Authors: Kevin Malarkey; Alex Malarkey
Pastor Robin Ricks, Christ Our King Church
Or consider those shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night when Jesus was born. “An angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified” (Luke 2:9). There are many angelic visits recorded in Scripture where people were frightened at the sight of angels. No wonder the angels of Heaven are worried about a little visitor’s reaction to the glory of God.
Next Alex will enter the Temple and speak to God Himself. On the way, he may speak to other angels, or he may not.
“Alex, when you move about in Heaven—”
“I can move by my own power there. My legs work perfectly in Heaven,” he smiles. “On earth, I can’t walk or move around, but it’s different in Heaven.”
How wonderful to know that God’s grace offers Alex a place where he can have the full movement he was created to have, as well as a foretaste of the perfection he will one day enjoy!
Even in Heaven Alex doesn’t have the perfect “resurrection body” that Paul describes in the New Testament. He is a visitor who still has his earthly body; it’s simply free of human wounds there. Alex eagerly anticipates the day when he is in Heaven to stay and will finally receive his heavenly body.
Alex converses with God until the Lord tells him the visit is finished. Sometimes other angels are in the meetings, and sometimes it is only God and Alex.
“Alex, do you miss God when you’re here?”
“No, Daddy, it’s the opposite. I miss God when I am
with
Him, because I know I’m going to be away from Him, and I never want to leave. It’s sort of like right now, Daddy. You’re getting ready to go to your office, and I’m already starting to miss you. That’s how it is when I’m with God. I can’t wait until I just get to stay. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be with God, but to also know you’re going to have to leave. That’s why when I return from Heaven I usually cry.”
Alex also has an ongoing connection with Heaven in his prayer life. A few years ago, when I was wrestling with a particular issue, I did what has become natural to me: I prayed about it. Then, just before leaving to go to work, I asked Alex, “When you are praying today, would you remember to pray for me?”
Alex looked at me with a penetrating gaze and said, “Daddy, I’m always in prayer because part of my brain, through the Holy Spirit, is in constant communication with Heaven. My mouth is for talking to people.”
My mind immediately went to the verse in the Bible that says to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). I had always thought it meant we should pray
a lot
, but somehow Alex’s words caused me to better understand the continuous nature of communion the verse is calling us to.
My Meeting with an Angel
Thanks to Alex, talk of the presence of angels, demons, and the devil became commonplace in our home—hardly anything to cause alarm. By the middle of 2006, I thought I had seen and heard just about everything regarding the spiritual realm; nothing could surprise me. We always took these visitations seriously, but they no longer elicited astonishment. Then on a warm summer evening in 2006, Alex said, “Daddy, there is an angel in our house, and he wants to talk with you.”
I admit it: I was caught off guard . . . again, for the thousandth time. Unsure of how to respond, I laughed a little nervously and said, “Wait a minute, Alex, you’re the one who’s the ‘angel boy,’ not me!”
Alex looked at me matter-of-factly, completely ignoring my evasion.“It’s the angel John who is asking for you.”
“His name is John? Can you tell me anything else about him?”
“Well, you’ve already met him, sort of. He helped the other angels pull you out of the car when we had our accident. There were five angels who carried you, and John was one of them. He’s the one who held your head.”
“I never knew that, Alex. And he has come back?”
“No, not really. He is here all the time. He follows you around a lot.”
Still a bit nervous, I said, “What do you want me to do, Alex?”
“Just look for him, Daddy! He’s right here.”
“Alex, I can’t see angels the way you can.” Alex’s experience with angels is so familiar to him that he takes it all for granted, often forgetting that others don’t see as he sees.
His brow furrowed, and I could tell his mental gears were turning.
“Daddy, what is that word that means you can see through something?”
“Um . . .
transparent
?”
“Yes, Daddy, that’s it. Just try to be transparent in your spirit. Then you’ll see the angel.”
Oh, that’s all I had to do, just be transparent
in my spirit
. For Alex, it was as simple as that. But what did that mean? I struggled to get my mind around what Alex was trying to explain, but after a few minutes of intense concentration, all I saw was what everyone with “normal” vision sees upon entering our house—a living room with furniture. I felt spiritually uncoordinated. My son couldn’t function in the physical world, but I was handicapped in the spiritual world. Who had the greater disability?
A strong sense of disappointment settled over me. I have learned to trust Alex when he makes these kinds of proclamations, but something was hindering my receiving what God had for me.
“Alex, I need to take out the trash. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Alex, who had been studying my face, sensed my low spirits. “Daddy, don’t give up on seeing John, okay?”
Alex always wanted Beth and me to enter the spiritual realm with him—to experience what he experienced and to see what he saw.
