Blurry Creatures - EP: 339 Seeing The Supernatural with Lee Strobel

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Best-selling author and investigative journalist Lee Strobel joins Blurry Creatures to discuss his newest book, Seeing the Supernatural. In this episode, Strobel explores real accounts of miracles, angels, and near-death experiences—offering compelling evidence that the unseen realm is not only real, but deeply relevant. From hard-hitting journalism to stories that defy explanation, this conversation dives into the thin places where the natural and supernatural collide For more Blurry Creatures content, exclusive episodes, and channels, visit www.blurrycreatures.com/members. - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We got Lee Strobel in the house. Seeing the Supernatural's brand new book. Hit the number one on New York Times bestselling. I'm just going to read... Number eight. Number eight. Well, we'll say number one. In our hearts.

Number one of hearts. Yeah. I'm just going to read the back of this as an intro because it was good. Lee Strobel, former award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times bestselling author of Case for Christ. And that was a book that we grew up with right at the tail end of high school. Yeah. the case for grace and the case for the creator, praise for a creator, with a journalism degree

from the University of Missouri and a master's of studies in law degree from Yale. Lee has won four gold medallions for publishing excellence. Former atheist, he's also served as a teaching pastor of three of America's largest churches. Lee and his family, they're married for more than 50 years and live in Texas. Welcome to the podcast. I've never done that before, so I wanted to do that, like actually read the interest. but that was better than we could do here but we have a you can't remember that long of paragraph yeah i know it's like all your fear of public reading in public you know like and now you're on the podcast and on the camera it's like yeah brings back terrified memories from high school anyway

um welcome to the podcast we kick off the supernatural conversation that's what we do here saying the supernatural is pretty much what we do yes and uh you know we we kick off the conversation with everyone we have everyone from theologians like dr. Michael Heiser to everybody else. What are your thoughts on Bigfoot? And then you don't have to have any? Tim Mackey famously had no thoughts on Bigfoot. What do you think? What do I think about Bigfoot? Well, there's a lot of misconceptions about Bigfoot and Yeti. People mix those up. Yeti, of course, is a Himalayan phenomenon. Yeah. And the word originally in Tibetan means bear-like. And he's kind of bear-like. He's a generally white-frey. to blend in.

That's why he has the reputation of being the abominable snowman. Yeah. Six to nine feet tall, according to three different versions. So six to nine feet tall on the Yeti. Have they captured one? No. They've seen footprints. They've supposedly got hair samples, but those are indeterminate scientifically when they're tested.

So, and then you have Sasquatch or Bigfoot, which is a different phenomenon. That's in the Western United States and Western Canada. and more of a mountainous and forested creature. But I'm more dark brown than Yeti. He's got to hide in the woods. Yeah, he's got to hide in the woods. Yeah, exactly. You don't have to blend into the snow so much.

Exactly. And so people get those mixed up. They're very distinct. But what they share is the question of, are they real? Or are they just, is someone mistaking a bear on their hind legs for Bigfoot? or are they some sort of a different creature, a different species and so forth? So we don't know. So I'm a journalist trained in law.

I look at evidence and facts and corroboration and logic. And so I look at that and go, I don't know. But I'm open. I'm open. If they catch one, I'd like to meet it. There's such an investigative journalist answer I love it. You're like, let's walk through what these are. But I do think the camouflage effect, like describing that is interesting.

because, you know, we've heard that a thousand times, but thinking about it again from that perspective of like, yeah, a Yeti would have to blend into the high mountainous, yeah, snow-covered mountains versus like Pacific Northwest is brown and green. Yeah. You want to be, because I think a lot of times we get those pictures sent in, it looks like a stump. Yeah, that's right.

It looks like a log. It's perfect. Perfect for Bigfoot. There been some Himalaya climbers who have found footprints. Well, the problem is when you have a footprint in snow, the wind action can distort it over time. And it can look bigger than it really is. So to me, that's interesting but not determinative.

We had Graham Highland on who wrote the book Yeti. He's an explorer from the UK who he did that. In the middle of literally no Western had ever been, he found footprints. And the yaks went crazy. So he had this whole thing where he was in some ways a non-believer, which would fit some of your story. And he jumped the shark. He's like, this thing's real.

the yaks freaked out. The Sherpas knew what they were talking about. And I found the footprints and there was something that was pacing us. Which is all interesting, right? No body. It's always like, where's the body? I love to catch one. Love that.

But I love to, if they catch one, I want to share Jesus with them. I think it's a great idea. We've had some people who have witnessed to Bigfoot on the show. But that is a whole other topic of conversation. But I like that you bridge the gap between the skeptics and use the data and kind of go to some of the, probably the wildest stories that we've had on our show. there seems to be sort of a chasm of belief in the middle and it requires data and more of an investigative journalistic perspective

to kind of help people come from I'm such a rationalist that I can't entertain anything woo-woo or weird but I think our show sometimes we just jump right into the deep end. Did you say woo-woo? Yeah. Very technical. I love that. I love that. I love that. I'm going to use that. Thank you.

Feel free to use that and say got this from blurry creatures. But Lee, for folks that aren't super familiar with us, maybe with you on our show, we were talking pre-roll. And like, Case for Christ is your first book, turns 27 this year. Big, big book. Yeah, 27 this year. I remember it was required reading my freshman year of college year 2000. And so.

In med school? That was not med school. That was Chico State. We were. Did you graduate high school? We were 15 on honors and then went to med school right away. I would like to be that young. Yeah.

But that was really your journey from being an atheist. to creating a case for Christ. And I mean, it turns 27. We were a joke before. And the movie came out in 2017. And a good friend Mike Vogel played. I didn't know this. We did this pre-roll.

My good friend Mike Vogel played you in the film. And Mike's a blurry features fan. So this is a small world. Mike's a great guy. And I love that. You've been blurry all along. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it was pre-b blurry.

