Angela Cox didn’t know Jesus died on a cross. She didn’t know what He died for. She had bought her first Bible at 45 and was reading it like a storybook, from the beginning. Then she turned to the Gospel of Matthew, reached the red letters, and was forced to her hands and knees. For about two hours, she says, she experienced the crucifixion from the cross itself.
In this episode of the God’s Truth Podcast, Angela tells Abigail Smith about the search that led her to Scripture, the vision that broke her, and how it changed everything. What follows is her account.
A God she didn’t know she could speak to
Angela grew up in Maryland in what she calls “a very dysfunctional home.” Her parents were not Christians. Her grandparents took her to church a handful of times, and her grandmother kept the Ten Commandments on the wall and called them “God’s rules.” Angela always believed there was a God. “I didn’t know I could speak to Him,” she says. “I didn’t know there was a book about Him.” She just tried to be a good person.
For about twenty years she worked in nursing homes and hospitals and watched many people die. Some, she says, died terrified, as if they were fighting something. Others died smiling and at peace. It almost confirmed for her that God was real.
By her mid-forties, married for 23 years with four children and a grandchild, she was drinking and using drugs, and was planning to go further still. “I was a wicked person,” she says frankly.
The search for truth
Angela has always been driven to find out what is really true. For years she poured that energy into politics, going “down every rabbit hole.” In 2023, the darkness she saw behind it all left her with a deeper question: if there is so much evil in the world, who is God?
So she bought her first Bible and started reading at Genesis. She felt prompted to sign up for baptism, though she and her husband had only been to church a few times. One evening the woman organising the baptisms called her. Angela was in her bedroom on a little swivel chair, reading Leviticus. The woman laughed. “Why are you reading that?” “It’s the beginning of the book,” Angela said. “Where do you want me to go?” The woman told her about the New Covenant and said to read the Gospels. “What are the Gospels?” Angela asked.
The red letters
After the call she opened Matthew. She didn’t know the red letters were the words of Jesus. She thought they were just important. As she turned to a page of red, her body went into what she can only describe as shock. She was forced down onto her hands and knees. She felt freezing cold and burning hot at once. Fluid seemed to pour from every part of her, and she wept harder than she had ever wept in her life. It felt as if every organ, vein and vessel in her body was shaking.
Then, she says, she was seeing from the cross. She was looking down through Jesus’ eyes at hundreds of people below.
First she felt His emotions: “an immense amount of shame, condemnation, betrayal, hatred.” Only later did she understand that these were not His own. They were ours, carried by Him on the cross (Isaiah 53:4–5).
Then she felt His love. The crowd was spitting on Him, cursing Him, mocking Him, “and He loved them so much still, and willingly did that for each and every one of them, and us.” She calls it “the most pure form of love. We can’t even fathom it here.” “Father, forgive them,” He had prayed, “for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
Finally she felt His body: His eyes swollen shut, His bones out of joint (Psalm 22:14), His lungs struggling, and the crown of thorns, long and thick and driven into Him. She becomes emotional even now describing it.
About two hours passed before she could stand. Exhausted and shaking, she went to bed. For two or three days she couldn’t bring herself to open the Bible. When she did, she read the rest of Matthew and realised that what she had felt was what had actually happened. She had known none of it beforehand.
A completely different person
“I was a completely different person after that,” Angela says. She stopped drinking and using drugs and was baptised. Her husband, who a month earlier had called churches cults, said, “If you’re going down this path, I want to check it out too.” About a year later, he gave his life to Christ. He says it “must be real, because of how different” she is. Her children have noticed too, and one of her daughters recently told her that she now believes in God.
The last two years have brought real family hardship, but Angela has peace. “I’ve never had peace,” she says, “that goes beyond any human understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Every morning she goes to “say hi to Dad.” She calls reading the Bible “like a mirror on yourself.”
Don’t beat yourself up
She has a word for new believers. After her baptism, she expected to wake up a saint the next day, and was hard on herself when she didn’t. “It’s not going to all happen overnight,” she says. “Don’t beat yourself up.” God’s grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9), and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).
And to anyone still searching: “When you’re ready to really know the truth, seek Him. You’ll find it” (Jeremiah 29:13). Everyone gets that opportunity, she believes. It’s only a matter of when. “I was 45.”
Scriptures in this episode
- Isaiah 53:4–5, surely He hath borne our griefs
- Luke 23:34, Father, forgive them
- Psalm 22:14–16, all my bones are out of joint
- Matthew 27:27–31, the crown of thorns
- Jeremiah 31:33, I will write it in their hearts
- Philippians 4:7, the peace of God, which passeth all understanding
- 2 Corinthians 12:9, My grace is sufficient for thee
- Romans 8:1, no condemnation
- Jeremiah 29:13, seek Me with all your heart
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