By Betty Abah
God is real and angels are real. The sad realities of our world being deeply entrenched in wickedness and our personal frailties and failings notwithstanding, the Almighty God’s unending mercy shows up in human interventions from time to time.
Yes, angels are real, very real. I have seen angels, my mum of blessed memory saw angels and my mentor and many others that I know have seen angels, real angels on assignment– appearing as humans.
Till her dying moment in May 2022 at about age 80, in which she lay down on the Lagos hospital bed singing a song of praise and commitment to her Maker shortly before drifting into a coma, my dear Mum, Benue State-born Madam Esther Omoche Onuh was very unequivocal about her most significant angelic encounter and the message therein 35 years earlier.
A new convert
It was sometime around 1987. She had just converted to Christianity from paganism and had quickly enrolled into the baptism class of the Methodist Church, Jericho Circuit, Jos Street in Otukpo where she had started worshipping with the rest of her family members, alongside Mr. Onuh Ameh, her polygamist husband, (with five wives) who also converted at the same time (I had however started church earlier, at about age five, following other Christian family members to same church).
My mum however noticed that as soon as she burnt all her protective charms and amulets and other paraphernalia of pagan belief and faced Christianity head on, her business fortunes started dwindling and she started suffering repeated financial losses.
What was a very large business empire with four shops in the Otukpo Main Market, her investment in properties yielding at least three houses in town, two in the village, a car and a vast number of other business investments and food stuff storages, started plummeting rapidly and she was suffering losses by the day.
But she was largely unbothered by what she described as the testing of her new-found faith. She instead intensified her prayers and overall Christian devotion and never went back to Baba Odoh Onoja, her older cousin who was also her personal spiritualist back in her Orokam ancestral village about two hours drive from Otukpo. She had fully decided for Jesus with her seven young children and that was it. She maintained her ‘steeze’, as we would say now, with her signature pleasantness which endeared her to people.
Strange man
On a certain evening, on her way back from baptismal class and heading back to the market, along Federal Road (a stretch of a federal expressway that passes through Otukpo town linking the small town and other Benue enclaves from the Eastern flank of the country through Benue and on to the North), she was stopped by a stranger, a middle aged man.
He greeted her in Idoma language and went on to tell her several things, prominent among which was the need for intensive prayers and cautions against someone close by whom he said was responsible for the ongoing spiritual attacks against her business fortunes.
She was awed and overwhelmed with gratitude at the revelation and thanked the strange man profusely. He then accepted the thanks, bade my mum goodbye and started walking away in the opposite direction.
Still rooted to the ground and still perturbed at the strange encounter, my mum turned abruptly to take another look at the stranger, but he had vanished without any trace before her eyes! Just like that? It was broad daylight and the road wasn’t even busy!
Instantly my mum had goose bumps all over her body. She got back to the shop, quickly closed and came back home to recall the unusual encounter. She kept recalling it from time to time till she passed.
Though her business continued to suffer terribly, she clung tightly to her faith, to her well-known business and personal integrity, and general upright living until her business picked up again several years later and she retired from active trading in her seventies until her peaceful passing in 2022 at about age 79.
Repeated encounters
Also, towards the end of her life, she had repeated divine encounters mostly via her dreams which she narrated to us her children from time to time.
Mama particularly had the gift of dreams, revelations and other deep potentials (which I believe circumstances including her limited education didn’t allow her to really explore and maximise to greater reach and higher impact on humanity, sadly).
My mentor’s experience
My mentor, Prof Ebele Eko is an Anambra State-born and Calabar, Cross River State-based retired professor of African Literature and respected clergy and writer.
Over the decades, she struck a wide reputation for her deep Christian devotion and incredible philanthropy across generations of UNICAL students and vulnerable populations across Calabar, Cross River and beyond, prominent among them widows (through her women association).
With her husband of blessed memory, Dr. Ewa Eko, she founded the Word Family Centre and continues to run it after he passed.
Besides attending to the physical and spiritual needs of the Calabar Christian public and other needy persons in their home in Calabar and at other locations, the inseparable couple travelled together frequently for missions and other works out of town.
On one of such visits to a nearby town, their car developed an issue and stopped in the middle of nowhere as nightfall rapidly approached.
Stranded, they wondered what next step to take. Just as they stood by the car contemplating and praying, a gentleman walked up to them and greeted them. “Open the bonnet and let me see,” he instructed them. They did. The stranger tapped on the engine and a few other parts inside the bonnet and instantly, the car revved back to life. ‘It is done,” he said. They thanked him profusely and he started walking away.
In a split second, the stranger had disappeared from their sight without a trace! Yet another angelic encounter! When she had her 80th birthday celebration in Calabar this May, I sat with her in her beautiful home, recounting my angelic experience. I also reminded her of this particular one of hers which she told me several years ago and which I included in her biography, ‘Mother of Multitudes’ that I authored to mark her 70th birthday in 2014, 10 years earlier.
She remarked that that was one of the several angelic encounters she and late Daddy Eko, her husband had in the course of their ministry work.
My experience
And yes, I too have also personally seen angels, though I had no single hint that they were angels until 26 years later!
