Rescued by an Angel

 

Margaret Nikol was born into a pastor’s family in Bulgaria. She grew up under one of the most repressive communist regimes in history. Her father and brother were both pastors. After multiple imprisonments and torture in concentration camps, her father, mother and brother sacrificed their lives for the sake of the Gospel. In spite overwhelming adversity, Nikol excelled in music and became a world-renowned concert violinist. She achieved fame throughout Europe and became concertmaster of the Dresden Symphony.

Because of her faith in Christ, she was subjected to physical and emotional cruelty. Eventually, she was given a prison sentence, to begin as soon as the concert season was over. But God had other plans. Nikol was invited to play in Vienna at an Easter concert in 1982. The communists repeatedly denied permission, but finally, because of external pressure, they relented. “God was faster than they were,” testifies Nikol. In Vienna she requested political asylum. Nikol then 37, was able to go to America.

She grew up in a time in Bulgaria when Bibles were not accessible. When the Communists seized power in her country years earlier, they confiscated hymns and Bibles. When the authorities burst into the home of one woman, a member of her father's church, the woman sat on her Bible to hide it. After they left, she tore out one page after another to share with other believers. One of those pages went to Nikol who was twelve at the time. She read it over and over again.

When she went to America, Nikol brought her two most prized possessions: her violin and one page from the Bible. Imagine her emotions, then, when she found herself in a Christian bookstore in America, walking past shelves of Bibles. She says “I stood there in the middle of that bookstore and wept. I could not believe that after praying for so many years God had finally answered my prayers. For twenty-five years I had prayed, ‘Lord, I want to have Your Word!” Now, here I stood, weeping with joy over holding in my hands an entire Bible”.

After receiving her first Bible she was finally able to turn the pages not only in her Bible, but her life as well. She says “I got a Bible, hugged it and wept. At first I was joyful and then I became sorrowful. I thought of my brother. He was a pastor in Bulgaria, having a fifteen hundred-people church. He preached from couple of pages copied by his own hand because there were no Bibles. And I said, ‘but Lord, what about them?’ That is why I respect Brother Andrew and others, who smuggled Bibles”.

The first three and a half years, I was a professor of music and gave concerts. Then the call came, I gave up everything and started travelling to raise funds for Bibles. In 1993, I was back in Bulgaria with 10,000 Bibles. The pastors of that country had their first conference in freedom. When I entered that hall with the Bibles and with my hand started giving each pastor their first Bible, there was joy and tears of gratitude from their hearts. And, prayers went up for the American Christians who sent them the Bibles.

In 2009 Nikol shared her many experiences of anti-Christian persecution with Oklahoma Baptist University students. Nikol expressed her reverence for the power of prayer. She claimed that if it were not for prayer, she would not be alive. Before her birth, Nikol's barren mother prayed for seven years that their family would have a child who would have a musical talent and in turn, serve the Lord with that talent. "Many times mother told me 'I prayed for your life, I prayed for your gifts and they belong to the Giver,'" said Nikol.

As an answer to that prayer, Nikol uses her gift as a violinist to share Christ's message. Christians in Communist Bulgaria were not highly educated. In spite of this, Nikol received education due to her God-given talent. "I have four doctorates in music: piano, organ, violin and musicology," said Nikol. “But it happened because God is not intimidated by Communists or anyone. Our God is sovereign and he plans the life of his children."

Nikol said that one of her most persistent prayers as a missionary was for her fingers to remain intact and unbroken by persecutors so she could continue to play music. She was happy to share that all 10 of her fingers are strong, and she could still play out of worship to God."I am so extremely grateful that the Lord preserved my ability to praise him with music - the gift my mother prayed for me to have to serve the Lord," said Nikol.

In Acts 5 we read “through the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were done among the people...the people esteemed them highly. And believers were increasingly added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women... a multitude gathered from the surrounding cities to Jerusalem, bringing sick people ... and they were all healed. Then the high priest rose up, and all those who were with him (which is the sect of the Sadducees), and they were filled with jealousy, and laid their hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison” (Acts 5:12-18).

