More Angel Encounters

THE ANGEL OF THE LORD COMES TO MY BEDSIDE

As far as the exact date he came to my bedside is concerned, I don't remember because my mind had gone into some sort of unfamiliar mode, while my body was in a rapid  metastasis.  All I know is I was really sick and I could barely  breathe. Looking back into my journal, it had to have happened during the week or shortly after my cancer diagnosis in the medical offices of Dr. Ahearn, on June 29, 1999,  and July 6, 1999, when I entered the emergency room of Mission Hospital, in Mission Viejo, California, at 3:00 A.M.

Sometime during that time frame, I awoke to see an angel standing over me.  It didn't appear to me that he ever looked directly at me nor did we make eye contact, all I did was lie there watching him as he placed his right hand on my throat and his left hand on my upper thighs and looking upward, he spoke to someone or something.  The most important thought I had at that moment was that God sent his personal messenger for my sake.  It was a divine appointment. 

While I didn't hear his conversation audibly, somehow I knew he said, "No more!"  While I will never know who he was talking to, I distinctly perceived at that moment he seemed angry.  That didn't worry me so much at the time, because I was so caught up with his right hand radiating a love like I have only known while worshiping in God's presence.  It was absolutely pure like some sort of precious water or liquid flowing through me reaching into my inner soul and spirit. 

His left hand, however, seemed like the polar opposite of his right, and for split second, I thought he might be angry with me and not who or what he was talking to.  But that sense quickly dissolved as I realized he was representing my Lord and it must have been God's power radiating from him.  All I really knew was that I wouldn't want to be on the other end of the angel's words and that I was assured of God's grace to me.

This visitation is imprinted on my mind as if it is some sort of snapshot accompanied with words and feelings.  He stood there beside me on my side of our bed while my husband slept next to me.  As I looked up from my sleeping position, I could tell he was tall, about six feet or taller.  The first thing I noticed was his awesome presence and beauty as he reached down and touched me.  It seemed like he was there for a while, but I'm sure it all happened in a moment.

Years ago I knew a man who had seen angels, and he said that not all angels have wings, but the one standing over me to did.  He had beautiful wings which extended up over his shoulders to about the top of his neckline and down his back as far as I could see from my bedside.  This has disturbed me, however, after talking to my late pastor's wife, Charm Buck, she explained to me that I probably saw him the only way I could unserstand it wasn't just any other man standing over me in the dark--which would have scared my already weakened body into an immediate death--that's why the Lord put wings on his appearance so I would recognize it was the Lord's doing.

We have all seen the old masters' works of art depicting angels who are effeminate with flowing gowns, but my angel was not feminine at all, but totally masculine and gorgeously handsome.  His hair was a medium short length like many men style their hair today, but with finger waves neatly combed towards the back of his head, very similar to films I've seen from the 1920s. 

Naturally, it was dark in our room that night, so I couldn't tell what color anything was, and there was some sort of filter or screen I was watching him through, but from my position of being under his outstretched arms over me, it appeared he was wearing some type of loose-fitting garment.  Thinking back at it now, I wonder why I didn't notice details I normally notice about clothes, seeing that I was a fashion designer years ago.  It just didn't seem relevant at the time. 

All my weary and pain ridden body knew was that he was sent by God and it was His pleasure and desire to remove the veil between me and the unseen world at that moment.  I just took it all in knowing I had been blessed with the privilege of knowing God was using him to mark me for survival as He told me before that, "You shall live and not die."  Now I knew for sure what happened as I grabbed those words the Holy Spirit spoke through my friend were, in fact, already in motion:  I was going to live and not die.  Little did I realize at that time what He was preparing me for and how He was going return my life to this world.

