(By: Curtis Ray)

The question was asked in a Prison Fellowship outreach if any of us had ever seen an angel before. I raised my hand, because I have. The speaker that night, Norm Rasmussen from Precious Testimonies Evangelistic Ministries, asked me if I would write the account down, so here it is. It's the first time I've ever written about it.

Some may doubt what I saw. I understand that, which is okay. I'm used to it. I'm not trying to convince anyone what I saw was real or not. All I can promise you is that I didn't make this story up, and I'll tell it just like I remember it.  

Here's a little of my past, to help people better understand how God has worked in my life. That's really why I write this testimony in the first place, to publicly thank God for saving me, because I should be in hell. God allowing me to see an angel is very secondary.  

My biological mother passed away when I was six years old. My mother died of Leukemia, a type of cancer. She died in her sleep. We lived in St. Louis, Missouri. She was too sick to cook for us. We ate at lot baloney and glazed donuts for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  

After she passed away my brother and I were taken to a foster care home for one night and then the next day they separated us from each other.

I was by myself and my other two brothers were gone away so I began to not eat anything. I was acting like a fool by throwing my food on the floor, but my tantrum evidently working because they got in touch with my aunt Verna Taylor, who lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and then we were together again. Our aunt adopted us through the courts.  

I attended Mountain Zion Baptist Church many times growing up. It was there that I heard about God. I had a job working with the City of Kalamazoo. I worked in different parks putting up Christmas ornaments on Christmas trees during the Christmas season, and did other various kinds of work for them in the off-season.

I got married and we started having children. However, my wife and I kept arguing all the time, so I left her and started another relationship with another women. This other woman got pregnant with my child. She was coming to the job to bring me my lunch at the time. I was living with her and then my wife started coming to my job as well. We were separated, but not legally. My wife had filed to get child support from me. Then they began to take money from my paychecks.  

She came to my job one day and asked if I would consider coming back home and helping her raise the children. I decided to go ahead and return back because I felt it was the right thing to do, though it was a hard decision to make. There was something else to consider as well --  the child my girlfriend was also carrying  at that time.  

Then came Friday. This was the day that I would tell my girlfriend that I was going to leave her and go back home to my first wife. But I knew that it was going to be hard for me to tell her this, especially by her being pregnant with our child. I knew she wasn't going to take it that easy - to just let me go.

Then a friend of mine picked me up when I got off from work. This happened to be on a day that was my girlfriend's sister's birthday. Her brothers and sisters were giving her a party. My friend had told me about the party, and while on our way over to it, I told him about my plan to leave my girlfriend. I told him that this would be the perfect time to get my things, while my girlfriend was out of the house. 

He agreed to move me move my things a little later, and we stopped at a store. I bought a pint of gin.  

About an hour passed by. My friend was upstairs in my girlfriend's house. I tried to tell my girlfriend that I was going to leave her, but it was hard to tell her something like that - knowing how she would feel, carrying our child inside her - so I waited ' as I began sipping on some gin. I believed that I would be more relaxed to tell her with some gin in me.  

Then my friend came down from upstairs. I had already paid him the gas money to help me move, so I said, 'Let's make the move now.'

He said, 'Wait -- give me another 10 minutes, okay?' Then he hurried back up the stairs so I ended up waiting the 10 minutes.  

Then he came down again and I said, 'Let's ride, man.'

He replied, 'Just wait until I handle my business.'  

I got tired of him stalling me. I said, 'Just give me back my money then and I'll get someone else to do it.'  

He said, 'No - you just are going to have to wait until I get ready.'

Upset now, I again told him to give me back my money.   

He said, 'No!'  

Then I hit him and slammed him on the floor.  

Our girl friends' and their brothers' broke up the fight.

After that I began trying to explain to my girlfriend that I was going to leave her and why.

The next thing I remember, everyone started yelling at me: 'Curtis, look out!'  

While I was a bit intoxicated, this supposed friend of mine struck me in my jaw. I lost my balance and fell and hit my head on a fire hydrant, which knocked me unconscious. Then they picked me up and took me inside the house and put me on the couch.

About 15-20 minutes went by. A long time friend of mine turned on the light because it was too dark to see. He was checking to see how I was doing. They said my whole face was swollen and bleeding, and I had a real bad cut in the back of my head where I had hit it on the fire hydrant. My nose and mouth was bleeding also. My buddy and the others took me out to his car and rushed me to the hospital. This is when I fell into a coma.  

