Rick and Coral Gray wed in September 1976 and three years later, after an extensive study of Angels, sat down together and penned the first Evangel story.  As a part of their study in Angels, the Grays had read the story of The Littlest Angel.  This classic children’s tale tells of a little boy who dies, goes to heaven and becomes a little angel.  In Heaven he is a mischievous Cherub but eventually learns the type of lessons life in Heaven is designed to teach.

Because of the studies the Gray’s had done in Angelology, they knew that humans don’t become Angel’s when they die but that the Angels are a separate order of created being. They also had grown to understand that Angels are not born, because they have no sex. Rather the Angels were all called into existence at one time – Evangel just happened to be created the smallest of all the Angels.  So they wrote Evangel – the smallest Angel as a corrective to the impressions communicated by an uninformed reading of The Littlest Angel.

After the first Evangel story was completed, the Grays, writing from the Angel’s perspective, penned an Evangel episode for all the stories they could find in the Bible that dealt with animals or children.  Nearly a dozen stories were written at that time and placed in a box.  Almost thirty years would pass before Evangel would be introduced to the American public.  When in 2005, a young black artist, Aaron Headley, would read the story of Evangel – the smallest Angel, take out a box of colored pencils and proceed to illustrate the stories in a way that have given life to the small black Archangel.