In the scriptures, there are many angels who are messengers from God. They rebuke wickedness, warn righteous people, declare good tiding, and a host of other tasks. But in the scriptures there is only one archangel and he only appears once at the end of the world to usher in the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of all and the final judgement. It reads in 1 Thessalonians 4:16:
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Something else we know about him from Jude 1:9 is that his name is Michael:
9 Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.
And that is as far as the Bible goes in telling us more about him, who he is and what he does. However, in LDS modern scripture from prophet's of this dispensation we can know a little more about him. In Doctrine and Covenants 107:54 we find out that the archangel actually had a much larger role to play in God's plan for the Earth:
54 And the Lord appeared unto them, and they rose up and blessed Adam, and called him Michael, the prince, the archangel.
In case you did not catch that, we believe that the archangel Michael is also Adam, the first man to ever live. This might seem weird to some people, but think about it. Why did Adam get to be the first person ever to get a body? Was is random selection, or was it because he was already an important player for God's side? In the second coming, Michael will bring in the host of heaven to the Earth and ultimately clear the path for Christ to come - how is that different than what he did the first time in making it possible for the host of heaven to come to Earth in body's and initiate the Fall so Christ could then come to fulfill the atonement?
This information, though interesting, is not really that important for us in getting to Heaven - in other words there are bigger things to sweat. Personally though, this little tid-bit of information brings some peace to me. It tells me more about who God is. He said that all things are one eternal round and having the first man also as the one to bring in the second coming helps me understand that everything, from the beginning to the end, was constantly in his sights. If that is true for the entire existence of the world, then I can also know that he's watching out for my life. From the beginning down to the end, I can have faith that he has a plan.
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