In my scholarly capacity, I have frequently served as a referee for articles submitted for publication to scholarly journals. Recently, an article I was refereeing identified a perplexing problem for many believing Christians--unanswered prayer. The article analyzed the issue from the standpoint of contemporary evangelical rhetorical strategies used to defend God for His failure to answer. Although the article neither compared prayer to nor contrasted prayer with advertising in the mass media, a case could be made that there are definite similarities. Mass communication tends to be more unidirectional, as compared with intrapersonal communication, interpersonal communication, small group communication, and online communication (which are all much more interactive than mass communication). Even public communication (in which one speaker addresses an audience) has a more easily obtained feedback than does mass communication. In public communication, the speaker can, at least, see the nonverbal facial expressions and body language of his or her audience. S/he can hear the applause, gasps, or heckling. In mass communication, on the other hand, the communicator is separated from his or her audience by some “medium”—radio, television, newspaper, magazine, billboard, etc. The communicator cannot “see” how his or her messages are being received. Advertisements in the mass media are impersonal and there are problems associated with discovering whether members of the intended (target) audiences even paid attention to the advertisements, let alone whether they decoded the messages in the same sense in which the advertisers encoded them. Nor do advertisers know whether the persuasion strategies used in the advertisements were successful. Hence, advertisers seek some sort of “feedback” from their target audiences (which those audiences do not typically offer without additional prodding). I submit that to the extent advertisers are unable to secure the desired feedback, they are in much the same boat (in terms of communication feedback) as are Christians who do not sense that their prayers are being answered.
Prayer, for many Christians, is a fairly unidirectional form of communication. As is the case with the target audiences of advertisers, the intended audience (God, in this case) cannot be “seen.” He may be paying attention and may be decoding the messages in the same sense in which those offering the prayers encoded them. Whether the persuasion strategies used in the prayers were successful may sometimes be adduced by whether specific requests were granted, but even then—absent some accompanying message from God--skeptics may easily question whether the granting of requests was accomplished by God or was simply a matter of coincidence. Christians, like advertisers, are desirous for some form of feedback. Unfortunately, while advertisers have developed quantitative and qualitative methods of discovering feedback, Christians face a far more daunting task.
The very words for “angel” in Greek and Hebrew denote a “messenger.” The Hebrew word MALACH (from which we also derive the name of the last book of the Old Testament: Malachi) means “messenger.” A MALACH may be either an angel or a human messenger. The same holds true for the Greek word AGGELOS. One can easily see, for example, the word “angel” in the word “evangelist”—one who is a human messenger of good news. In prior commentaries, I have demonstrated that angels are the personification of God’s creative fiats, His intrapersonal communication, and His own unidirectional messages. I have indicated the role they play in God’s communication network. So, here I offer a few examples of angels representing God’s tangible “feedback.”
Although Mary and Joseph never requested a miraculous birth, according to Luke 1:26-38, the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary to announce her pending pregnancy. Matthew 1:20-23 reports that an unnamed angel also visited Joseph in a dream to verify that Mary’s pregnancy was divine. Since these two angelic visitations, however, were not prompted by a prayer request, they are not to be classified as “feedback.” They are, instead, in the category of God’s own unidirectional messages. Joseph’s angelic message was presented as entirely unidirectional; Mary’s encounter with Gabriel included interaction between Mary and Gabriel, as Mary questioned how the virgin birth would be possible.
While the angelic encounters of Mary and Joseph were classed as God’s own unidirectional messages, the similar encounter between Zachariah (the father of John the Baptist) and an unnamed angel, in Luke 1:11-20, fits the category of “feedback.” In Luke 1:13, the angel says to Zachariah, “Your prayer has been heard.” The old man Zachariah and his old, barren wife Elizabeth are to have a child. This is angelic/divine feedback.
In Acts 10:31, the gentile Cornelius reports being visited by a man in bright clothing (no doubt, an angel) who says, “Cornelius, your prayer was heard and your alms were remembered before God.” The angel directs Cornelius to the house where Simon Peter was staying and Cornelius becomes the first gentile Christian.
Acts Chapter 12 relates an account of Herod persecuting the church. He has the Apostle James executed and, since that act appears to please some Jews, he next proceeds to arrest the Apostle Peter (with a similar result in mind). The church meeting in the house of Mary the mother of John Mark, fearing an impending murder of Peter, prays fervently. The night before Herod planned to bring Peter to judgment, Peter is bound with two chains, sleeping between two soldiers, with more soldiers guarding the door to the prison. An angel comes to Peter, breaks his chains, tells him to get dressed, escorts him past the guards at the prison door, and takes him to the gate in the wall of the city, which opens for them automatically. Once on the street to John Mark’s mother’s house, the angel leaves Peter. Peter proceeds to the house and knocks on the door. He explains what has happened and then flees to another place.
These New Testament accounts of angelic encounters exemplify God’s angelic feedback. Old Testament examples include angels responding to the cry of Abraham’s son Ishmael to preserve him from dying in the wilderness (Genesis 21:17), responding to Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac--telling him not to do so (Genesis 22:11-12), answering the prayer of Manoah, the father of Samson--confirming that he had indeed visited Manoah’s wife with instructions about Samson (Judges 13:8 ff.), answering the prayer of Elijah concerning the threat to his life (1 Kings 19:7), answering the prayers of Isaiah and King Hezekiah to defend Jerusalem (Isaiah 37 and 2 Chronicles 32:21), and of course, answering the prayers of Daniel by protecting him in the lions’ den. Perhaps, the account of the angel confronting Balaam and his donkey, in Numbers 22, is also an example of divine feedback.
Angels are not the only means of feedback used by God in the Bible. Gideon’s fleece, the Urim and Thummim of the high priest, and fire sent from heaven to consume sacrifices are other representative examples of feedback. The point here, however, is that angels are the personification of God’s communication. Feedback is but one aspect of communication.
