ANGELS

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne … and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands, of thousands;

—Rev. 5:11

91 Book On Angels—Bestseller

Evangelist Billy Graham’s book Angels, a Doubleday publication, sold 810,000 copies by the end of 1975, despite its not getting started until October. Sales reached one million in January the next day. It is believed to be the first time a best-seller has hit the one-million mark within four months.

92 Billy Graham On Angels

Billy Graham says: “As an evangelist, I have often felt too far spent to minister from the pulpit to men and women who have filled stadiums to hear a message from the Lord. Yet again and again my weakness has vanished, and my strength has been renewed. I have been filled with God’s power not only in my soul but physically. On many occasions, God has become especially real, and has sent His unseen angelic visitors to touch my body to let me be His messenger for heaven, speaking as a dying man to dying men.”

93 Board Tilts Against Gravity

In A Slow and Certain Light, Elizabeth Elliot told about her father’s experiences with angelic helpers:

“My father, when he was a small boy, was climbing on an upper story of a house that was being built. He walked to the end of a board that was not nailed at the other end, and it slowly began to tip. He knew that he was doomed, but inexplicably the board began to tip the other way, as though a hand had pushed it down again. He always wondered if it was an angel’s hand.

—Bible Expositor

94 Train Stops Just In Time

The British express train raced through the night, its powerful headlamp spearing the black darkness ahead. The train was carrying Queen Victoria.

Suddenly the engineer saw a startling sight. Revealed in the beam of the engine’s headlights was a weird figure in a black cloak standing in the middle of the tracks and waving its arms. The engineer grabbed for the brakes and brought the train to a grinding halt.

He and his fellow trainmen climbed out to see what had stopped them. But they could find no trace of the strange figure. On a hunch, he walked a few yards further up the tracks. Suddenly he stopped and stared into the fog in horror. The bridge had been washed out in the middle and had toppled into a swollen stream. If he had not heeded the ghostly figure, the train would have plunged into the stream.

While the bridge and the tracks were being repaired, the crew made a more intensive search for the strange flagman. But not until they got to London, did they solve the mystery.

At the base of the engine’s head lamp, the engineer discovered a huge dead moth. He looked at it a moment, then on impulse wet its wings and pasted it to the glass of the lamp.

Climbing back into his cab, he switched on the lamp and saw the “flagman” in the beam. He knew the answer now: the moth had flown into the beam, seconds before the train was due to reach the washed-out bridge. In the fog, it appeared to be a phantom figure, waving its arms.

When Queen Victoria was told of the strange happening she said, “I’m sure it was no accident. It was God’s way of protecting us.”

—Selected

95 Large Audience Of Angels

An old minister worked into the night on a sermon for his small congregation. His unsympathetic wife chided him for spending so much time on a message that so few will appreciate. To this the minister replied: “You forget, my dear, how large my audience will be!” If angels are looking, nothing on earth done for Christ is trivial.

96 Legend Of Mahomet On Angels

According to legend, when Mahomet was transported to heaven, he saw an angel there with “70,000 heads, each head had 70,000 faces, each face had 70,000 mouths, each mouth had 70,000 tongues, and each tongue spoke 70,000 languages.” This would make more than 31,000 trillion languages, and nearly five billion mouths.

See also: God, Protection of ; Occultism—Demonic Activities ; Signs and Wonders ; Heb. 1:7, 14; Rev. 8:13; 9:1; 12:7; 14:6.