Angels

I enjoyed teaching about angels in my Life Group on Sunday morning.  Angels are a fascinating aspect of the Bible and Christian history.  Billy Graham's book entitled Angels sold more than 3 million copies and includes several fantastic angel-testimonies.

My favorite "angel" story involved a lady named Thelma Gaines whom I knew for years.  She loved the Lord and walked with him for years and years.  Her husband, an alcoholic, abandoned her and her two daughters years ago.  She had kept on trucking, walking with the Lord and loving her family.  She loved to listen to Charles Stanley and would regularly ask my mother, "Did you hear what Dr. Stanley preached this weekend?"  Ms. Thelma contracted cancer in the 1990's.  I remember visiting her several times at St. Francis Hospital in 1995 before she died.  The last several days prior to her death, she went into a semi-coma and did not open her eyes nor communicate with anyone.  One minute before her body died, with both of her adult daughters in the room, Ms. Thelma opened her eyes, sat up in bed, held her arms out, and exclaimed, I knew you would come for me!  Then she fell back into the bed and her body was dead.

I hope I never forgot the reality of Ms. Thelma seeing the angels of God coming into that hospital room to take her spirit into what the Bible calls "the bosom of Abraham," the place of rest for those who have put their faith in the God of the Bible.

I eventually wrote a song about angels called Angels in this Place and included Ms. Thelma's testimony as a verse in the song.