What Are Dominion Angels?

Dominions Deliver Justice, Show Mercy, and Lead Lower-Ranking Angels

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Carrying Out God's Will

Dominions are a group of angels in Christianity who help keep the world in proper order. Dominion angels are known for delivering God's justice into unjust situations, showing mercy toward human beings, and helping angels in lower ranks stay organized and perform their work well.

When Dominion angels carry out God's judgments against sinful situations in this fallen world, they keep in mind God's good original intent as the Creator for everyone and everything he has made, as well as God's good purposes for every person's life right now. Dominions work to do what's truly best in difficult circumstances—what's right from God's perspective, even though humans may not understand.

Examples of Dominion Angels at Work

The Bible describes a famous example in the story of how Dominion angels destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, two ancient cities that were full of sin. Dominions carried a God-given mission that may seem harsh: to completely obliterate the cities. But before doing so, they warned the only faithful people living there (Lot and his family) about what was going to happen, and they helped those righteous people escape.

Dominions also often act as channels of mercy for God's love to flow to people. They express God's unconditional love at the same time as they express God's passion for justice. Since God is both completely loving and perfectly holy, Dominion angels look to God's example and try their best to balance love and truth. Love without truth isn't really loving, because it settles for less than the best that should be. But truth without love isn't really truthful, because it doesn't respect the reality that God has made everyone to give and receive love. Dominions know this, and hold this tension in the balance as they make all of their decisions.

Messengers and Managers for God

One of the ways that dominion angels regularly deliver God's mercy to people is by answering the prayers of leaders around the world. After world leaders—in any field, from the government to business—pray for wisdom and guidance about specific choices they need to make, God often assigns Dominions to impart that wisdom and send fresh ideas about what to say and do.

Archangel Zadkiel, the angel of mercy, is a leading Dominions angel. Some people believe that Zadkiel is the angel who stopped the biblical prophet Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac at the last minute, by mercifully providing a ram for the sacrifice God asked for, so Abraham wouldn't have to harm his son. Others believe that the angel was God himself, in angelic form as the Angel of the Lord. Today, Zadkiel and the other dominions who work with him in the purple light ray urge people to confess and turn away from their sins so they can move closer to God. They send people insights to help them learn from their mistakes while assuring them that they can move forward into the future with confidence because of God's mercy and forgiveness in their lives. Dominions also encourage people to use their gratitude for how God has shown them mercy as motivation to show other people mercy and kindness when they make mistakes.

Dominion angels also regulate the other angels in the angelic ranks below them, supervising how they perform their God-given duties. Dominions communicate regularly with the lower angels to help them stay organized and on track with the many missions God assigns them to carry out. Finally, Dominions help keep the natural order of the universe as God designed it, by enforcing universal laws of nature.

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Hopler, Whitney. "What Are Dominion Angels?" Learn Religions, Feb. 8, 2021, learnreligions.com/what-are-dominion-angels-123907. Hopler, Whitney. (2021, February 8). What Are Dominion Angels? Retrieved from https://www.learnreligions.com/what-are-dominion-angels-123907 Hopler, Whitney. "What Are Dominion Angels?" Learn Religions. https://www.learnreligions.com/what-are-dominion-angels-123907 (accessed March 28, 2024).