0:00
LinkedIn is pretty great at a lot of things, like helping you tap into the latest trends
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and insights in your field.
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We cannot stop your co-worker from tapping her pencil.
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LinkedIn can help you find new jobs that align with your career goals.
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LinkedIn is the network that works for you.
0:30
This is Undaunted Life A Man's Podcast.
0:54
I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
0:57
All right, guys.
0:58
We've got a special guest on the podcast today.
0:59
His name is Lee Strobel.
1:00
So he's a Christian author and apologist, and his most famous book that I'm sure a lot
1:03
of you have read is The Case for Christ.
1:06
This book has sold over 5 million copies.
1:08
This basically details how he went through a two-year period as this journalistic atheistic
1:13
guy trying to disprove Christianity only to come to faith in Christ at the end.
1:18
And I've just, I've wanted to talk to him for a long time because The Case for Christ is
1:21
on our book list on our website.
1:22
On 100 books, every modern Christian man should read lists, so it's Undaunted.life/booklist.
1:27
And so we got to talk about that in today's episode about like, okay, what made you want
1:30
to go on this journey?
1:31
What did you discover?
1:32
The impact your book has had over the years and what that means for you.
1:35
But also we talked about his latest book.
1:37
It's called Seeing the Supernatural, Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near Death
1:43
Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World.
1:45
So this is fairly different from a lot of his other offerings because he's written a lot
1:49
of books over his career and sold a bunch of books.
1:51
In this particular book, we're talking about finding an evidentiary basis for things that
1:56
seem so outside of the normal bounds of understanding and belief.
2:01
And so we're looking at the world of the supernatural.
2:03
We're looking at angels and demons and visions of heaven and dreams about Jesus and seeing
2:08
the other side, but not just hearing these anecdotes, not just hearing people or pastors
2:13
that are trying to get your money, spin stories that'll help them seem worth theologically
2:17
adept or get you to donate more or something like that, but real scientific evidence and
2:23
historical evidence and in all the different ways you can get evidence to prove, hey, these
2:28
things actually happened and gosh, if they actually happened, that means there might
2:31
be something on the other side that some people have to really reckon with.
2:35
And so I just really enjoyed my time with Lee today.
2:38
I'm not going to keep him from you any longer.
2:39
So without further ado, let's get into it.
2:42
Lee Strobel, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
2:45
Hey, Kyle, thanks for having me, I appreciate the opportunity.
2:48
You have such a legitimately happy smile.
2:50
I just got to tell you, sometimes I smile and I'm not actually happy.
2:53
I feel like you can't hide it.
2:55
Do you just have Blee coming out of the pores of your skin, sir?
2:58
I'm a happy guy.
2:59
You know, I've been married now for almost 53 years, met my wife when we were 14 years
3:05
old and got married young, got married in 19 and I was 20.
3:09
She was 19, got two great kids, four great grandkids.
3:13
What's not the like, right?
3:15
Well, yeah.
3:16
Seems like there's a lot to be happy about, but let's get into kind of who you were back
3:19
in the day because I didn't know you back then, but I didn't know that I don't know
3:22
that we would have been friends back then because you were a journalist, a legal editor,
3:27
and you were, and we're going to talk about this later, there is a line between skeptic
3:31
and cynic.
3:32
A cynic cannot have their mind changed.
3:34
A skeptic just wants to ask a bunch of questions, but let's go back to the old Lee before you
3:40
came to Christ.
3:41
That was your career, you were digging into stuff and your entire life was cutting through
3:45
BS, right?
3:46
Exactly.
3:47
Yeah.
3:48
Yeah.
3:49
My journal, my trainings and journalism and law, I was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune
3:54
and I was an atheist.
3:55
Now, if you asked me back then, why don't you believe in God?
3:59
It was like, yeah, it's just ridiculous.
4:01
It doesn't make any sense.
4:02
It's just illogical and not that I'd really studied it and come to any conclusion, but
4:07
I wanted to be God.
4:08
I wanted to make my own decisions and so I lived a very self-centered narcissistic,
4:15
immoral, drunken life.
4:19
I mean, that was me and it affected my family, it affected my children.
4:24
I remember my daughter when she was little and a little toddler, if she would hear me
4:30
coming home from work through the front door, she would just take her toys and go in a room
4:36
and shut the door.
4:37
She's going to be drunk again, she's going to be, you know, yelling and screaming or
4:41
like one day when I kicked a hole in the wall out of anger, you know, it was nice and quiet
4:46
in here.
4:47
So it affected that and my wife was kind of spiritually neutral.
4:52
She was kind of an agnostic, I call her, but she just couldn't put the puzzle pieces together
4:57
and then she met a neighbor who was a Christian and a nurse and they became best friends and
5:02
they had a daughter, the same age as our daughter, and they had conversations about God.
5:08
And this woman, Linda, took her to church with her one day and my wife checked everything
5:13
out and then one day she came up to me and gave me the worst news an atheist husband could
5:16
get.
5:17
She said, "I've decided to become a Christian."
5:20
And I thought, "Oh no, here it comes," she's going to turn to some holy roller or something,
5:24
she's going to look down her nose at me and all my friends and literally the first word
5:28
that went through my mind was divorce, I was going to walk out.
5:33
And so, I mean, obviously as you said there at the beginning, that's not something that
5:36
you did, but I mean, everyone can see if that's your default mechanism, this, you know, you're
5:42
basically a materialist, atheist, and I wouldn't say you were militantly so or perhaps you
5:47
would say that you were militantly so, but yeah, whenever your wife becomes a Christian,
5:52
you know, you don't have these positive thoughts, but for you, this wasn't just like, oh, this
5:56
is an unfortunate circumstance, it's like, no, I've got a new life submission.
6:00
Basically, I'm going to pull the rug out from underneath my wife and I'm going to disprove
6:05
this nonsense that she believes in some sort of sky daddy that's in his sky sun down here
6:09
to die for our sins.
6:11
So let's talk about you starting down the path on that journey.
6:13
Yeah, that's exactly right.
6:14
I thought maybe I could liberate her from this cult that she's gotten involved in.
6:18
And even as an atheist, I recognize that the resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of
6:23
Christianity, it's everything, and because Jesus clearly made messianic and divine claims
6:28
about himself at one point, he got up before a group and he said, I and the father are
6:32
one.
6:33
And the Greek word for one there is not masculine, it's neuter, which means Jesus was not saying
6:38
I am the, I and the father of the same person.
6:41
He was saying I and the father of the same thing were one in nature or one in essence.
6:45
And the audience understood what he was saying.
6:47
They picked up so much to kill him because he said, you, you're just a man and you're
6:50
claiming to be God.
6:51
So Jesus claimed to be God, but so what I could claim to be God, you could claim anybody
6:55
could claim to be God.
6:57
But if Jesus claimed to be God died and then three days later returned from the dead, that's
7:03
pretty good evidence to tell him the truth.
7:05
And I figure this is right up my alley.
7:07
I investigate things.
7:08
I check things out.
7:09
This is a historical issue.
7:11
It either happened or it didn't happen.
7:13
What is the data?
7:14
What is the evidence?
7:16
And so I jumped and honestly, like Kyle, I thought I could disprove this on a weekend.
7:21
I mean, I was trained at Yale Law School.
7:23
I understand what evidence is.
7:24
And I thought I could easily disprove nobody comes back from the dead after three days
7:28
and so forth.