All these years I have been searching for answers as to what happened to me that night.  Why did I feel the Lord's anger through His angel's left hand?  Was He angry at what caused my cancer?  Was he talking to Satan or some sort of evil entity?  Was it at mankind for how we have ruined the perfect world He put us on?  But the only answers I have received thus far are the words and the expressions I felt from God through His messenger that night: I met the Creator Who would make known to this fallen world the everlasting counsel of His redemption; and It touched me from eternity past.  When He put his left hand on my thighs, I knew it had been foreordained for me to experience what was recorded in the libraries of heaven before the foundations of the world were laid that we would know His perfection.  And when his right hand was placed on my neck, we would know He had reached downward through His cross and empty tomb to our bedsides to know yet still today, "By His wounds we were healed."

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him,
And by his wounds we are healed.
Isa 53:5 NIV

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,
so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness;
by his wounds you have been healed.
For you were like sheep going astray, but now
you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
1 Peter 2:24-25 NIV
 
To think of such a marvelous Shepherd and Overseer of not only our soul and spirit, but our bodies as well, is unconscionable, and I don't think humans can ever understand this kind of love.  That He would provide a Way to not only redeem back to Himself His disobedient and rebellious children, but that He would also provide the blessedness of healing as well.  Every time the Holy Spirit reveals to me the nature we inherited from our unthankful and obstinate parents, Adam and Eve, I am amazed that He would continue to reach out to us still.  News stations all over this world report the condition of our lost and wayward citizens every day, but to be able to comprehend a Father Who would send His only adored and perfect child Who has been the object of His affection since before time began to remove this power over us on a murderous chopping block, cannot compute in my brain.  And, the fact that He sent His own servant to touch me for His purposes as well, still boggles my mind.  But that's what He did.

HE GAVE ME A VISION OF PROOF HE IS WITH US

The Lord not only allowed me to see His angel touch me, He also gave me a vision of what I couldn't know at that time.  He showed me His awesome and large hands reaching down from heaven and placing me into a crib with Christ.  Whenever the Holy Spirit relays a vision to me, it's never with an understanding of what it means.  It's just a factual prophetic event that is going to happen.  I've had so many of them, that's why I can say this.  After they happen, I always see and understand what they mean, so I didn't try to contemplate what it meant at that time; I just waited for Him to reveal it to me whenever He chose to do so.

In this vision, while I had my current mind and thought, my body was that of a toddler in a white outfit that looks much like the little onesees babies wear today.  It was a t-shirt that extended down to the upper thighs and appeared closed at the crotch forming short pants.  Why I was a small toddler, I don't know, but like in any vision I have had, I just observed as the events unfold.  All I knew was that loving Hands with rolled-up sleeves were holding me and reached down with me in them, He tucked me underneath the body of Christ Who filled the entire crib with His body, so He sat in it with His lower body and legs extending to the footboard, while His upper body extended well over the top bars of the "crib".  When those hands reached downward to put me into the crib, I wondered where I would fit because Christ consumed the entire surface of the mattress.  But He tucked me in between the seated backside of Christ and the tall headboard where a pillow might be placed for a baby in it's crib.

Several years after coming home from the City of Hope, this vision became another witness to me of the reality of all I had truly seen during my cancer experience.  Many years ago, my husband and I were impressed to take an act of faith by placing a red ribbon outside of the doors of each home we have lived in.  This red ribbon symbolized to Richard and I the Passover, the very same act of faith the Hebrew children did before Moses led them out of Egypt. This Feast of the Lord was the first of three great festivals God instituted foretelling Christ, the Perfect sacrificial Lamb yet to come.  What the Hebrews did was smear the blood of an unblemished lamb on their doorposts as a signal to God that He would  "pass over" their houses when He destroyed all the firstborn of Egypt because Pharaoh refused to let God's people go.

All this came home to me as I was washing the dishes and looked out of our kitchen window and saw that now more meaningful than ever red ribbon we placed in our patio.  As I was pondering my survival of cancer, the Holy Spirit answered my thoughts and said very direct and clearly, "If it could have gotten through Christ, it would have gotten to you."  There and then I realized the purpose of the vision of Christ in my crib.  My crib was my hospital bed, He gave me a glimpse of my life with Him before the foundations of the world as a child, and while unsolicited, He proved to me that He is our shield and our buckler through our simple act of faith.