So let's talk about the new book is seeing the supernatural. So you start with creating a case for Christ. You sort of, you're reverend. reverse engineer this thing and really find the evidence. How do you go from from that to to the supernatural? I mean, these obviously make sense to us. But like when you're doing that, like how do you start to approach something that's very foundational to our faith? From a, you know, sort of analytical investigative data standpoint. Well, as you probably know, eight out of ten Americans do believe in a supernatural realm of some sort. So it's a, it's a common

belief that there is something beyond what we can see and touch. The Bible of, course talks about that. And Jesus was an exorcist. So he obviously believed in demons. Jesus believed in angel. So I mean, he believed in a supernatural realm. And, but being a skeptic and being someone who investigates things, I wanted to see in this book, what is the evidence that there is really something beyond what we can see in touch? I didn't really deal that much in what is that realm? As much as I dealt in, what is the evidence that there is something beyond our physical, naturalistic, material world. And so I looked at everything from near-death experiences,

interviewed John Burke, who you guys know, a fascinating area, deathbed visions. That's kind of a new area. Interviews on that. I did one on mystical dreams among Muslims in the Middle East who are having these Jesus dreams, who point them toward something external that leads them to fate. I talk about direct experiences of God

where God just intersects someone's life in a dramatic way. People who weren't even looking for them. And there's some amazing stories there. I look at miracles. Do we have miracles that cannot be explained by any natural means? And are they documented in medical journals? That's what I was looking at. Guess what?

Yeah. Do we have scientific studies that show that something miraculous is going on? We do, published in respected secular, scientific medical journals. So there's some fascinating stuff to me that says, this is real. Yeah, it may be blurry, but it's real. Just because it's blurry doesn't mean I didn't real. Yes. So a question I would have like overarching question. Do you believe that a lot of Christians in the church believe in stories like Noah's Ark or parting of the Red Sea? Do you think they believe this? That's a great question. Here's my opinion on that. This is going to fend a whole bunch of American

Christians. I believe in the American church, we have a problem, and that is that we want to be respectable. It's okay if my neighbors know I'm a Christian. It's okay if they know I go to church and believe in Jesus. Of course, yeah, that's fine. But I don't get into that weird stuff. Don't start getting me. I don't want to get into things like angels and demons and, you know, things like that. And so in the quest for respectability and to be seen as just everyday folks who, yes, happen to believe in God. People even in the church often don't delve into these areas very much. In fact, I've been a Christian since three in the afternoon on November the 8th of 1981. I've never heard a sermon on the topic of angels. My whole Christian life. Nobody, why don't, I mean, Jesus believed in angels

or a couple hundred references to angels in the Bible. Why aren't we talking about it? Well, it's not even in seminaries from what we've talked to a lot of people. Like Heiser said, it was only two classes. I'm not even like just a day. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Not an entire, uh, just a session. Yeah. So it's mind blowing, but I, you know, you say eight out of ten people, uh, believe in a supernatural, but doesn't seem like that. Yeah. It seems like when you talk to modern people, they're like, they don't really believe in the Noah's Ark. They're like, that's impossible. Yeah. It's no way God could get all the animals on that. And then we're over here like, hey look, there's like LiDAR penetration like technology that's looking under the pyramids.

Suppose they found Noah's ARP, maybe a, or a giant ship or some kind that was ancient. And we're always like over here trying to convince the skeptics of like, there's more than enough data and evidence. It seems as though we've been taught to be skeptical, overly skeptical. And I think there's a, there's certainly continuum here. I think a lot of people are into what I would call the paranormal, you know, witches. psychics and stuff like that, that's kind of the ghosts and things like that. I deal with ghosts in the book, but I'm skeptical of those. But so it's a whole paranormal area, and a lot of people are more receptive to that

than they are about the paranormal or the supernatural claims of the Bible. So there is a continuum, and there is, at some point, skepticism generally steps in. But as an atheist, like what was your, you know, kind of, stepping into, because the Bible is a supernatural book. I don't, I don't know how we've divorced ourselves from that. Right. Right. You read it, you read the Old Testament. You're like, there's so many wacky things in there. What's the New Testament, right? You've got this, this, this, you know, immaculate conception. You have an incarnate God. Yeah. You have a resurrected Christ. Well, for me, people walking on water. I mean, obviously, humans doing these things.

Right. You know, it's, it's even beyond like God coming into our realm and doing it. It's, it's, even as a skeptic, um, and what happened was, I was a skeptic. And, not because I studied all the evidence on every side and come to the conclusion I should be an atheist. It was, I wanted to make, I wanted to live my life the way I wanted to live my life. I didn't want there to be a God. And so I lived a very immoral and drunken and profane and narcissistic life. And I was happy in it. And then my wife became a Christian.

Pissed me off. Really? First thought within my mind when she told me, divorce. I was going to walk out. And then I thought, wait a minute. maybe I could rescue her from this cult that she's gotten involved in. How would I do that? Well, wait a minute.

It's easy. Clearly, the entire claims of the Christian faith are based in the resurrection of Jesus, a supernatural experience. Supernatural. That doesn't happen in real life. Jesus clearly claimed to be the son of God. At one point, it got up before a group, and he said, I and the father are one, and the Greek word there for one is not masculine, it's neuter,

which means Jesus was not saying I and the father are the same person. He was saying, I and the father are the same thing. We're one in nature. We're one in essence. And the audience got it. They picked up stones and said, you're just a man and you're claiming to be God. So Jesus claimed, I could claim to be God. Or maybe not Luke.

