I am in the final phases of finishing a biography/autobiography of R. Kenneth McAll, my dear friend, who died June 2, 2001. Ken was an extraordinary servant of the Lord. The characteristic that made his life so extraordinary was his intimate relationship with the Lord. His life was characterized by not only being guided and directed by the Lord, but he also heard and saw Him. Because he was such a wonderful example of how to communicate with God, I thought it important to tell you that many Christians are privileged to have these experiences. They are not hallucinations or figments of their imaginations! God really speaks to us and reveals himself to us.

Before I met Ken I would not have believed that we are given the privilege of having a peek into the supernatural world. It was at a conference on demonology at Notre Dame University that I met him. He presented a paper after mine entitled "Taste and See." This unprepossessing little man walked to the podium and opened his remarks with, "When I used to walk the plains of North China, Jesus would come and walk with me and he had on a brown robe." Another psychiatrist sitting next to me said, "Mother, how did I get in here." In spite of his remark, by the time Ken finished I knew without doubt Jesus had indeed walked with him and talked with him. There was a kind of godliness about him that testified to the reality of his walk with Jesus.

Others have seen Jesus, too. Rufus Mosely, another profoundly influential man of our time, describes an event when Jesus appeared to him and actually fused with him. Others were aware of the presence of Jesus in his life thereafter. Rufus too was noted for the effect he had on others. He seemed to radiate a kind of holiness that was obvious to all. He describes his experience in his book, Perfect Everything.

Ken’s experiences of seeing the Lord began when, "On one of the long tramps of mine, I was carrying stuff on my back, and in the west on the horizon there was a village. I thought it would do as a place to stay for the night. I was tramping along as it was getting dusk, and a fellow came up along side of me, just off my right shoulder and pointed to a village. He then drew my attention to him by saying, ‘Over there is a village that needs you tonight.’

I said, ‘Oh, all right. I’ll go over there because it’s a little bit nearer.’ So I turned right.

I saw that this man was white gowned. His dress was in contrast to that of the locals who never wore gowns. Still I thought, he’s just a farmer. I didn’t really look closely at him. I was just aware of a white figure.

When I got there, I could see the mud wall of a village with a roofed entrance and a double gate which was studded with metal and heavy bars. It was fairly secure. There was a ditch around the outside of the village to make the defenses even stronger and a levee to keep away flood water.

The gates swung open, and I was grabbed and pulled inside, and they said, ‘Oh, you are fortunate. We were watching you, and suddenly you turned right. We don’t know why. If you had gone three more steps, you would have fallen into a Japanese tank trap. The village you were walking towards today has a Japanese garrison there, and you were walking straight into it.

We have got a lot of wounded we want you to see. Why did you turn right?’

I said, ‘That man out there told me.’

They said, ‘There is no man out there.’

I said, ‘Oh yes there is, and he’s got a white gown on — a farmer or something.’ They said, ‘There isn’t. Come back to the gate, and have a look.’ When I looked out, to my surprise, there wasn’t anyone working out there in the field. So, we shut the gate and went back into the village. As I was walking along, I thought, ‘Silly ass, he talked to you in English. Isn’t that extraordinary. It was the Lord!’ This was when I began to see as well as hear Jesus. Gradually, as the years have gone by, I’ve built on that privilege of seeing as well as hearing Him. He speaks through his Word and our thoughts."

When he saw Him, he most often saw him in his mind’s eye. The images like his that we all see are called eidetic images. Eidetic is defined by Webster as: "Being marked by or involving extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall especially of visual images." Ken was fully aware that they were just that.

We in psychiatry are aware of the prevalence of eidetic images. I have never met a non-psychotic person who was not capable of producing them. It is these images that are used in the Christian intervention of inner-healing. To understand how they occur we begin by inspecting the concept of mind.

C. S. Lewis in his book, Miracles, makes the point that our mind is supernatural. He said all we have to do to realize this is to think about thinking. Our mind, therefore, exists above our brain because thinking takes place in our mind. Most philosophers, psychiatrists and psychologists believe in a concept that is called monism, i.e., the mind exists in the brain and is coexistent with it. When our brain dies our mind dies. There are, though, others of us who believe that the mind exists above the brain and interacts with it. The name of the theory that describes this state is called dualist-interactionism. Karl Popper was a strong proponent of this theory, but he was backed up by Sir John Eccles, the great Australian neurophysiologist, and by Wilder Penfield, the Canadian neurosurgeon. Dualist-interactionism is compatible with the Christian view of the nature of man, monism is not.

