An Angel in Disguise Trivia Quiz

Answer: Serpent

According to Genesis 3, a serpent tempted Eve to eat of the forbidden tree. She did and then Adam ate after her. The serpent appears to be a literal animal; the text even states that it was "wiser than any beast of the field which the Lord God made" (3:1, Easy Bible translation). Then as punishment for his role in the fall of mankind, God cursed the serpent to be cursed more than any other animal. The curse seems to include slithering and having a fork tongue. Snakes appear elsewhere in the Bible as the descendants of this original creature.

However, the book of Revelation calls Satan the ancient serpent. To the reader, this might seem contradictory or confusing. It doesn't seem likely that Satan actually WAS the serpent, given the description in Genesis. However, one could still argue that by possessing or using the serpent for his will, Satan was in disguise.

Answer: True

Genesis 18:1-2, Easy Bible
"Now the Lord came to him by the holy tree of Mamre, when he was seated in the doorway of his tent in the middle of the day;
And lifting up his eyes, he saw three men before him; and seeing them, he went quickly to them from the door of the tent, and went down on his face to the earth;"

Two of the three men were later identified as angels (Genesis 19). While some have suggested that all three were angels in the form of men, others believe that the third man was God Himself in human form, as the text states that the Lord visited Abraham.

Answer: Sodom

God was going to destroy Sodom for its extreme wickedness (it was not just one type of sin, but many different types of sins, based upon Genesis, Ezekiel, Jude, etc.). He sent two angels there; evidently two of the three men who had visited Abraham in Genesis 18.

According to Genesis 19, these angels looked exactly like human males. When the men of the city saw them, they wanted to have sex with them.

Answer: The texts don't really say.

Genesis 32:1-2, Easy Bible
"And on his way Jacob came face to face with the angels of God.
And when he saw them he said, This is the army of God: so he gave that place the name of Mahanaim."

All right; all right: these angels weren't in disguise, since Jacob knew what they were. But honestly, there are not very many angels in disguise in the Bible. So I decided to ask what they might have been disguised as.

While it doesn't say how exactly these angels looked, many Biblical angels looked like human males when they appeared to people. Ezekiel 10 describes angels with a mixture of human and animal parts; multiple eyes and multiple heads. The popular art depictions of angels as beautiful women or babies with wings aren't Biblical, although the Bible never explicitly says that angels can't be feminine, either.

Answer: The angel of the Lord

It was the angel of the Lord, and the Lord Himself.

Exodus 3:2-4, Easy Bible
"And the angel of the Lord was seen by him in a flame of fire coming out of a thorn-tree: and he saw that the tree was on fire, but it was not burned up.
And Moses said, I will go and see this strange thing, why the tree is not burned up,
And when the Lord saw him turning to one side to see, God said his name out of the tree, crying, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I."

(This translation says "tree" but most say "bush").

As a side note, the Protestant Bible only addresses two good angels by name, Gabriel and Michael. The Catholic Bible names a third angel, Raphael. Both name some demons, such as Satan, Abbadon, and Beelzabub, but it's possible that these all refer to the same devil.

Answer: Genesis

This account is from Genesis 6. According to the text, the sons of God (usually interpreted as angels; the book of Job also refers to angels as the sons of God) married and mated with women, whom they saw as very beautiful. A common belief is that the offspring were giants or the Nephlim, and because these creatures weren't fully human, they were corrupt and God had to destroy them in the flood.

The fact that the angels somehow had male anatomy and impregnated women stumps some Christians. We are often told that angels are neither male nor female, but simply spirit. Jesus said that angels don't get married in the Gospels. It is possible that when an angel comes on the Earth, they obtain human features. It's also possible that God had changed angels from the time of Genesis to the time of Jesus. Yet another possibility is that angels can be male or female, but they just don't get married.

Answer: True

The Hebrew word that is translated as angel, "mal'akh" simply means messenger. While virtually every English Bible translation states "the angel of the Lord", a better understanding would be "the messenger of Yawheh".

Hagar, Jacob, Gideon, Joshua, and Samson's parents were just some of the Old Testament people who were visited by "the angel of the Lord". He looked like a man, but they felt like they were in the presence of God Himself. Other times, the messenger didn't look like a man, but spoke as God, such as to Moses through the burning bush or tree. There were times when the angel received worship and forgave sins, which are things that no ordinary angel can do; in fact it would be blasphemous.

While not everybody agrees that each occurrence was the same angel, many do. They believe that this was no ordinary angel. In the case of Exodus 23, God told them that His name was in the angel. Other examples of "the angel" being identified as God are in Genesis 16:7 (Hagar said that he was the God who sees), the burning bush in Exodus 3, and in Judges 13:22, when Samson's father said that he and his wife would die since they saw God.

The book of John calls Jesus the Word of God. It also says that nobody has ever seen the Father God. The common belief then is that the pre-incarnate Jesus was the angel of the Lord. Depending upon translations, the New Testament refers to "the" or "an" angel of the Lord, such as Gabriel, but the New Testament never identifies an angel with God.

Outside of Christian thought, the Jewish theologian Philo also attributed the angel of the Lord to the Logos or Word. The Jewish Talmud calls the being Metatron and indicates that it had a special relationship with God.

Answer: Hebrews

The verse is Hebrews 13:2. It alludes to the angels who visited Abraham and Lot. If we accept the Bible as the word of God, it also suggests that angels could come to people still today.

Answer: An angel of light

The point of this scripture is that Satan can trick people into thinking that something is good, when it is bad. In the context of the chapter, Paul discusses false apostles, who at first, seem like apostles of Christ.

Answer: A dragon

All throughout the book of Revelation, Satan, also known as the devil, is called a dragon. In the Old Testament, the dragon Leviathan also is a symbol of Satan.

In Christian tradition, Satan began as the angel Lucifer, but he rebelled against God. This caused him to be kicked out of Heaven down to Earth--he became a fallen angel. He took on the new name, Satan, and just like other angels or demons, Satan can appear in various forms. Given that Satan is called the serpent and the dragon, I wonder if the original serpent was a dragon before being cursed to be a snake.