Ps 91
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  
I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge
and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust."

You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
Nor of the arrow that flies by day,
Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
For He shall give His angels charge over you,
To keep you in all your ways.
In their hands they shall bear you up...

"Because he loves me," says the LORD, "I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
He will call upon me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life will I satisfy him
and show him my salvation."

Therefore, the angel who touched me was sent to seal my fate-marking me for Life despite my condition.  He had been sent because of simple acts of faith, which the Lord Himself had  given me to speak out loud as a proclamation of what had already taken place within my soul.  Also, the proof that God the Father had given Christ all authority as the Son of Man to righteously judge us after He had suffered our death sentence, I was also given the privilege to feel His anger against all that is wrong.  The thought occurs to me that through the angel's left hand I felt God's judgement.  That righteous representative of the One I have known for years, let me literally feel His wrath against Sin which has caused all the sickness of mankind.  I knew right there and then I had been given the honor of knowing His rightness on one hand, and His grace on the other.  Living during this Age of Grace had never before been so priceless to me, and I never want to feel the left hand of The Son of Man ever again.
The mere fact that we are living in a time of God's Grace, has been taken so lightly by the Church at large.  Because the finished works of Jesus Christ has provided a Way to Him now, that does not mean we are free from the consequences of our choices.  There will be an end to His grace, and one day, He is also going to judge unbelief and evil.  Those who choose to let their bodies be the hosts for evil powers to do their craftiness, will be punished for it, along with Satan.  What a perfect age we live in now, that we may live is this Age of God's divine Grace.  More than ever before, I can relate to Paul's words:

"We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.  For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard Him.  God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will."
Heb 2:1-4 NIV

One of the constants I have been learning in my life, and especially since my cancer experience, is that God has reasons for doing what He does and to whom it does it.  He is exacting in who, what and why He performs His mighty deeds to mankind.  He leaves nothing to chance, and He will explain why He does what He does if we will just ask Him and give Him time to show us.  When awkward and bad things happen to us, you can be assured there are nuances for His purposes present, but only He can explain it for each one of us, if we will learn to listen to Him.  This takes experience after experience because it takes time for Him to show us that His ways are totally different than ours.
Now, more than ever, I understand the words I have read over and over in my lifetime from John 3.  I saw the Lord, I spoke to Him face to face, and His promises are true: "I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live."  This actually was accomplished in me.  When I first heard the words of my friend Cliff, "You shall live and not die," like a gecko the spirit within me reached out of me without me even thinking about what he said, and grabbed that promise.  It was the voice of the Father speaking through a human being.  The Holy Spirit within me, agreed with the Father and my spirit and His were all in agreement.  Therefore, by faith, I realized things not seen and "I was going to live and not die" had to happen.

GOD WANTS YOU TO KNOW HIM

Not far into writing this, the Lord began to show me what His purpose was for taking me to heaven: He wants people to truly know Him.

When I was dead to this world and alive in His, one of the greatest moments was when I was face to face with God while comfortably resting in a servant of  God's arms.  Knowing I was about to leave that glorious place, I requested a pause so I could talk directly to my Lord and ask Him the most pertinent question I have had all my life.  God promptly granted my request and my guide delayed just long enough to let me speak with Him.  With the Lord looking into me as He waited for me to speak, I asked Him, "I can see why you love all these beautiful people who are perfect and radiant, but why do you love me?"  His answer came to be so loving and assuring, "I just do."