Now if our mind is supernatural it is obvious that God who is supernatural can communicate with us by his mind, for God is mind. Paul was aware of this for he said, "We have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:16). He based his understanding on Jesus’ statement that God is spirit. By this he meant that He is non-corporeal. God does not have a body like you and I. He exists in dimensions above the ones we live in. From this it should be obvious that what we are is a mind living in a body. Because God is mind, we can communicate with him in "spirit and truth." Again we have to interpret this as communicating with Him supernaturally. What Jesus said was that when we have the right relationship with God, He will communicate ideational truths to us in our mind. Therefore, if God can communicate truths that are ideational, there is no reason to doubt that He can convey images from his mind to our mind.

When the prophet Joel said that young men will see visions, he was talking about the eidetic images that God puts in our mind to convey a message to us. The Bible has 37 references to both visions from God and visions of false prophets. Visions were most often seen by prophets before the Holy Spirit was given, but the prophet Joel said it would be possible for all believers to see visions when God poured out his Spirit on all flesh (Joel 2:28).

I do not doubt that God can also create actual physical phenomena like a "writing hand" if he chooses to do so. The hand writing on the wall that Belshazzar and his attendants saw is the most unusual example we have in scripture (Dan. 5:5). It was seen by all the people who were with him so it must have had physical dimensions. On multiple occasions he sent people too. There are numbers of theophanies where heavenly beings appeared in the flesh. They are thought to be Jesus because he was God in the flesh. He could appear then because he existed before time. Abraham experienced God when he appeared to him (Genesis 12:7) and told him to leave his people and go to Canaan. He again appeared when Abram was 99 years old (Gen. 17:1). It was at this time He changed his name to Abraham. God also appeared in the flesh to Jacob at the Jabbok Ford (Gen 32:24) and wrestled with him. He even wrenched his hip so he had a permanent limp. Moses saw the backside of God on the mount in Sinai. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were accompanied by a "man" while in the fiery furnace. This too has to be considered a theophany for the Bible says "the fourth (man) looks like a son of the gods."

Ken saw angels too. Supernatural beings like angels were commonly mentioned in the Bible. They were often known to be present and on occasions they were seen. We have to assume that they were not in fleshly form because they are supernatural beings. Even so, we have a problem, for there are a few places where angels seem to have fleshly dimensions. One interesting appearance occurred when Balaam had been summoned by Balak to curse the Israelites (Numbers 22:5-35). The angel was first seen by Balaam’s donkey who refused to go to the kingdom ruled by Balak. After Balaam beat his donkey and the donkey spoke to him, he saw the angel and received further instruction. An angel appeared to Gideon (Judges 6:11-23) and gave him explicit directions as to what his role was to be as a leader in Israel. In a like manner, an angel appeared to the wife of Manoah and told her she was to bear a son to be named Samson. Later he appeared to Manoah himself. He was seen and heard as if he was a man, but when he ascended in the fire of a sacrifice offered to God, he was recognized as a supernatural being. That angel appeared in the dimensions of this world, but then moved into another dimension of existence to ascend in the flames. David saw an angel on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite and conversed with him (2 Sam. 24:17). Elijah was physically touched by an angel to wake him, and he was then brought food and drink by the angel as he was fleeing from Jezebel. There were many other appearances of angels in the Old Testament. Most notable was the lengthy description of an encounter Zechariah the prophet had with an angel. In a vision he had a long conversation with an angel and was shown scenes that were prophetic. He was told things by the angel that he was to prophecy to Israel. From the description, this must have been a vision that was eidetic (Zech. 1:7-2:3). Most of that book has to do with the words that an angel uttered and scenes that the angel showed the prophet.

In the New Testament angels continued to appear in dreams and in imagery. The first such incident probably was the announcement of John the Baptist’s conception to Zechariah (Luke 1:11). Soon thereafter Mary learned from an angel of her coming pregnancy to be conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:30). Then another angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him that the child that Mary had conceived was by the Holy Spirit, and that he was to be named Jesus (Matt. 1:21,22). At the time of Jesus’ birth, angels were everywhere. They were in the heavens and on the earth announcing this extraordinary event. An angel appeared to tell Joseph to take Jesus and Mary to Egypt (Matt. 2:13), and later told him to take Jesus back to Israel (Matt. 2:20).

