By Harold Phillips
In the book “Angels, Angels, Angels: God’s Secret Agents,” Dr. Billy Graham tells the story of a missionary and his wife who were surrounded in their mission headquarters by a tribe of natives intent on killing them. In distress, he and his wife fell beside his bed and cried out all night to God for deliverance. When morning came, not only had they not been attacked, but the warriors actually left!
A year or so later, the chief became a believer and a friend, and the mission pastor asked him why he had not attacked that day.
The chief said that he would have, but the missionary had too many armed soldiers
Dr. Harold Phillips is the senior pastor of Pleasant View Baptist Church in Port Deposit, Maryland, and serves as the president of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware.
protecting him. The mission pastor responded that there had been no one there except his wife and himself. The chief insisted that the natives were afraid to attack because they had seen many men in shining garments with drawn swords standing guard.
In Matthew 16, Jesus told Simon Peter that he would be given the keys to “The Kingdom,” that whatever he bound on earth would be bound in Heaven, and whatever he bound in Heaven would be bound on earth.
They were “walking among the angels.”
Jesus told all of His disciples (while on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus would be arrested) that, if they loved Him enough to keep His word and obey His commands, they could ask anything of His Father in His name and it would be done for them. They were“walking among the angels.”
Maryland/Delaware Baptists, we have been blessed with something that the lost world does not have. When we came to believe in God through Jesus, we were connected to the same world that the angels live in, the supernatural.
Even in the Old Testament, God came to the campfire of Abraham (in Genesis 18) and allowed Abraham to dialogue with Him about the problems in the valley of Sodom and the surrounding cities.
I want to encourage our leaders to examine this passage as God asked a question: “And the Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?” (Gen. 18:17). God was about to go down and judge the sinfulness of Sodom, and He was asking if He should involve Abraham, a human, in heavenly decisions. I find this strange, but as I read on, I am amazed as God answered His own question. His answer:
Since Abraham is going to make an eternal difference with his life, and because Abraham is going to be a man who would influence his children to follow him as he followed the Lord in His ways, he would be included.
God has tried to encourage us to participate in the supernatural, but it seems the criteria for allowing us to be apart the world of angels is all about our relationship with His Word. “And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?
“For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgement; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.” (Gen. 18:17-19 (KJV))
Dear Christian leaders, let us never think that our influence in the name of Jesus is a small thing. May you and your congregation enjoy the joy of walking where only believers and angels walk!