Betty Malz - Angels by My Side: Stories and Glimpses of These Heavenly Helpers

I once commented to our old missionary friend Morris Plotts, Id like to read a good book on working angels.

Why dont you write one then? he said simply.

Not me, I protested. I was hesitant about tackling such a big subject, though angels held a fascination for me. Plus, my practical nature did not want me to be classified with people who mount angels on their automobiles for hood ornaments and boast of private angel-servants on command.

He pressed the point. Read the future book, he said, the prophetic book of things to come, Revelation. It mentions angels all the way through who in the last days will govern the affairs of men and nations, control the weather and war, fight battles, declare the Gospel of Jesus and announce His coming back to the earth again. More and more, he added thoughtfully, as we draw closer to that day, angels are helping Gods servants reach the ends of the earth with the Gospel.

I agreed. It sounded like a fascinating study, and later I wondered if he was really right about angels increased activity in this world. Mostly, it seems, we are not even aware of them, or else we remember them only as celestial beings who heralded important events in Bible times.

I tried to put the suggestion aside but, curiously, it seemed to pursue me, and I came to realize he was right. Whenever I traveled on a speaking tour, whether being interviewed before a television audience or talking with a fellow airline passenger, someone would excitedly confide his own angel story. My friend Morris was not without one, either, perhaps the most fascinating I have ever heard. Even television commercials seemed to jump out at me with the clever use of angel characters.

And I discovered that the more I pondered the angel book, the more I felt driven to write about the encouragement evident in their activities. I wanted to write a comforting book that would stimulate ordinary people to tap the extraordinary resources of angelic assistance. I became utterly convinced that God uses angels to help us through the impossible places of life, times we cannot make it unless He helps us.

This book, then, is a practical journey of adventure. It is not meant to entertain, but to search out the ways angels work, the specific times they help us and how we can have the right perspective about them. Some of the stories will sound incredible, but, then, no more so than biblical accounts of angels at work.

It was a fascinating search, one that actually began years ago with my own encounter with an angelmy guardian angel. Perhaps my story is not typical in that I am alive to tell about it, for amazingly enough, I had to die to begin to understand the extent to which angels walk beside us.

But now I am getting ahead of myself.