At the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, we find an angel strengthening Jesus as he prayed in the garden prior to his crucifixion (Luke 22:44). After his internment and the tomb was empty, we find an angel announcing Jesus’ resurrection. This time the angel is described. Contrary to the popular medieval conception of male and female angels with wings, the angel at the tomb is a man dressed in white. He is not described as having wings. "His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow." It does not say that the angel was armed but you remember the angel that accosted Balaam had a sword. It does, therefore, appear that angels are young men dressed in white and sometimes carry swords if they are warrior angels. Later Philip was directed to go to meet the Ethiopian eunuch on the road to Gaza. Cornelius was directed by an angel to bring Peter to his home. Peter was released from prison by an angel (Acts 12:7). Herod was killed by an angel when he was called a god by the people (Acts 12:21). Some god he was! An angel spoke to Paul and reassured him that he would be safe in a storm while being taken to Rome for his appeal to Caesar (Acts 27:23,24). Finally the book of Revelation is filled with accounts of angels making announcements.

Why am I taking the time to recount the appearances of heavenly beings in the Bible? I am sure that I did not find all of them, but they occur as frequent experiences of persons who have a close relationship with God in both Judaism and Christianity. There is no doubt in my mind that these experiences have continued to occur throughout the history of Judaism and Christianity, and do so in the lives of many of us in the modern world. Dr. McAll was one of these people.

Unfortunately modern society is philosophically both humanistic and deterministic. For humanists there is no supernatural and any of these phenomena are considered figments of the imagination. My response to that idea is that my imagination cannot create the things that God has shown me. God talks to me by illuminating thoughts that go through my mind and then confirming them in scripture. The most notable of these occurred when I was struggling with the meaning of the cross. Jesus had said in Luke 9:23, "If any man would be my follower he must forget (deny) himself and each day take up his cross and follow me." I always thought that taking up one’s cross was bearing the burdens that came my way as a Christian. It was when I was on a mission to a little mountain church in Virginia that I verbalized this idea to an old retired minister. When he heard me say this, he said, "Doctor, what you are describing are burdens. They are not crosses." He did not elaborate, but I responded by determining to find out what bearing a cross meant.

I went to the Duke theological library and got all the books I could find on the subject and read them. I did not get a satisfactory answer from any of them. I had previously read my friend Ed McDowell’s book, Jesus and His Cross, so I took it off my shelf and reread it. Still no answer came. I was preoccupied with finding an answer, so I began to pray fervently and ask God to lead me to the answer. I was praying this way one afternoon as I drove home from work. I had almost reached the house when, as I turned into a main thoroughfare a block from my street, I suddenly saw an elongated sign in my mind’s eye. It had flames all around the edge and written on the sign was the word OBEDIENCE. I knew then what Jesus meant when he said that we were to carry our cross.

I was not, though, sophisticated enough to know that the Bible should or could confirm the vision. I discovered that it did two weeks later. I was reading in Philippians 2:8 where it said, "Jesus walked the path of obedience to death, his death on the cross." If carrying a cross is the symbol of obedience, the Lord wanted me to be obedient as I carried it. I should go where he tells me to go and do what he tells me to do. This includes saying what he wants me to say.

If my recollection is correct that was the first time the Lord spoke to me in a vision. It certainly was not the last, for another occurred some time later after I had an encounter with a noted abortionist in our state. I was consulting in the Pain Clinic at Duke University. We had examined a nursing assistant from his clinic who had a dull ache in her lower back. She had no positive physical findings. In my evaluation of the psychiatric aspects of her pain, I asked her if participating in abortions bothered her. She said no and I dropped the subject. She apparently went back and told her boss that I had asked her that question. His response was to call me and curse me. I was upset with this, for the man did abortions wholesale, and I felt my question was legitimate because one of the symptoms many women have after an abortion is low back pain. I wondered if she was empathizing with the women whose babies were being killed. His phone call and attitude really angered me. Like all humans I felt he deserved to be punished because he was killing children and deserved to pay for his crime before God. I certainly could not punish him because I have no authority to do so. I knew that God meted out justice at the judgement so I asked the Lord to show me what was going to happen to him. A few days later God gave me an answer. On a fall afternoon when I was raking leaves in my yard I prayed about it again, and the Lord suddenly showed me a man standing before the light of God. All around him as far as I could see were the mangled bodies of the babies that had been aborted. Standing beside each body was the person the baby would have been. The most disturbing aspect of the vision was the look of horror on the man’s face. He knew in the silence that there was a God and that he was being justly judged and sentenced. Quite understandably he did not relish what was to come for he must have known that hell is not a vacation place. Thus the look of horror on his face.

