Angels Among Us

Nakita Kolov, the Russian nightmare.

No, the devil's nightmare here. From it's time to man up. Challenging men to step into their true manhood. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it.

Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Kingdom Pursuits, where you hear from ordinary people instilled with an extraordinary passion. Together we explore the stories of men and women who take what they love and let God turn their passion into Kingdom Pursuits. Now, live from the Truth Booth, your host, Robbie Dilmore.

Wow, here we are on Kingdom Pursuits. I'm really, really excited about this show today because I get to talk to some old friends, one really old friend, and one that I think you're going to be familiar with is, first up, I'm going to talk with Adam Draper. Adam was the host, and to an extent he always will be the host of Teach Me to Pray. He was on Disciple Magazine. He's a very, very good friend of mine.

We've known each other over 20 years, but you may wonder, Robbie, why do you have him on today? Because here's the thing. Adam is one of the coolest Bible studiers I know. When Adam and I go anywhere, it isn't my wife says, you guys are going to get into some Bible discussion that's going to go on and on and on and on and on. Isn't that fun to have friends like that? Right, Adam?

No, it is. It's always fun. And so Adam actually, as an attorney by trade, was my attorney.

But I'd go to see him about whatever, and the next thing you know, we would be in some deep discussion. And so I thought it'd be really fun today. As I talked to Adam this week, he had some really cool insights that I think are extremely timely for us in the season that we're in in this country right now. So I'm hoping you're going to enjoy what we have to share. I know I'm going to enjoy it.

I've never known a time where Adam didn't teach me something that I thought was just, wow, that is so cool. So thanks for being with us today, Adam. Oh, it's my pleasure, Robbie.

Thank you for having me. And you're down in sunny Florida today at the beach. Yeah, we're down in Destin. It's not all that sunny today. It's kind of cloudy, but it's beautiful. And the sun's breaking through the clouds. And I don't know, I think that's a, that's a prophetic sign.

Yeah, I can assure you he is. Well, next up I have Nancy Panko. I've had her on before. She was the author, you might remember, of an amazing book.

It was an award-winning book called Guiding Missiles, which was 50 years of military men. But she has a new book out, which is Sheltering Angels. So welcome, Nancy. Thank you, Robbie.

It's so wonderful to be with you today. And so I'm taking it that this is sort of a novel, right? It is a novel, but it started from me thinking about all the things that happened to me and my family throughout my life and wondering, how did I ever escape being hurt or injured or how did that happen? And wondering if I had a guardian angel. And I started doing some research on angels, reading the Bible. I picked up Billy Graham's book, Angels, ringing assurance that we're not alone. Oh my gosh, I've read it like four times.

It is the most wonderful reference. And here I had all these incidents from my life. And I started writing a story that incorporated these incidents. And I started connecting what God tells us about angels and what angels are and what they are not.

It's equally important to know what they are not, what they don't do. And I wove this story. And all the way through it, I kept saying, I wonder how many people realize that we have angels that surround us. And I wonder how many people can say, I've had an angel encounter. Well, the really cool thing about this show, and I didn't even put it together until this very second, is your other guest today is the only person that I have ever met in my entire life that had a discussion with his guardian angel. If you're listening right, Adam, that's a conversation I will never, ever, ever forget. So yeah, yeah, it's really cool.

So how cool that we have you guys both on. But you know it is Kingdom Pursuits. And for those who've done this before, no, it's got to come. So speaking of angels, Beth Ann, I bet you're wondering, what is a good name for an angel that always looks up instructions online? An angel that always looks up instructions online? Yeah.

A Googler? Emmanuel. Come on, Adam. It was a little funny. You've got to laugh.

Oh, yeah. So you probably know how angels ring a bell. You've seen that in many movies, you know, like It's a Wonderful Life. But how do angels light a match, Beth Ann? How do angels light a match? With a match made in heaven. I'm just saying.

It's right there. So as the story goes, God was one day talking to one of those angels and said, You know what I've just done? I have just created a 24 hour period of alternating light and darkness on earth. Isn't that good? And the angel says, Yes, but what do you do now?