7:29
I mean, it's just crazy.
7:31
It took me almost two years to investigate the evidence.
7:35
Well, I'll say this Lee, the statement you said this either happened or it didn't.
7:41
Yeah.
7:42
I use that in casual conversation all the time as it pertains to the resurrection of Jesus
7:46
because it's like, okay, if you look at it between, you know, is this a fantastical
7:50
statement or is this not a fantastical statement, then it seems kind of insane.
7:54
But it's like, hey, this either happened or it didn't.
7:56
That's right.
7:57
And then I ask people, do you have the mental ability to surmise based on the evidence whether
8:03
this actually happened or didn't?
8:05
Because if you come to the conclusion that it did, then you're kind of at a decision point.
8:09
This is what I talk about with Jordan Peterson.
8:11
At this point, Jordan Peterson has publicly said that he believes in God and also an atheist
8:15
podcaster basically got him to admit on camera that he believes that Jesus actually rose
8:20
from the dead.
8:21
What we haven't heard from him yet is that he has pushed you out or transferred his faith
8:24
from Jordan Peterson into the person and work of Christ for the propitiation of a sin dead,
8:29
right?
8:30
And so he kind of had to get everyone to that point.
8:31
Go ahead.
8:32
That's exactly right.
8:33
I mean, after two years, I remember it was November the 8th of 1981, I sat down and reviewed
8:38
all the evidence because I figured a good juror reaches a verdict.
8:42
And I realized in light of this avalanche of evidence that points so powerfully toward
8:46
the truth of Christianity, it would have taken more faith to maintain my atheism than to
8:52
become a Christian.
8:53
It was just the evidence, the scales went like that.
8:56
The evidence was overpowering.
8:57
And so like you said, I came to the conclusion, okay, I do believe based on the data of history
9:03
that Jesus claimed to be the son of God, he backed it up by returning from the dead.
9:07
So what?
9:08
Now do I just go back to my life as normal?
9:09
No.
9:10
I've pointed out a verse to me, John 1 12, which was the critical verse that says, for
9:15
as many as received him to them, he gave the right to become children of God, even to those
9:21
who believed in his name.
9:23
And so I looked at that verse and I thought, this forms an equation, a mathematical equation
9:28
of what it means to become a child of God, believe plus receive equals become.
9:34
So I believe based on the data that Jesus is the unique son of God.
9:38
But as another step I had to receive this free gift of grace, this free gift of forgiveness
9:44
and eternal life that He purchased for me on the cross when He died as my substitute to
9:48
pay for all of my sin.
9:50
And when I would receive that free gift and a prayer of repentance and faith, I would become
9:55
a child of God.
9:56
And that's what I did on November the 8th of 1981, and my life over time began to change.
10:03
My values, my character, my morality, my attitudes, my relationships, my character, my marriage,
10:08
my parenting, so much so that my little daughter, she was five years old by the time I came
10:13
to faith.
10:15
And she's too young to study the historical data for the resurrection, but you know what
10:22
happened to her?
10:23
She started to watch.
10:24
Something's changing with my dad.
10:26
Something's different with my dad.
10:28
Something's new with my dad.
10:30
And she watched it, she listened to God change my life for, it was about four or five months.
10:36
And then one day she came up to my wife, you know what she said?
10:39
I want God to do for me what He's done for daddy.
10:42
And she received this free gift of God's grace.
10:45
She became a child of God.
10:47
And today she's married to a seminary graduate, similar story with my son.
10:51
He's now a PhD in theology and a major seminary.
10:55
God changed our family as a result.
10:58
That's such a beautiful sentiment, I mean, you've probably said that so many times you
11:01
can say it without choking up, but you got me all choked up.
11:03
I didn't know that story.
11:04
You got to stop doing that.
11:05
What's wrong with you?
11:06
But I want to fast forward a little bit and then we'll back up, but you're kind of bringing
11:09
up something I wanted to ask you about is the Christian apologetic space.
11:14
So this is you and he who shall not be named, Robby Zacharias and J Warner Wallace and,
11:19
you know, all these great Christian apologists, they also would most of them admit you can't
11:25
argue someone into heaven.
11:26
I mean, the Holy Spirit calls them if you believe in the authority of Scripture, then
11:30
yes, that's what that says.
11:32
But I also have a deep and abiding love for the study of and the existence of Christian
11:37
apologetics.
11:38
And obviously we need to be able to provide an apologia for the faith that we have inside
11:41
of us.
11:42
But for you, it seems like some people come to faith in Christ through their dreams, which
11:47
we'll talk about a little bit later when we get into the new books.
11:50
Some people come to it in nature.
11:51
Some people come to it as a child in, you know, a wana or vacation Bible stool, but it
11:55
seems like you came to it via your intellect, similarly to like a C.S. Lewis or something
12:00
like that, that use their intellectual abilities to go to that, but kind of help me understand
12:06
the tension between, hey, you can't argue someone into heaven, but you've got to have
12:10
arguments.
12:11
That's a great question, a great way to look at it.
12:13
The way I envision apologetics is it helps people get past what I call the spiritual sticking
12:19
points in their journey toward God.
12:21
In other words, they'll have, most people have questions.
12:23
They have doubts.
12:24
They have issues.
12:25
They have something that's sticking point in their spiritual journey.
12:29
And what apologetics does, it just helps people get past that sticking point so that they
12:33
can make progress toward a resolution of who Jesus is.
12:37
And, you know, I think the mistake that a lot of so-called apologists have is they tend
12:43
to focus too much on the evidence and the facts and the arguments without seeing apologetics
12:50
as Martin Luther described as the stepchild, the stepmaiden to evangelism.
12:57
In other words, it's only worthwhile, I think, to look at evidence for the faith and arguments
13:03
for the faith if it's used in a process of helping someone come to an authentic relationship
13:10
with Jesus Christ and can change their life and change their eternity.
13:14
Well, Lee, as you were saying that the phrase that came to mind is like, "Apologetics isn't
13:20
just data.
13:21
It's also poetry."
13:22
And so there's more emotion in poetry, right, and, you know, poetry and music and art speaks
13:27
to someone differently than hard data do or, you know, something that they see in a book.
13:32
But speaking specifically about a book, you didn't just go on this two-year journey and
13:36
have this conversion experience and start your sanctification process, which had an impact
13:40
on your entire family tree and all the things, right?
13:43
You actually put it into a volume, you know, the case for Christ.
13:45
I've got an old version here, an old hyper-bag version that's got my tabs and my notes and
13:49
my highlights.
13:50
This is back in the day when I used to write in books like a crazy knuckle-dragger.
13:54
But I mean, I guess why even put this into book form and then we can just talk overall
13:59
about the impact that the book's had since.
14:01
Yeah, I wanted to – it was my wife's idea.
14:04
We were taking a walk one day.
14:05
She said, "Lee, why don't you tell your story and the evidence you convinced you into
14:10
a book?"
14:11
"Oh, I can't do that."
14:13
And she said, "Why not?"
14:14
And I thought, "Yeah, I need to retrace my journey because when I did my investigation,
14:18
I wasn't trying to write a book.
14:20
I just doing it for myself."
14:21
So I went out and I interviewed these scholars and experts and so forth to kind of retrace
14:26
and expand upon my original journey and present it in a way that I hope will help people get
14:32
past those sticking points in their life.
