Acts 7:38
Acts 7:3838He was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. And he received living words to pass on to us.
The Watchtower holds that angels can bear Jehovah's name and act as his representatives — disobedience to the agent counts functionally as disobedience to the sender, but the agent remains a creature. Stephen's reference to the angel at Sinai is read within that framework, and is cited to show the Law was transmitted through angels.
Notice what Stephen does with the two figures. He says Moses was with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai — and through the whole chapter he treats the one who spoke at Sinai as God speaking. The agency defence is reasonable in principle, but it breaks on , which describes this angel. Three things are said there. First, he will not pardon transgression — but only God forgives sin, which is precisely the premise the scribes assert at and which Jesus does not deny. Second, absolute obedience is owed to him on pain of judgment. Third, the reason given for both: "for my name is in him." Ordinary agency lets a messenger act with the sender's authority. It does not confer the power to forgive sin, and it does not make disobedience to the messenger a capital matter in its own right. Combine that with — no one has seen the Father, and the Son has explained him — and with , and the cumulative case is that the Angel of Exodus 23 is the pre-incarnate Christ. Compare , .