Saved By An Urgent Voice

It is interesting that the words spoken by angels, both as recorded in the Bible and as heard in our own modern times, are often very insistent. No! Don’t do it! Get up! Hurry! Go quickly! Make haste! These are the sort of words often used. Yes, sometimes the voice of an angel has to be insistent. Otherwise we may hesitate, we may try to reason with it. But danger will not wait!

“For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.” Psalm 91:11

“Every redeemed one will understand the ministry of angels in his own life. The angel who was his guardian from his earliest moment; the angel who watched his steps, and covered his head in the day of peril; the angel who was with him in the valley of the shadow of death, who marked his resting place, who was the first to greet him in the resurrection morning – what will it be to hold converse with him, and to learn the history of divine interposition in the individual life, of heavenly cooperation in every work for humanity!” Education 305

Peter Marshall, in his youth, spent a summer working in the English village of Bamburgh, sixteen miles south east of the Scottish border. One very dark night as he was walking back to Bamburgh from a nearby village, he decided to take a short cut. He knew that there was a deep, deserted limestone quarry in the area, but he thought he could avoid the danger spot. So he struck out across the moors. The night was starless and very dark, and the sound of the wind seemed to give it an eerie quality. Suddenly he heard someone call “Peter!” The voice was urgent. He stopped. “Yes, who is it? What do you want?” For a second he listened, but there was only the sound of the wind. Thinking he must have been mistaken, he walked on a few paces. Then he heard the voice again, even more urgent this time – “Peter!” This time he stopped dead still and tried to peer into the impenetrable blackness. He knelt down. Cautiously he put out his hand moving in a semi-circle and found that he was on the very brink of the abandoned stone quarry. Just one more step would have sent him plummeting to his death! Peter Marshall never forgot that voice he had heard. And there was never any doubt in his mind about the source of it – the voice must have been that of of his guardian angel.