Angels Dressed as Soldiers

 

These guys look like they're ready to suit up and drop onto the battlefield.

Angels are described in the book Early Writings thus. "The company of guardian angels around them had been doubled, and they were clothed with an armor from their head to their feet." Not exactly the effeminate angels of Renaissance Christian art. Angels as described in the Old Testament could appear as nonthreatening, but usually they had to reassure those to whom they appeared, saying, "Fear not!"

And angels pop up all over the place in scripture and in stories throughout Christian history. I have seen the working of angels, but they remained out of my sight. A friend at camp almost ran over me and a canoe load of kids with a motorboat he was unfamiliar with. I watched in shock as the boat did an impossible 180 degree turn as the boat, bow high was coming down on us. It turned so fast the spring loaded ladder on the back of the boat knifed through the air where my head had been a second before. I felt it brush my hair as I was looking over the side watching the boat's propeller pass underneath the canoe. The way Jack (the boat driver) and I figured it, his angel got on one end of the boat and mine got on the other and spun it around. Whatever they did, that boat was moving fast and it suddenly disobeyed the laws of physics. And I'd just missed by a fraction of an inch, being knocked off the canoe on top of a spinning propeller. Jack and I spent the next hour in a lengthy prayer of thanksgiving.

A missionary friend of mine told a story about a South American Adventist school where angels did make themselves visible to the enemy. Local communist guerrillas decided the school was counter-revolutionary and must be eliminated. The principle did not know anything about it. He went to the store in town one morning for supplies. When he went up to the counter the store proprietor seemed shocked to see him.  

"Where did you get the soldiers?" the man asked as he rang up the supplies.

"What soldiers?" asked the principal.

"The ones that were standing guard around the school last night!" The store owner proceeded to tell him why he'd asked.  The guerrillas it seems had chosen the previous night to attack the school. Of course, word got around the close-knit community and everyone expected to hear bad news about the school in the morning. The attack never happened. Word came back that when the guerrillas reached the school, they found it surrounded by tough-looking heavily armed soldiers. The guerrillas quickly decided that in the interest of their personal survival, attacking the school was a very bad idea.

The principal was shocked himself; he'd never seen any soldiers at the school that night. Certainly no one from the government or the military had offered to help or had even warned him of the attack. He returned to the school with a glad heart and brought together the children and the teachers to pray and give thanks for the angel "soldiers" who had camped round about them that they might fear no evil.

We shall see greater miracles than these in the coming days. We are told that we often entertain angels unaware. Angels have often stood guard over us to save us from dangers of which we were not even aware. I've had more than my share of what had to be angelic intervention over my life. I once got smacked in the chest by a 3 foot wide boulder from above while rock climbing along the Trinity River. Had to have had help hanging on to the tree root I found myself dangling from when my head cleared. God only knows what other stupid things my guardian angel has saved me from.

 In these last days we may go about God's work without fear. Whatever happens, we may be assured of God's deliverance no matter what. Some of us may sleep, but we all shall be changed in the moment in the twinkling of an eye. Knowing God sees the end from the beginning and makes sure that whatever happens we will surely be going home with Him, we may face whatever the armies of evil throw at us with confidence.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.

 

© 2023 by Tom King