Thank God for angels

When my son J was a little boy, he nearly drowned in the neighbor’s pool, lured into the deep end by a tantalizing floating inner tube. I jumped in (fully clothed) and all ended well.

In the course of his life, J has had more close calls with water, notably two years ago when he and his cousin swam into a cave in the Dominican Republic during low tide and made a narrow escape when the water level rose. He told me his lungs hurt from holding his breath and that he could not have done it a second longer.

So when J returned to the D.R. last week for a rare reunion with siblings and cousins, I prayed daily that God would protect him, specifically from water. And now I have learned that he hurt his back halfway through the vacation from a dive that went badly. None of the other guys—some surfed while others jumped from high cliffs into a lagoon—had a run-in with the watery element of nature.

It got me thinking: Did God not hear my prayer? (That was the devil talking.) Or did God hear my prayer in spades and keep my son from death at sea? (That was faith talking.)

It also got me to wondering if there are trap doors in the universe, or demons presiding over particular realms. We know, for example, that there are wicked principalities or powers over certain geographical or political regions. One angel was late in bringing a word from God to Daniel, detained by “the prince of the kingdom of Persia,” an angel from the dark side who withstood the good angel 21 days (Daniel 10:13). After delivering God’s message, the bright one from heaven returned to “fight against the prince of Persia,” and then spoke intriguingly of a “prince of Greece” (verse 20).

A boy with “a spirit that makes him mute” (Mark 9:17) was brought to Jesus. The father explained to the Lord, “From childhood … it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him” (verse 21–22). Could fire or water be the execution weapons of choice for certain demons?

Little do we know what machinations in the unseen world our prayers head off. Little are we aware of our own narrow escapes, and who it is that prayed for us. We go about our business and have close calls and near misses all day long, never privy to what heavenly skirmish went on behind the scenes. Here is one we do know about:

“… when the Archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you’” (Jude 1:9, ESV).

Thank God for the angels. Why?

“Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14, ESV)

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