14:34
And God has used it.
14:35
I use the analogy of Wrigley Field in Chicago.
14:37
Yeah, I'm a Cubs fan from Chicago.
14:41
Hey, I'm a Cards fan.
14:42
I don't need any Cubs examples.
14:44
Can you find another example, please?
14:46
No, I can't.
14:48
It's got to be a Cubs story.
14:49
Okay, fine.
14:50
I've got to be Wrigley Field.
14:51
If Wrigley Field, what happens is sometimes the batter hits the ball and it's a pop-up
14:56
to center field and it gets caught for an out.
14:59
But sometimes, because it's the windy city, sometimes you hit the ball and you don't
15:04
hit it any harder and the wind of Chicago takes it out for a home run or a grand slam.
15:09
That's how I feel like the case for Christ's book is because did I hit the ball?
15:13
Did I write the book?
15:14
Yes.
15:15
But God has taken it so far beyond what I could ever imagine.
15:21
Millions of people around the world and I get letters and emails virtually every day from
15:25
people coming to faith, including my favorite one was Evil Knievel, the great motorcycle
15:31
dare devil writer who ended up reading my book as part of his journey to come to faith.
15:36
He became a radical Christian in his later years and on his tombstone and his request
15:43
it just says believe in Jesus Christ, he was radically transformed.
15:47
So I love that because my mission in life is now, I mean I left my journalism career,
15:53
I took a 60% pay cut, I joined the staff, the local church, never intending to write books.
15:58
I just felt called to a mission in life, which is a drag as many people to heaven with me
16:03
as I can.
16:05
That's kind of my mission.
16:06
Well, Lee, you got to put the ball in play like you got to put it into fair territory.
16:10
And then you let God turn the ball or turn the stadium into Yankee Stadium right field
16:14
where a pop up to second base could be an upper deck home run, the most ridiculous stadium
16:18
in all sports for my money to kind of put a bow in the case for Christ.
16:23
The legacy you kind of touched on a little bit there.
16:26
Really write something thinking there's going to be legacy behind it.
16:30
Like one of my good buddies and mentors, John Eldridge, when he wrote Wild at Heart, even
16:33
like that, that book didn't start selling for like two or three years and now sold millions
16:37
of copies.
16:38
It's probably the most important specifically men's ministry book and existence.
16:41
And so for you, you put this out there, you put your full force of effort behind it.
16:45
You do a good job.
16:46
You work as unto the Lord.
16:48
But I mean, how many copies are we at now, Lee, like 5 million copies plus all the excerpts
16:53
that have been pulled out in all the doors of the picture they did, the movie they did.
16:57
How could you imagine?
16:58
How can you encapsulate because the story is not done with the case for Christ either,
17:02
right?
17:03
We've still got the rest of time right for this book to have an impact.
17:06
So just talk to me a little bit about what that feels like.
17:08
Yeah, I mean, I see there's other areas that Christians have sticking or people have sticking
17:15
points in their journey toward God, evidence from science and so forth.
17:20
So I wrote the case for a creator and is God real to try to deal with the scientific evidence
17:24
for God.
17:26
My new book, Seeing the Supernatural, looking at evidence that indeed there is a supernatural
17:31
realm beyond what we can see and touch just as the Bible tells us.
17:35
So there's lots of fascinating areas to explore and it's just been a remarkable journey.
17:42
It's been the greatest adventure of my life.
17:44
Well, we have a book list on our website.
17:46
It's the 100 books every modern Christian man should read and there's different categories.
17:50
There's Christian apologetics.
17:51
There's theology.
17:52
There's philosophy.
17:53
There's money, marriage, parenting, all the things.
17:55
And this is the first one in the Christian apologetics section is the case for Christ.
17:59
I know you, I know you've gotten some accolades in your life, but that's got to be right up
18:02
there on your Mount Rushmore, right?
18:04
That's awesome.
18:05
I have that is absolutely awesome.
18:07
That makes my day or week or month.
18:09
I mean, that is absolutely fantastic.
18:11
Well, I say that somewhat tongue in cheek, but there are men that become Christians.
18:17
Maybe they were listening to my show beforehand and then they become Christians and they're
18:20
going on this journey and they think they know me because they listened to me for a
18:23
few hundred hours and then they just go to my website and they just, some guys are very
18:28
linear, right?
18:29
They have a starting point and end point.
18:31
It just so happens to alphabetically be in the first category, apologetics and the first
18:35
book, case, right?
18:36
The sea.
18:37
And so they just start with the case for Christ.
18:39
I love that.
18:40
I love that.
18:41
You know, it's what I love about that is there are so many guys out there who are looking
18:46
for answers.
18:47
Who are looking for truth.
18:48
Who are looking for something firm to build their life upon.
18:52
And I'll add this, honestly, there are a lot of guys out there and I'll count myself as
18:57
one of them who have very serious father issues.
19:02
And that can be an impediment in their spiritual journey.
19:05
If you look at all the famous atheists of history, Camus, sorry, Nietzsche, Freud, Voltaire,
19:10
Welles, Foyer, Bock, O'Hare, every single one of them had a father who died when they
19:14
were young, divorced their mother when they were young, overthrew them, they had a very
19:17
difficult relationship.
19:19
And the implication, as Freud said, is if your earthly father has disappointed you or
19:24
hurt you in some way, you don't want to know anything about a heavenly father because he's
19:28
only going to be worse.
19:30
And so often that leads in going down the road to atheism.
19:34
I had a very difficult relationship with my dad.
19:38
I was an unwanted pregnancy in my parents' marriage.
19:42
And I never had a good relationship with that.
19:45
We had a big blowout argument on my eve of my high school graduation.
19:50
And at the end of it, he said, "Look, I don't have enough love for you to fill my little
19:53
finger."
19:55
So I had a difficult relationship.
19:57
And did that, was that a factor in me walking down the road to atheism?
20:01
I think it was.
20:02
But you know what?
20:03
Jesus Lewis had a solution for this, and I say this to any guy who's watching who may
20:09
say, "Well, yeah, I wonder if my skepticism is coming because of that."
20:15
Here's what C.S.
20:16
Lewis said.
20:17
He said, "Imagine, for just a minute, you can imagine what the perfect father would
20:21
be like."
20:22
Okay.
20:23
Just everybody can imagine that.
20:24
Oh, he'd be kind, he'd be loving, he'd be encouraging, he'd be mentoring you, he'd pull
20:29
you up in his lap and give you a hug and be your biggest cheerleader.
20:33
That is the picture of your heavenly father.
20:36
He's not just a magnified version of the earthly fathers, he is fundamentally different.
20:42
And so if that's an impediment for some people, as it was, I believe in my life, there are
20:46
answers for that.
20:47
And I think the evidence can then propel us toward the truth of the Christian faith.
20:51
Well, in Eldridge, basically, that's why his book, "Fathered by God," has been read by
20:56
so many men.
20:57
But even as you were listing all those people, I thought about Karl Marx because I spent a
21:00
lot of time thinking about and studying Marxism and then the downstream consequences of that
21:05
communism, socialism, feminism, all the isms, right?
21:08
But with the father issue thing, that was probably no more poignant for me than whenever
21:12
I went up and spoke at Lewisburg Prison in Pennsylvania.
21:15
Because here I am in this setting where no one had come to speak to these men for years.