God says, I think I'll call it a day. Oh, I hurt you. Robbie, did you stay up all night? Yeah, I do. I do. I hope you're writing these down.

Oh, he is. You want a copy? Sure. I'm actually intrigued, very intrigued by the answers that I'm going to get to my riddle today to moving over to the riddle. So you can call in and win today by answering this simple riddle. There are at least three angels that we have the names of that are in the scriptures. And that's not counting Jesus.

You could make him number four, at least. And there may be more, but that's why I'm hoping the listeners will come up with it. So if you want to give a shot at naming all three or name one or two, you know, we got plenty of books and stuff to give away. So all you have to do is tell us the name of an angel in scripture.

866-348-7884, 866-34-TRUTH. And if they can do that, Beth Ann, tell them what they'll win. Oh, we're going to be angels and we're going to reach deep into our truth prize closet.

And Robbie, there's so much good stuff in there. So we're going to put it in the mail for them. There you go. All you have to do is tell us one of the angel's names. They were given names 866-348-7884. And Nancy, I imagine you've got this one all. Adam probably does too. So no giving away the goodies because we got to give away the goodies.

And the only way we can do that is to call us 866-348-7884. So I know we're going to get into Adam's angel story here, but I don't want to, you know, I'm going to tease you a little bit. We'll get into that a little bit later. So the other thing that actually we talked about that I think is really, really cool that led to me saying, Adam, why don't you come on the show Saturday and we'll talk about that topic is in Isaiah 61, right? Jesus mentions the word as he's going to, you know, bind up the brokenhearted and set the captives free. The word meek. So Adam kind of set that up for us a little bit.

I'll just go over the conversation we were having the other day, Robbie. This is how it started. I've been reading Isaiah and when I do this, I read it, I kind of spread it out on Bible Gateway and I read it in several different translations. The one in particular I like to read is the Orthodox Jewish version and in there it uses the, shows you the Hebrew word and then you can translate it and go look up the, you know, the English and the Greek or whatever. So when it says to preach the good news, it's really interesting.

For instance, the King James version says that the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek. Wow, and right then we're going to go to a break. So we were at Good Tidings.

That's a good place to go. We've got Matthew is in Dallas, North Carolina. He's got an answer to our angel question and we've got so much more. We've got, oh, more Riddler's, all sorts of stuff calling in.

So stay tuned. We've got so much more Kingdom Pursuits coming up. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom.

Today I'm blessed to have friends with me, Adam Draper, my old friend and attorney here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. But we're talking about the word meek and the whole discussion around there, I'm hoping you'll find as interesting as I do as well as Nancy Panko. She is the author of her new book, Sheltering Angels. And so we've got a whole lot of talk about angels going on as well as we got three Riddler's for three names of angels at least. So I will say to all my Riddler's is I take you one by one. By all means, I still want to talk to you even if somebody guessed your angel's name. So don't hang up on me, please.

And if you would just share one so that the other two have a chance at this. Okay. So we start off with Matthew.

He is in Dallas, North Carolina. Matthew, you're on Kingdom Pursuits. Good morning. How you doing, man?

I am wonderful. One of them is Gabriel. You're exactly right. And Gabriel, how do you remember Gabriel Matthew?

The Virgin Bird. Yeah, he was there. You know, he was there with Daniel too. And so that is awesome. Well, you're exactly right. Thank you for calling in today, Matthew. I appreciate it.

You're welcome. All right. So we got his information.

I'm going to put him back on hold. And then we got Angela Falson in Burlington. So, Angela, you're on Kingdom Pursuits. Good morning.

Good morning. Well, I had to ask a friend about the names of angels. And she's pretty knowledgeable. She reads her Bible through every day.

So if it's there, she should know. She said there's an angel in the Bible named Rufus. Rufus? Rufus. Really?