But anybody could claim, anybody could claim to be God. But if Jesus claimed to be God died and then three days later rose from the dead, that's pretty good evidence he's telling the truth. So I spent a lot of two years of my life, a lot of that investigating the historical credibility of this supernatural event called the resurrection of Jesus. Until after two years, I realized that the evidence is so compelling that it would have required more faith for me to maintain my atheism than to become a Christian. It was as the scales went like that. That's amazing. The evidence is so, I'll tell you a quick story. When I was at Yale Law School,

one of my heroes was a man I learned about named Sir Lionel Lacu. Sir Lionel was considered the greatest lawyer in the world. He was at one point in the Guinness Book of World Records, as winning more murder trials as a defense attorney than anybody in history. I think it was 130 or something trials in a row before the jury are on appeal. Unbelievable. He was knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth. He was appointed the Supreme Court of his country. Brilliant guy. And I liked him because he didn't believe in the resurrection either because I was an atheist at the time. He was a skeptic about the reserick. Until somebody came up to say, Sir Lionel, you're the greatest lawyer in the world. Have you ever investigated the evidence and come to an informed verdict on whether the resurrection took place?

He said, no, not really, but I will. So he spent years of his life doing what I ended up doing later, and his conclusion was, I'll quote it, he said, I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof, which leaves absolutely no room for doubt. Wow. That from the greatest Lord. And by the way, I told that story at a church in California. Leslie and I had just moved out there.

I was a teaching pastor at Rick Warren's Church, a Saddleback Church. And a woman came up to me after that. doors. And she said, hey, we haven't met yet, but I'm your new neighbor. I live a couple doors down. I said, oh, great, great to meet you. And she said, yeah, and she said, I'm Sir Lionel's sister. Sometimes it feels like when you get that phone bill, it's like the crash site document. You can't read it. There's a bunch of numbers, random fees, vague language, stuff's blacked out. You're like, what am I actually paying for? I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. I like to be simple. I like to be easy. I'm going to be thrown away money on big wireless carriers.

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of this issue, did Jesus return from the day? Did he have a conversion event after that? What's that? Did he, did he? Oh, profound conversion. He ended up quitting the legal profession and becoming an evangelist. Oh, man. Yeah.

I mean, that is the power, right? Is the changed life? Yeah, exactly. You see, yeah, you can prove things analytically, but if it changes who you are, it's hard of the gospel. It has to be kind of presented a lot of that. And it's such a way for a big portion of the population. Like, we interviewed Wes Huff and he was saying that there's more evidence that Jesus was

a figure in his. than Caesar Augustus. And we have no problem, you know, thinking that this guy was a, but Jesus, we're all skeptical. And it could be from his claims, the supernatural claims that he made. And do you feel you write books to that portion of the population? Both Christians and people who are spiritually curious and investigating. My hope is that my books will deepen the faith of followers of Jesus, but that after they read the book, they give it away to a friend, a family member, a neighbor who's spiritually confused or curious. And maybe this would be helpful. And so I've got so many stories of people who've come to faith who they've never thought about this stuff.

They've never looked at the evidence before. And once they do, they find it compelling. Did you feel like this was the natural progression? Yeah. And then the next step sort of from Case for Christ? You make a case for the real Jesus Christ existence. did what he said he was going to do, said who he was, raised himself, was raised from the dead.

Yes. And then the next thing is to say, okay, that's supernatural, right? But here's the rest of the, like, here's, here's, the rest of the paradigm. The rest of the story. The rest of the picture, you know, because so many people these days, I mean, you look at science. Many scientists will say that we are just our brain. Right. We have no soul, no spirit, no consciousness is either an illusion or whatever.

And so we're just the firing of neutrons. Well, that has a lot of implications because basically it means we don't really have free will. Yeah. Golly, that has implications. So do we have a spirit, a soul, a consciousness that is distinct from our brain and yet interacts with our brain? So I interview a PhD from Cambridge University in the book who makes a compelling case. You're down right. We are a hyphenate creature, a soul and a body.

And we are a soul who has a body. And she provides great evidence and arguments in favor of that. I think that's important because the Bible says, and again, this is consistent with the Bible. The Bible says when we die, our spirit separates from our body to be absent from the bodies, to be present with the Lord. And ultimately, when history consummates and when Jesus returns, our spirit will be reunited with our now resurrected body, and then there will be ultimate judgment and eternity in a very physical place, heaven or hell.

So that's consistent with the Christian teaching. But do we have a spirit? Do we have a soul? Yeah. Yeah, I think we do. So you start there. Is that where you begin sort of the, let's talk about how we are a hybrid creature in that sense? Yeah, there's two ways, two pieces of evidence, I think, that are helpful in that. One is one you're familiar with. We could talk about it because I think it's fascinating. Our near-death experiences. Yeah. All we need is one documented near-death experience to establish that we do have a soul that lives on after our clinical death. We have one researcher in the year 2009 surveyed the scientific literature. and found 107 cases in which not only is this a near-death experience, but they experienced something while they're out of their body that they could not have experienced had this not been an authentic out-of-body experience. So those are called veritical claims, veritical reports.

In other words, they're corroborated. That's the kind of thing I'm looking for. So near-death experiences, and, you know, there's so many examples, and John Burke's the expert on this, when I interview him for the book. But, you know, he gives the case of a woman who died in a hospital, I believe it was in London. But she said later, I was conscious the whole time. And she describes how her spirit floated toward the ceiling. And she was looking down, watching them working on her body, trying to revive it. And then it floated out of the hospital.

And she encountered a divine creature. And then they revived her. So her spirit returned. And she said, by the way, see the ceiling fan here in this room? On the top of one of the blades is a red sticker, which she described in great detail. You couldn't see it from the room because on the top of a ceiling. because they're on the top of a blade. Yeah.

So they get a ladder, they go up there? Sure enough, there it is. And that's just one example of literally 107 that have been documented of claims that are corroborated by something to show that she couldn't have known that, apart from her telling the truth about seeing this from that perspective. The other line of evidence is a little mind experiment I'll do with you. Let's say there's a woman named Mary. and Mary is the world's leading expert on the human eye. She's a medical doctor.

She's a scientist. She understands everything about the eye, how the eye functions, how the optic nerve carries impulses to the brain, how the brain processes that into vision. She understands the entire mechanical process, but she's blind. What if one day she received her sight for the first time? would she learn anything new on that day? Duh, yeah, I think she would. And what that shows is no amount of knowledge about the physical working of the brain can explain the first person experience of sight. And that's what our soul, our spirit, our consciousness, it's our first person experience.