“I’ll keep trying,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”
Taking the Malarkey trash bins to the street takes effort. Our driveway is about a tenth of a mile long. After walking to the end of the driveway, I paused in the growing dusk. It was a beautiful evening. I waited and listened and heard . . . a chorus of crickets.
I really was trying, because I believed Alex. There were too many times he had spoken into people’s lives, too many times he had direct experiences with angels, too many miracles to doubt that God had opened to Alex some rare window into the heavenly realm. Surely if an angel had a message from God to deliver to me, I must have the ability to see or hear it. I slowly lifted my heart and my hands to Heaven. “God, I am here. If You want to say something to me through one of Your angels, I am willing to receive any experience You want me to have.”
Some people are physically challenged; I must be supernaturally challenged. Alex must be far beyond me. I looked back toward the house, deeply breathing the night air. Then suddenly I said, “I have anointed you with a message of hope.”
Where did that come from?
A sudden chill ran over my body as I glanced around. There was nothing out of the ordinary to see, but Someone had just spoken to me in my spirit. A trembling of my spirit gave me the sense there was more. Like a radio signal tuning in to the right frequency, it came first in fits and starts. My heart raced within my chest. The Lord was directly communicating His will for me. I took off running up the driveway and burst through the door. I was all thumbs riffling through the counter and desk, looking for anything to begin writing:
I dropped the pen and reread what I had just written.
“Alex! Alex!”
Seeing my joyous state, Beth and Aaron gathered around, listening with amazement.
“He spoke to me . . . in my spirit . . . at the end of the driveway. John the angel spoke to me and said . . .” And I read aloud the message I had just received.
Beth and Aaron sat in surprised wonder, but Alex wasn’t the least bit moved. If I’d told him the crickets were singing tonight, he would have had the same response—
no big deal, happens all the time
. I was ecstatic, but it was all old hat to him. Just when the rest of us were basking in the warmth of that spiritual afterglow, Alex said, “There’s more. You should go back out there.”
I went back out to the identical spot—I wasn’t going to tamper with anything about this experience. Before long, the voice came again:
Back at the house, I again wrote furiously before hurrying to Alex’s room. He had fallen fast asleep. The morning seemed days away. I was so eager to share with him what I had received. When Alex finally woke up, I read to him all that I had written down.
Nonchalant he simply said, “You got all of it.”
It was all routine for him, but I felt as if I’d been lifted up, turned upside down, and shaken to my very soul. Please understand, I don’t come from a background that regularly embraces supernatural invasions into our physical realm; my faith pilgrimage had been highly conservative. But even in the process of publishing this book, I can see what the Lord revealed to me beginning to be fulfilled.
Perhaps discussions of another, spiritual realm make you uncomfortable. If so, you’re in good company—they make me uncomfortable too. It is one thing for others to have supernatural encounters, quite another when you are the recipient. Nothing even remotely close to this experience had ever occurred in my life. My mind had to struggle to catch up with my spirit. If you don’t have a neat theological box in which to put all these things comfortably away, don’t worry; neither do I. They are what they are. I am simply reporting what happened. Fortunately we have the Scriptures as an infallible guide to evaluate everything we experience.
The Real Angels
While some people have difficulty contemplating the spiritual realm, others seem to have an unhealthy fascination with heavenly things. It can become a way to avoid either responding to God as He has revealed Himself in the Bible or doing the work of God in the mundane, ordinary days that compose our lives. After all, don’t we all have times when we wish we didn’t have to clean the bathroom? As much love as there is in my family, there are some days when I would like to be transported away from my duties and lie on a sunny beach contemplating angels!
Heaven, angels, and miracles are wonderful and fascinating. If all Alex and I have done is provided a momentary thrill through telling what has happened in our lives, though, we have failed most miserably. The Bible clearly speaks against those who worship the creation rather than the Creator. In the same way, if we aren’t careful, we can become enamored of the messengers and miss the God who created and sent them.
Angels are not cute little cherubs who live on the limbs of Christmas trees; they are powerful created beings to do the work of God. The Bible constantly describes the angels as God’s messengers and special agents, crossing over into the physical world to carry out His assignments. The Bible also tells us to be hospitable since we may one day entertain angels without realizing it, as others have done (Hebrews 13:2).
If I may offer a humble word of exhortation, the enemy is a deceiver who masquerades as an angel of light. We all need to be on guard against counterfeit truth. Anything that doesn’t square with Scripture is counterfeit. Alex’s angels never operate outside the parameters we find in Scripture—the measure of authenticity.
You don’t need to see or talk with angels to live a life that glorifies God. Don’t be derailed in your quest for meaning by seeking a supernatural experience. Seek God through His Son, Jesus Christ.