I Believe in Angels Songs of Praise

MUSIC: "I believe in Angels" by Abba

"I believe in angels", sang the pop group, Abba, but do you?

Do you believe that your guardian angel watches over you

on your journey through life?

Or are angels just mythical creatures, the stuff of legends

and fairy tales and rather beautiful paintings, like this one?

On today's Songs of Praise,

who was the mysterious figure that appeared at the scene of a car crash?

Was this church protected from gangs by guardian angels?

Plus, some favourite hymns

and a special performance by Sir Willard White.

What do you think when you hear the word "angels"?

Beautiful statues in Victorian cemeteries?

Angels on top of Christmas trees?

The lovely Clarence from that classic film, It's A Wonderful Life?

Or the traditional image of an angel seen in stained glass windows

in churches everywhere?

Angels have been inspiring artists over the centuries and in fact,

there are well over 150 paintings of angels

here in the National Gallery's collection in London.

This one dates back to the 15th century

and it features no less than nine choirs of music-making angels

on each side of the holy family.

Whilst angels are often shown making music,

we mortals are also inspired to sing about angels.

Robbie Williams, The Eurythmics, even the great Aretha Franklin.

And of course, there are lots of angelic hymns,

like our first one today, Angel-Voices Ever Singing.

One in three people in this country believe in angels,

that's if you believe the statistics.

So perhaps it's no wonder that there is a growing industry

in angel jewellery, angel ornaments and angel books,

about four shelves of them in this book shop alone.

I must say I have sometimes felt a bit sceptical

about the whole idea of angels appearing today,

but when you think about it,

the Gospels start with the appearance of an angel

so if we believe the rest of the Gospel, why not believe in angels, too?

I'm not sure if I believe in angels or not

but I suppose I'd like to think there was something there.

I do believe in angels in a sort of metaphorical sense.

I don't expect the angel Gabriel to come down from the sky and tell me the good news,

but it could be in the guise of somebody else, somebody you've not met before,

who gives you good advice, or someone showing you some kindness.

I don't know, I just know I have something watching over me all the time.

No, I don't, I'm afraid.

-Not even an inkling they might exist?

-No, not even an inkling.

My religion tells me that you should honour angels

just the same as honouring Christ.

I think there's so much that we don't know about,

God speaks in many ways and sometimes, yes, perhaps he uses angels.

So, if angels do exist, what is their purpose?

Well, according to our next hymn,

because angels are close enough to see the face of God,

they can help us to worship Him as we should.

One frosty evening in December 1981,

Roy Godwin was driving with his wife and children.

We were travelling on a main road,

quite a wide main road through a forest.

Suddenly there were four headlights side-by-side immediately in front of us.

One car overtaking the other.

I instinctively pulled the car to the left onto the grass verge

but the car that was in front of me hit us head on.

It was very serious indeed and I was quite clear that I was dying.

Both the police and an ambulance came.

Smoke started to come up from the front of the car

and they needed to get everybody out.

They couldn't get me out because I was well and truly trapped in there.

Roy believes that whilst he was waiting to be freed from the damaged vehicle,

something quite miraculous happened.

I was alone in the car.

Suddenly through the darkness came a figure.

He walked very steadily and clearly straight between the trees,

through the forest, which was impenetrable,

certainly at that time, with brambles.

But he walked in a straight line, straight to the side of the car.

And he climbed in.

The seat was covered with broken glass but he simply sat there.

He was wearing a coat with a hood up, I didn't see his face.

But he put his arm straight across my shoulder.

It felt as though I'd been plugged into the mains.

The most incredible force and power

was just continuously flooding through me.

After a while, the ambulance men came over

and said they were taking my family off to hospital

and at that point, this person who was sitting by me climbed out of the car

and said with a very strong and clear voice, "Stop".

He said to the ambulance man,

"You are to bring his wife over here to him."

They brought her over to me.

Then he spoke to me and said,

"Man, you are to know that your wife and children and you as a family

"will be together again and whole

"and you are to disregard anything else that anyone tells you."

