Preaching Angel and Vision Stories Inspires More Stories

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Special to United Methodist Insight | Nov. 5, 2025

I have had the opportunity to preach about angels and visions in several Wisconsin churches over the past several months. Recently, I was asked to preach at the Briggsville United Methodist Church in rural Marquette County, Wisconsin.

Jo and I lived in Marquette County for eight years, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I was pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Montello, Wisconsin. I preached at Briggsville in a pulpit exchange in 1981.

To prepare for my return, I got out the journal I had kept in those days to look for local stories I might tell. In one entry I noted that I didn’t think I had done too well in that Briggsville sermon.

So I told them I was back to see if I could do better 44 years later.

I was surprised to discover that there were some powerful angel and vision stories that I had forgotten. I started the sermon by reading directly from the journal.

On January 15, 1981 I wrote: “Visited Carol Coffman at Home Town Village (an apartment complex for seniors in Montello). Carol told me of a floating sensation she experienced once when she was near death. And she described a time she had a vision of her son’s life blood flowing out of him. She said the next morning she received a cable from Korea saying her son had been shot.

Carol also told how her late mother once came to her at night to tell her how to correct a stitch in some knitting she was doing.

As the years went on in that first full-time pastorate, I began to hear more and more people tell personal stories like these. I started to pay closer attention.

Then came the occasion when I heard some personal accounts of mystical experiences that was life changing for me --- although I didn’t figure that out until many years later.

This event, which occurred at our home on Daisy Lane in Montello on September 23, 1985, was to lead to the writing of four books on visions, angels, healing miracles and a variety of other mystical experiences.

Jo and I were hosting a farewell party with our clergy cluster for Rev. Jane Follmer Zekoff and her husband, Rev. Steve Zekoff. Jane had been pastor at Briggsville, Moundville and Endeavor for five years, and had just been appointed to the Lake Mills United Methodist Church.

After supper, about a dozen of us clergy and spouses went downstairs to the family room for dessert. We got to telling stories.

Mavis Anderson, whose husband, George, was pastor at the United Methodist Church in Portage, told about the “presence” they experienced in the parsonage when they lived in Richland Center, Wisconsin. She said they would hear footsteps coming up the stairs, say hello, and know that someone was in the room, yet not see anyone. Everyone in the family experienced the same thing at different times. Mavis said it was always a “comforting presence, never frightening.”

And Mavis added, “Other clergy families who lived in that parsonage reported having the same experience.”

I mentioned that people in our culture are not usually comfortable with stories like these and often dismiss them as fantastical ghost stories. I then asked if anyone had ever experienced the presence of a loved one who had died.

Mavis Anderson spoke up again. She told of the time when their small granddaughter, Katie, was gravely ill with meningitis. Her daughter was rocking Katie and praying fervently for her healing. While she prayed, she felt the distinct presence of her late grandfather behind her and heard his voice say, “She doesn’t look so bad to me.”

Mavis said her daughter felt very comforted by this and her granddaughter did recover.

I made another comment that these kinds of stories are not often shared, because the teller would be dismissed as a crank.

More stories followed after that. Rev. Joyce Alford took a turn. Joyce was the pastor at the Poynette and Inch United Methodist Churches and would later become my grandmother’s pastor at Peace United Methodist Church in Richland Center, Wisconsin. She had been Director of Nurses at Methodist Hospital, in Madison, before she accepted a call to pastoral ministry.

Joyce told about a time she was a young nurse on a polio ward in 1952. She said she was changing the bed of a small boy who was in the isolation unit. He said to Joyce, “Jesus is here!”

Joyce said she felt like someone had come into the room, but couldn’t see anyone. When she looked again at the little boy, he had died.

Then I told the good Briggsville folk, “Your former pastor, Jane Follmer Zekoff, told of a woman she knew who had a visit from an angel after her dear little dog died. The dog had been her chief comfort after the death of her husband. Other people in the community dismissed the woman as senile, Jane said.

I learned something that evening that I have never forgotten. If you are in a group of six to ten people, and you tell a mystical story about an angel or a near death experience, or a dream of a loved one who has passed, you can be sure that someone else will tell a similar story. People will tell these kinds of stories when it feels safe to do so.

In the Scriptures we read of many angel and vision stories. One of the most dramatic is reported in the fifth chapter of Acts.

It was after the crucifixion and resurrection. The disciples were teaching and healing people, as Jesus had taught them. Crowds of people came from all the little towns around Jerusalem --- and the authorities began to get nervous. Here is what happened:

“Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail.  But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out.  “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people all about this new life.”

I remember hearing this story when I was a child in Sunday school, and kind of assuming that that was then and this is now. Angels appeared to people in the Bible, this I understood. It never occurred to me that angels still come to people today.

It wasn’t until I began to collect vision and angel stories in 1999 that my world-view, which began shifting when I first heard these kinds of testimonies in Marquette County in the 1980s, began to change for good.

I concluded the Briggsville sermon with one of the most remarkable angel stories I have ever heard, and which I tell everywhere I go.

I went to see John McLaughlin of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church, in the spring of 2005, a few weeks after his wife Mary's death. John told me he was sitting beside her bed at St. Joseph's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, half sleeping, half awake, when he saw three angels come through the window on a beam of light.

One stood at the foot of the bed and one on each side. The one at the foot seemed to be saying prayers and then made an upward sign with his hand. John watched as Mary's spirit came out of her body and ascended up through the window with the three angels. When he approached the bed Mary was not breathing and there was no pulse. He pushed the buzzer for the nurse, who came immediately and confirmed that she had passed.

John said to me, Pastor John, "It was so vivid! I want you to tell people about what I saw.”

And so I do.

People always ask me after I tell these stories, “Well, why hasn’t this happened to me? I have faith. I was sick, I was in trouble, my friend was dying, I prayed and prayed and no angel came for me.”

And do you know what I say?

I don’t know.

This is the mystery in which we live.

The Rev. John Sumwalt is a retired United Methodist pastor and the author of “How to Preach the Miracles.” Email him at johnsuwalt@gmail.com.