A doctor was going to do surgery on me, but if he would have, he said later, that the air would have hit my brain and I would have died, so he did not attempt surgery. They just put me in a room on a machine to keep me alive.  

I suffered for two weeks, in and out of a coma at first, and then I went fully comatose. By the third week my heartbeat wasn't right and my will to live was not on a positive level. However - God knew that if I died I was going to hell. It was apparent the brain surgeon gave up on me; I was not getting any better. The machine was keeping me alive, barely, and the doctor told the nurses to call my family so they could start setting up funeral arrangements for me. The doctor thought I may not even make it through the night. He assumed that I was going to die. 

I believe God was waiting for the doctor to give up on me, so that He could get glory out of my situation. (I've often wondered if anyone was praying for me during that time. I'll probably have to wait until I get to heaven to find out.)

In the quite of the night, while I was lying there, I felt something cover my face. Then my eyes opened up and there was sight.  

I rose up and looked around the hospital, wondering what I was doing in there. There was a nurse in the room. She jumped up and ran to tell the doctor that I had come out of the coma! 

He came inside the room and I heard him say: 'It's a miracle! I can't believe it! Wow!'

Once again, because God knew that I was going straight to hell if I would have died, God spared my life. I knew that he was going to use me. This is my first supernatural encounter with God that I can remember.  

The second one is when I was in Gardena, California. That's when I saw an angel. It was also there that I suffered my first seizure ever in my life. Here are the details:

I was living with my wife's male cousin. I ready my Bible a lot during this time. By that time I seriously believed that Jesus died to pay for the full penalty of my sins, and I confessed with my mouth and truly believed in my heart that God the Father raised His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead, for sinners just like me. (I was not saved when I lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan, even though I was going to church a lot.)

While living with my wife's cousin, I found out he liked men rather than women. He tried to seduce me but I told him I was not like that, and I told him that is an abomination to God for a man to be like and that He did not create man for that kind of purpose. I mentioned to him from the Bible where God says this:

'You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.'  -- Leviticus 18:22

He then got made and took his roll-away bed from me because I would not sleep with him. That same night he had a guy come over and have sex with him.  

A few nights after than, when I was sleeping on the floor, I had a seizure. That had to put a spoon in my mouth so I wouldn't swallow my tongue. I ended up in the hospital.

I was unconscious for a few days. Then when I regained consciousness, the doctor said, 'Mr. Ray, I am sure glad that you came back to us, because we though that we were going to lose you.'

'I discovered that you were in a coma. We've located your wife in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She's on the phone.'  

While on the phone with her, she asked me to come back home after I got out of the hospital, so I agreed that I would.

The next day they released me for the hospital. Then I called to talk to my sister and she said, 'Please don't come back to your wife, because she is seeing some other guy across the street from my house. I see her going in and out of the man's house all the time.' My sister asked me to go to Atlanta, Georgia instead to stay with her daughter. She assured me she would pick me up from the bus station. 'She'll know you are coming there.  I'll let her know.'

I agreed to her suggestion, because after what she told me about my wife cheating behind my back, I did not want to go back to her infidelity.  

I really wasn't quite well yet from my injuries. When I walked, I walked imbalanced. After my seizure, the doctor gave me some large pills to take so I wouldn't have another seizure. I left California and headed to Atlanta, Georgia.  

At the bus station in Atlanta I waited for about 15 minutes and then her daughter finally arrived. 

The bus ride across the country made me quite exhausted and very tired, so a few nights, later I was resting up, sitting, studying my Bible. I had the light on while I was studying. All of a sudden I began to get real light headed and weak and my unawareness began to dim. I began having another seizure.  

I'm not sure exactly how to describe it; like I sort of fell under some kind of spell or trance. Next, I was lying there on my stomach, when something began breathing over my shoulders. My eyes were closed very tight.  I could not open them. Then I turned around - but still under this spell or trance - I looked, but still I couldn't open my eyes. It seemed as though this thing was very dark that was before me yet something like red circles. I believe in my conscience they where eyes.  

I kept feeling hot, and hearing hard breathing in my face. Then suddenly it went away. Then I heard something hit the floor as though someone knocked over something. I became frightened when that happened because I couldn't see what it was.