It's the locus of our introspection and our decision making and so forth. And you can't explain that through just mechanical process. There is a first person quality to our spirit, our soul that can't be explained by a physical brain. Right. It's like the idea of experiencing and understanding, right? Yes, that's right. Yeah, it's almost like if you're in the law space, it's like here's your eyewitness versus your, like your sort of evidence. That's actually a great example.

You know, they can present all this evidence, physical evidence, you know, like blood samples and all the DNA. It kind of reminds me of that scene in Goodwill hunting when, you know, he's like a child genius. and he's talking to Robin Williams. He's like, you know, you can tell me all about a, you could write a sonnet, but you don't know what it's like to be in love with somebody. Yes. And you can tell me all about the Sistine Chapel,

but you haven't stood in the room and looked up and smelled what it's, and seen it for yourself. And I think that- Seemed what dead of your soul. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that is something that I think that our modern world,

we've divorced ourselves from. And we sort of read the Bible as this like almost like a Lord of the Rings. Like, it didn't actually happen. It sounds like that. that, but it didn't. But then, you know, people on our show, they, a lot of theologians and a lot of different people who have, they've had, they've lived in a haunted house. Or they've seen a creature they can't explain. Or they've had a near-death experience. I mean, I had a moment where I got a concussion and I floated out of my body. And that, I didn't even know until years later that that

was what happened. Like, I couldn't explain. Like, I was like watching myself on the bench in a football game. This is when you were playing offensive line and kicker? Yes. Were you kicking or you played an offensive line? No, I was pulling on the guard and I hit the linebacker.

So I hit the linebacker, all things, everything goes black and then I can't remember anything. I can't remember the plays. I told the coach, I can't remember any of the stuff. Wow. I sat on the bench and it was eerie because it was Halloween game. And the lights started coming on because we were of GAV. But then I started

floating out of my body and watching myself on the bench. And it was just so bizarre, didn't know, I was a freshman or a sophomore, young kid, didn't really know. I tried to tell my dad, like, I don't know what's going on. But people have these experiences. That's right. And then they go to Christianity. The Christians don't talk about it. Right, right. So they lose their faith. Yeah. They walk away or they're like, you guys are, you guys don't actually believe any of this stuff. And I say, look at the evidence and it will point you toward this a supernatural reality. I'll give you an example similar to yours, sort of. There's a little girl. I think

she's eight, nine years old. She drowns in a swimming pool. Wyoming, say swimming pool in out west, Idaho. Or I can't remember. But anyway, she drowns. No, her brain swells, no respiration, no heartbeat. They get her out of the pool. She's dead.

You take her to the emergency room. They put her in the hospital just to keep her body mechanically functioning until they figure out what to do. But she says later, I was awake the whole time. And she said, I encountered God. And she said, you know, and the doctors are skeptics. They say, no, okay. Tell you what, here's a crayon and here's a piece of paper. Why don't you draw the emergency room where we took you when you were dead?

Picks up the cranks. She draws the emergency room exactly as it was. But then she says, when my parents came to visit me in the hospital, I followed them home. Oh. my mom made chicken and rice on the stove that night my dad sat in a certain place in a certain posture doing certain things my brother went into his bedroom and was playing with a GI Joe army doll with a Jeep she described what they were wearing and so forth and it all checked out how do you explain that if her spirit their conscience didn't separate you like yours something happened to you And you're watching something that you couldn't have otherwise seen, which is your body from a different perspective.

It was weird. It is weird. We talked John Burke about this. John say that, like, science would tell you that you have this rush of chemicals to your brain. So these folks that are having this hallucination, if you will. Right. But then the evidence you're talking about. It's schizophrenia.

Yeah, can't explain that. And it can't explain how one study showed 21 cases of blind people, most of them blinds since birth, who during their near-death experience were able to see or, you know, or had vision-like perceptions for the first time. Vicki Umapag, 26 years old, killing a car accident, blind virtually since birth. But she says, I was conscious the whole time. And I could see. I saw my body and the paramedics trying to revive it. My spirit floated out.

I saw birds. I saw trees. I saw plants. I saw people. And then when her body was resuscitated and her spirit returned, she was blind again. Oh. Medical research. This is medically impossible.

And yet multiple cases of that happening. That's wild. There's some wild stuff. Yesterday we're talking to Pastor Joe and Franco who works with autistic children. And they're describing the same things. They're able to leave their body in their dreams and they're having visions of Jesus, just like Tom Doyle talks about with the Muslims. And they come back and there's sort of this frustration when they come back into their body.

Yeah. He said that they talk about it's like putting their chains back on. Yeah. Interesting. But it's a supernatural experience. that these nonverbal autistic people are having, they're able to sort of have this out-of-body experience. Now, what I look for in something like that is,

can you describe something you could not have known if you hadn't had an out of it? I bet they can't. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like all kinds of things. When they learn how to spell and they actually can communicate on iPads and other things that some of these kids are saying things

that they've had decades of knowledge. And the parents are like being mind-blown, How do you know all this stuff where they think their kid doesn't know anything or can't hear them or can't understand them? Wow. And they're actually like trapped in a world where their brain is totally functioning and alive. But but there's a lot of data. And I would say that what about when you present here are the footprints, here's the hair, here's the pictures. Yeah.

And people still go. Yeah. What is that? You know, to me, for instance, when I investigated a miraculous claim, I'm looking for four things. I'm looking for it. Do we have solid medical documentation? Number two, do we have multiple eyewitnesses with no motive to deceive? You know, number three, do we lack a natural explanation that could reasonably account for it? And number four, did it take place in the context of a spiritual experience like prayer or whatever?