And, yeah. And as soon as we finished speaking with each other, I'm getting out the concordance and looking him up because I hadn't read about him. Oh, that's just, I hadn't heard about Rufus either, but we're very fortunate. We have Nancy Pink. She just finished her book on angels. Nancy, are you familiar with Rufus?

I am not familiar with Rufus, but I am. I don't. I think it's from Southern Israel. Oh, I can always depend on Robbie to make me laugh. Thanks, Robbie. In South heaven, however that works, I don't know.

But I'm pretty sure he got his wings. I really like it. I'm going to get out my concordance too. Let me check in with Adam Draper since, you know, Adam, have you ever heard of Rufus the angel? No, no.

George Carlin played a kind of an angel named Rufus in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. So that's a beautiful thing. Well, I'm just saying, Angela, you have us all going to have to go check our Bibles now.

Right. You know, this is just another time that kingdom has driven me to Bible study. So we'll see what happens. And if he's not there, I'll call you back. Call us back with an update next week because we got to find out what happened to Rufus the angel. You know, what do you get in heaven? Oh dear, I hope he's not. Wait for it.

A fallen angel. Yeah, me too. All right. Thank you, Angela.

You're a winner though. God bless you. All right.

Next up, we have Nancy Gant in Chapel Hill. Nancy, did you have Rufus on your list? No, I didn't, but I had a question. Are you including fallen angels? Ah, yes.

I am. There's actually, well, there's Lucifer. Correct. But there's one that I don't know if it's the same or not that's mentioned in Revelations as well, which would have been a fourth actually. So I may be mistaken.

It wasn't Rufus. I'm taking it. No, Abaddon or- Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. I bet you Adam knows that name. In fact, in Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan used it. Apollyon maybe. Was it Apollyon? Yeah, Apollyon or Abaddon.

I've heard both names for the same place in Revelation. Right. That's a good answer, man. I ought to send you two books for that. You did really good with that one, Nancy.

There's no doubt about it. So awesome. Well, thank you.

You're a winner on Kingdom Pursuits today. God bless. Have a great week. Enjoy Pastor James tomorrow, because I happen to know Nancy goes to James Banks' church, who does our encouraging prayer with us. So Nancy's a wonderful, wonderful disciple too.

God bless Nancy. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Bye-bye. So when we left our hero, Adam, he was trying to talk to us about, right, preaching good news to the meek. So Adam, I'll let you take off where I cut you off.

Oh, yeah. Well, the word for meek there, that's translated meek in the King James, the Septuagint, the Greek version translates as poor. The Hebrew word for it is anabim, the Hebrew word for it is anabim, which is anav is the root word. And it means in Hebrew, basically poor, afflicted, humble, or meek. But the Greek word that they use in the Septuagint for the translation of anab or anavim is a different word altogether.

It is much more descriptive. And it's basically not just a poor person. It's helpless as a beggar, the pauper, the pauper rather than the mere peasant or the extreme opposite of the rich. So what was interesting to me about it, Robbie, that we were talking about is that so meek, the word that's translated meek in the King James, there are several words for meek in Hebrew, or that would go along with that. For instance, there's another word called the sheflup, which kind of means the kind of lowliness that we take on before the Lord.

It's not a bashed or a base, but it's sort of your God and I'm not kind of thing. In reference to him, sort of when we pray, your face is in the ground. But when Jesus spoke, and what's translated as meek to us, because it doesn't always get across to us in English what's really being said. So I looked up, what I'm familiar with with meek is when Jesus said, you know, the meek shall inherit the earth.

Well, what is that? That means the poor and the extreme, the beggar shall inherit the earth. Well, let's know that actually, the word used in the Greek there is different. It is it is praus. And that means, Strong puts it this way, the biblical meekness is not weakness, but rather it refers to exercising God's strength under his control.

Interesting thing to me when I kept looking at it, because, you know, discussions, I'll just keep looking. Jesus also said that about himself, take my yoke upon you. This is in Matthew 11 29. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am meek, a different word.