21:20
They had basically been forgotten.
21:21
And then I come in there, it's non-compailed attendance, so whoever wants to show up can
21:24
show up.
21:25
But I know walking in there, I could feel the burden of fatherlessness around me because
21:29
these murderers, these rapists, these drug dealers, these MS-13 people, what percentage?
21:34
I mean, it's got to be a multiple of what we see in regular society.
21:38
What percentage of these people didn't have a dad at all?
21:40
That was around.
21:41
They had someone that sired a child but didn't raise them as a child.
21:44
How many of those people grew up in a loving, two-parent household with low conflict to
21:48
go into church?
21:49
And then they just got sideways and murdered somebody when they were 18 years old.
21:52
That person exists, but there's not a whole lot of them.
21:54
That's right.
21:55
That's the burden of evangelism when you're talking to someone and you recognize when
22:00
I just use the word father, even when I talk about a perfect father or a heavenly father,
22:04
that's just not going to ring in their ears very nicely.
22:07
You know, that's so true.
22:09
And look at the trend in America over the last 50 years.
22:13
Oh, man.
22:14
The trend has been toward an increasing number of fatherless families and at the same time
22:19
an increasing number of people who are skeptical about Christianity.
22:23
Interesting.
22:24
Well, wait a minute, do you think maybe there's a connection?
22:27
Yeah, I think that's I think there is.
22:30
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22:31
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22:40
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22:48
and bookstores, giving parenting advice that looks and sounds good, but doesn't work in
22:53
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22:59
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24:39
And that's not a, so people like to colorize, I use that in a racial sense, they like to
24:44
colorize issues.
24:45
It's like, wait a minute, since the 60s, every single racial cohort except for Asians has
24:50
had exploding fatherlessness rates, exploding rates of single motherhood and some of that's
24:56
been incentivized.
24:57
But when we look at our societal ills, right, like if fatherlessness was the one thing that
25:03
we could solve for culturally and as a society, what else does that take care of almost everything?
25:10
Absolutely.
25:11
Absolutely.
25:12
That's why I appreciate so much what you're doing and building up men and pointing them
25:15
in the right direction and getting behind them and encouraging them and so forth.
25:19
There are not a lot of people doing that these days.
25:21
Well, I'm trying my absolute level best and we seem to be having some success pushing
25:25
back that darkness, but we need to get into the weird part of the interview here.
25:30
We got to talk about your new book.
25:31
So here it is, guys, check it out, it's called seeing the supernatural, investigating angels,
25:36
demons, mystical dreams, near death encounters and other mysteries of the unseen world.
25:41
So I want to read a quote from the intro to short quote, in short, is it truly possible
25:46
in our scientific and technological age to be a rational person and still have faith in
25:51
the existence of a realm we can't see, touch or analyze in a test tube?
25:56
So for you, Lee, why this book?
25:58
Why now?
25:59
Why you?
26:00
Well, first of all, we live in a materialist age, a scientific age, and you know, that
26:04
quote is, I think, dead on in the sense that many people believe we don't have a spirit,
26:11
we don't have a soul, we don't really have consciousness, we don't really have free
26:14
will.
26:15
We're just a physical brain with neurons firing.
26:18
Well, there's a lot of implications if that is true.
26:22
And then people, we live in an age where American Christians want to be respectable.
26:29
And so, yeah, they don't mind if their neighbors know, I'm a Christian, I believe in Jesus.
26:34
I go to church, but don't get me started on any of that weird stuff, like angels and
26:38
demons and heaven and hell, that's just a little too weird for me.
26:43
Well, wait a minute, Jesus was an exorcist.
26:47
He cast out demons, he believed in a demonic realm, he believed in angels.
26:52
He said when he was being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, do you not think that
26:57
I couldn't call on my father right now, and he would send legions of angels to protect
27:01
me?
27:02
So he believed in the angelic realm.
27:04
So the question I have as a person with a skeptical background and a journalism and
27:09
a legal background is this, is there any corroboration?
27:14
Is there any evidence that indeed there is something beyond what we can see and touch?
27:18
So I'd look at things like miracles, is there any documented miracles, not just something
27:23
we hear in the halls of a church or read on the internet, but I'm talking about cases
27:27
where we have a solid medical documentation, multiple eyewitnesses with no motive to deceive,
27:34
no natural explanation that can account for it and it occurs in a context of prayer.
27:39
Do we have those cases?
27:40
Yeah, we got lots of them, they're fascinating, they're amazing.
27:44
What about near-death experiences?
27:47
All we need is one near-death experience, one documented near-death experience to establish
27:55
that we are more than just a physical body and a physical brain, but we do have another
27:59
dimension, we do have a soul, a spirit that separates from our physical body at the time
28:04
of death.
28:05
And guess what?
28:06
In 2009, scientific researchers found 107 examples in the scientific literature of near-death
28:12
experiences that are corroborated by people having seen things or heard things during
28:20
their near-death experience that would have been impossible for them to see or hear if
28:24
they hadn't had an authentic out-of-body experience.
28:28
I looked at things like deathbed visions.
28:32
Deathbed visions are incredibly common and they're biblical.
28:35
We see Stephen in the book of Acts who's about to be stoned to death and he has his vision
28:40
of heaven and Jesus and the Father together.
28:45
At one major hospice facility in New York State, they asked all of the dying people there.
28:51
If you have a vision, it's unlike anything you've ever had, would you please tell us?
28:56
We want to know because a lot of people don't want to say anything, I think it's weird.
29:00
Well, guess what?
29:02
88% of those patients had a deathbed vision of what was to come.
29:08
And again, we have corroboration.
29:10
We have cases in which people see people in the realm to come who they didn't know had
29:15
already died.
29:17
So I'm looking for something I can dig my teeth into, something solid and corroborated.
29:23
I found a bunch of it.
29:25
Well, Lee, you talked about we need one example because you made this point early in the book
29:29
to where there's most people think to make an extraordinary claim, you need an extraordinary
29:34
level of evidence.
29:35
It's like, no, you just need an appropriate level of evidence to prove the point that
29:38
you're asserting.
29:39
Exactly.
29:40
But I even remember, because Phil Robertson, who's a personal friend of mine, hearing
29:43
some stories of him in the 24 hours before he passed, he was in there with his son,
29:49
Jace.
29:50
And at one point, he's like, hey, are we going?
29:52
And Jace's like, what are you talking about?
29:53
I was like, are you going to take me to Jesus now?
29:55
That's essentially what he was saying.
29:56
And there was a lot of stuff that'll be remained private with the family, but where he was
30:00
basically talking to something and someone that he was seeing and that's just an incredibly
30:05
common thing.
30:06
But before we get down into specific examples, just to back up a little bit and broaden out
30:10
just a hair, there's a lot of people in the scientific field, right?
30:14
A lot of skeptical atheists.
30:16
These are proponents of scientism, it's not just scientific method and all these different
30:20
things.
30:21
The issue, and you point this out in the book, is there is a difference between a scientific
30:25
statement and a philosophical assertion and a lot of people in the scientism space are
30:31
making philosophical assertions, but they won't take ownership of it.
30:35
Let's talk about that.
30:36
That's right.
30:37
If someone makes a statement, the only way to validate something as being true is through
30:45
science.
30:46
Science is the only validator of truth.
30:50
That is not a scientific statement.
30:52
I can't take that statement and put it in a test tube.