And the answer to that is yes, there are many cases, for instance, of miracles that match that criteria. So those are the kind of things I'm looking for. Like, for instance, in my book, I document the case of a woman who was blind for a dozen years. She had an incurable condition. She went to a school for the blind. She learned how to read braille. She walked with a white cane and she married a pastor. And one night, they're getting ready to go to bed.

She's in bed. He comes over and he starts to cry. And he puts his hand in his shoulder and he begins to pray. And he says, Lord, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can do it. And Lord, I pray you do it tonight. And with that, she opened her eyes and perfect eyesight, which remained for the next 50-plus years. Wow. And she said, I was blind when my husband prayed for me. I opened my eyes. I could see

him for the first time. I could see things. I got perfect vision. And what do you do with that? He's like, do you like what you're looking at? Yeah, right. He was like, and he was a hunk. Yeah. It was great. And that was, that was documented by multiple medical researchers and published this case study in a medical journal. That's incredible. Do you talk to Craig Keener? Is that one of the Yes, I have a chapter with Craig Keener. He's a good friend. Talking about miracle. We had him on the show. He's, he was, he's a great guy. He's a great guy. We don't know what he thought about us. My favorite story about Craig, I don't tell on the show,

is that beforehand he emailed or text me and he said, is it okay if I wear a green sweater? And I was like, it was right before Christmas and I was like, feels appropriate, Craig, I think you should. And he did, but the reason to bring that up is like when we talk to Craig, in the same way, he had this criteria and then he, but he's, and he's just got these volumes of. Yes.

I interview him in the book. He cites case after case after case that fit that criteria. Which is just phenomenal. And you go, what do you do? When I was an atheist, I ruled out the supernatural at the outset. The supernatural is not possible. Now, bring me your evidence. Well, that's not the way to investigate something.

The appropriate way is to say, bring me your evidence, and I'll evaluate it. And if it meets the criteria that makes me convince that it's true, I'm going to reach a conclusion. It's true. So I think that's a more appropriate idea. You started talking about angels. Yeah. So what in your research did you find or who did you talk to or some stories about the, I mean, we know we have the scriptural evidence. We have angels that eat and walk and wrestle with Jacob and angels show up and announce the coming of Christ. And you talked about this is not something we hear on Sundays a lot as a sermon about angels. But what sort of research evidence did you find for the validation of the angels? Great question. What is the corroboration? Yeah. So what I document the book is a case study involving a guy named John G. Peyton, P-A-T-O-N. John was a missionary from Scotland, and he his wife went to do missionary work on a Pacific Island in the South Pacific.

Well, they lived in a little cottage, and they were trying to share the story of Jesus with people. Well, the people didn't like it. And so one night, a mob of them came to burn down their house and kill them. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room.

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forming outside our window right now what are we to pray they prayed for god's protection all night long and by dawn the mob just dissipated and went home year later he leads the head of that mob to faith in jesus and they're talking one day he said by the way do you remember that night that y'all came to burn down our house and kill us Why didn't you do it? And the guy said, well, who were all those men that you had there? And he said, I didn't have any men. It was just my wife and I.

And he said, no, no, no. Your house was surrounded by these muscular men in white garments with drawn swords. There's no way we could have attacked your house that night. What do you do with that? What do you do with that? Comes from reliable sources and so forth. There's a story in the Bible of that. Yeah.

Same thing. I think about John Reed. We had an episode with a missionary to the Amazon. who was making this run through the Amazon where there are pirates and he tells the story, it's one of our episodes, it's a member's episode,

but he tells a story of, it's him and the pilot and the captain. And he has his Bible and got to go to the front of the boat and the pirates are pulling up on the side and they basically will kill you from the river at night and said they pay some

and they peel off. And he goes up to the village they're going to go share the gospel out. There's an amazing experience up at the village with the gospel and you can listen to that in the episode if you want, if you're listening to the show. But he returns and a girl shows up and says,

her dad is one of the pirates and wanted to know where all the armed men were they were on the boat when they pulled up on the other night before, or a couple nights before. And he said, there's no arm. It was just me and my Bible and the captain. My dad said there was, the ship was lined with men that were armed.

And so he has a similar story, which is fascinating. So you have these sort of eyewitness. And interestingly, sorry to interrupt, But the Bible in Hebrews foretells that we may very well have encounters with angels because it says sometimes you're going to entertain someone, unbeknownst you, it's an angel. So there's an anticipation. And the other thing about the angels is that I have a chapter in my book, fascinating area of deathbed visions. What do people see just before they die? One study showed 88% of people before they die have a deathbed vision of what's to come. 88% of a study group in a huge hospice in New York State. But so often they see angels coming for them. And this is consistent with what Jesus said in Luke 16, where he is a rich man who died,

who had ignored the poor during his life. He went to a place of torment. But the beggar went to a place of bliss. And in verse 16, Jesus said, angels carried him. And so, there are tens of thousands of these deathbed visions have been written about. And so often, and people will see the angels coming for them. Even Charles Templeton, the most famous atheist in Canada, who ended up coming to faith before he died, saw angels coming for him. But here's the little bit of corroboration.

What about children who are dying? For a five-year-old child, what do they think of when they think of an angel? It's a cartoon character, right? It's a big wings, maybe some feathers or something, but it's generally big wings, and that's what a child would imagine. Yeah. Well, we have cases of children who are dying who see angels,

but that's not what they see. And there's a case in a doctoral dissertation of a little girl who is dying, and she says to her, mommy, mommy, mommy, can you see them? What, honey? In the room here, the angels are coming from me. Oh, they're so beautiful. Look at their eyes. Oh, they're singing.

It's so beautiful. They're so wonderful. And her mother didn't want to disappoint her. So she said, oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I see the angels. Look at their big wings. And a little girl said, oh, mommy, you don't have to lie. They don't have big wings. And she went on to describe them in vivid detail. And, you know, Bible doesn't say that all angels have wings. No, this actually. We talked about this on the show. That's more of a, that's a renaissance art. Well, yeah, you had to, like, distinct the characters. And so they put wings on them to make humans know the difference between. But you would think that if a child, if this was a product of her subconscious mind generating something, it would probably be a cartoon. Because that's all the imagery.

