A problem most of us have with the book of Revelation today is that the explanations provided within the text are often as difficult to understand as the images they are supposed to explain. For example, it is not much help to know that the seven stars in Jesus' right hand are the "angels" of the seven churches unless we know what role angels have in relation to churches. The word angel means messenger, and some (for example, Tenney 1957:55) have theorized that these "angels" were actually human messengers of God, either the minister or the pastor of each church--assuming churches had a single leader by this time--or a prophet, or perhaps the public reader of John's letter to the assembled congregation (see 1:3).

Everywhere else in the book of Revelation, angels are supernatural messengers, and there is no reason to make an exception here. When angels in this book are identified, it is always either in relation to whomever they serve (for example, God's angel, or Christ's, in 1:1; 3:5; 22:6, 16; "Michael and his angels" in 12:7; "the dragon and his angels" in 12:7, 9), or in relation to the realm over which they rule (for example, "the angel of the Abyss" in 9:11 or the angel "who had charge of the fire" in 14:18 or "the angel in charge of the waters" in 16:5). "Angels of the seven churches" belong to the latter group. They rule or preside over the churches just as an angel presides over the sources of fresh water or over fire or over the realm of death and destruction (compare the four angels in control of the winds "who had been given power to harm the land and the sea" in 7:2). Like these angels over various spheres of existence, the angels of the seven churches are not easily characterized as either good or evil. They share in the moral ambiguity of the congregations over which they preside, as well as in the praise and the blame that those congregations deserve (see Beckwith 1922:445).

Today, because of our love for abstraction, we find John's distinction between the angels and their respective congregations--between the stars and the lampstands--rather confusing. Many of us would be more comfortable speaking of the ethos, the atmosphere or even the spirit (in a rather secular sense) of a congregation or a community than of its "angel." Yet to John they are, quite literally, angels whom God holds responsible for the life and well-being of the congregations. Paul had referred to speaking "in the tongues . . . of angels" (1 Cor 13:1) and had urged proper conduct in worship at Corinth "because of the angels" (1 Cor 11:10). They seem to have had their greatest importance in Paul's Asian congregations (Colossae and Laodicea), and Paul is careful to point out the danger of esteeming them too highly or putting them at the center of Christian worship or religious experience (see Col 2:18). Perhaps because of such tendencies in Asia, they are not pictured here in Revelation as dwelling "in the heavenly world" (Boring 1989:86) or as the churches' "spiritual counterparts" in heaven (Caird 1966:25). They are as much a part of this world as the churches for which they are responsible. "I know where you live," says Jesus to the angel of Pergamum, "where Satan has his throne" (2:13).