30:54
I can't take that statement subject to the scientific method.
30:57
That is a philosophical statement and it's self-refuting because if the only truth is
31:03
that that can be determined by science, that statement can't be determined by science,
31:09
therefore it's false, so it's self-refuting.
31:13
I think the most prudent thing to do for any rational person is to say where does the evidence
31:20
point and to be like a baseball umpire who calls a balla ball and a strike a strike and
31:25
just says, I'm going to follow the evidence wherever it takes me, even if it takes me
31:30
to the uncomfortable conclusion that God exists.
31:35
That's the part, the uncomfortable conclusion because here's the thing.
31:38
None of us are completely intellectually honest, not a single one of us, but you have to strive
31:43
for that.
31:44
When you go into something, you have to say, I'm just going to go into this and I'm going
31:47
to let the evidence speak for itself.
31:49
If I claim to be about capital T truth, then I better go with wherever the truth points
31:53
me.
31:54
You are specifically talking about, and we'll talk about the different things near death
31:57
and out of body experiences.
32:01
If you want to share some of the anecdotes that you had in the book, feel free, but that's
32:04
something that everyone's heard of before, and maybe even some of us have experienced
32:11
it, but what specific evidence have you found, because that's a very singular thing that
32:16
somebody experiences, but people might be confused, "Hey, how could you provide substantiation
32:22
for something that happened inside of one person?"
32:24
Great question.
32:25
A scientist has found at least 107 cases in which there is corroboration that this is
32:34
an actual out of body experience.
32:35
In other words, the Bible says, "When we die, our soul, our spirit separates from our body."
32:40
Well, what is the evidence for that?
32:42
Well, we have at least 107 cases, and I think that's a lot more because that was in 2009.
32:47
I talked to one guy, he says, "There are at least 300 cases like this where we have corroboration."
32:53
So I'll give you a couple examples.
32:55
There was a woman named Maria, I believe, and she was dying in a hospital in London,
33:02
England, and she's dead.
33:05
She's dying, but she says later, "I was conscious the whole time," and she said, "My spirit
33:11
apparently separated from my body because I'm watching the resuscitation efforts on
33:15
my body.
33:16
I'm watching them."
33:17
My spirit kind of floated out of the hospital and she encounters a divine being.
33:24
And then her body is revived.
33:26
They finally revive her body.
33:28
Her spirit returns to her body, and here's a corroboration.
33:31
She says, "Oh, by the way, there's a ceiling fan here in the hospital room.
33:37
On the top of one of the blades of the ceiling fan is a red sticker which she described in
33:43
perfect detail."
33:44
Well, you couldn't see that from the room because it was on the top of one of the blades
33:50
of the ceiling fan.
33:51
So they got a ladder, they go up, and they look, and sure enough, on the top of the ceiling
33:57
fan blade, they see the red sticker just as she described it.
34:00
I don't know how she could have known that had she not had an authentic out-of-body experience.
34:07
Second example, little girl named Katie drowns at a swimming pool in Utah.
34:13
And her brain swells, she's got no brain waves anymore, she has no respiration, no heartbeat.
34:21
She's clinically dead.
34:22
They take her to the hospital, they put her in a room where they can just keep her body
34:28
mechanically alive till they decide what to do.
34:30
But she said, and three days later, she's fine, three days later, she recovers.
34:35
And she says, "I was conscious, I was awake the whole time.
34:39
In fact, I met God during that time."
34:42
And the doctors are skeptical, they say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, here's a crayon and
34:47
a piece of paper.
34:48
Why don't you draw us what the emergency room looks like, the one we took you when you
34:53
were dead?"
34:54
She picks up the crayon, she draws the emergency room exactly how it looks.
34:58
But then she says, "By the way, my parents came to visit me in the hospital, and I followed
35:04
them home."
35:07
And she described how her mother made chicken and rice on the stove.
35:11
She described where her father was sitting and what he was doing.
35:15
She described how her brother went alone into his room and was playing with a GI Joe doll
35:20
and a jeep.
35:22
She described what they were wearing at the time, things that there's no way she could
35:26
have known had she not had an authentic out of body experience.
35:31
One more example.
35:33
There's a scientific study of 21 cases of people who are blind, most of them blind since
35:38
birth.
35:39
And yet, during this near-death experience, they are able to see or they have vision-like
35:44
perceptions for the first time.
35:46
So for instance, there's a woman named Vicky Umpag, Vicky 26 years old, blind virtually
35:51
since birth, she's in a car accident, she's killed in the car accident.
35:56
But she said later, "I was awake the whole time."
35:59
And she said, "My spirit separated from my body and I'm watching the resuscitation efforts,
36:07
the paramedics who are trying to resuscitate my body.
36:11
My spirit floated out of the car and so forth and I began to see trees and birds.
36:18
And I saw people and children.
36:22
And then her spirit returned when her body was revived and she was blind again.
36:28
And medical researcher said, "This is medically impossible.
36:31
21 cases have been documented in the medical research."
36:34
By the way, there are 900 scholarly scientific articles written in scientific and medical
36:41
journals over the last 40 years about near-death experiences.
36:44
This is not a very mysterious thing anymore.
36:49
Science has really documented what these are like.
36:52
And here's the key.
36:53
Here's the thing that's most eye-opening to me.
36:57
My friend John Burke, who's a Christian pastor, science background, engineering background,
37:03
who has also studied 1,500 near-death experiences in depth.
37:10
He studied those cases.
37:12
And here's his conclusion.
37:14
If you don't look at how people interpret their near-death experience, because we all
37:19
see it through a different worldview, set that aside.
37:23
Look at just what actually happens during a typical near-death experience.
37:28
It is consistent with the teachings of the Bible.
37:32
That was a powerful breakthrough.
37:35
So near-death experiences are a really powerful area of study that I think documents that
37:44
we are more than just a brain.
37:47
We are more than just a physical body.
37:48
We have his spirit, a soul, that at the time of clinical death separates.
37:54
Not one.
37:55
I don't know.
37:56
Can I mention one other thing?
37:57
Yeah, please.
37:58
These experiences are not always positive.
38:01
Sure.
38:02
There's at least 24% of them are terror-inducing experiences.
38:09
And I think a lot of people who have a terrible, hellish experience don't want to talk about
38:13
it when they're revived.
38:14
And so the numbers are probably higher.
38:16
But I'll give you an example, Howard Storm.
38:19
Howard was an atheist.
38:20
Howard had a tenured position as the chairman of the art department at a large secular university.
38:27
He's in Paris, France, visiting.
38:29
He has a heart attack.
38:30
He dies.
38:31
But he said later, I was conscious the whole time.
38:33
In fact, I'm standing there, so to speak, and I'm looking at my dead body.
38:38
And then in the hospital, some guys in the hallway start beckoning him, "Hey, Howard,
38:42
we've been waiting for you.
38:43
Howard, come on with us."
38:45
Okay.
38:46
Howard begins to follow them down the hallway, down another hallway, down another hallway.
38:49
And he's getting dark and foreboding.
38:52
And he says that these guys got abusive.
38:55
Howard, come on.
38:56
You're lagging behind.
38:57
Come on.
38:58
Get with it.
38:59
Go with it.
39:00
And they're yelling at him.
39:01
And then they attack him and they begin to maul him.
39:02
He said, "I was reduced to roadkill."