Exactly. I mean, I don't, Lee, how do people not believe in angels but also like read the Bible and are Christians? That's a good question. I don't understand where that. I think they just ignore it. I don't know if they don't believe in it. They don't think about it. They don't, you know, I was a number.

There's a significant number of people. I'm thinking the number is 69% who believe in angels. So there's quite a percentage that do. but do they think about it? Do they really? Or is this something where you believe something, but in your heart, you know it can't be true. Yeah.

Well, that's like a nice story. Yeah, nice story. Because we're kind of the opposite end of the spectrum. Like we talked to John Burke, and he was talking about the tunnel of protection that these people are going through, and the angels might be a part of that, us from one realm to the next.

Right. Or one kingdom to the next. Right. Empire to the next. And those are way out of the box. Yes. for Christians, but yet the Bible is chock full of these stories. And I'll tell you a story about my life.

I had an encounter with an angel. Let's hear this, Lee. And I was so embarrassed. I told very few people about it. It happened when I was 12 years old. And it was a dream, but it was unlike any dream I've ever had. And I remember to the, it's the only dream for my child. I remember, I'm in my kitchen at the house, and an angel appeared to me and began extolling heaven.

how beautiful and wonderful it is to me in the presence of God in heaven. And I said in a very offhanded way, well, I'm going to go there someday. And he looked at me and he said, how do you know? Wow. And I thought, what do I mean? How do I know? I'm a good kid. I get good grades in school.

I generally obey my parents. I'm nice to my friend. I'm trying to justify my good deeds. And he looked at me and he said, that doesn't matter. And a chill went down my spine. How could it not matter? All my attempts to be a good kid, you tell me that doesn't matter. And then he said, someday you'll understand.

understand. So I wrote it off. I thought, ah, it was a pizza, it was a bad pizza or something. And then 16 years later, I became an atheist. 16 years later, my wife drags me to a church, January the 20th, 1980. And the pastor gave the gospel in a way I could understand it for the first time. And I realized it's not based on how good we try to be that opens the door of heaven. It is a free gift of grace that we receive in repentance and faith. And I hear this message and I flash back to the angel. I thought, he told me something that day that I did not know. That's a form of corroboration. And the second thing he did that day is he made a prophecy, a prediction. Someday you'll understand. And 16 years later, I did. Now, I was so embarrassed by this that even after I became a Christian, I was going to be ordained.

You know, we've gone through the whole process. And here are these staid theologians who are, you know, assessed whether I'm worthy of being ordained as a pastor. And I'm thinking, do I tell them this? I mean, they're going to think I'm nuts. You know, I mean, should I say this? And I thought, I should, full disclosure. So I said, guys, I got to tell you something that happened to me.

And I told him this story. And you know what the response was? Yeah, okay. Yeah. We get it. We've heard those stories before. We've heard people. Yeah.

It's not surprise us. And so. You describe the angel? Like, do you remember what? Describe it? Yeah. It would look like. It was funny because I knew intuitively it was an angel.

But he didn't have wings or anything like that. It was like it was a guy. It was a man. And by the way, interestingly in Scripture, when angels do embody themselves, it's always as a male. But in ancient Jewish literature, there are female embodiments of angels for whatever that's worth. But anyway, I intuitively knew that he was an angel. There was a slight glow to him. but it was almost as if, oh, yeah, an angel.

Like you knew. Larger than normal, but not extremely. Bobby a looking guy, like your hair. About a 10% about your size. Extraordinary large. And when it comes to angels in certain topics, supernatural topics, one of the questions I had for you and wanted to talk about is,

historically the church is broken up and fractured because of interpretations of the supernatural. Yeah. And some people go hard, right? Some people are hard left. And what do you think about church history in terms of the skepticism that has been in humans since the beginning? Yeah. That we don't believe.

There is, I think within Christendom, there are Bible-believing theologians who come to different conclusions about topics like angels. They believe the Bible, too. They read a little differently or understand a little differently, maybe a little more skeptically. I'll give you an example. Do we have a guardian angel? Is there an angel assigned to you, guys? I don't know. To me.

I think so. Yeah, you're not sure and you think so, and I'd say, I'm kind of with you, I think so. But here's the divide, because there's difference of opinion. Some will say, there's two passages in scripture that suggests we might very well have a guardian angel. In one scene in Matthew, Jesus is talking to a group, and he says, do not look down, in a sense, on these young children, because their angels see the face of God every day in heaven. Well, who are their angels? Could it be a guardian angel?

And then in the book of Acts, Peter escapes from prison. And he goes and he knocks on the door of some Christians who had gathered. And the servant says, who's there? And he says, is Peter. And she calls out to the group, hey, Peter's here. And they say, no, can't be Peter. He's in prison. Can't be Peter.

It must be his angel. They will, Bible, believe, Christians will point to those verses to say, my conclusion is we have an angel assigned to us. In certain, I think it's Greek Orthodox traditions, they believe that at the time of baptism, an angel is assigned to each Christian. On the other hand, other Christians will say, that's not enough evidence for me that there's an individual angel with each of us. Yes, there are angels, but they're unconvinced. They're a bit skeptical, more skeptical about those two verses. They don't come out as, as explicitly as they wish they did.

