“This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him so that he might show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John.”
(Revelation 1:1-2)

The angel of revelation. Angel who describes and encourages and enlarges our horizons and strengthens our faith reminding us, with the imagination of his visions and the guarantee of his testimony, that God is the Lord of history, that the times are in his hands, that he rules over the future as he has ruled over the past, and that his people have nothing to fear as his throne is eternal and his word is everlasting. Angel of trust and strength and joy. Vision of glory and winds of promise. Angels in human history.

The whole book of the Revelation of John is full of angels. Every church has its own. “The seven stars are the Angels of the seven Churches, and the seven lamps are the seven Churches themselves.” (1:20) The seven Churches mean all of us, and to us are directed the warnings and the encouragement the angels address to each one of them. Another angel “comes up from the east” with the seal of the living God in his hands in order to mark the forehead of the servants of God. Others manage the winds and the seas and the fires and the stars, they open seals and blow trumpets and defeat devils and protect the elect and lead them to the throne of the Lamb. They organise history and shape eternity. They are many, and their presence fills the heavens.

“As I looked I heard, all round the throne and the living creatures and the elders, the voices of many angels, thousands on thousands, myriads on myriads.”
(5:11)

We are in good hands. Every angel is a creation by himself, and there are numbers without numbers of them in the heights of heaven and on the walks of earth. Their ways lead us to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb, the Holy City that is image and reality of the eternal joy that awaits us, together with the angels who have been by our side in our pilgrimage.

“So in spirit he carried me away to a great and lofty mountain, and showed me Jerusalem, the Holy City, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, it had the radiance of some priceless jewel, like a japer, clear as crystal. It had a great and lofty wall with twelve gates, at which were stationed twelve angels.”
(21:10-12)

The angels who guide us on earth keep watch at the gates of our eternal city in heaven. We who walk with them will enter through them. An angel locked the gates of Paradise, and twelve angels welcome us at the open gates of heaven. “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to you with this testimony to the Churches”, says the last page of the Bible (22:16). The Law of Moses “was promulgated by angels” (Galatians 3:19), and the fullness of revelation is now handed over to us by their hands in is definitive abundance. The company of angels guides and strengthens our lives.