Real Angels

Real angels surround us, both those who live in this world and those who have passed to the next. We may think of them as our “angel team.”

A Favorite Angel

Recently we lost my ninety-one-year-old mother-in-law. Her death felt like a graduation. We will miss her, but Mardi Condie lived a full, faithful life even leading the music in church two weeks before her passing. As we planned her funeral and celebrated her life, I was overwhelmed with the understanding that we now had one more member on our angel team.

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, real angels are part of our mortal experience and our eternal hope.

Our Associates

Angels are people who once lived on earth and are nearby when we pass from this earth to join others who are beyond the separating veil. An article from Public Square Magazine collected quotations about real angels to comfort people who were mourning at Christmastime. Quotations in this blog are from this article.

Heber C. Kimball once testified that “angels are our associates; they are with us and around about us, and watch over us, and take care of us, and lead us, and guide us, and administer to our wants.”

When we understand that the Spirit world is aware and near, can we approach even the difficult times with more confidence and peace?

President John Taylor taught, “God lives, and his eyes are over us, and his angels are round and about us, and they are more interested in us than we are in ourselves, ten thousand times, but we do not know it.”

The scriptural assurance that more are with us than against us becomes even more meaningful with this perspective.

Likenesses to Real Angels

Parley P. Pratt spoke of angels as beings that “eat, drink, sing and converse like other(s).”

They pass from one world to another with more ease and in less time than we pass from one city to another. They have not a single attribute which man has not. But their attributes are more matured, or more developed.

We do not need to consider real angels as mysterious or ethereal. They are more advanced than mortal beings, but still share characteristics with us.

B.H. Roberts taught that angels “possess a material body of flesh and bones.”

[They] can eat, drink, walk, converse, reason, love, fight, wrestle, sing, or play on musical instruments. They can go or come on foreign missions, in heaven, earth, or hell; and they can travel space, and visit the different worlds, with all the ease and alacrity with which God and Christ do the same, being possessed of similar organizations, powers, and attributes in a degree.

If we think of the spirit world as so different that we should not think about it until we get there, we should remember that God created, organized, and  watches over and reaches out to both. The organization of God in heaven is more similar to earth life than we may recognize.

Angel Teams

Elder Spencer J. Condie (emeritus general authority) spoke at mom’s memorial. He shared what President Joseph F. Smith had shared after the death of his own family member: “They are as deeply interested in our welfare today, if not with greater capacity, with far more interest, behind the veil, than they were in the flesh.”

Have you ever felt a loved one nearby? Have you felt their comfort and concern or counsel? Grief is part of the separation caused by death, but how beautiful is it to consider the modern-day teachings and revelation that proclaim that real angels are like us; they are interested in us, and they understand us.

President Ezra Taft Benson told some children, “I promise you, dear children, that angels will minister unto you also. You may not see them, but they will be there to help you.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland invited us in 2012 “to invite angels into our lives . . . Angels are our relatives. Angels are prophets. I testify of angels. I believe in angels.”

I believe that what prophets and apostles have testified of angels is true. And though we may be separated from those we love who have died, we are never truly alone. Heaven is near and cheering us on.