So I think it's okay that there's a little bit of a spectrum. But I want to say, what is the basis of your conclusion? What evidence are you looking at that convinces you there are, there aren't an guardian angels? Well, we've got an FBI agent assigned to us, which people would surmise. Why not an angel, right? Well, there's certainly no shortage of angels. In Revelation Chapter 5, there's an image of Jesus, the Reservoir. resurrected Jesus on the throne. And if you do the math of the verse and figure it all out,

there are a hundred million angels at that point worshipping him. A hundred million. We've got two billion Christians. Yeah, but that's just a portion. That's a portion. Who knows how many we got. That's like a small venue for God. Yeah. He's like, we'll pack him in here. That's right. So take us back, January 20th, 1980. Yeah. What do you think happens? Do you hear the data being spoken from a pastor or do you have a Holy Spirit supernatural moment? That's a great question. I think it was I was still an atheist. I'm sitting in the pews. I hear this gospel message for the first time. And my thought was, I don't believe it. But if this is true, this has huge implications for my life. Duh. You know, right? Hey, there's a revelation. So from that moment, when I did my investigation to try to rescue my wife,

from this cult, I determined that I would not try to disprove the resurrection. I want to look at all of the evidence and reach a conclusion like an umpire in a baseball game. Call a ball a ball, a strike a strike. Where does the evidence point? Now, was that enabled by the Holy Spirit? Would I do that of my own? On my own, I think the Holy Spirit began to guide me and lead me toward my investigation. I don't know that. But I think that, It would make sense that God was beginning to open my heart at that point. I was willing at that point to investigate it. What do you think was lacking in the people who, especially the religious of Jesus' day?

They had all the data. Yes. They had the scriptures and everything. Right. But they had lacked faith. Yes. What is that? And look at Judas.

Yeah. He was around. He saw the movie. He heard all the time. Hello. Yeah. And yet he not only walked away, he betrayed Jesus. I mean, I...

Some say he was possessed. That's what, you know, he was overtaken by the spirit of Satan himself. I deal with that in the book. And there are those Christians who believe he was possessed. If not possessed, then oppressed by sedentine forces. Yeah, I think that's true. Because he does have a moment at the end where he regrets his decision. You know, he's the first to realize, oh, what did I do?

Yeah. And then as the darkness does he, and they talk and then he kills life. And they were done with him. They were done with him. Yeah. Yeah. But there seemed to be a moment of like, I was taking, I don't know what, I don't know what just happened. Like I, poor guy.

But, um. But I think, you know, why is it that anybody chooses to reject the, you know, Romans says, we all see from nature that God exists. And there's, in fact, there's so much evidence from nature. We're without excuse. But we suppress that. We suppress it. And the Greek imagery of the suppressing of that is like a brake on a car.

It's like you're pushing a pedal. It's like every time you begin to think, oh, maybe there is something to that. You suppress it. You push down the pedal. Maybe what about, press it down. Why? Because we want to be God. We want to be worship.

We want to make decision. We don't want someone telling us what to do. Or, to be honest, there's some psychological factors at play. Yeah. You know, there's a famous study done by. a professor of psychology at major New York University who studied all the

famous atheists of history. Hamu, Sart, Nietzsche, Freud, Voltaire, Wells, Foyerbach, O'Hare, every single one of them. And they had something in common. This is a Bose moment. It's 10 blocks from the train to your apartment door. Ten basic, boring city blocks until the beat drops in Bose clarity.

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divorced their mother when they were young, or with whom they had a terrible relationship. And the implication is someone who grows up with their father hurting them, abandoning them in their mind, rejecting them in their mind, disappointing them. They don't want to know about a heavenly father. He's going to be worse.

Why would I know about a magnified version of the father who hurt me? There's the whole show here. I mean, that's just about fatherhood. And think of this. What are the trends in America? Fatherless families going up, disbelief in God going up. I think they're related.

You have to be. Yeah. I mean, we've talked, you know, you talk about supernatural. It's like, I think, and I wanted to get to this, the other side of the coin from angels, of course, is fallen angels and demons. Yes. And on that note, I do think one of them made the primary objectives of the kingdom of darkness is to divide the family.

Absolutely. A lot of angels have daddy issues. Yeah. You know? The ones left. Yeah. Yeah. A big man.

Lucifer had some problems. Yeah. He wanted to be like his dad. He wanted to be worshipped like this dad. We were just talking about Judas and it's like Luke 22 and John 13. It says, and then St. Luke's and Satan entered Judas called a scare it. one of the 12, and then John 1327, as soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered him.

So Jesus told them what you're about to do, do quickly. So, I mean, of course, the supernatural conversation, you have angels, but the flip side, of course, is we'll fall on angels and demons. That's right. So what sort of research did you do in demonology? I have a whole chapter in the book on demons. And I'll tell you an interesting story. There's probably one of the most credible people, I think, on the topic of demons, a guy

named Dr. Richard Gallagher. Dr. Gallagher is a psychiatrist, which means he's a medical doctor. trained in psychiatry from an Ivy League University, teaches at some highly respected small colleges in the Northeast. He lives in New York. He doesn't break watermelons. He's not that Gallagher. No, no, no. And I have a quote from the former president of the American Psychiatric Association, saying Dr. Gallagher is a man of high integrity, high credentials, he's trustworthy. I mean, just extolling this guy. Twenty-five years ago, Richard Gallagher and his wife had two cats. And the cats loved each other. They hung out together. They slept together. No problem. Until one night,

the cats went crazy trying to kill each other. They were trying to kill each other. They are snarling and attacking and clawing and hissing and biting and just, they were literally trying to kill each other. And they had to pull them apart and put them in separate rooms. And they thought, what in the world was that? 9 a.m. the next day, the doorbell rings. And it was a pre-sad appointment, a Catholic priest was bringing by a woman to be examined by Dr. Gallagher psychiatrically. The woman claimed to be a high priestess of a satanic cult. He answers the door, nine that next morning. This woman claiming to be a high priestess of a satanic cult sneers at him and says, so, how'd you like those cats last night? Wow. Wow. Got his attention. Yeah. Dr. Gallagher's

now spent 25 years involved with investigating demonology and so forth. He is involved with, he's Catholic, he is involved with exorcism, not as a participant, but as a consultant, because he knows, as a well-respected psychiatrist, is this person mentally ill? Are they schizophrenic, or they have some other mental ill? Or is this truly a demon possession? And he has cases, he documents, he wrote a book called Demonic Fos. And he documents cases where this one petite woman who, was possessed, picks up a 200-pound Lutheran deacon and throws him across the room. He has one case where eight eyewitnesses saw a demon-possessed person levitate off a bed for 30 minutes. Like the movie. Yeah, that's a movie. He saw people possessed who were speaking spontaneously

in Latin, a language they didn't understand, who would spontaneously bruise and have claw marks on their skin. I mean, this is real stuff. Demons really exist. And when you think about it, Jesus was an exorcist. He was. He believed in this and cast out demons. And he knew the difference, by the way, between illness and demon possession because it said, Jesus went out to heal the sick and cast out the demons. So two separate things. Great point.

