(7 of 9)
Chris just smiled. "It's fine," he told her, "I'm all right." His companion remained quiet, his eyes on the floor as though not wanting to be noticed. He was tall, dressed rather like Chris usually did, in a flannel shirt, new Levis and lace-up workboots that appeared as if they, too, had just been taken off the shelf. "There was no real age to him," Melissa says. "No wrinkles. Just this perfectly smooth and pale, white, white skin and ice blue eyes. I mean I've never seen that color blue on any human before. They were more the blue like some of those Husky dogs have. I'll never forget the eyes."
Chris seemed to want to be left alone, and so she reluctantly agreed to leave. When he came back to his room, she says, "He was lit up, just vibrant. Smiling. I could see his big dimples. I hadn't seen them in so long. He didn't have the air of a terminally ill and very weak man anymore."
"Who was that guy?" she asked.
"You're not going to believe me."
"Yes, I will."
"He was an angel. My guardian angel."
Melissa did believe him. "All I had to do was to look at him to know something extraordinary, something supernatural had happened."
She searched the hospital to find the man. There was no one around, and the security guards hadn't seen anyone come or go. "After the visit, Chris told me his prayers had been answered. I worried for a while that he thought the angel had cured his cancer. I realize now it wasn't the cure, it was the blessing he brought with him. It was the peace of mind." Chris died two days later.
In the 11 years since Chris's death, Melissa says not a day has gone by when she has not thought about the angel and what he did for her husband. "Chris' life could not be saved, but the fear and pain were taken from him," she says. "I know what I saw, and I know it changes lives. Never, never, never will anyone be able to convince me that angels don't exist."
THE DEBATE IN THE CHURCHES. So much lively spiritual activity might come as a welcome sign to mainline churches, whose memberships have dwindled over the years. Some see the movement among conservative Christians as a backlash against secular society. "Angels are reassurance that the supernatural and the realm of God are real," says Richard Woods, a Dominican priest and an author of books on angels and demons. "They are a reaffirmation of the traditional vision of a Christian world when that vision is under attack." Retired rabbi Morris Margolies, author of an upcoming book on angels in Judaism agrees. "We're living in an era very similar to the Maccabean era for the Jews," he says, "where disaster confronts us on all sides. People are looking for simple answers."
But other clerics are not so sanguine; in many ecclesiastical quarters, the angel revival is a cause for some alarm. Ministers see in the literature the makings of a New Age cult, an easy, undemanding religious faith that may also represent a rejection of mainstream church life. "When you don't believe in God, you believe in every god that comes along -- a tame, domesticated one with a small g," says Malcolm Warford, president of Bangor Theological Seminary. "When you trade mystery for security, you end up with a trivialization."