39:05
He said, "There's no horror movie ever made that can capture the ways they violated me."
39:11
And in the midst of that, he called out and he said, "Jesus, rescue me."
39:15
And this horror became, and Jesus rescued him.
39:19
Later, his body was revived.
39:22
His spirit returns to his body.
39:25
This was not some random hallucination.
39:27
This was such a real experience, a Howard storm.
39:31
He renounced his atheism.
39:33
He resigned his tenured position as a professor at a major secular university.
39:38
He became a Christian.
39:39
He went to seminary.
39:41
He became a pastor, and today he's a pastor of a little church.
39:44
I think it's in Kentucky somewhere, Oklahoma or somewhere, just serving the Lord.
39:50
That is how transformational it is, and that's how real these experiences are.
39:54
Scientists have ruled out the possibility this is just a brain secretions or a subconscious
40:01
mind or things like that.
40:02
Those have all been ruled out.
40:04
There is no other explanation that stacks up other than these are authentic out-of-body
40:09
experiences.
40:10
One, Lee, as you're going through that, obviously, as I was reading, as you're describing some,
40:15
you kind of get chills going into that, but then even getting into the dreams and seeing
40:20
other realms and seeing the other side and visions of Jesus, I don't very often get choked
40:25
up while reading.
40:26
As I was reading the introduction of the book, I literally like panic cried, like immediately
40:31
put my hand over my mouth and cried, and it was the story I'll tell quickly.
40:35
Her camera's sister, she was pregnant, and she miscarried, so she's at the doctor's office,
40:40
and they're like, yeah, you have a miscarriage, so we need to do a DNC basically to clean
40:44
that out so you don't get infections or anything like that.
40:46
But her mom called her and said, make sure they do an ultrasound before it do not leave
40:51
the room until they do an ultrasound in that room.
40:53
She refuses to leave.
40:54
They bring in the ultrasound machine into everyone's shock.
40:56
The nurses, the doctors, and her, there was a heartbeat because she was pregnant not with
41:01
one baby, but with two, with twins.
41:03
One of the babies had unfortunately passed away, and the other one was alive.
41:08
She takes the other baby to term and hear that little girl's four years old.
41:12
And I have not been able to get through telling this story to people without getting choked
41:15
up.
41:16
So forgive me, guys, if you don't like tears, let's see how I can get through it.
41:19
Little girl comes up to mommy, and at this point, she doesn't know what happened before
41:24
she was born.
41:25
She's a four-year-old girl, right?
41:26
It's all crayons and cartoons.
41:28
And she says, mommy, do I have a sister?
41:31
And her mom, obviously, her heart sinks.
41:32
She doesn't know what to do.
41:33
She panics, and she's like, well, what do you mean, sweetheart?
41:35
She says, well, I keep having these dreams, and there's a girl in my dreams, and she looks
41:39
just like me.
41:40
And I remember getting so choked up at just everything that comes there, then you have
41:46
Muslims in the Middle East, where there aren't street preachers and there aren't multi-site
41:51
churches with TED Talk preachers and all that in Iran and Baghdad and all these other
41:56
different places, right?
41:58
And then you have people having visions of Jesus and coming to Christ.
42:01
You've already talked about supernatural healings, but for me, I'm naturally skeptical just
42:07
like you.
42:08
I'm naturally pessimistic.
42:09
I try to use my pessimism as a superpower, because as a pessimist, you either get to
42:12
be right or you get to be pleasantly surprised.
42:14
Those are both really good outcomes, but I have not experienced a near-death experience.
42:19
I have not experienced a supernatural healing.
42:22
I don't know anyone close to my life that I trust implicitly that has said one of these
42:27
things has happened.
42:28
And so for me, I'm like, "Okay, I read it in a book.
42:32
Okay, I heard Lee talking about it, but everything is at best second-hand."
42:37
And so how are we to deal with the skepticism when you personally, me personally, we aren't
42:43
the ones that experienced it?
42:44
Yeah.
42:45
I think we follow the evidence.
42:46
I think what is the evidence?
42:48
I could tell you a story about, "Oh, my mother was healed of cancer."
42:51
Or I'll tell you a story, a true story with me a few weeks ago.
42:55
Dr. said, "Oh, you got cancer, Lee, and skin cancer.
42:58
You've had it before.
42:59
You got it again.
43:00
They're two spots, and we're going to schedule surgery, and we'll do the biopsies, but let's
43:04
get the surgery scheduled because you've definitely got skin cancer again."
43:08
They do the biopsies a week later, the biopsy results come back, "You don't have cancer.
43:14
Turns out I'm okay.
43:15
Was that a miracle?"
43:16
No, I don't think so.
43:18
I think that was just a mistaken diagnosis.
43:21
I think they thought I had cancer, but the biopsies showed I didn't.
43:24
I don't think that was miraculous, but there are cases that are miraculous, that are documented
43:31
by medical researchers published as case studies in medical journals.
43:34
I'll give you one.
43:36
Woman blind for a dozen years within a curable condition.
43:40
She went to a school for the blind.
43:42
She learned to read Braille.
43:44
She walked with a white cane, and she married a Baptist pastor.
43:48
One night they're getting ready to go to bed.
43:49
She's in bed.
43:50
He comes over.
43:51
He puts his hand on her shoulder and he begins to cry, and he begins to pray.
43:53
He says, "Lord, I know you can heal my wife.
43:55
I know you can do it, and Lord, I pray that you do it tonight."
44:00
With that, she opened her eyes to perfect eyesight, which remained then for the next 50 years.
44:08
She said, "I was blind when my husband prayed for me.
44:11
I opened my eyes to perfect eyesight."
44:13
It was a miracle.
44:14
I endowed her that it was.
44:16
This was documented by four medical researchers and published as a case study in a medical
44:21
journal.
44:22
That's the kind of evidence I look at, because how do you explain that away?
44:26
How do you explain this sudden, incurable blindness being healed during and right after
44:31
a prayer to Jesus for healing?
44:34
And we can go further.
44:38
Often we hear of healings breaking out in areas of the world where the gospel is just
44:44
breaking in.
44:45
So God seems to cluster the miraculous in places like Mozambique, China, Brazil, where
44:53
the gospel is just breaking in as a way to point to the truth of who He is.
44:58
Well, there was one science expert from a doctorate from Harvard University.
45:06
She's a professor at Indiana University, a major secular university.
45:10
She said, "Wait a minute.
45:11
You're telling me there's an outbreak of miracles in Mozambique?
45:15
I'm going to test it."
45:17
So she got a team of researchers together.
45:20
They went to Mozambique.
45:21
They said, "Bring us all your deaf and blind and people with severe hearing or vision problems."
45:26
So they bring them.
45:27
First thing they did, they tested them scientifically right there.
45:31
Specifically, what is your level of vision?
45:34
What is the level, the volume that you can hear?
45:37
They got that data on each person.
45:40
Then they were immediately prayed for in the name of Jesus by people who didn't have a
45:44
track record of God using them that way.
45:47
And then immediately after that, they're tested scientifically again.
45:51
Is there any change?
45:52
Is there any improvement?
45:53
And guess what?
45:54
There was improvement in virtually every case.
45:57
In fact, they get this.
45:58
The average improvement in visual acuity was tenfold.
46:02
There was a woman named Martine.
46:04
When they first encountered her, she couldn't hear the equivalent of a jackhammer next to
46:08
her.