Proos. Okay. So I am meek and lowly in heart. And you shall find your rest unto your souls. Now, interesting thing is that use the word when he used it to describe himself. That word means is loosely meek, but it is the necessary balance of exercising power and avoiding harshness. So when he's saying the meek shall inherit the earth, from the Greek translation, it means, what are we? Well, we're like him, him working through us. So our meekness is not weakness. It refers to, okay, but what did Jesus do? I only do what I see the Father do.

I only say what I hear the Father say. So we're like, I want, okay, now you guys go be my disciples. I'm teaching you how to go do this. Okay, so then I am, when I'm meek, what I'm doing is I am actually exercising God's strength under his control.

I'm not doing anything. I'm just going, this is what the Lord does. And then God comes in and does the rest. I just speak out his word. And I preach good tidings to the Lord. To the poor and the word does the work, right?

We're just out there doing it. But what Jesus did was, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I am exercising the power. But again, he's as God, but as man, what is happening? So this is that whole theological thing that you and I discussed before, Robbie, that is so awesome to me, which is, although Jesus is God, because he's the you know, curdea soma, why the God man? He's all God, but he's also all man. So while he's here as man, he's not acting as God. But he is surrendering all of that, and acting as a man in right standing with God, one, to show us what that looks like.

But two, in defeating sin and death as a man so that it's counted as righteousness. We get to walk in the back. Wow. And so here we are at another break. I know that was worth the price of attendance right there.

I mean, wow. So we got more with Adam. We got lots more with Nancy.

I'm sorry I didn't get to you this segment, Nancy. But then we got three more guesses on the angels. So there might be more than Rufus coming up. You want to stay tuned for that.

So we got so much more. Kingdom Pursuits, stay tuned. So welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom.

Today we have my good friend Adam Draper talking about meekness, or anav as the case may be, as well as Nancy Panko. She's the author of her new book, Sheltering Angels. And I should point out that if you go to KingdomPursuits.com, you can just see Nancy's book there, click on it, and order it.

All that kind of stuff is at KingdomPursuits.com. Again, the name of the book is Sheltering Angels. And speaking of angels, we got all these callers that I want to get to.

So we got Fail is in Greensboro, North Carolina. Fail, you're on, Kingdom Pursuits. Good morning. Good morning.

I have another Rufus. Do you really? And his name is Fanuel. P-H-A-N-U-E-L. Fanuel. And now, it is in Revelation, chapter 11, verse 52. But they don't name him, they don't give him a name, but it says the Seven Angels. And it's Fanuel. All right, you got me.

I'm going to look for Rufus, and I'm going to Revelation 11, 15. And you too are a winner. So thank you. Listen, one more thing. I'm going to give you a joke.

It's not a joke. This just came to be. Okay. Michael Angelo. I like that one. We won't give that one out because it would be too, but that's all right.

Michael Angelo. I like that. You know, I never put that together, but you're exactly right. That's very good, Fail. That's awesome. Thank you for calling in today.

It makes my day. Have a blessed day. You too. Bye-bye.

All right. Next up, we have Jan is in Durham. Jan, you're on. Oh, we lost Jan. She might've had, you know, Fanuel as well. Rufus, we got Catherine.

This is in North Carolina. Catherine, you're on. Well, we lost Catherine too. So, okay. We can get back to Nancy. She can tell us. Have you heard of Fanuel? No. Well, actually I did, but I'm not sure where.

Okay. So I'm curious, as you were doing your research about angels, and of course you wrote this into your novel, undoubtedly, sheltering angels, what kind of just blew your mind? Like, man, I did not know that. Well, everything from the beginning that God created a finite number of angels at the time of creation, and that angels are just one step higher than man. I found that to be interesting, and that God's angels are there to worship Him and do His bidding and act as His messengers. And He sends them to heaven to help.

I mean, He sends them to earth to help us. And some are given the task or the ability to transform themselves into a physical body. Well, it's written about that when Lot and his family are saved, two angels go to help them, and they are actual physical body presentation of angels. And so I wrote that into the book. I had an angel transform himself into a lovely nurse who cares for the little girl when she becomes very ill with complications from measles. And those things interested me so much. Well, that's why I read Billy Graham's book four times.