What was the reaction of the doctors when you got to hospital

and they saw your injuries?

I was wheeled straight into theatre.

They asked me to sign a form,

giving them permission to amputate my left foot and lower leg.

I couldn't give them that permission because all I could hear was,

"You are to disregard anything that anyone else says.

"You and your family will be together and you will be whole."

So I didn't have my foot amputated and I have it today

and we are doing very well together.

One of the things I was concerned was,

that because of the seriousness of my injuries, I had dreamt it all.

But some weeks after the accident, the police turned up unannounced.

They had two questions.

Given the extent of the damage to the car, they wanted to know

whether I had any explanation as to how it was that I was still alive.

Then their second question was about the figure in the car with me

who had carried such authority that they had unhesitatingly obeyed it.

It seems to me as though God sent an angel to help me.

I knew I wasn't abandoned, I knew I wasn't on my own.

I was clear that God was going to carry me through where I was

and I felt loved.

This picture is of a Bible story from Genesis

and it shows an angel appearing to Hagar,

the servant girl who has run away, having been made pregnant by Abraham.

The angel tells her that her son, Ishmael,

will become the founder of a great tribe.

It's one of countless stories

of angels appearing to people in the Bible.

And they seem often to bring a message.

The word angel comes from the Greek word "angelos".

It's the word that's used in the New Testament

to describe angels.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word is "malach".

And both of those words simply mean a messenger.

So if you were going to describe a human messenger,

you would use the same word as you would use to describe

an angelic or heavenly messenger.

You might not always know that it's an angel.

Because if an angel is simply a messenger,

it could be somebody sent from God, from the heavenly realms,

who is very, very clearly an angel,

like when Mary encounters Gabriel.

But there are other places in the Bible where it's really not clear.

The interesting example of that would be in Genesis 18

where Abraham meets four people

who later turn out to be God and three angels.

But he isn't sure at the time.

One of the really striking things about being a Christian

is that you can be in a church which is stuffed with images of angels.

You've got them on the stained-glass windows,

you've got them in pictures all over the church,

you hear about them when you hear the Bible readings,

you sing hymns about them.

And yet, actually, when you talk as a Christian,

you very, very rarely talk about angels.

And one of the reasons for that is because of a scepticism

that has grown up about whether angels really exist.

Also, they've become associated with

what you might call a New Age view of the world,

which people feel a little bit nervous about.

But actually, angels are a thorough part

of the Jewish and the Christian tradition.

They're there all the way through the Bible,

all the way through subsequent Christian tradition.

And it seems that we've lost something.

Because angels provide for us within the tradition

something that's really important.

Something about the mystery of God.

Something about the way in which God

yearns to communicate with the world.

I've had a number of experiences in which,

at really crucial times in my life,

somebody has done or said something

which has made a vast amount of difference.

Now, I would argue that that was an angelic experience.

Because whether they were human beings or not,

they said something which communicated God's love to me.

The point is that God works in the world often in ways that we miss.

And the important thing is to be able to look back and to reflect

and to notice the places where we discover God's hand in our lives.

In 1985, Wallace Brown moved to Birmingham

to become vicar of this church, St Boniface.

And having left a very comfortable parish in Leicestershire,

inner-city life came as a bit of a shock to him and his wife Mary.

Within the first week of us moving to these big council estates,

there was a murder about 50 yards away from our back door.

And I thought, "What sort of place have I come to?"

I found a trail of destruction

where vandals had gained access and pulled down wallpaper.

And there'd been excrement smeared around the study walls.

And I began to think to myself,

"How can I possibly bring my children here?"

Wallace and Mary soon discovered that a gang known as the Quinton Mob

gathered outside the church from 2:00 in the afternoon

until 2:00 in the morning every single day.

They were very violent.

They wielded knives.

They were quite drunken.

And there was always bottles being thrown around and smashed.

One particular night that I couldn't sleep,

I had this sense of needing

to go and get a bible and read the Book of Nehemiah.