In the Gospels the main adversaries of Jesus were the Pharisees, but in Acts, the main adversaries were the Sadducees.  The Sadducees had more to lose, since they controlled the council and had worked out a compromise with the Romans to share power. The Sadducees did not believe in the supernatural; they did not believe in angels, demons and the resurrection (Acts 23:8). They had a particularly hatred to the gospel because it confirmed the doctrine of the invisible world and the resurrection of the dead. These theological liberals were the first to persecute the Church.

The religious leaders thought they stamped out this Jesus movement when they executed him, but now thousands of people were joining the Church. Miracles were happening all over the city of Jerusalem. There was no way to deny the resurrection of Jesus because his disciples were doing the miracles that only Jesus could do. Clearly he was in their midst though invisible. The Apostles were proving hard to intimidate. Earlier “they commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.” And to which Peter and John said, “Now, you judge whether we ought to obey you or God”( Acts 4:18-19).

The apostles, like Jesus whom they represented, were persecuted because their good works and popularity were a threat to those who had an interest in the status quo of the religious establishment. The Sadducees started by the persecution of Peter and John (Acts 4:1-4). Now it is extended to "the apostles" as a whole since Christianity had spread more rapidly in Jerusalem more than when it began." The growing popularity and influence of the apostles annoyed the religious leaders. They were filled with a jealous rage. So, “they laid their hands on the apostles and they put them in the common prison” (v.18).

They hoped the effect of this arrest on the disciples looking on would be fear, intimidation and hesitancy about sharing the Gospel. They would let the apostles spend the night in jail pondering their fate. They would then summon for them to appear before the Council, making every effort to terrify them and thus to silence them. The religious leaders would then re-establish their power and prominence among the people. However, things did not go on as planned by the Sanhedrin.

At night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out, and said, “Go, stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life” (Acts 5:19-20). Putting the apostles in jail gave God a wonderful opportunity to display his power once more. Locked doors are nothing for God or those who He uses. There is no prison too strong for God to both visit his people in it and fetch them out of it."God did not use an earthquake, he sent an angel to get them out. The Sadducees had always taught that there were no angels. So, God, in his divine humor, said, “angel, go show them you exist.”

The Apostle's rescue from prison was wonderful, but for a purpose.They were not rescued for comfort or safety. The angel did not tell them to hide or to leave the city until things cool down. They were to return to the very place where they had been preaching before the arrest. They were to continue speaking “all the words of this life”. No modifications, no retractions, no change of course. They must speak the whole truth and not conceal anything for fear of offending or in hope of ingratiating themselves with their rulers.

The Bible is the word of this life. Jesus said “this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (1 John 17:2-3). This knowledge is not just intellectual; it involves a transformative relationship, where one's life is aligned with God's will and character. A relationship with Jesus promises the life that now is, as well as of that to come. In 1Timothy 4:8 we are told that “godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come" (1 Tim. 4:8).

Eternal life is not merely a future promise, but also a present reality. If you believe in Jesus you already have eternal life. 1 John 5:11-13 says “God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life”. Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live” (John 11:25).

And when they heard that, they entered the temple early in the morning and taught. (Acts 5:21). The apostles followed their instructions to the letter. They went to the temple at the break of dawn, at the earliest possible moment. And they began teaching, just as they had been doing. The people had to take note of this, especially since the arrest of the apostles must have become public knowledge. When others believers saw them preaching again they must have been emboldened by the apostle's Spirit enabled boldness! 

The apostles were God’s shining candles. The opposition kept blowing at them and the more they blew, the brighter they became. Satan tried to put them out but he only added fuel to the fire. The more he tried, the more the flames spread. These followers of Jesus were, “blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life (Phil.2:15-16). That is the kind of Church Jesus envisioned.