As a boy, I remember reading Frank Peretti’s novel This Present Darkness. My youthful imagination was inundated by this work of fiction that portrays a small town becoming the battle ground of spiritual warfare between light and darkness—angels and demons. Unfortunately, we are often more enamored by the superstition than the biblical teaching on these topics.

In question 19, the Westminster Larger Catechism continues its teaching on the providence of God. In the previous question, we defined providence with the words of John Flavel: “Providence is that continued exercise of the divine energy whereby the Creator preserves all his creatures, is operative in all that comes to pass in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end.” This includes the unseen world of the angelic host.

Creative speculation has often been spent in discerning when and how the angels fell. For example, some have thought that Isaiah 14:12–14 teaches the fall of Satan and even use this passage to connect the devil to the name Lucifer. Others have found the same event in Ezekiel 28, or have concluded that, when the dragon’s tail swipes a third of the stars in Revelation 12:4, this describes the fall of the angels. But when the Catechism approaches the question of God’s providence toward the angels, it does so with the same modesty of the biblical witness itself.

The Bible teaches that God’s sovereign providence extends over His spiritual creation (see Job 1:12 and Matt. 8:31). Nevertheless, angels were created as moral beings and, while God permitted their fall, they bear responsibility for their sin. Jude wrote: “And the angels who did not stay within their own positions of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day” (v. 6). These angels, the Apostle Peter said, sinned, so God did not spare them but “cast them into hell” (2 Pet. 2:4). As Christ has not come to help the angels (Heb. 2:16), these are irretrievably lost without hope of reconciliation and restoration.

That heavy truth is intended to motivate us toward Christ. Again, Jude says those angels could not keep themselves. Then, in a somewhat startling exhortation, he says we are to “keep ourselves in the love God” (Jude 1:21). How? If the mighty angels could not do this, what hope is there that you and I can keep ourselves in the love of God? And then Jude brings us to the climax of his letter—the pinnacle of praise for Jesus: “Now to him who is able to keep you” (v. 24). The dreadful thought of the angel’s fall is a means to secure us to the Great Shepherd.

But not every angel was lost in sin. The Apostle Paul speaks of those angels who are “elect” (1 Tim. 5:21). Later, the Catechism will teach us what the Bible says about the election of God’s people, but here we are told that He has also elected some angels—angels who have been chosen and preserved by God. While the fallen angels are kept for judgment, these elect angels are preserved in holiness (see Mark 8:38) and in festal happiness (see Heb. 12:22).

Moreover, against the anti-supernatural tendency of the modern day, the Bible teaches us that these angels are “ministering spirits sent out for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” (Heb. 1:14). We shouldn’t look for an angel behind every bush, but the biblical witness does tell us that angels sometimes administer the power of God, as when the Assyrians were struck down (2 Kings 19:35), or the justice of God, as when Herod was killed (Acts 12:23), or even the mercy of God, as when Peter was delivered (Acts 12:11). Whatever these ministering spirits do—privately or with the corporate church—we should be grateful that they carry out the will of our Father in heaven for our good and for His glory.