Angels are real

(1st of a 4-part article)

God and his angel messengers are just as close to those who do not see them as to those who do. As we live day by day, feeling high or low, we never realize that an angel is ministering to us. Remember the mysterious urge to do something a bit out of character? Suddenly, a problem is taken cared of for us. A sudden flash of insight upon waking up is actually a spirit interceding to keep us safe and healthy.

“An angel reaches down and gives us a heavenly hug, and we say, ‘What a glorious day!’” wrote one believer.

Rules to get angels’ help

Throughout time, angels have typically appeared in whatever form the visited person was most willing to accept – perhaps a winged version for children, or a gentle grandfatherly type for a woman in distress. “Angels and angels alone are minds without bodies,” says philosopher Mortimer J. Adler in The Angels and Us. ”… When they assume bodies, they do so only for the sake of engaging in their earthly ministry.”

What are the rules to get angels’ help? According to Joan Wester Anderson in her book, Where Angels Walk, there are six rules that we must follow in order to get the assistance of angels.

First, one’s recognition or faith isn’t a prerequisite for aid. Second, angelic protection never seems to occur when people are deliberately breaking the laws of society or even the natural law – for example, taking risks by speeding down the highway, or stealing from or abusing others. Charging into danger and waiting for God to rescue us, says Betty Malz, author and angel scholar, apparently moves us out of the “safety zone” in which angels operate.

Third, unless we deliberately invoke their aid, angels can help only in a limited way. We must tune in to the heavenly realm.

Fourth, people who experienced help from angels didn’t care whether anyone believed them. Their conviction was powerful in its simplicity. “I know what I saw – and it changed my life,” one woman said quietly. That seemed to be enough.

Fifth, “there is a diversity of angel forms to be celebrated, and there is an element of surprise to be realized,” writes G. Don Gilmore in Angels, Angels Everywhere, “but unless people revive their childhood wonder and imagination, they may never experience such things.” Sixth, as Jesus put it another way: “Unless you become as little children, you cannot enter heaven.” He was speaking of the trust, the wonder, the innocent acceptance of things not provable… in short, He was speaking of faith. “Blessed is He that has not seen, and has believed.”

Angel journal

What follows are some anecdotes compiled by Mrs. Anderson about people’s experiences of their own angels’ heavenly hugs.

One mother and her little daughter were walking down the street when, a few feet from a wall, the child stopped. The mother urged her on but the child seemed rooted to the spot. Suddenly, there was a great crash – the wall had fallen. Had they gone on, they undoubtedly would have been crushed to death. Pale with fright, the woman asked her daughter why she had stopped at the precise moment. “Didn’t you see that beautiful man, dressed in a long white gown, Mommy?” the child asked. “He stood right in front of me so I could not go on.”

One morning Danny tore across the living room floor and tripped. A horrified Laura Leigh watched him, almost in slow motion, hurtle head-first toward the sharp corner of the table. She took several steps, knowing already that she was too late to break a fall.

But Danny didn’t hit the table at all. Instead, he seemed to stop in mid-air. Within a few seconds, he stood straight up again and ran on. By the next day, Laura Leigh had forgotten the incident until Danny, absorbed in play, looked up at her. “Mommy? I saw a beautiful lady with wings.”

“Really Danny?” Laura Leigh smiled. His stories were so imaginative. “What is the lady like?”

“She’s nice,” Danny said matter of factly, “She caught me yesterday so I didn’t hit my head against the table.” Laura Leigh felt chill. “Did the lady say anything?”

“Uh-huh. She said she was going to watch over me and keep me from getting hurt.”

Jean Biltz was expecting her fifth child in a few months. On a cold spring morning, she awakened in her Wichita home early and, after making the coffee, went outside to see if the milkman had made his delivery.

During the night, the back porch had become glazed with ice, and as Jean stepped onto it, both her feet slipped out from under her. There was no railing on the stoop, nowhere to catch-hold and keep herself from tumbling down the stairs. Almost in slow motion, Jean saw herself falling… falling… perhaps losing her unborn baby.

Then all of a sudden, two strong arms caught Jean and stood her up straight against the door. Thank heaven her husband had awakened early and was at the right place at the right time! Her grateful heart still pounding, she turned to him… but there was no one there at all. The door stood open, the kitchen beyond was empty, and even the snow-covered yard was silent except for a little sigh in the wind. Jean’s baby was born strong and healthy, and today is the father of eight.

The Angel Watch Network to raise humankind’s spiritual consciousness

Another dedicated angel ambassador is Elaine Elias Freeman of Mountainside, New Jersey, USA. She is a writer and lecturer and holds a Masters degree in Theology from Notre Dame. In 1992, she founded the Angel Watch Network, a clearing house organization dedicated to “searching for the angels in our lives and in the world around us.”

Ms. Guiley recounts that Elaine’s first angel experience happened at age five, which research has shown is the most common age for an initial “extra-ordinary experience.” Elaine’s guardian angel, Enniss, appeared to her one night to ease her fears about her deceased grandmother as well as to alleviate unfounded fears that were already paralyzing her life. The angel spoke in a voice that Elaine describes as “like pure crystal.” The experience was transforming and from that day on Elaine knew that angels were real.

In 1979, Elaine began having a series of inner visions and intuitions in which Enniss, and several other angels began to teach her about the angelic kingdom, how it is organized and what are the nature and abilities of angels. The communication occurred on a nearly daily basis for three years.

The three years of teachings yielded a 1,200-page, three-part manuscript, which Elaine hopes to publish. Among numerous things, it describes how beginning about 250 years ago, an increasing number of angels were “seeded” on earth to initiate a new and closer relationship with the human world. Elaine calls it “The Pilot Program,” and she and other angel ambassadors are part of this effort, to raise humankind’s spiritual consciousness, by teaching others about angels. This Pilot Program is one reason accounting for the increase in angel encounters, she says.

Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying is filled with angels

Some angels are creatures of God, Who is the light of the world, a glow or even a flash of brilliant light is another signal of their presence. In his book, Something Beautiful for God, the story of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Malcolm Muggeridge recounts an episode when the British Broadcasting Co. was filming a documentary about her. Some scenes had to be taken inside Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying. It was dimly lit, with small high windows. Although the photographer was sure, filming could not be done there, they decided to try anyway and took some footages of the sunny courtyard as well.

When the film was processed the indoor scenes were bathed in beautiful soft glow, whereas the parts taken outdoors were rather dim and confused. The film was checked and found to be in perfect condition.

Muggeridge said: “I am convicted that the technically unaccountable light is, in fact, supernatural. Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying is overflowing with a luminous love, like the haloes artists have seen and made visible… I find it not at all surprising that the luminosity should register on a photographic film.”

Angels bring God’s love to us

Let me conclude this article with a beautiful quotation from Emanuel Swedenborg’s Angelic Wisdom: “Because He is love in its essence, God appears before the angels… And the angels become love and wisdom, not from themselves but from the Lord.”

(Part II – Angels, angels, angels everywhere)

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