If you ask me what God looks like, all I can say is that He is One with His Father; and the brightness of His image shielded me from seeing the detailed features He allowed me to see the angel with.  But, some sort of understanding and vision of His personage was definitely there because I knew He was watching me leave.  This understanding of His words and vision of His personage, made it clear to me that His face was that of a doting Father which seemed to pass through me.  Somehow, I could "see" Him and knew He looked at me with absolute knowledge of who I am.  When He answered my question,  with absolute purity unlike anything I had ever seen before, His gentle, "I just do!" is now forever fixed into my being with a certainty that never moves.  That's who we are to Him.  We are His children deeply loved without question.

To this very day, I wonder why I had ever doubted His love; but at that moment in my life with all the suffering I was going through, it must have been the most important question in the world to me.  There I was standing in front of God, and I ask what should have been a question I already knew being in fellowship with Him for so many years...but I guess I must have had a great uncertainty, "How could He love me? when He has all these perfect ones in His presence day and night?  Why in the world would He want me?  I just knew He did and He truly knows and love me just as I was.

ANGELS WATCHING OVER US, EVERY MOVE WE MAKE
HE IS THE SAME YESTERDAY, TODAY AND FOREVER

When it all happened during my BMT, it was a normal as eating and breathing, but now-a phrase I have grown to understand because of my husband's teachings-when I think about being face to face with God, it blows me away.  Do I truly understand what actually happened?  Do you understand this?  Can any of us understand this?  I was cradled in the arms of a servant of the Lord who let me tell them, "Wait!"  Why was I given such an audience and why would God even listen to me?  To this very day, it boggles my mind; and the further away in time I get from that happening to me, the more it behooves me.  I was given an audience with the Lord, and not only that, but He was there watching me leave His home.

Why is this so hard to believe that I stood there in His presence?  Why is it so hard to believe I saw Him when so many of us believe He truly exists?  The Bible says, "He is the same yesterday, today and forever," therefore, if that really is true, why can't we believe He can appear to me just as He did to Moses, or to Saul--who was renamed Paul by the Lord when he saw Him?  Yes!  I have believed He exists since I was a very young child around the age of five years old when He began to reveal Himself to me in many different ways.

Around the age of six or seven years, my mother told me to go get the mop just outside our back porch door.  Evidently, one of us kids spilled something and when mom told us to go do something, we did it! When I went to the back porch door, I noticed a car with two men inside it and they were parked at the top of the steps of our side-yard that led up to the street or down to that porch door.  As I looked at them through the door window, they stared back at me and started to open their doors with a look on their faces which was so frightening to me; but mom needed that mob and I knew I'd better get it for her.

When I opened the door that cloudy night with the moon shining through them making it look really spooky, those men leaped out of their doors and started down the stairs at the door, and as they did, somehow I was able to get the mop and close and lock the door quickly.  As they kicked the door trying to push it open, my mother, brother and sister came running to the porch to help me.  How did they know what was happening?  My mom just had a knowing I was in trouble.  How did a child like me move so quickly and lock the door with that mop inside, I must have had some help. Well, many more times like that have happened and I live and am given the privilege to tell about angels watching over us, every step we make.

Another time something out of the ordinary happened to me was when I was about the age of 12.  I heard my name spoken which seemed to be audible, but my sister who shared my bed didn't hear it at all; and this happens quite frequently still.  I will never forget the Lord calling my name in the middle of the night, and that night changed my life forever.

This happened about the time I was in the eighth grade.  We lived in Redondo Beach, CA, and at that time, it was a pretty rough neighborhood.  Life magazine even wrote us up during the time of the "Jesus Freak" movement which must have accelerated from a church a couple of blocks away from our home where many supernatural events were happening, and out of that church, other's like Chuck Flinn, who started Calvary Chapel, emerged.  I really don't remember the timing of things back then, but I do remember what happened to me and others in our neighborhoods. 

