1991 January/February issue Part 2

The Angel in the Cell

My brother David Howard does a lot of travelling and comes back with wonderful stories. Last June when the six of us Howards with our spouses got together for a reunion Dave told us this one, heard from the son of the man in the story.

   A man we’ll call Ivan, prisoner in an unnamed country, was taken from his cell, interrogated, tortured and beaten nearly to a pulp. The one comfort in his life was a blanket. As he staggered back to his cell, ready to collapse into that meager comfort, he saw to his dismay that somebody was wrapped up in it- an informer, he supposed. He fell on the filthy floor, crying out, “I can’t take it any more!” whereupon a voice came from the blanket, “Ivan, what do you mean you can’t take it any more?” Thinking the man was trying to get information to be used against him, he didn’t explain. He merely repeated what he had said.

   “Ivan,” came the voice, “have you forgotten that Jesus is with you?”

   Then the figure in the blanket was gone. Ivan, unable to walk a minute ago, now leaped to his feat danced round the cell praising the Lord. In the morning the guard who had starved and beaten him asked who had given him food. No one, said Ivan.

   “But why do you look so different?”
   “Because my Lord was with me last night.”

   “Oh, is that so? And where is your Lord now?”

   Ivan opened his shirt, pointed to his heart- “Here.”

   “O.K. I’m going to shoot you and your Lord right now,” said the guard, pointing a pistol at Ivan’s chest.

   “Shoot me if you wish. I’ll go to be with the Lord.”

   The guard returned his pistol to his holster, shaking his head in bewilderment.

Later Ivan learned that his wife and children had been praying for him on that same night as they read Isaiah 15:14, “the cowering prisoner will soon be set free; they will not die in their dungeon, nor will they lack bread.”
   Ivan was released shortly thereafter, and continued faithfully to preach the Gospel until he died in his eighties.