46:09
After ten minutes of prayer in the name of Jesus, she could hear a normal conversation.
46:13
So then these scientists said, "Wait a minute.
46:15
Something weird is going on here.
46:16
We got to see if we can replicate this."
46:18
They go to Brazil, another place where the gospel is breaking in.
46:21
They did the same test.
46:22
They got the same results.
46:23
In fact, there was a woman in Brazil.
46:25
If you held up three fingers from nine feet away, she couldn't see it, prayed for in the
46:30
name of Jesus, and then immediately after that, she could read the name tag of the person
46:34
praying for her.
46:35
This was a rigorous scientific study that was accepted for publication, a secular peer-reviewed
46:42
medical journal, highly respected journal, the Southern Medical Journal.
46:48
In my book, "Seeing the Supernatural," I interview that PhD from Harvard who did that
46:54
study and I say, "What do you think of this?"
46:57
She said, "Well, something's going on."
47:01
I agree.
47:02
I think it's something supernatural.
47:04
Again, follow the evidence.
47:06
That's typically the answer to my skepticism.
47:09
If I'm skeptical of someone's opinion or something that I see that is being passed off
47:13
as fact.
47:14
Now, I do want to get to my favorite section of the book.
47:17
The heading is, "Are you willing to die for Jesus?"
47:20
This is a part of a conversation of you in Tom Doyle.
47:22
I'm going to read a decent-sized quote here.
47:26
One way to assess the legitimacy of these dreams is to measure the kind of fruit they bear.
47:30
In other words, do they lead to a superficial and short-lived faith?
47:33
Or do they result in thorough conversations and a deep commitment to Christ?
47:40
No question these dreams generally lead to a radical life change, Doyle told me.
47:44
A Muslim who comes to faith in the Middle East is exposing himself to possible rejection,
47:49
beatings, imprisonment, or even death.
47:51
This isn't just for the faint of heart.
47:52
This isn't casual Christianity.
47:54
It's ironic, I said, that in America, we see the proliferation of shallow commitments
47:58
to Christ because of a cultural Christianity that hasn't really revolutionized the person's
48:02
goal.
48:03
Yet, we're skeptical of how authentic these conversions are in the Middle East, where
48:07
people face persecution if they pursue their faith.
48:09
Doyle agreed.
48:11
Before praying with someone to receive Christ, many leaders in the Middle East will ask two
48:14
questions.
48:15
First, are you willing to suffer for Jesus?
48:18
And second, are you willing to die for Jesus?
48:20
He said, "I wish we had those two questions in the new members' classes at churches in
48:25
America."
48:26
I have railed for a long time on these inch deep in a mile wide theology churches, these
48:31
churches where it's basically Mick Church, where you get your rock concert and your lights
48:36
and your stuff, and then you get your TED talk sermon with a little bit of Bible over the
48:40
top of it so you can keep your tax exempt status.
48:43
And then you get these people all whipped up into a frenzy where they raised their hand
48:47
and there's no fruit of a gospel repentance thereafter.
48:50
Now, if anybody makes a movement towards Christ, I think that we should just assume the best
48:54
and help them on their sanctification, discipleship, journey.
48:58
But my goodness.
48:59
I live in Oklahoma, I trip and fall and I will land on seven different churches somehow.
49:04
But in the Middle East, these people know what's at stake.
49:07
They could lose their heads.
49:11
And then the conversion, obviously, they're like, "Yeah, I understand.
49:13
It's the Coptic Christians that were killed by ISIS there on the beach.
49:19
It's like, "Yeah, the worst thing you can do to me is cut my head off by all needs to
49:23
go ahead."
49:24
So let's talk about that.
49:25
And here again, we've got corroborated evidence that these dreams that are breaking out around
49:31
the Middle East are not just a product of their subconscious mind.
49:36
Because as you say, no devout Muslim has any incentive if they're living in Saudi Arabia
49:43
or somewhere.
49:44
They have no incentive to have a dream about Jesus and maybe come to faith in a way that
49:48
would risk their own life.
49:50
But here's the external corroboration.
49:52
This is why these dreams, we can take them as being real and more than just a subconscious
49:56
product of the mind.
49:59
What's happening in the Middle East is these Muslims are not going to sleep as a Muslim,
50:03
having a dream about Jesus and waking up as a Christian.
50:06
These dreams and visions are pointing them toward something exterior to them that validates
50:13
their dreams.
50:14
So I'll give you an example.
50:15
So a woman named Nor, Muslim mother of eight children in Cairo, she has a dream of Jesus.
50:21
It's like nothing she's ever had.
50:23
She's walking with Jesus along the lake shore and she is so mesmerized by Jesus.
50:29
She feels the love and the grace and she says, here I am in the presence of a man and for
50:33
the first time in my life, I don't feel shame and she's just feels so liberated.
50:39
And she says, Jesus, why do you appear to me?
50:41
I'm just a poor mother of eight children and he said, Nor I died for you.
50:48
I love you.
50:50
And my friend will tell you tomorrow why I came to see you.
50:54
And she said, well, who's your friend?
50:56
And he gestures to a man who'd been walking with them along the lake, but she was so mesmerized
51:00
by Jesus.
51:01
She didn't notice this guy.
51:03
So she wakes up.
51:04
The next day she goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo and she sees that man from her dream.
51:09
She goes up there.
51:10
She says, you're the one.
51:11
She says, what do you mean?
51:12
You're the guy, same glasses, same face, same clothes.
51:15
You're the one.
51:16
He says, did you have a dream about Jesus last night?
51:19
Yes, he was an underground church planter.
51:23
He didn't want to go to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on Friday afternoon because it's
51:26
so chaotic.
51:27
But he went that day because he felt like God had an assignment for him and he intersects
51:31
with Nor.
51:32
But here's the key.
51:33
Here's what he does.
51:35
He pulls her aside and he opens the Bible and he shares the good news of Jesus.
51:41
That is external corroboration that this is an authentic experience.
51:46
So what do you do with that?
51:48
And this is so common.
51:49
It's been estimated as many as a third of all Muslims who are coming to faith around
51:53
the world.
51:54
And we've had more Muslims come to faith in Jesus in the last couple of decades than
51:56
in the 1500 years since Mohammed.
52:00
About a third of them have had a Jesus dream like this.
52:03
It's so common.
52:04
If you go to Cairo, sometimes in the newspaper, you'll see an ad and the ad says, call this
52:10
number and we'll tell you about the man in white you met in your dream last night.
52:14
Yeah.
52:15
I mean, you mentioned a Bill Kureshi in the book and I remember reading his book, Seeking
52:19
a Law, Finding Jesus and you see the visions and the dreams that he had and the journey
52:24
that sent him on.
52:26
I just wish we would have had him longer.
52:27
So we would have had more of his work, but you know, I'm glad we got.
52:30
Yeah, I'm glad we got the three books from him that we did those old, those were down
52:34
through the ages.
52:35
I can say.
52:36
Yes.
52:37
But something you're hitting on Lee.
52:38
Well, actually I'll read a quote from the book, one test of whether an experience with
52:42
God is authentic, added, grew through us, I don't know, say that guy's name, growth,
52:46
growth, growth.
52:47
Gosh, I was not even close.
52:49
Yeah.
52:50
All right.
52:51
Let me, let me try a little.