I kept finding new things each and every time. Well, speaking of new things, we still have Adam. So I promised the audience, Adam, if you could kind of quickly but tell the story of your action with your guardian angel. Robbie, you kind of got me at a loss there.

Which one were you talking about? Well, yeah, because, you know, the interesting thing is Adam actually talks, and it's a wonderful thing. Actually, the more you get to know Adam, the more you're going to like this, but the time that you ask him, you know, didn't he get bored? Oh, oh, that wasn't my guardian angel. That was an angel standing in front of this window.

I realized that he'd been standing there for a really long time and was guarding, he was a a not, he was a guardian. But, uh, and I said, don't you get bored? And he said, he said, No, I'm, I'm, I'm doing what the Father sent me here to do. And I mean, whatever that is, is the fullness of his joy.

Why would I be bored? It's really awesome. It really was. And what you described to me at the time, because I think I talked to you not well, it was, it was in a reasonable way. You said that he mentioned a tree that, do you think a tree gets bored doing exactly what God has for it to do in its true identity? Yeah, he did. That's, that's right.

That's what he was talking about. It's just, you know, it's life. You take part in life. And it was really, Robbie, a kind of an admonition that I received it. At other times, I was standing among some angels in a vision once and I, and I was telling him, Don't you understand something about evil and how they function? And they both they looked at me and went, You're the one studies evil.

We don't study it at all. We just know what we know what good is. Because we know good. We know what what it is not. It is not. And there you go. There you go, Nancy.

Right. I mean, in that, in that, it's, it's, it's really wonderful to me that, that, that you wrote this book. And it's so relevant, right? It is relevant. And the beauty of this book is that it's, it's a generational story.

It starts on a farm. A young couple has a baby girl, and she's born with a gift, but they don't know it yet. And when the child is three years old and is verbal, the child relates to her mother, that she has a friend, and the friend's name is Sandy.

He has a long name, Mommy, but he told me to call him Sandy. And, and the mother thinks she has an imaginary friend, that her precocious little girl just has this imaginary friend. And as she, a little older, she tells her parents exactly what she sees. They're big, they're tall.

Sandy is very big and tall. Mommy, he has wings, big wings. And, and then during undeniable angelic intervention, this little girl looks up and said, see, I told you, Sandy helps us. And it goes from there. And this family grows in faith and love and trust in the Lord, learning from their three-year-old child. And then four-year-old, this angel has been sent to earth in my book to stay with his charge for her entire life.

And he makes it clear that that's not the rule, but in this particular instance, for the sake of the story, he is to stay with her for her entire life. And it becomes quite interesting. And I too wrote a section in there where I converted it to the story, but I also had an interaction with a guardian angel who saved me from certain death on an interstate highway. Wow. Yeah, those are, I've, you know, I've done shows on the Christian car guy and had people call in and it's way more common than I think most people understand that people know that they had that, that situation where an angel told them to buckle their seatbelt before something happened or an angel sent some kind of message.

And those are all so beautiful. Well, I've got a couple other callers. I got to get two.

So I got Amy Cabo with the Cure. And Amy, you got a big show coming up today at one o'clock on procrastination. Oh, something like that. Trying to make the best out of the time given.

Time is precious and it's important that we make it count and live a person's full life day by day. Oh, what an amazing show. Interesting show you have. Yeah. Yeah.

We're having fun. Well, Amy's show is going to be live. It's on one o'clock. So if you struggle with procrastination, today is your day.

You can call in live at 866-348-7884. We still got Jerry. He's got an angel story and more with Nancy and Adam. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom. So much fun today with my friend, Adam Draper and Nancy Panko and her new book, Sheltering Angels and Speaking of Angels. We have Jerry Miller who's got another angel for us.

So Jerry, you're on Kingdom Pursuits. Good morning. Good morning. Sorry, I don't have an angel story.