A third incident occurred when I was visiting my friend Fra. Rick Thomas S.J. who is the director of Our Ladies Youth Center in El Paso, TX. This experience was written up in the magazine, "Angels on Earth", published by Guideposts magazine. I will repeat it here in an abbreviated version. Rick has a ministry in the jail of Juarez, Mexico just across the border from El Paso. Each week he takes a prayer team and several lay evangelists and they go to the jail to preach to the prisoners. They take food along to feed the prisoners after the service. His prayer team of 15 to 30 persons prays throughout the time the evangelists are preaching to the prisoners.

Rick’s team ministers to the Mexican men, the Mexican women, and to the Americans who are confined there. I was sent with the evangelist to the males who made up the bulk of the prisoners. They were confined in two rooms. One room had about 125+ prisoners, a smaller room had about 35 prisoners. This latter room held the more violent criminals. The rooms were as Spartan as they could be for they only had concrete benches in them and the prisoners had only their clothes and a blanket.

We went to the largest room first. I did not want to be in the way so I asked the evangelist what I should do. I could not be of help in the preaching because I did not speak Spanish. He asked me to pray for him. At this point it is important to tell you that on my first visit to the jail several years before, one of the prisoners had walked around me the entire time I was standing with the evangelist. He walked around and around menacingly. He was one of the most evil looking persons I had encountered in quite a while. I discerned that he was controlled by Satan, and that what I was sensing was satanic evil. I have described satanic possession in a chapter I wrote for a book entitled, Demon Possession, edited by John Warwick Montgomery (Minneapolis MN: Bethany Fellowship, 1978).

So on my second trip to the jail I wanted to make sure I did not have that happen to me again. Therefore, when I got ready to pray I put my back to the wall, closed my eyes and began to pray. I asked the Holy Spirit to anoint the evangelist’s words and to open the prisoners’ ears. From time to time I would pray with my spirit. (Remember that my eyes were closed.) Then suddenly I saw six angels dressed in iridescent white robes standing in the air over the evangelist and the prisoners. They held long broadswords with undecorated hafts. The points rested on the ground before them. There was, of course, no ground but it appeared there was something they were standing on and resting their swords on. They were young vigorous looking men who searched the room attentively with their eyes. My first reaction was to think that I was hallucinating, but I opened my eyes and they still were there. I closed them and they did not disappear. They did not move about but were attentively surveying the scene.

I continued to pray until the evangelist began to pray with the prisoners who had responded to his preaching and were accepting Christ. I continued to see the angels as we prepared to leave. We called the guard and he unlocked the door. As he did the angels disappeared. After some refreshments we went into the second room. I did the same thing that I had done in the first room and this time three angels appeared. They were not the same ones who had been in the first room but they were dressed and armed in the same way. They too stayed until we got ready to leave and when the door was opened to let us out they disappeared. Again they were there whether my eyes were opened or closed. I told Rick about this and he was delighted.

It is interesting that Ken McAll and I saw angels who were quite like the ones described in the Bible. They were young men, dressed in dazzling white gowns carrying broadswords. They did not have wings and they were definitely men. In the television program Touched by an Angel, they are both men and women but the primary angels are women. Never in the Bible are angels described as women. In the stories one reads in Angels on Earth many of them are described as being female.

Why is there consistency in the appearance of angels both in the Bible and in the experiences of Ken and myself, and why is there inconsistency in what others see? I do not have an answer to this.

Do others see angels too? Quite clearly they do for many of their stories are recorded in the magazine. It is also true that others who love the Lord are also given this privilege. We learned this one evening when we were meeting with our small group from our church. I do not know how it came about, but the conversation drifted to supernatural phenomena. I made the point that God did allow us peeks into the supernatural world. I cited my experience in seeing angels. Immediately a lady in the group related her experience with angels, as did her husband. Another woman in the group told of her experience. Almost everyone in that room had experienced angels. Most of our experiences were similar in that the angels were usually men dressed in white who were young and vigorous appearing.