52:52
Let me do a bit.
52:53
All right.
52:54
I'll just say the Dutch guy.
52:55
One test of whether an experience with God is authentic added the Dutch guy is to weigh
52:58
it against the teachings of Scripture because we have solid reasons for trusting the Bible's
53:03
reliability.
53:04
Right.
53:05
However, I've got breaking news for everyone in the audience.
53:06
We're biblically illiterate because here in this country, we have a stack of Bibles on
53:10
our shelf.
53:11
It's on them, mind you, we have multiple Bible apps on our phone, but guess what?
53:16
We don't read any of them, right?
53:18
We've got daily Scripture apps that'll send Scripture directly to our phone that we scroll
53:23
the moment we wake up, but we will just go past the notification of Scripture because
53:27
Instagram or Trump said a thing or whatever is happening and we kind of skip to everything
53:32
else.
53:33
Yeah.
53:34
We live in a time where there's not that thirst for the Bible.
53:36
And I'll tell you a second mention of Phil Robertson.
53:38
He has changed how I view the Bible because I was with that man in his home and his duck
53:43
hunting shed shop.
53:46
I was with him in the studio and you know what was always within arms reach of that
53:49
man?
53:50
His tattered, well-worn Bible when he was stuck somewhere waiting on something, you know what
53:55
he would do?
53:56
He wouldn't check his email or post something on Facebook.
53:58
He was going to the Word and then he had a life where the Scripture wasn't just memorization
54:03
and he could spit it out so he sounded theologically adept.
54:06
He was just part of him so it would just come out of him because that's what was inside.
54:11
But what is it about the Bible that even Christians in America, they just don't seem
54:15
to find it as a reliable place to spend their time?
54:17
Yeah, we take it for granted.
54:19
Yet the Bible says test the spirits so that when we have some sort of experience, some
54:24
weird experience or something, the first thing we ought to do is test it by comparing
54:28
it to the Bible.
54:29
Is this biblical?
54:31
Because we can trust the Bible and I've written in my book The Case for Christ many reasons
54:34
why we can trust the Bible for various reasons and therefore it gives us a plumb line, something
54:40
we can measure everything against because I'll tell you something, Satan is a counterfeiter
54:48
of light.
54:49
In other words, he can fool us many times.
54:52
It's very interesting, I have a chapter in my new book Seeing the Supernatural about
54:56
ghosts and the technical definition of a ghost is someone who has died but their spirit
55:03
refuses to enter into the next realm and decides to hang around and haunt people.
55:09
There is no biblical warrant for that.
55:11
I don't see any example of that in the Bible.
55:13
What do I think ghosts are?
55:14
I think they are demonic apparitions.
55:18
We are compared to the Bible.
55:19
I don't see that in here.
55:21
Golly, maybe it's something else.
55:24
Maybe it is something that I ought to be wary of and suspicious of.
55:28
But unless we know the scriptures, we can get fooled into thinking that any weird experience
55:33
is from God or legitimate or authentic or valid.
55:39
Unless we test it and that, as you say, Kyle, presupposes we understand the scriptural
55:45
teachings.
55:46
Well, that's why whenever my friend Melissa Doherty talked about her book, talking about
55:52
new thought and her book's called Happy Lies, it's like most Christians will get convinced
55:56
of new age or new thought ideas because they don't have the Bible to compare it to.
56:00
So look at what Jesus endured while in the desert under temptation, scripture was being
56:05
quoted to him, but inaccurately, right?
56:10
If you leave the door open like that, all Jesus or all Satan has to do is say, did God
56:16
really say?
56:17
And if you don't know what God said on the issue, you're just going to go wherever the
56:20
tide takes you.
56:21
But Lee, I'm so happy to have your time into bouncing out of all these different subject
56:26
matters.
56:27
But the last thing I want to ask you is just what's next?
56:30
Obviously you've got millions of books sold, you've written and contributed to a lot of
56:33
stuff, you've had stuff turned into movies, but I want to know something you're not telling
56:37
anybody.
56:38
All right.
56:39
So I just want to know something you're working on or something, idea you're kicking around
56:42
that hasn't already been signed, see it and just waiting to be delivered.
56:46
Give me some good.
56:47
What are you working?
56:48
Okay.
56:49
I got two projects that have not been announced yet formally.
56:50
Let's go.
56:51
Let's go.
56:52
One picture that's coming out this December 15th.
56:56
It'll be a movie theater around the country for two weeks.
56:58
It's called The Case for Miracles.
57:02
And it's based on my book, The Case for Miracles.
57:04
And it's with a Guatemalan guy, she's an American citizen now, but his family is Guatemalan.
57:12
Great, great guy, strong Christian, who is doing this documentary with me in it, talking
57:17
about the evidence for the miraculous.
57:19
So that's one project that's coming out, hadn't been announced yet, but I hope people
57:23
can mark their calendar and say, hey, December 15th, I ought to be going to movie theater
57:27
and seeing this film.
57:28
It's going to be a lot of fun.
57:30
The second project that's coming out, I've never done two books in one year, but my next
57:36
book comes out in just a few months, September or so, October.
57:41
And it's called The Case for Christmas.
57:44
I did a little book on that topic many, many years, 25 years ago, but it just, I never
57:50
was really that happy with it.
57:53
So I've completely redone it with new research.
57:55
And by the way, there's been some new discoveries that bolster the truth of Christmas.
58:02
I talk about the incarnation.
58:03
I talk about what did really happen with Mary and Joseph, because the typical story we hear
58:09
is not exactly what the gospels are telling us.
58:12
We have to be careful and understand what first century culture was like and what first
58:16
century houses were like and so forth.
58:18
So I try to set the record straight, show the incarnation is true.
58:22
I try to show that the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem is authentic
58:27
and true.
58:29
And then I do a chapter with all the tough questions about Christmas that people ask.
58:34
And I get input from experts on how to respond to those.
58:38
So that's another project coming out.
58:40
Very good guy, I always like making people uncomfortable with questions and make them
58:43
give me information.
58:44
They weren't planning on.
58:45
So bam, I've checked the box, but Lee, we've been in and out of a lot of subject matters.
58:49
I'm very appreciative that you're able to come on.
58:51
That's all for me.
58:52
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
58:53
I'm gay.
58:54
Hey, listen, I really enjoyed it, Kyle.
58:55
Awesome.
58:56
Your podcast is just awesome.
58:57
I love the fact you're influencing so many guys, just God bless you, man, and all your
59:03
listeners.
59:04
All right.
59:05
Thanks.
59:06
Let's talk again soon.
59:07
Thank you.
59:08
And I hope you enjoyed my time with Lee Strobel.
59:10
But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost at undaunted life
59:13
or mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental
59:17
and physical resilience.
59:18
Three links for you today.
59:19
I've got a link to Lee's website and then I've also got Amazon links to where you can
59:21
buy his new book, seeing the supernatural and his biggest book, the case for Christ.
59:26
Thank you for listening to this podcast.
59:27
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five
59:30
star review.
59:31
If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an email
59:34
to info@undonton.life, that's i-n-f-o @undonton.life, follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
59:41
and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content
59:44
like this coming your way.
59:45
Just go to www.undonton.life and as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing
59:50
us to use their music for our content.
59:52
The music on this podcast is their song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album
59:56
on Face Down Records.
59:57
The links are in the description.
59:59
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
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