Question #208 “Does God assign a guardian angel to each of us?”
Answer: The Scriptures nowhere state that an angel is assigned to an individual. Angels were sometimes sent to individuals but there is nothing said about a permanent assignment. The idea that each believer has an angel to guard them, and a demon to tempt them came into existence during the early extrabiblical writings and none of those writings made it into the books of the Bible.
However, God’s Word does present angels as messengers and ministers who are sent by God to serve a particular purpose. God sent an angel to protect Daniel in the lion’s den (Daniel 6:22). Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were protected by an angel from the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:28). In the New Testament we see many angels appearing to communicate some special message like the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus to the mother and fathers. We are told that angels rejoice when someone receives salvation (Luke 15:10), carry the souls of believers at death to heaven (Luke 16:22), that they desire to watch the gospel unfold (1 Peter 1:12), and that we sometimes could entertain them and be unaware of the fact that they might be an angel (Hebrews 13:2).
There are books written about people who have had personal encounters with angels, movies and television programs abound, but we are not to develop our theology from our culture or from experiences that we or others have had. Our doctrines are to come from what the Bible teaches. People who claim to have had an experience with an angel may have had a real experience but a wise person who is a student of God’s Word must be skeptical about what they experienced. The enemy is a great deceiver and as Jeremiah warns us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
Lots of people have taken great comfort in thinking that an angel is with them watching and protecting them. However, in reality, why would we be satisfied to have an angel, a created creature caring for us when God’s Word tells us that Almighty God, the creator of the universe, is always with us, He is for us and He is in us? If we are His children through faith in Christ, He works all things that goes on in and around us for our good (Romans 8:28-30). That ought to be the greatest protection and security that we would ever want. If we have an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, all loving God with us, does it really matter whether or not an angel is there?