Billy Graham in his book, Angels: God’s Secret Agents, (Garden City NY: Doubleday and Company, 1975) cites numerous cases where angels are seen. In many instances they have the same appearance as the ones Ken and I saw. Graham goes on then to describe their purpose and work in God’s kingdom. His book is worth reading if you are interested in the subject.

I have to say at this point that I did not start out to talk about angels, but it is a fact (I am guilty too) that whenever the subject of angels and demons comes up people get curious and want to know more about them. I do then want to return to the subject of God allowing us to peek into the supernatural world.

I have emphasized that science and in particular psychiatry and psychology have tried to convince us that there is no supernatural. The most interesting thing about their denial is that mathematically there is a supernatural world. They ignore the knowledge that there are other dimensions of existence above our four dimensional world. To my knowledge Norbert Wiener was one of the first mathematicians to postulate other dimensions of existence. Others seem certain that at least seven exist, and maybe as many as 10 or 11. There is one interesting bit of biblical information that in a way corroborates the idea that there may be seven dimensions of existence. Paul said that he was taken to the third heaven and showed things that he could not talk about. This means that if we add the three heavens he visited to the four dimensions of earthly existence, we have 7 dimensions of existence. Since the existence of supernatural dimensions of existence seems to be possible, the existence of supernatural beings is quite plausible. To this we can add the fact that we too do and can exist in supernatural form. (Here I remind you that I said earlier our mind is supernatural.) There is then no reason to deny the reality of our peeks into the supernatural world. They are though the privilege only of believers. If one is not a citizen of the Kingdom of God, a person will not receive visions from God nor will God speak to them. Satan may speak, but not God unless he is drawing them to himself.

Problems exist for unbelievers that cause them to deny the ability of man to experience the supernatural. (1) No man or woman wants to admit that there is a heaven or hell if there is a distinct possibility that he or she may end up in the latter. This is why 90% of people in the US believe in God and that they are going to heaven. Quite clearly not all of them will make it, but they are hedging their bets. (2) We humans do not want to give up our freedom to live life as we want to live it. Our human nature wants to guide our behavior by the pain and pleasure principle. Eat, drink and be merry is the motto of our human nature. We do, therefore, want to reject the control of a supernatural God who has provided rules to live by. (3) Jesus made it clear to us that we would not live the "Life of Reilly" if we decided to follow him. Christians and Jews have always been persecuted. Jesus emphasized the dangers that exist when we decide to follow him. He told us that we would be successful in the world, but there would be persecutions as well. The final reward would be in the world to come. For many the persecutions outweigh the rewards. We do not want to be persecuted so many of us will deny Him when persecutions come. Jesus predicted this behavior too in his parable of the seeds (Matt. 13:18-23).

It is only when we come to know Jesus that we understand the supernatural world of the Bible. Paul said, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14). We must then never try to convince unbelievers that they are wrong. We must simply tell them what we have seen and heard. It might convince them that they are wrong and need to know the Lord. This happened to a person who was in our small group on that evening when we were talking about angels. The consensus of the group was enough to convince him, and he later asked Jesus to be his Lord and Master. We were His unabashed witnesses so that another came to know him too.

Years ago I obtained some tapes by Stuart Briscoe that addressed the subject of witnessing. He said that everyone has problems. Their greatest problem is that they are without God, without Christ and without hope. Most often they are eager to tell you about the problems in their lives. My mentor once said that if you want to get a conversation started ask a person about themselves, their family and their work. I have found out that this almost universally works. I did encounter one man on a plane from Johannesburg RSA to Miami who would not talk about anything, but otherwise if I can get their attention for a minute it works. Almost universally they will include their problems. When they have done so you can then tell them that Jesus solved your problems. In doing so you relate your story of how you were without the Lord and were stumbling around without hope. Then you asked Jesus to come into your life, and when he came he changed it.

Almost every Christian undergoes changes when Jesus comes. They have a happier mood, perceive truths that they have not perceived before and demonstrate behavioral changes. In addition they are more altruistic and have improved relationships. Christians receive supernatural gifts and their talents are anointed to become gifts to the body of Christ. Finally major areas of misbehavior are eradicated. Drunks stop drinking, drug addicts stop using drugs, persons who curse and swear cease using bad language, men who abuse their wives and children cease their abuse, adulterers stop committing adultery, liars start telling the truth. Many times psychiatric problems are healed, especially if they have a spiritual origin. Since some of these things have happened to us, we can witness to the life change we have experienced or we have seen happen in the lives of others.