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Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. –Hebrews 3:15 (NIV)

Eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.  –1 Corinthians 14:1

Do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. –Romans 14:16 (NIV)

The teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.” So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.” –Mark 3:22-30 (NIV)

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Angels are referred to as “lights” and “stars” in the Bible. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights” (Jas. 1:17). Light is symbolic of illumination, revelation, and knowledge. I believe James was speaking of spiritual gifts–particularly revelation gifts that involve angels, dreams, and visions. There have been times when I have seen angel sparkles in dreams, and also with my eyes closed in inner visions. “While the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). And this is what they are–they are bright like stars (which makes me wonder about the Star of Bethlehem). Angels are creatures of light. These angel sparkles will appear out of the thin air, while our eyes are open–they look like little Christmas lights (usually white ones, sometimes blue, sometimes orange, etc). They flash like little bright LED lights for one second, like a tiny little camera flash. Most of the time, they are white. They vary in size. For me, most of the time they are no larger than a pinpoint. Sometimes, they are as large as a dime or a quarter. My wife has seen them even larger than this, sometimes in the shape of a mist, spreading out several feet in front of her. They prefer to appear at night, but can appear at any time of day. Lastly, there was that time when Jesus was called “him who holds the seven stars in his right hand” (Rev. 2:1).

One of my favorite books on charismatic or prophetic church history, is Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend, written in 1260. He referred to “angel sparkles” too, except he didn’t use our special term. 

In volume 1 (William Ryan’s version), he speaks of the funeral of SAINT AMBROSE (4th c.): “When his body was transported to the cathedral on the night of Easter, a number of baptized children saw the saint. Some of them saw him seated on the episcopal throne, some pointed him out to their parents as he went up to it; still others told how they had seen a star above his body” (p. 234).

Again, another “angel sparkle” occurrence on the martyrdom site of ST. PETER MARTYR (13th c.): “Many religious men and women and numbers of other people have seen lights descending from Heaven over the site of the martyrdom, and have testified that they saw two friars in Dominican habits surrounded by these lights” (p. 260).

In volume 2 there are more examples. Here’s one from SAINT DOMINIC’s infant baptism (13th c.): “When Dominic’s godmother lifted him from the sacred font, it seemed to her that he had on his forehead a brilliant star” (p. 45).

SAINT MARCELLUS (5th c.): “Another night when he was asleep, someone came and awakened him, and, once awake, he saw a star shining in the entrance to his cell. He got up and tried to touch the star, but it quickly moved to another part of the cave, and he followed it until it came to rest over the spot where John the Baptist’s head was buried” (p. 138).

SAINT DENIS’ martyrdom (3rd c.): “Instantly the body of Saint Dionysius stood up, took his head in its arms, and, with an angel and a heavenly light leading the way, marched two miles” (p. 240).

ST. COLUMBA (d. 597): “A great heavenly light was seen to shine above him by several of the brethren on separate occasions, both at night and in broad daylight…poised over the face of the sleeping child was a fiery ball of light…I saw a very bright column of fiery light going in front of the man of God whom you despise, and holy angels as his companions…how great and special were his experiences of angelic visits and heavenly light…the place where his bones rest is still visited by the light of Heaven and by numbers of angels” (Adomnan of Iona, Life of St. Columba, pp. 110, 206-07, 233).

Both Robert Fleming, the Covenanter biographer, and Adomnan saw “angel sparkles,” or “bright lights,” or “heavenly lights” as angelic manifestations, and as closely associated with open visions of angels. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights” (Jas. 1:17). It seems “HEAVENLY LIGHTS” is the more Biblical and traditional expression. The Golden Legend also uses the phrases HEAVENLY LIGHTS and STARS for this phenomenon: not “angel sparkles,” which admittedly sounds a bit irreverent, casual, or overly familiar. Also, the “very bright column of fiery light” mentioned above makes me think of Exodus 13:21: “By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.”