We used to walk to school those days, and I attended Adam's Jr. High School.  My sister, preceded me by two and half years, and she must have made several Hispanic girls very unhappy, because when my friends and I were walking home, these girls would try to fight with me-or in those days, it was called, "choose me off"!  So, in order to combat their behavior, I put on one a face of my own and started standing up to them by cussing up a storm and replying to them with all the rank words of my day. 
What I will never forget was during one of those  nights I heard a kind and fatherly voice calling me in my restless sleep saying, "Alice?"  I thought it was an audible voice, so I got up and went down the hall and peeked into the front bedroom where my mom and dad slept.  When I did, both of them were sound asleep.  So, not wanting to wake them, I went back to bed  thinking I was just dreaming I heard my dad calling me, then back to bed I went.  When I fell back to sleep, the same thing happen again.  I heard a more distinct voice this time calling my name, "Alice".  This time that voice seemed to have a lower pitch, but somehow I knew this voice and thought it must be my dad calling because there was no other man in the house but my little brother.  Perhaps my dad fell asleep right after he called me, so again I strolled down the hallway to their room, and that time, my dad was even snoring.  Could I be having a reoccurring dream, and  for some reason I couldn't remember it when I woke up?

Well, as I pondered this, I must have fallen asleep again and when I heard my name being called so lovingly and kind once again, I knew this time it was the Lord.  That third time my name was called, He brought into my memory the story of young Samuel my Sunday School Teacher had taught us when I was a young child.  The details came flowing into my mind of how young Samuel thought that Eli, the priest of the Lord, was calling him in the night while Samuel was sleeping, and how the third time Samuel heard his name being called, Eli told him to say, "Speak Lord, for your servant is listening." (I Samuel 3).

Could this really be happening to me as it did to Samuel?  Somehow, in my frozen state with a reverent fear coming all over me that night, I knew it was the Lord and I decided to watch the words that left my mouth from then on. 

As years began to fade that experience, I almost forgot the Lord calling me that fearful night, that is until other things like that began to happen again and again. When I was in my early 20s, the living reality of His call began to speed up and I began to hear His voice more and more as He lead me to speak for Him to individuals in my church.  As you can imagine, this was extremely difficult for me to do and I wasn't always willing to share it with them and would just keep it inside.  After all, how did I know it was the Lord, the Holy Spirit, God Himself talking to me. 

Perhaps I was just dreaming again, and yet there were so many instances I could not account for in any other way.  For instance the time when I was just walking down the street in Long Beach and a car of rough looking men slammed on their breaks next to me when I was at the corner of Lime Avenue and South Street.  All of a sudden, one of the men jumped out of their car and while he started to grab me, he looked at me in horror and jumped back into the car and yelled, "Go! Go! Go!" They sped off like lightening and I looked all around me stunned.  What just happened!  Wondering all the way to my destination a couple of blocks further, I was still in shock and knew they had seen a very frightening something standing behind me.  I knew it must have been an angel.  I didn't see it but they sure did.  I'd like to know what they discussed as they sped off.

This type of occurrence has happened many other times as well: There were two times I was walking to my parked car in the parking lot after I took a late lunch at work and one time a car with a couple of men was cruising the lot and there I was.  I stood there helpless and looking around for someone to hear me yell to, I couldn't find another person anywhere.  I was too far from the back door of the office, and too far from my car to run for it, when out of seemingly nowhere, there appeared a man who told me he would hold them off while I got into my car.  When I did, I ducked down inside while peeking out until the car finally drove out of the lot.  Then the man who was standing close by me just disappeared out of sight as quickly as he appeared to help me.

Another time was when I was bring in groceries from the store just down the street from our home in Long Beach, CA.  My 10 year old son and I were just walking into the side door, when we saw a man frantically running down our driveway towards us.  He looked at us, and I saw in his eyes that he was up to something evil, when out of seemingly nowhere, two policemen in their cruiser appeared and yelled at him just in time to keep him from pushing us into our home.  Instead, he ran through our yard and jumped the fence.

There are other happenings like this in my life and God lets me know that these servants of the Lord are watching over us all the time.

Alice Takeshita

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