Do you believe in angels? The brilliant scholar C.S. Lewis began to turn toward Christianity because the Lord of the Rings author, J.R.R. Tolkien, asked him if he believed in ancient mythical beings, angels or demons.
When my wife and I began serving as pastors of a small Baptist church in Florida, we had hopes that God would revitalize it. There were some precious folks in the congregation who had suffered deep hurts when their church had been split.
I never saw any flock of believers so wounded by rejection and betrayal. The pain they felt was real. Their reputation in the community was hurt because of some things their previous pastor had done that were odd -- nothing immoral, just unusual. I had been sent by the Lord to shepherd this sad, ailing flock. The church was like a wilted plant, close to dying, to being discarded. We worked hard to get them healed.
In that county in rural Florida, there was a partisan atmosphere of strife. You could see it in the divorces, the political divisions, the enmity and suspicion, people wanting money and control, the blood-is-thicker-than-water favoritism, and all kinds of jealousy. Almost every family had a member in prison from drug running over the previous year. There had been more church splits in the county than people could count. I've never seen so many little churches serving such a small population.
Factions and feuds abounded. The division was between blacks and whites, between union and management at the local paper mill, and by the local men who thought women (especially wives) were their servants. We began prayer walking.
Early one morning as we prepared to go out the door for our daily vigil to "pray and declare," Lana popped a brand-new worship tape out of its wrapper and put it into our stereo. She hit play and we listened to a portion of the first song, an amazing a cappella chorale of harmonious male voices.
They were singing an unfamiliar Scripture chorus, using verses I couldn't quite identify, but wonderfully glorifying God with their heavenly blend of melodious and symphonic praises. It was breathtakingly beautiful! I asked my wife if that tape was the new one from Hosanna. I walked over to look at it playing in the stereo, and indeed, it was our new tape. "A new sound!" I said to myself. We turned the stereo off and left out the door to walk and pray.
We came back from our prayer walk, showered and dressed. I went into the den and rewound the tape to listen once again. I knew that Hosanna had never before produced an a capella praise tape before, without musical instruments. The song wasn't on the tape!
Nothing at all similar to that song was on the tape. We searched again. It was not to be found! We were stunned, speechless, -- realizing we had simultaneously heard an audible miracle, manly angelic voices. We had even described it to each other. I think what we heard was a chorus of angels! Big warrior angels, with a strong masculine sound, like a Military Academy choir. They had been singing exalted high praises to God. The sound had physically come out of our stereo system. If this hadn't happened to me personally, I wouldn't believe it.
Had our reinforcements arrived? We took this as a sign that heaven had heard our prayers. Soon, we had our first new convert. Many other things began to turn around for us at church, right in the middle of a tough region that had been ruled so very long by sin and darkness. Holy angels were on the scene helping us.
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Ron Wood is a writer and minister in Washington County. Contact him at [email protected] or visit www.touchedbygrace.org. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
Religion on 06/15/2016