Acts 12:10

‘And when they were past the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate that leads into the city; which opened to them of its own accord, and they went out, and passed on through one street, and immediately the angel departed from him.'

If it was a dream it was a good dream. Out they went past the first and second guard, both not interfering and seemingly unconscious of their passing, until they came to the iron gates that led out of the castle into the city. And the gate ‘opened of its own accord'. That was how it appeared to Peter. Again we are being impressed with the ease with which God had it all arranged. All man's attempts to thwart God were as nothing. So they passed out and into one street and then moved into the next. And there the angel left him. He was free. None could bind the representative of the Kingly Rule of God.

Here we may stop and pause for a moment and possibly ask ourselves, was this angel (messenger) of the Lord a heavenly visitant or an earthly one? It actually does not really matter. Whoever it was, it was undoubtedly of God. But while nothing has been said that could not be true of an earthly and carefully planned rescue by a group of sympathisers (but with heavenly assistance), who possessed the necessary keys and had drugged the guards, as described by someone who was half asleep at the time, the mention of the ‘angel of the Lord' is against it. The ‘angel of the Lord' is usually a very specific divine figure. But the description of the whole incident is itself evidence of the genuineness of the story, with its picture of a dazed Peter doing just as he was told, and then suddenly finding himself alone. It rings true.

Whether the deliverer was earthly or heavenly is a question we must decide for ourselves. We may make our own choice. What we do know is that God was behind it, and that when God does such work we can only look on in awe, and leave to Him the method that He uses. I am reminded here of another saint of God, the Sadhu Sundar Singh. He too was imprisoned because of his Christian witness, knowing no one, and with no hope of escape or rescue, until awoken at the dead of night by a stealthy figure whom he thought to be an angel, who led him out to safety. But this visitant then whispered ere he left him, ‘the Sanyasi mission', and he later learned that the whispered words of this ‘messenger of God' was a member of a secret group of Indian Christians who, he discovered, claimed to trace their origins back to Thomas the Apostle. But who could doubt that he too was a messenger sent from God, and an ‘angel of God?