Guardian Angel
As his company was fighting to take the German town of Dillingen, Arnold Brown saw a building that offered good observation of the enemy occupied area of the city. He climbed two flights of stairs and found a two-man forward observation team using the same vantage point to call in artillery fire. As soon as he arrived, the strangest phenomenon of his life occurred. He called it his “vision.”
His mind suddenly became like a movie screen and he could see German soldiers with their distinctive helmets. The soldiers had a radio and were beaming in on his position. They were transmitting this information to an artillery battery where the guns were being aimed and prepared to fire. As this picture filled his mind he became confused:
I hesitated. I thought, “What should I do? Should I tell these men to move? If I tell them to move and nothing would happen, they’d think I was cracking up…”
When I hesitated, I felt something pushing me toward the stairway, just like wings, pushing me. When that occurred, I didn’t hesitate. When I got down off the last step, an artillery shell exploded in that room and killed both of those men.
This was my evidence that I was going to survive this war, and that I did have a guardian angel.471
We know that there are many biblical references to angels. This soldier’s amazing witness seems to confirm that these heavenly beings continue to do God’s work in the modern age as well. The Bible tells us that angels were created by God to act as his servants, to relay messages from God, give encouragement and guidance, and provide protection. Arnold Brown’s confidence that a guardian angel was looking over him is a powerful witness to the continued existence of this special way that God can directly touch our lives.
He thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and… When they walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches.”
—Acts 12:9–11