ST. SYMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN (d. 1022) – Greek Orthodox: The unique thing about St. Symeon is that he is not having visions of angelic lights, but visions of the shekinah glory of God (or kabod), or seeing the light of the Holy Spirit. He also writes a lot about why he believes this to be so; and that the practice of contemplation (or hesychasm) leads to this glorious experience of God’s light. His biographer said that Symeon saw “the Holy Spirit as an infinite and formless light descending upon him…he lost all awareness of his surroundings and forgot that he was in a house…he saw nothing but light all around.” He said that the light would come at different times, like when he was reading theology, standing before the icon of Mary (as a Protestant I can’t quite agree with that), praying the Trisagion, and while worshiping God with the Lord’s Supper. “Symeon speaks of the light waxing and waning, appearing first as a star, then growing until it is like the sun in brilliance, and finally once again withdrawing”; and he describes it as “the energy and power of His all-Holy Spirit, in other words, His light.”

He also believed it was possible to experience transfiguration in this life, just like Jesus did on the Mount of Transfiguration, where the apostles saw His glory (Luke 9:32). He said, “I partook of the light, yea and became light, beyond every passion and outside every evil.” His Biblical support for Christians being able to experience transfiguration comes from John 17:22: “The glory which You gave me I have given them.” Turning from his own personal experience of divine light, he turns to the Bible and the Desert Fathers for further confirmation: the pillar of fire (Exod. 13:21), the glory of God that filled the temple of Solomon (1 Kings 8:10-11), the vision of Isaiah 6:1-5, glory in Ezekiel 10:18-22; 11:22-23; and 43:1-5, the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant (Exod. 19; Lev. 10:1-3; 16:2; 2 Sam. 6:4-7), Moses‘ encounters with it (Exod. 24:5), and esp. 34:29-35, which says in v. 30, “When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him.” Then we have the example of when Jesus appeared in light to Paul on the road to Damascus, blinding him and knocking him off his horse (Acts 9:3-4), Stephen saw the glory of God before he was martyred (Acts 7:55), the glory of God is said to give visible light to New Jerusalem (Rev. 15:8; 21:23), and Paul says that Christians contemplate and then see the glory of God in a vision: “We all, with unveiled face, beholding (contemplating, katoptrizomai) as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).

ROBERT BRUCE (d. 1631) – Covenanter: “Fleming also mentions angelic visitations, the audible voice of God, bright lights appearing in the darkness, physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit in meetings…” (Jack Deere, Surprised by the Voice of God, p. 76; Robert Fleming, The Fulfilling of the Scripture, pp. 416, 418-19, 432, 437-40).

SOLOMON STODDARD (d. 1729) was the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards; and the forerunner of the Great Awakening that occurred under Edwards’ ministry and preaching. The circular light peeking out behind the pillar in his pastor’s study is apparently an angelic light, symbolizing the revelation, illumination, or enlightenment, that Stoddard had received from the Holy Spirit and the angels. The mere fact that something like this was painted in Stoddard’s pastoral portrait, in color, shows that Stoddard must have not only seen, but believed in manifestations of angelic light orbs, and had taken them seriously.

THOMAS OLIVERS (d. 1799) was an early Methodist preacher, hymn-writer (“The God of Abraham Praise”), and editor of The Arminian Magazine, that is, until he started to make a lot of printing errors with it. He was converted under George Whitefield’s preaching and became a friend of John Wesley. Shortly after his conversion, he was walking at night by himself, and he later wrote, “At the entrance of the town, a ray of light, resembling the shining of a star, descended through a small opening in the heavens, and instantaneously shone upon me. In that instant my burden fell off, and I was so elevated, that I felt as if I could literally fly away to heaven. This was the more surprising to me, as I had always been (what I still am) so prejudiced in favour of rational religion, as not to regard visions or revelations, perhaps, so much as I ought to do. But this light was so clear, and the sweetness and other effects attending it were so great, that though it happened about twenty-seven years ago, the several circumstances thereof are as fresh on my remembrance, as if they had happened but yesterday” (Thomas Jackson, ed., The Lives of Early Methodist Preachers, 1837, vol.1, “Mr. Thomas Olivers,” p. 207).