Just a few moments later,' all of a sudden, over my shoulders came this brightest light, an incredibly bright light. It was brilliantly white. Even though my eyes were still closed, my spiritual conscience, or perhaps better said, my spirit man, was aware of what was going on.  

Next I felt something pulling my tee-shirt. It thought maybe they were angels, because they were communicating something to each other. Hard as I tried to open my eyes to see them, I couldn't. However, I knew something was really happening. It was very real and I knew I wasn't imagining it.  

Finally I came out from under this spell or trance. It was very dark, so I scooted backwards and turned on the light. Then I looked in the kitchen. The garbage was knocked over. Garbage was all over the place. I was a little scared so I continued to read my Bible for about half an hour. Then I went to sleep, but I left the light on.

The next morning my niece woke me up and asked me who turned over the garbage. I answered, 'I have no idea.'  She was mad, understandably.

After I had that experience, I knew that God was with me, so I decided to throw away those pills because I knew that God would heal me and I would never have another seizure.

I decided to go back home to Kalamazoo after that and visit my wife and the children. I learned of another man in our home and I was quite convinced he was living there, so I left.  

I then moved in with my brother.  Some weeks after, I met another woman I enjoying being around. She was now a dedicated Christian who had several months earlier gotten off a crack addiction and was getting back on track with her relationship in the Lord.   

One night she and I had just arrived at church, but rather than go in right away, we stayed in the car. We were talking about the possibility of getting married; where we would live; child issues, things of that nature.  

A few people came out of the church and my girlfriend's cousin was one of them. For whatever reason, I had my full attention on her cousin, as she started walking across the street. She had some Crispy Treats in her hand, and she somehow dropped them right out in the middle of the street.   

All of a sudden a car going at a very high speed seemed to come from out of nowhere. As my girlfriend's cousin had been bending over to pick up the Rice Crispy treats, she then started to stand up straight again, but it was too late.

The speeding car ran smack dab into her! She screamed. The car hit her hard and she went straight up in the air -- high in the sky -- and then all of a sudden I saw whiteness in the sky. I saw wings. It looked like an angel.  

This angel grabbed her body and wrapped something like a cloth around her. I saw something like glittering stars come from the cloth that the angel wrapped around her body. The angel's hair was as white as snow.  

By that time I was yelling at my girlfriend. She was on the passenger side. I said, "Look! Look, look, look at that! Did you see that?!" But she was going hysterical.  

I kept looking. Then the angel flew her body down to the school - Washington school - and laid her down softly and flew back up into the sky.  

My girlfriend was completely out of control. She thought that her cousin was dead. She kept saying, 'Curtis, did you see how hard that car hit her?!'

Then she exclaimed in horror, 'When she hit the ground -- I know she is dead!'  

Nevertheless, I continued to tell her that her cousin was not dead, and I told here what I had seen with my own eyes.  

She refused to believe me. Then I tried to tell her family, and even they had doubts. We all rushed to the hospital behind the ambulance and the police. They all believed that she was dead, but I new something that they did not know. Our Lord God revealed something awesome to me  Had He not done so, I wouldn't have believed she was alive either!

Our Father God gave at least four things that belong to Him. He gives them to anyone who will receive them, when He didn't have to:  

1)    Jesus Christ His Son as the one and only perfect and acceptable sacrifice for the sins of the world, for your your sins and my sins. 

2)    The Holy Spirit to help born again believers in their relationship with God.

3)    The Bible, His Holy Word, to help feed our spirit and soul, and as the means to learn what is right and wrong, and how we are to serve God and grow in our relationship with Him.

4)    Angels to help us as God wills. 

We might as well believe it. It's a fact. I can't wait to see my Savior. Amen!

PLEASE HELP US HELP YOU SHARE THE BEST NEWS GOD HAS FOR EVERY PERSON BECAUSE...

JESUS DID IT! and...

YOU ARE SO GREATLY NEEDED!

Remember: All that we do in this life comes back to our God-given purpose which is to serve and glorify God. The money and assets we accumulate, the fame and power we've attained or seek to attain - all of the things of this nature will one day pass away, but those lives of others we impact for Jesus Christ will last for eternity, and we will be rewarded for the part we helped play by impacting those lives ... for eternity. (Matthew 6:19-21 is our assurance)