In April this year (2024), precisely a day before Good Friday (Thursday 28 March, 2024), I was driving back home one evening along College Road, Ifako, Lagos when a voice started speaking to me. It was almost audible and so real: “Do you still remember the two men that took you to school in their car in 1998 when you were stranded back home in Benue?” “Yes, yes! I remember’, two huge, fresh-looking and well-dressed middle aged men in a brand new Peugeot 406, they picked me from the Wurukum Market roadside all the way to Calabar,” I responded right back. “Do you know they were not human beings?” Instantly I was struck with awe and gasped, still driving. “They were angels sent by God to rescue you because you were stranded at home.” ‘My God, my God!’, I exclaimed inaudibly as I fell into silence, in deep thoughts and still driving…. I had no idea I had met angels!
Flashback
You see, that incident was real, very real. My school, the University of Calabar had resumed about three weeks or so earlier but there was no fund for me to return to school.I felt trapped at home and resorted to intense prayer mode as I also sensed very strong spiritual attacks against me what with horrible nightmares and other encounters which I won’t recount here.
My mum’s business was still in a very bad shape at the time (her business crises lasted for about 12 years and it’s amazing how God kept her alive and in general good health, happiness and in vibrant, emotional state till almost 80 years before calling her home peacefully).
My dad, Mr. Onuh Ameh, managed to sell one of his pigs for 1,200 Naira as he reared pigs and goats (a piglet actually as there were no big ones to be sold to fetch enough fund for me). With part of the money, my mum helped to get me food items as usual (mostly local rice, garri and soup items). I bade my family members goodbye and traveled to Makurdi, the Benue State’s capital about two and half hours away.
By the time I arrived Makurdi town in the evening, my pastor, spiritual mentor and benefactor of blessed memory, Rev. Simon Sani whom I had trusted would add up to my transport fare (as I needed around 700 Naira to get to Calabar) was nowhere around. I learnt from his wife, Mrs. Victoria Sani that he had traveled out of town. I was heart-broken and almost broke down in tears.
Yet I was determined to get to school by faith so, very early the next morning, I prepared, took my luggage and headed for the Wurukum market road side (where I had gotten transport before to Calabar though not on a straight trip, but bit by bit to Katsina-Ala, Ikom or Ogoja then Calabar).
A few minutes after I arrived, an ash or grey-coloured, brand new Peugeot 406 (used mostly by government officials in that era) pulled up by the road side. Some teenagers hawking banana and groundnuts or so in trays ran to them to market their wares. I also walked down to them, bend over and said “Good morning, sirs, please, are you going to Calabar?” (Candidly, looking back now, I still wonder why I would ask such a question and what the probability of a random car driving along a major road in Makurdi going to, of all places, Calabar, some eight hours away, were, and why I didn’t even entertain the fear of entering a private car alone!).
They were two men in the car, dressed in clean, new and well ironed shirts and trousers and looking very robust, like some middle class aristocrats. They didn’t answer my question but rather asked me in return.
“You, are you going to Calabar?” I answered in the affirmative and they asked me to come in. I put my loads in the booth and hopped into the back seat. It was a very smooth ride complete with car AC.
They bought me lots of fruits especially banana along the way and drove me all the way to Calabar. I remembered that along the road they asked if I knew Prof (Mrs) Ebele Eko to which I answered positively and that she was our HOD (or immediate past HOD), and that she was a well known and influential figure in the department and school (Prof and I weren’t close then until much later).
I equally remembered becoming jittery when we approached Calabar city because I had just N200 on me and wondered if they would accept that instead of N700 and if they took that, how I would get to the campus as I didn’t have any other money with me.
So, when we got close to around Estate Bus Stop or Metropolitan Hotel area in the city, they said, ‘Hello, we would have to drop you here because we are still going farther up’. I thanked them profusely and in a most timid and small voice (😂), asked how much I was to pay them. One of them chuckled and said, “So you think we would charge you transport fare? No, it’s a ride we gave you.” I thanked them profusely and disembarked.
They zoomed off while I gathered my stuff excitedly before boarding an okada (commercial motor bike) to the campus with my humble traveling bag and a big sack of food items. A few days after arriving back in school, I wrote a testimony of the miraculous way I was able to make it back, helped by perfect strangers, on the press board of my fellowship, Christian Union aka CU. I was then an editorial board member of the fellowship’s press unit and constant contributor to the press board as well as other press boards in school on both religious and secular subjects.
It wasn’t until March 2024, about 26 clear years later (the incident happened I think sometime around March of 1998 when I was in my third year at the university) that I got the confirmation that I had indeed encountered angels on assignment (my rescue mission?) as explained earlier in this piece.
God’s faithfulness
In retrospect, several encounters and deliverances from life-threatening situations and conditions too numerous to name in my 50 years so far on earth couldn’t have been ordinary but through the help of the Almighty using both visible and invisible angels, earthly (human) and heavenly angelic beings coming to earth for timely rescue missions. How wonderful and loving is our God!
Surely, I believe in angels. Certainly, the Lord is our All-powerful Shepherd and All-knowing Stronghold in times of trouble, holding our feet from hitting devilish stones and traps.
All thanks to our God, the Father of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Little wonder the Bible counsels in Hebrew 13:2: ‘Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it!’
And it tells us in Hebrews 1:14: ‘Therefore, angels are only servants—spirits sent to care for people who will inherit salvation’
(New Living Translation)
(Ms Abah is a Lagos-based writer and activist)