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The Armies of Heaven

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And the LORD roars aloud at the head of His army; for vast indeed is His host, numberless are those that do His bidding...

Our Angels Are Warriors. The Heavenly Host is organized as a rigid military structure to fight against the forces of evil in the name of God. With the big man being The Omnipotent, this tends to imply a Powers That Be or Have You Seen My God? portrayal that necessitates his servants to fight his battles for him.

The Legions of Hell are their enemy, and these soldiers will be the ones fighting on the front lines on Earth or to defend their home base when Hell Invades Heaven.

The Celestial Paragons and Archangels will be the ones in charge of the lower angels, with Archangel Michael typically as the field commander and the one to personally smite Satan.

The Good Counterpart to The Legions of Hell. See also Valkyries.


Examples:

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    Comic Books 
  • Ghost Rider: Sometimes enemies, sometimes allies. It's eventually revealed by Retcon that the "demon" Zarathos is actually a misguided member of them and that the spirits of vengeance he imitates when possessing John Blaze, which include the "true" Ghost Riders, are in fact non-military agents of heaven meant to work where heaven doesn't actually want it's interests to be obvious. Most of the conflict between angels, spirits of vengeance, Zarathos and the like stems from misunderstanding, except when the angels in question are just evil.
  • Preacher: The Heavenly Host shows up, mostly at the end where they're slaughtered to an angel by the Saint of Killers. The story begins when one of the seraphim has sex with a succubus, birthing Genesis and starting the whole story.

    Films 
  • The Monkey Goes West: The second film has an army of heavenly warriors arriving to arrest the Bull Demon and his wife, Princess Iron Fan.

    Gamebooks 

    Literature 
  • A Batalha do Apocalipse: The Cherubs are the military caste of the Seven Heavens. They are specialized warriors, assassins, spies and hunters who participated in most of the angels conflicts, like the Ethereal Wars, Lucifer's rebellion and the Civil War.
  • The Beginning After the End: The Asuras of Epheotus have their own armies. In Volume 11, Kezess, the ruler of the Asuras, not only brings Epheotus into the mortal plane, but as part of his deal with Arthur the previous volume sends down his own forces to occupy the newly liberated Dicathen under the pretext of protection against a potential counter-invasion by the Vritra. This is much less benign that it would seem as God and Satan Are Both Jerks is in full effect in the setting with Kezess himself having committed his fair share of atrocities upon the Dicathians he claims to protect.
  • The Dresden Files: The existence of the Heavenly Host is foreshadowed by Queen Mab, but they are yet to make a canon appearance. The Archangel Michael (who is also yet to be introduced) is said to be their Frontline General.
  • Dr. Greta Helsing: In Grave Importance, the angelic armies of a parallel universe attack the Heaven of Greta's universe, deeming it "false".
  • High School D×D: While they don't exactly do much fighting, the angels do have a large military presence in the series.
  • Left Behind: Jesus with His army of saints emerging from Heaven in Glorious Appearing.
  • That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: The angels are the personal armies of Veldanava that fight to protect the world from interdimensional invasions. And then Veldanava died because of the world's mortal races and the angels continued that duty while also nursing a deep grudge against them, which manifested in descending every 500 years to launch attacks on advanced civilizations to uphold Medieval Stasis. They then descend into full-on Omnicidal Maniac territory with the prompting of the Big Bad's mind-control.
  • The Salvation War: In the second book, Yahweh sends the Incomparable Legion of Light, formed by a mixture of afterlife humans and angels, against the Earth army who is invading Heaven. It turns that it's no match against a 1.2 megaton nuke.
  • Wars Of The Realm: The angels of Elohim are divided into various orders—Ministers, Messengers, Carriers, Guardians, and of course Warriors. These latter compose a literal army, complete with generals, officers, and grunts, and are in a state of constant physical war against the army of the Fallen.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Supernatural: The Host of Heaven is organized like a military. The angelic foot soldiers on Earth are divided into garrisons, of which Castiel commanded one for a while before he was demoted and replaced by Uriel. Their boss Zachariah seems to be in charge of several garrisons and answers to Michael, Heaven's commander-in-chief. God has been missing for millennia.
  • Xena: Warrior Princess features an army of angels at war with an army of demons, and due to Crossover Cosmology the angels are able to resurrect Gabrielle, who should have gone to the Elysian fields, as one of their own to counter the demons resurrecting Xena as one of their own. It works, so far as Gabrielle does stop Xena from helping the demons, because dragging Gabrielle off to hell becomes more important to her. This isn't the first or last instance of this kind of thing, they've also been removed from their usual afterlife for the purpose of reincarnating after one of their dead enemies reincarnates as an unopposed warlord of a Bad Future.

