Praise God for Hacker Angels

Monday night, after getting the kids to bed, I sat on my family room couch, staring straight ahead, with a heart weighed-down by multiple worries. Over the past weekend, we (my coauthors and I) discovered and worked to resolve a malware attack that began to create ripples,  starting to affect any website that had ever linked to our Gift of Giving Life site.

It broke my heart that all the wonderful people who had helped us promote our book with their sites were now suffering because of us. We did several things with our site in hopes of getting rid of the problem, but we still didn’t know whether we’d be able to salvage our site, whether our own personal blogs would also need to be torched, and whether all the other people’s affected sites down the line would recover.

We’ve known for years that writing The Gift of Giving Life had put us on Satan’s “black list.” He has tried attacking us from a wide variety of angles, but this was the first time he had used technology to try to take us (quite literally) down. I should have known better than to despair, but that night I admit I was beginning to fear that the forces of evil were winning this battle.

After wallowing in my despair for too long on Monday night, I checked my email one last time and saw that Felice had sent me the final piece of her new book to edit. It was good timing. Within the piece, she wrote about the power of intention. One of the statements that stood out to me was this:

At Princeton University, experiments required human subjects to project their intention at a computer-like random number generating machine to attempt to get the machine to generate a predictable pattern of numbers. The results were astonishing, showing that overwhelmingly people were able to influence the machines. (See Meditation as Medicine, p. 127)

If intention could affect a number-generating machine, I thought, then why not a website? Almost immediately, I posted requests on several facebook pages for prayers with the intention of the highest good for our website(s).

Then, later, as I was lying in bed, getting close to drifting off to sleep, I thought about my deceased brother, Steven, a self-taught computer wiz. I believe he has helped me with computer issues in the past. When I have been stuck and haven’t know how to fix a problem, I have thought of Steven and mentally asked for his help. Ideas of things to try would pop into my mind, and the problems were fixed.

I believe God and His angels are in possession of technologies so advanced that mortal minds couldn’t even comprehend them. Our little malware problem that felt so huge in that moment would certainly be nothing to them. So, as I drifted off to sleep, I asked, “God, will you please send Steven and some super-awesome hacker angels to fix all the issues with our websites and get Google to clear the sites quickly?”

In the morning, two giant weights were lifted off my heart. One, when my husband told me he got a job interview we’ve been hoping for (yay!). And two, when Sheridan emailed to say our site had been cleared by Google! In that moment, I praised God for hacker angels.

It’s so easy to forget the magnitude of the help we can call upon. Our Father is the “Lord of Hosts.”

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels
 round about the throne . . . : and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and
 thousands of thousands. (Revelation 5:11)

How often I try to fix my problems alone. How often I forget that angels stand waiting and eager to assist me, if I would only use my agency to allow them. I love these reminders to allow angels to help us:

• “The angels knew the people by name and watched over them closely. . . . I saw that we could literally call down thousands of angels in our aid if we ask in faith” (Betty J. Eadie, Embraced by the Light, p. 121).
• “There are many powerful, wonderful spirits who are being called home right now, that they can better help their families prepare for that which is about to take place in your world. One of the major reasons many of us are here is to serve and help those in mortality” (spoken to Lance Richardson by his deceased cousin, The Message, p. 86).
• “Our agency is always honored, so much so that even though there are good angels around us, we still have to invite their intervention” (Visions of Glory, p. 41).
• “Angels are our guardians and stewards. The purpose of their creation is to serve humanity. They want to adorn us with support, direction, protection, and assistance. There are multitudes of angels and heavenly hosts to call upon, and yet many people do not call upon them for a variety of reasons” (Carol Tuttle, Remembering Wholeness, p. 133).
• “You must ask in order to receive. . . . You should resolve to be more specific in your request, expressing much more specifically the desires for which you are striving” (Grant Von Harrison, Drawing on the Powers of Heaven, p. 33).
• “Angels are agents of power.
 Each of the Lord’s angels possesses extraordinary capabilities and powers, making them formidable
 beings” (Donald W. Parry, “Angels, Chariots, and the Lord of Hosts,” BYU devotional, July 31, 2012).
• “I ask everyone within the sound of my voice to take heart, be filled with faith, and remember the Lord has said He ‘would fight [our] battles, [our] children’s battles, and [the battles of our] children’s children.’ And what do we do to merit such a defense? We are to ‘search diligently, pray always, and be believing'” (Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Ministry of Angels“).

We didn’t know how to chase away the enemy binding us, but God knew, and His angels knew. After we had done everything we could, divine hackers finished off our foes. Praise God for hacker angels!