Angels In War (The First World War)

He began to appeal to listeners to respond to that love by forsaking their sins and receiving forgiveness, and during that appeal the face of the man of Sorrows became enshrouded with glory.

An onlooker described Christ's face 'as most beautiful beyond description, kindly beyond words. And the eyes! They looked at you personally - those loving sad and glorious eyes which moved in the living face.'

George Jeffreys told us how long this vision lasted. It was not just for a brief time. It lasted through the night into the morning. Crowds of people came in to see it. Long after the meeting, it was still there. News spread throughout the town and hundreds more flocked in to see for themselves, and to hear yet another message from the evangelist.

Of course, some tried to explain it away. One man actually went to the wall and tried to wipe it off but without effect. So another man who was a painter and decorator took a cloth and held it over the vision but to his surprise the vision shone right through. Another tried to explain it by saying it was a hallucination caused by a flickering of the electric light. Stephen Jeffreys did not argue, he merely switched off the light, and there still shining out was the Saviour's face even more living and real.

Another thought that it must be that a bright light was shining through some sort of stained-glass window. Stephen tested this suggestion also. He had all the blinds drawn and so excluded all light, but that made no difference. The heart-rending vision still shone on through that night and into the day.

News continued to blaze around the town, and all kinds of people flocked in to see the vision. People of all ages and types - boxers, tradesmen, professional men, alcoholics and others with problems.

Figure 6.1. War Memorial at Llanelli. Many of those who died in WWI would have seen the vision of the lamb and the Man of Sorrows two weeks before the war commenced.

Little did they know that within two weeks the whole world would change for ever. The world's worst war would break out and hundreds of those young men who filed in to see the vision and had their doubts changed to faith would shed their blood on the fields of Flanders.

Even when the war broke out, it seemed to arise out of minor disputes. People in the streets were saying, 'It will be over in a few weeks!' It lasted four long years, during which millions died. Today one can go to Llanelli and see the names of the fallen, and among them would be a large percentage who'd filed past the vision, stopped to hear Stephen repeat his messages, yielded their lives to Christ and rejoiced in forgiveness from the Man of Sorrows.

I Saw The Zeppelin In Flames

As I write this account, the eightieth anniversary of the end of the First World War is about to be celebrated, but very few people will be told of the hidden mysteries which were behind them - the real reason why the two World Wars started and why they finished when they did.

Figure 6.2. Author's picture as prizewinner in a pre-WWI beautiful baby contest. Source: Mother and Home, February 13th, 1915.

Having been born before the First World War, I remember vividly, at the age of six, rushing to the top of the nearby hill with others to hear the guns of London fire salvo after salvo of rejoicing that 'the war to end wars' had ended and that the Armistice was being signed that very minute at 11am on the 11th month in the year 1918. During the war, my mother entered me for a beautiful baby contest, while father was serving at the front in Mons and elsewhere with his Northants Regiment.

Have you seen pictures of an early German Zeppelin? Heath-Robinson couldn't have designed one better! Air tactics were more primitive then. Still vivid in my memory is the sight of that quaint old-fashioned Zeppelin coming down in the night fog of London near Norwood. In the second year of the war it was intended to be a morale shaker. The bombs weren't very big. Indeed the crew merely lifted them out over the edge of the basket, to drop them upon the astonished citizens.

Unfortunately for Count F. Zeppelin's invention, a British airman in his army biplane shot it down. I saw it come down in flames in the dense yellow fog a little way from our backstairs landing window. I was roused by the shouts of folk in the house to see the sight. For me in my innocence it was better than a fireworks display.

On the whole I enjoyed the air-raids of the first great war, but certainly not in the Second World War, for then we were pounded mercilessly from the air by over a thousand Nazi bombers night after night as soon as darkness came and then when morning light dawned and the all-clear sirens blew their shrill sweet music we went out to pick the bits of bodies from among the rubble of what was once their homes. For part of this time I served as chaplain and then as vicar in a London parish.

In the First World War, raids were comparatively insignificant. I grew big enough to merit a pushchair and this was a source of wartime enjoyment because in the event of an air-raid warning when mother was shopping, the policeman would shout, 'Get into the doorway for shelter! Quick!' But for mother, the only safe place for an air-raid was home and as fast as you could get there, and so she would rush the pushchair over the cobbles at tremendous speed and I would go bouncing around like ice cubes in a cocktail shaker. It was great fun, better than a funfair crazy car, and by the time we reached home the air raid would be over!

But as I grew I became aware of the great tragedies. Telegrams arrived at neighbour's doors and young women wept and names were added to long lists later to be chiselled into the cold stone of memorials in every village, town and city, and then one saw the newspaper clips of endless mud-filled trenches and saturation bombardments overseas.

First published in Miracles & Angels, Dr E K Victor Pearce.