Christianity began with the appearance of an angel. In the gospel of Luke, Mary is told by the angel Gabriel she will conceive and bear a son and call him Jesus.

Angelic messengers such as Gabriel bookmarked Jesus’s life. After his baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus was taken by the Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days (according to the gospel of Matthew) where he was tempted by the Devil. When the Devil finally left him, “suddenly angels came and waited on him”.

Before Jesus’s crucifixion, in the garden of Gethsemane, as he was praying that God relieve him of the need to sacrifice himself,

an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling upon the ground.

In all four gospels in the New Testament, angels appear to speak to the various women who visit the tomb of Jesus.

Gabriel is one the two most important angels within the Christian tradition, along with Michael, who would have a key role at the time of the end of the world. These are the only two angels named in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

According to Revelation, the last book in the New Testament, Michael was the leader of the warrior angels who would throw a dragon (called the Devil and Satan) and his evil angels out of heaven to earth.

From the first century onwards Gabriel and Michael were known as “archangels”, the rank higher than angels.

In the theory of angels (angelology) within the Christian traditions, angels were created by God on the first of the six days of creation. From then on, they were immortal.

All angels were created as good. But they also had free will to choose good or evil. Some chose the good and remained in heaven. Others, who chose evil, fell downwards, where they lived, along with their leader Satan, in the cloudy atmosphere between heaven and earth.

In the Old Testament, the angels were members of God’s heavenly council advising God on his........

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