The trouble Nehemiah was having

were people causing trouble on the walls of Jerusalem,

preventing him from doing the work God had sent him to do.

And I thought, "Gosh, that's so like us."

And Mary said to me, she said,

"I think the Lord's been saying to me

"that he wants us to go outside

"and to pray for angels to protect us."

I took a deep breath.

I'd never had anything to do with angels before.

But I was so depressed, frankly, I would've done anything.

So early the next morning, the two of us went outside

and we said, "Lord, please send your guardian angels on these walls

"to help us in our deep, deep problems."

And we did that every day for the next week.

This 35-strong Quinton Mob,

which we knew had been there for at least seven years,

seemed to diminish by the Monday down to about 12.

And a few days later, no gang turned up.

And it just seemed like God

had planted his guardian angels over the walls.

They never came back.

And we stayed in this place for 18 years.

This place turned into a lovely community

where we were so glad to be,

seeing God at work transforming the area

and bringing his love to many, many people.

# Love, fear not though sad thy dreaming

# All through the night

# Though overcast bright stars are gleaming

# All through the night

# Joy will come to thee at morning

# Life with sunny hopes adorning

# Though sad dreams may give dark warning

# All through the night

# Angels watching close surround thee

# All through the night

# In thy slumbers close surround thee

# All through the night

# They will of all fear disarm thee

# No forebodings should alarm thee

# They will let no peril harm thee

# All through the night. #

Lorna Byrne grew up in Ireland in the 1950s.

She believes she can actually see angels.

She's written several best-selling books about her angelic experiences.

I'm Catholic, so I was brought up as a Catholic

and I have four brothers and four sisters.

And we were very, very poor. We lived in Old Kilmainham in Dublin.

How far back do you remember seeing angels?

You know, I always say from the very moment I opened my eyes.

You know, lying in the cot.

You know, reaching up and trying to catch them, to play with them.

Um...they were always over my cot and always around me.

And it was only, say, when I was about two and a half,

when I discovered that they were angels

and my mum and dad couldn't see them, or my sister.

Why you, Lorna?

Actually, I don't know why me.

I'm just a very ordinary person.

I don't know why God chose me and, say, not you.

I really don't know. I don't have an answer.

How do you see angels?

In your mind's eye or close enough to touch?

They're real enough to touch.

I see them physically, as I see you sitting there.

They are so, so bright.

They give a human appearance.

I don't always see wings.

If I see wings on an angel, I feel privileged.

Because they are extremely beautiful.

But I couldn't say really whether

they're giving an appearance of male or female

because angels don't seem to be either.

You know, if you were out on the street,

you'd see all of the people walking up and down.

I see all of the people,

but I see the guardian angel with everyone, as well,

as physically as I see the people.

And everyone has a guardian angel,

regardless of their religious beliefs,

whether they're a Catholic or a Protestant or a Muslim or a Jew,

or even if you're good or bad, you have a guardian angel.

You're a Christian.

How do angels fit in with our Christian view of God?

Angels are creatures created by God.

You and me and everyone in the world out there

has a soul which is that speck of light of God.

That is one reason why your guardian angel never leaves you for a second.

Because it's in the presence of that light of God.

# When at night I go to sleep

# Fourteen angels watch do keep

# Two my head are guarding

# Two my feet are guiding

# Two are on my right hand

# Two are on my left hand

# Two who warmly cover

# Two who over me hover

# Two to whom it is given

# To guide my steps to Heaven. #

Dear Lord, thank you for the times

when you've sent us angels to comfort and protect us.

To offer guidance and words of wisdom.

To give us hope and enlightenment.

And for the many different ways that your love is manifest to us.

Amen.

Angels have captured the human imagination for centuries

in pictures, poems, films and songs.

And the words of our final hymn today reflect the belief

that angels have been with us since the dawn of creation.

Next week, Aled's in London preparing for the season of Lent

with traditional pancake tossing,

stocktaking at the zoo

and cricketer Henry Olonga, who tells of his sporting sacrifice.

Plus a special performance from Only Boys Aloud.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd