My visitor had no wings, no flowing white robe, but he did seem to have a warm glow. He was affable and empathetic. Intuitively, I knew right away that he was from another realm. Deep inside, I sensed that I was interacting with a celestial being.
The encounter occurred in a dream when I was a youngster. But it wasn’t an ordinary dream; it was more vibrant, more lucid, more real — so much so that today, it’s the only dream I remember from my childhood.
I wasn’t intimidated by the being. We chatted amiably. He told me something I never knew, and the revelation floored me. Essentially, he said that my efforts to be compliant and dutiful — to treat others well, obey my parents, and visit Sunday school on occasion — would never be sufficient to earn my way into Heaven someday. I was stunned and flustered. I didn’t know what to say. This seemed totally counterintuitive.
Then the angel made a prophecy. He said that someday I would understand. In a flash, he disappeared. Sure enough, sixteen years later, as I visited a church at my wife’s behest, I learned that the angel was right. I found out that eternal life is not a reward for good behavior, but rather it is a gift from God that must be received in repentance and faith. The moment I understood the gospel, my mind flashed back to the angel — and I smiled.
Was this an authentic otherworldly encounter, or could it have been just the aftereffects of a spicy snack before bedtime? Personally, I’m convinced it was genuine because of two bits of corroboration: the angel told me something I didn’t know, and he made a prediction that did, indeed, come true nearly two decades later.
I’m far from alone in reporting a possible encounter with an angelic presence.
According to one survey,
75 percent of people around the world believe in angels.
More than one out of three of them report having a personal experience with a celestial being — and for 15 percent of them, it happened in a vibrant dream.1
The Bible features about three hundred references to angels, starting just three chapters into Genesis, where God places “angelic sentries” to guard the entrance to Eden after Adam and Eve were banished from it.2 The Bible’s final mention of angels comes in its last chapter, Revelation 22:16, when Jesus says He has “sent My angel to give you this testimony for the churches.”
One of the most significant scenes in Scripture occurs in Revelation 5:11–12, in which the apostle John describes a vision of Jesus in his post-resurrection glory:
Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”
Just try to picture that. “Ten thousand times ten thousand” means there were 100 million luminous angels crowded around Christ’s throne and pouring out their worship. In fact, Dr. Craig Keener points out that “ten thousand” was the highest numerical figure used in the Greek language at the time,3 which means this phrase “may be John’s way of describing an inexpressibly large company of angels — myriads upon myriads.”4
Fascination with angels has ebbed and flowed over the past two millennia. In the early 1990s, America saw an outbreak of “angel-mania,” with Newsweek saying that “those who see angels, talk to them, put others in touch with them are prized guests on television and radio talk shows.”5 Bestselling books about angels sometimes offered a stew of New Age and even occultic beliefs, often encouraging readers to focus on these celestial beings rather than looking to God Himself.
Since then, the mania over angels has cooled off. According to Gallup, the number of Americans who believe in angels decreased from 79 percent in 2001 to 69 percent in 2023.6 Still, curiosity about angelic beings remains strong, especially when credible people report extraordinary encounters with them.
“He Caught Me”
The story of one such encounter came while I was chatting with theologian Roger Olson from Baylor University about various attitudes that people have toward the supernatural. The Baptist professor began to get nostalgic about his upbringing in a Pentecostal home, where there had been an openhearted expectation of healings and otherworldly experiences.
“I remember one incident where a little boy in our church, probably ten years old, accidentally opened the door and fell out of the family car while it was driving down the road,” he recalled. “When they rushed to pick him up, they thought he would be dead, but instead he was just standing there. They said, ‘What happened?’ He said,
- ‘Well, didn’t you see the man? He caught me.’”
Olson pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. “There’s no doubt in my mind that an angel caught him.”
Billy Graham offered the account of Scottish missionary John G. Paton, whose home in the New Hebrides Islands of the South Pacific was threatened by a hostile mob intent on burning it down killing him and his wife. Paton and his spouse prayed intently all night — and as the sun rose, they were surprised to see that the crowd had dispersed. They thanked God for sparing them.
A year later, the chief of the tribe that had been threatening them became a Christian. One day Paton asked him why they abandoned their plan to attack Paton’s home that night. Replied the chief, “Who were all those men you had with you there?” Said the missionary, “There were no men, just my wife and I.”
The chief insisted there had been hundreds of big men in shining garments and swords drawn, encircling the home.
“Only then,” wrote Graham, “did Mr. Paton realize that God had sent His angels to protect them. The chief agreed that there was no other explanation.”7
1. Cited in “Majority of People Worldwide Believe in Angels, 36% Had Angelic Encounters, Study Finds,” PR Newswire, March 12, 2024, https:// finance.yahoo.com/news/majority-people-worldwide-believe-angels -150000951.html.
2. Genesis 3:24 NET.
3. Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 779.
4. Ron Rhodes, The Secret Life of Angels: Who They Are and How They Help Us (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2008), 10.
5. “Angels,” Newsweek, December 26, 1993, www.newsweek.com/angels-190644.
6. Cited in Megan Brenan, “Belief in Five Spiritual Entities Edges Down to New Lows,” Gallup, July 20, 2023, https://news.gallup.com/poll/508886 /belief-five-spiritual-entities-edges-down-new-lows.aspx.
7. Billy Graham, Angels: God’s Secret Agents (1975; repr., Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), 3–4.
Excerpted with permission from Seeing the Supernatural by Lee Strobel, copyright Lee Strobel.
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Your Turn
Do you believe that our powerful, loving God has sent His angels to protect you and deliver you from trouble? Have you experienced angels? Do you want to? ~ Devotionals Daily