I had the name of an angel, which is Michael, the archangel. And I can just say that I just love when the Lord applies his truth to my heart, and then when he lets me feel his presence, I mean, that just is beyond the beyonds. Yeah, that's the ultimate message, isn't it? It exactly is. It is.

Okay. Thank you, Jerry. I appreciate you calling in so much.

You're a winner. God bless. Thank you. All right. Thank you for your program. You're welcome. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. So I'm sorry, Jerry, I cut off that last word, but I did want to get a chance with Nancy and Adam to talk about this word meek, which I want to connect to angels for you from my perspective, because I love my friend Adam because he's actually probably the smartest person I ever met in my life as far as just really studying things and really, really studying them. So he understands the Greek.

He understands the definitions that people have studied through the years. What I like to look at is actually the letters that are in words to begin to study what the original word picture was. And so the word that Adam is talking about in Hebrew from my perspective is anav. And Nancy, maybe you can see how this fits into angels.

I hope you do. That when I look at that word in Hebrew, the first letter is anion. And if you were to look at a picture of anion, which I would welcome you to go do, look it up, just Hebrew letter ion. What does it look like? Well, it looks like a yoke. And so when you take that first letter as you're going to be yoked to something, and the second letter in the word anav is anun, which means essentially it's a seed, it's a picture of it in some ways, but in other words, it kind of synonymous with the word faith. Okay? So if I am yoked to my faith, then the V that comes at the end is like Jacob's ladder. It's a straight line that comes down, but it means something's coming from heaven.

Okay? And when we get this picture of what Adam said with this guy on his face abashed, like, God, you've got everything. Let me yoke myself to what you're doing, and the picture of that, when you look, I think it's in Numbers, I forgot the reference, I'm sure you know it, Adam, where the Bible says that Moses was anav anav. In other words, he was the meekest man on earth at the time, and very, very anek, and the way they, very, very meek was that it was a double anav. Well, when you heard Adam's description of an angel saying, this is what God has me doing, an angel is completely meek. It's completely doing what, it's yoked to God, right? In complete faith. And at the same time, one angel took out what, 600,000 people with one swipe in the book of Revelations is gonna take out. So the amazing power of what God is through this anavness is unbelievable, but at the same token, it is completely meek. You see what I'm saying?

That's wonderful. And they hearken to his word to perform it. That is this amazing notion so that God's power works through us to do of his good pleasure. So it's how the heavenlies function. And we're being taught that. I mean, I don't want to last into something completely different, but why is it that we're learning all these things about angels now, that time is coming, body of Christ awake, that time is in front of us? We're being taught. Right, right.

It's gonna be a blast. And that's the cool thing, is that, as Nancy told you, she didn't read that book by four times because it wasn't something four times because it wasn't something that really was beautiful and fun and something right that gives you hope. And I sense through reading your novel, Nancy, people are going to get that hope.

I hope so. That's why I wrote it. You know, after I wrote Guiding Missile, I did not intend to write another one, but I felt multiple taps on my shoulder that this story needed to be told.

And I do believe that with God's guidance, I was able to tell it. And Interestingly, Adam, you got taps on your shoulder right now to write one too, right? Well, I've been writing. Yeah, I love to write, Nancy. I'm so happy that you're doing that. That's wonderful. I had not written until I retired from nursing.

I'd not done any serious writing. And so at the age of 71, I had my first short story published, and I was moved to write the book Guiding Missile. And that is a God-driven story as well. Yeah, that's beautiful because Adam is actually retiring in a few months. And so we can look forward to all that God will do through that.

So it's not retiring. Actually, it's just getting more on what God's yoked you to. God is not done with us. So thank you guys so much. I had so much fun today. And you listeners, you get more fun because Encouraging Prayer, which is an awesome episode with James Banks coming up, followed by The Masculine Journey starts here now at 12 o'clock. Nikita Koloff is going to be on at 1230. And then Amy Cabo with The Cure. So much truth coming at you on The Truth Network.