Angels--True Encounter Stories

By Nick Nichols

What does the hand of an angel feel like? My friend found out. And what a shock it is to encounter a homeless man and soon discover he's not homeless but from Heaven! I experienced that one!  Or a muscle-bound angel protecting my old uncle from a street gang.  These and the rest of the stories in the book are all true.

 

Angels come in unexpected shapes and sizes but they all have one thing in common, after they do their job, POOF, they're gone!  Leaving us jaw dropped, and wondering where they went as it slowly dawns on us . . . it must have been an angel!

 

What a joy it is to share these encounters as an encouragement to keep trusting Jesus no matter what the problem!  Because, He may just send one of his angels to step in and help you out!

 

122 Pages

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Nichols
• Release date: Dec 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223830696

Nick Nichols

Nick Nichols was born on June 30, 1961, in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Educated at Wayne County High School and Georgia State University, he graduated in 1988, with a law degree. After clerking for a trial judge from 1988 until 1990, he started a trial practice that continues. He lives in Johns Creek, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Emma, and his stepdaughter, Madeleine.

Book preview

Do Angels Drive Mercedes?

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Sitting in my car in the trashy alley by the river in Pittsburgh, I was utterly lost.  I had driven through so much new construction that my map was worthless.  The waning rays of day cast shadows through the large bridge I was sitting under making the area look even more hostile and not a place to be caught alone in the dark.  Sighing, I thought, I’ll never make it to the seminar.  At least not on time, and I hate being late!

It started the week before when I heard about a seminar on the struggling church in China being held at a church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Everything seemed to be at the last minute: discovering the seminar, calling the last day of enrollment and getting permission to leave work early on short notice.  But the Lord had placed China in my heart, and I really wanted to attend that seminar.  Time wise, getting there was going to be tight since I was driving from Columbus, Ohio.

Now there I sat at 6:45 p.m. with the seminar starting in fifteen minutes.  I prayed, Lord, I am lost, and I really don’t want to be late.  Please help me to find my way to the church.  In the name of Jesus, Amen.  Just then a Mercedes pulled out of a side street right in front of me, and I had this sudden strong urge to follow the car.  It turned left out of the alley, and I turned left following.  We went down the road, turned right, cut through another alley, turning left onto a main road.  We passed through a four-way stop, turned right and followed a short detour of orange signs.  We made more turns through some construction and came to a traffic light turning yellow.

We slowed to a stop, but just before the light turned red, the Mercedes took off straight through the intersection leaving me stuck at the red light.  As I watched it disappear into the traffic, I looked at my watch . . . three minutes to go.  I thought, Have I been stupid?  The light turned green, and as I was passing through the intersection, I noticed a church on my right.  It was THE church with the entrance to the parking lot right in front of me!  I parked, went in, sat down, looked at my watch, one minute till seven!  The speaker stood up and said, Let’s get started.

To be honest, I didn’t hear the first few minutes of his talk.  I was sitting there marveling at what had transpired in the last fifteen minutes.  I wondered, Do angels drive Mercedes? 

Then my mind passed from that thought to a Scripture I had read long ago.  In Psalms 22:5 (GNT) it says, They called to You and escaped from danger; they trusted You and were not disappointed.  I trusted, and I was not disappointed.

Snorkeling with an Angel

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For fun I threw my motorcycle into neutral and free-rolled down the long hill from our apartment in Penang, Malaysia.  Coming to a stop at the intersection across from the local mosque, I waited.  It’s a dangerous intersection.  A hundred yards on my left is a tight blind curve and a hundred yards on my right is another tight blind curve.  So I wait.  I look right....then left....then right, left again and pull out.

It’s a blur, but a speeding red taxi has shot out of the blind curve on my right!  Stunned that I’m suddenly ten feet from the front end of his taxi and shocked that he’s not trying to stop, by the time I hit my accelerator, he’s less than three feet from the broadside of my bike.  With my back wheel spinning and smoking, my bike slides sideways, and his speeding front bumper misses my leg and the side of my motorcycle by mere inches!!

Pulling over into the mosque parking lot, I stopped and looked back just in time to watch him round the next blind curve.  Out loud I said, Thank you, Lord Jesus, for protecting me again!!  So many times He has saved my hide!  But what if He hadn’t saved me and if I had been smacked by the taxi and thrown through the air, hitting the ground rolling—ripping clothes, breaking bones, and coming to a stop in a puddle of my own blood?  I saw it happen to a friend of mine when I was a kid . . . and the thought chilled me.

A couple weeks after the near-miss on my motorcycle, my wife and two daughters and I flew to Krabi, Thailand, for spring break.  We both work at an international school in Malaysia.  My daughter had gotten us an incredible coupon deal, so we were able to stay at a nice resort a few blocks from the ocean.

From the beach, the view is beautiful.  In the clear blue waters there are solitary limestone peaks that are world-class attractions for rock climbers with their near vertical rock walls and the coral reefs at their base for divers.  When I first saw the islands, they looked like giant multi-shaped rocks that were randomly placed around in the water.  Some of them are huge and even have their own beaches.

In search of a closer look at these natural wonders, we tried to find a tour excursion, but all the island-hopping tours were booked, so we ended paying for a private, three-island hop.  We had the boat all to ourselves; it was just us and the boatman.  The boats that are used to shuttled tourists among the islands originated in Thailand and are called long-tail boats.  They’re a heavy wooden boat about thirty feet long and can carry around twelve to fifteen passengers.  They’re propelled by a car motor mounted on top of a swivel with a long shaft that sticks out about fifteen feet behind the boat with a propeller on the end, thus the name, long-tail boat.  The propeller is connected directly to the driveshaft; with no other gearing, this simple design allows them to easily navigate their boats through shallow or deep water.

The first rock island we came to was for snorkeling.  My wife was having trouble getting the hang of snorkeling in the waves, so I