(Note: Nathan E. Jones serves as an evangelist with Lamb & Lion Ministries and is the co-host of the television program Christ in Prophecy. This article is an interview that Dr. David Reagan conducted with Nathan about his newest book, The Mighty Angels of Revelation.)
1. What led you to write a book about angels?
The impetus for writing the book came about due to a devastating car wreck that my parents barely survived. They were hit head-on by another vehicle, with the force of impact so powerful that their searing-hot engine was pushed through the firewall, pinning my mother to her seat. One side of her body became a painful collection of broken bones, lacerations and burn marks. She would end up needing major reconstructive surgery on various internal organs, and though she survived, she struggled to walk normally again.
My father, on the other hand, suffered from a body length bruise and three cracked ribs, but praise God, nothing more. He managed to crawl out of his window in the hopes of getting to the other side of the vehicle in order to help my mother out. But, he’d suffered a concussion, which quickly caused him to pass out in the middle of the road.
After a few moments, he awoke in a semi-conscious haze, and through the pain of his wounds, he felt, more than heard, the deepthroated sound that, as a motorcycle enthusiast, he instantly recognized as a Harley-Davidson. Through one swelling eye he viewed a gigantic, chromed wheel visibly inch up and stop right next to his head. The sound of a motor abruptly cutting off was replaced by the clack of steel-toed boots upon the roadway. Sky and ground traded places as he was lifted off the hot tarmac and gently laid onto the cool softness of the grassy roadside.
This is one of 12 full-page illustrations of angels drawn especially for Nathan’s book by Christian artist, Shalis Stevens.
The biker, all clad in bandanas and a black leather jacket emblazoned with the words “Heaven’s Angels,” rose and approached the totaled car. The nails-on-chalkboard sound of metal being sheered from metal echoed off the hillsides as the passenger door was ripped asunder. The biker next checked on the other crumpled vehicle, then began directing traffic away from the scene of the accident.
By then my father had passed out once more, and when he awoke the next time his gurney was being loaded into a waiting ambulance. After asking if everybody from both cars had survived, which praise God they had, he asked the paramedic to thank the biker for him. The problem, though, was that nobody but he could recollect the biker ever having been there. Their rescuer had mysteriously disappeared without a trace! My father was the only survivor who could remember the biker and so insisted they must have been rescued, not by a mere man, but by an actual angel sent from God.
When I received the dreadful call that my parents had almost died in a car accident and heard my father’s story about the biker angel, I admit I was skeptical at first. After all, I’d spent years in classrooms earning a Bible degree. I had followed that up with some seminary courses, and was even working full-time in ministry as an evangelist. I’d taken whole classes in the doctrine of Angelology. And yet, here I was doubting that angels could be as active in our modern-day affairs as they clearly were in both the Old and New Testaments.
After all, there are nearly 300 different instances where the Bible describes fantastic encounters between God’s celestial beings and His earthly creations. I certainly believed the accounts of angels from the Word of God, but still had doubts about their activities today because neither me nor anybody I’d ever known had knowingly encountered an angel.
I soon felt driven to learn all I could about God’s mighty angels. I expressed my interest to my old friend, Vic Batista, who at the time was the pastor of a Calvary Chapel Church in Florida. He and I have been the co-hosts of his ongoing radio and podcast program, “The Truth Will Set You Free.” Vic is from the Dominican Republic and was saved out of the Catholic Church. The Catholic churches of Latin America are steeped in the errant worship of angels, and so he had developed a healthy respect for the doctrine of Angelology.
Vic challenged me with a study idea he believed would help me in my new quest to learn more about God’s mighty angels. He told me that the book of Revelation is THE place to go to learn about angels. After all, he pointed out, the book of Revelation, with its whopping 72 instances of angels, demons, and entire groups of angels and demons, stands out from the other 65 books of the Bible as the most prolific source in all of the world for the study of Angelology.
Vic had me hooked! And so, I accepted his Revelation challenge. We then spent a year teaching Angelology through a verse-by-verse study of the book of Revelation, and blogged it on “The Christ in Prophecy Journal” (https://christinprophecyblog.org). I finally took all that we had learned and incorporated it into my new book, The Mighty Angels of Revelation.
In the second part of this interview with author Nathan Jones, we’ll look at what roles the angels play in the book of Revelation.
Resource
Encounter 72 of God’s mighty angels from the book of Revelation! Come and travel along with a man called the Elder and his angelic guide as the end times are revealed throughout the book of Revelation in stunning detail. Along the way, meet 72 of God’s mighty angels as they proclaim God’s messages of warning and hope to a lost world. Together let us encounter… The Mighty Angels of Revelation! (New book by Nathan E. Jones.)
“I consider this book to be the premier work on the subject of angels to this point in literary history.” – Terry James, Rapture Ready
My wife, about a year before I met her, had an almost identical Angelic experience as your father’s. She was driving out of New Orleans, LA on I-10 into the suburban area known as Metairie, when she was forced to slam on her brakes to avoid a pileup ahead of her across two traffic lanes. She came to a stop with just inches to spare, hitting nothing. But then she looked in her rear view mirror to see a Jack-knifing 18 wheeler, just before it slammed into the back of her car. The impact broke the driver’s seat-back, and she ended up unconscious in the back right passenger seat. She awoke to the sound of a motorcycle, whose rider wore a red flannel shirt, jeans and motorcycle boots. As he helped her from the car and carried her to safety on the grassy roadside, he called her by her name and said that he was Michael. She later asked the police and medical teams to find Michael so she could thank him. Nobody remembered a motorcycle, or a man in a red shirt.
She had a similar experience about a year later. She was working the cash register in a neighborhood convenience store, when 2 armed men came in, walked around the inside and then approached the register with no purchases in hand, but reaching into their jackets for their weapons. Upon hearing a motorcycle pull up to the front door, the men spread out. And as the rider, wearing a red flannel shirt, shut off his bike and entered the store, the gunmen beat a hasty retreat. She called 911 immediately, and turned to thank Michael. But he was gone again. She hasn’t seen him since, but she still occasionally feels his presence.
Amazing story, H.D.! Praising the Lord for His protection of your wife.