    Mythology and Religion 
  • The Bible: Among the many titles of God is "Lord of Hosts", "host" here meaning the armies of heavenly angels. This is also rendered as "Lord Sabaoth" - "sabaoth" being a Latinization of the Hebrew צבאות (tzevaot), the word in the original language for these armies.
  • In the mythical Battle of Clavijo, Saint James comes down from heaven as a One-Man Army to fight off the Arabs.
  • Norse Mythology: The Valkyries are a divine Amazon Brigade serving either Odin or Freyja (depending on the source). They would serve as Psychopomps who took the souls of fallen warriors to Fólkvangr.
    • In addition, the Einherjar are this, in service to Odin. They are half of all warriors who die in battles, collected by the valkyries to Valhalla to feast. They also fight and kill each other, coming back to life each morning to feast and fight again and again, to prepare them for Ragnarok, the destruction of the world.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Demon: The Fallen: In the backstory, Lucifer's rebellious angels battled the angelic armies loyal to God and led by Archangel Michael, but the latter seem to have disappeared from the world while the Fallen were locked up in the Abyss.
  • Dungeons & Dragons: All of the Upper Planes are home to numerous beings of good that are capable of fighting, but the Archons of Mount Celestia are the ones who form a true proper army. They rarely mobilize except in the most extreme circumstances, but when they do they bring truly awesome power to bear on whatever evil has earned their wrath.
  • In Nomine. All of the angels of Heaven oppose the demons of Hell in their own way, but the hosts of angels led by the Archangels Laurence, Michael and David are the closest to being a heavenly army. Of the various types of angels, Malakites (regardless of which Archangel they serve) are most often involved in anti-demonic combat.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Applied In-Universe for the Imperium of Man: Many planets are populated by superstitious peasants who know little of life outside what is taught by Imperial preachers, and thus believe the Space Marines to be actual angels (and are indeed known as Angels of Death).
    • The Sisters of Battle are all human women (less augmented that Space Marines but much stronger and zealous than ordinary humans) whose use of Joan Of Archetype imagery and heavenly ranks (Seraphim, Celestials, Living Saints, etc.) brings them close to the trope.
    • The natives of Fenris combine this with Warrior Heaven: Fenris is a Single-Biome Planet of medieval Scandinavia, with Viking tribes fighting each other for dominance. The young men who fall during these battles are candidates for training and augmentation into Space Marines, battling and boozing across the stars in the God-Emperor's name: the Space Wolves.
  • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
    • The Stormcast Eternals are the army of Sigmar, the setting's primary God of Good and God of Order. They're created from the souls of deceased heroes and champions of order and reforged into immortal warriors, make heavy use of angelic imagery, ride into battle on griffins and draconic beasts, and are sent out from the Realm of Heavens to oppose the corruptive forces of Chaos and end their menace once and for all.
    • The Seraphon a faction of Lizard Folk who are described as essentially Order's counterparts to the Daemons of Chaos. They normally dwell in the highest reaches of the Realm of Heavens, but their Slann leaders will send them to the lower realms, manifesting entire armies of incorruptible warriors out of pure starlight, in order to directly oppose the machinations of the Ruinous Powers.

    Video Games 
  • Angelic Waifus has Doomguy facing off against the angelic host. This is composed of an endless number of cute, adorable angel girls that want nothing more than to wipe you off the face of the Earth.
  • Arena.Xlsm: "Summon Angelic Horde" spell lets you deploy one in order to instantly kill your enemy. Sounds cool, except that it takes 30 blood to unlock and 10 blood to use (why angels don't mind Blood Magic being used on their behalf is another question), which is a truly immense amount, and will require you to make do without many of the lesser spells that would have likely proved lifesaving otherwise.
  • Bayonetta has the angels of Paradiso as the main enemies that Bayonetta faces.
  • Darksiders: A small sub-faction of Angels, known as the Hellguard, appear as antagonists to the protagonist, War. In Darksiders II they appear once again, this time as (not all too willing) allies to Death.
  • Diablo: All angels are warriors, and they spend all of their time either fighting demons or planning to fight demons. As well, they all seem to be identical except for the five special snowflakes on the Angiris Council and their lieutenants. At least, this is how it was, until the creation of Sanctuary threw a wrench in the Eternal Conflict, leaving the angels to mostly mope about the Heavens in trepidation.
  • Kid Icarus: Palutena has an army of Centurions, but they are so weak that she almost never sends them on the battlefield as she doesn't want them to be hurt, privileging her elite soldier Pit (the protagonist of the games).
  • League of Legends has the champion Kayle, an angelic being from "a land far away" who fights using the power of the sun. She also has a sister, Morgana, who uses the power of the moon against the warriors of the sun.
  • The first PAGUI ends with the summoning ritual's completion, which brings three Taoist war gods descending from the heavens (from a portal shaped like a Yin-Yang symbol) to slaughter the crap out of a city of ghosts. In a long and awesome cutscene set to anachronistic rock music despite the game being set in the 1950s, just because.
  • Planescape: Torment: The high-level spell Celestial Host summons different celestial beings to smite all onscreen foes with their angelic might. It's one of the most powerful spells in the game, but also one of the most difficult to find. Even if you do the right thing to receive it, you've still got to massively Level Grind to get a spellcaster high enough level to cast it.
  • Starcraft II: The map "War in Heaven" pits, well, Heaven against Hell, using Terran and Protoss units as heavenly soldiers and Zerg for demons: Marines are warrior angels, Sandalphon is a colossus, Jesus is a battlecruiser...
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Pit's Final Smash calls in an army of Centurions while the goddess Palutena shines in the background.

    Web Originals 

    Western Animation 

 
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