Yeah. I think in the West, it's always as well, it's mental illness. It's schizophrenia. You hear voices. That's schizophrenia. And I think there is some of that. That's right. We've talked to a few exorcists.

And they're like, you have to sort of, you have to divide these things out. But I do think that, especially in the Western Church, it's always like, well, you just need medication. You just need to. And there's a lot of these cases where you have. It's so strange. Demons. It's very interesting stuff. But the Bible doesn't give you origin stories.

So the Bible isn't written to skeptics. Right. And it's vague on this. My best interpretation of the verses that talk about what happened is that there was a kind of a premier special angel named Lucifer, which I believe means angel of light. And Lucifer, has daddy issues. He had issues. He had daddy issues. He wanted to be worshiped like daddy. That's right. In fact, it's interesting. When Jesus is tempted in the desert, what was the devil trying to get him to do? Worship him. So he craved me in worship. He wanted, and it was that pride that caused him to fall.

and he took a certain number of angels with him. Most likely God, after he created angels, angels are created beings. They don't reproduce, so there's not more and more of them coming. There's a set number of them that he has created. Maybe he could create more if he wants, but they're all created by him. They're spirit beings. And I believe he probably gave them free will for a period of time to let them kind of assess what do they want to do.

and you know Lucifer made up his mind and someone said yeah I'm with him and so I think that's the origin of Satan Satan's name means the adversary Right and there's many Satan's actually We've talked to seeologians like Mike Heiser would say There's many in the it just means the accuser

The accuser, right? So there's a set of what the Satan we're talking about from the New Testament Yeah There's a specific being And so is the dragon And we have these sort of these things but The serpent, the dragon yeah

I think we said is interesting I want of things that stuck with me when we talked to John Burke, a friend of our, a mutual friend, was he was saying that he believes that, and this is his opinion on free will, that like this life is our, and I've just stuck with me for whatever reason,

this is a testing, ultimately a testing of our loyalty. Yeah. So we have free will here. And so he can, maybe contends, there's still free will in heaven, but if we've made this far and we are Lord of the King, that we're not gonna, God knows we won't rebel

in heaven. And those are that happened, I think they saw, no only did they see the rebellions happen, but they saw the work of the cross. I think any sort of future rebellions They sort of teach each other. They watch us.

We watch, you know, we, we hear rumblings and stories of them. They're here to, like, sometimes protect us. But there's also this somewhat crossover. Obviously, they can, they can interact with us much more, uh, and broad, uh, permission than we can, them. You're talking about demons or angels? Angels, angels and humans. Yeah.

But there's been a lot of talk on our show that there is some sort of like, almost like we're distant brothers of some kind that we have a lot of similar. Siblings is what. Yeah, siblings. And, you know, there's some, some posthia, because there's stories in the Bible, like Genesis 6. Yeah. And giants are these, these officers.

What do you think about that in some of those stories? Yeah, I'm no expert on it. But, you know, one interpretation of that is when it talks about the sons of God and the daughters of men, that they're talking about angels who bred with women, human women. I don't buy that. And one of the reason I don't buy that is Jesus said angels do not marry. they don't reproduce their spirit beings. And would they even have DNA? I mean, I, you know, so I don't think angels were designed to marry and reproduce.

I think a more logical interpretation of that is that the sons of God is the line of Seth and the daughters of men is the line. of Cain. That's some theologians, now there's some problems with that too. And then some will say, oh, the sons of God are kings. And the kings are often, because they have authority or life and death or a local person and so forth. They're described

sometimes as sons of God. So sons of God, and then they are marrying multiple women and I don't know, bottom line, what the correct interpretation is. I wish Michael Heiser was still around because. Well, Heiser, yeah. I mean, we, we had them on. Yeah. And we did a couple of shows.

I wanted to interview him for this book, but he died beforehand. It was so bummed. I mean, he was sort of the impetus of the show. Oh, no kidding. And if we had wrote a book, the case for blurry, you know, and I think that, and I think we started. You could do a sequel called Blurrier Still. Yeah. We'll hit you up, Lee. We need to write a book. Help us write it. But we've sort of started with the data ourselves here and kind of worked our way through, like topics of demons, angels, giants, Bigfoot, all the things. You know, I think we've come to a conclusion.

There is an origin story for some of these things. It's just extra biblical literature that you have to kind of go into. Yes, that's true. And He did that. I mean, he built his whole career. Book of Enoch. Yeah, talks about angels and demons.

And, but, you know, as a Christian. There's a real good one out there, Lee, that we published. Yeah, somewhere here. So, I mean, back to the book, though, for you, what was most surprising? I mean, you set now. In my research?

Yeah, in the research. I don't know if this was surprising, but, you know, I never heard a sermon on angels. I didn't know a lot about angels, so I investigate them. And I begin to realize, based on that, several things, based on the story I told about the missionaries who were protected by the angels, based on the words of Jesus, when he was arrested, he said, do you not think I could call upon the father right now? and he wouldn't send legions of angels to protect me? Well, wait a minute. If Jesus is saying he could, if he wanted to, ask the father to send angels to protect him.

I believe as a Protestant that we don't pray to angels. The danger with that, I think, is that it can morph into worship. And you don't worship anything but God. So I don't believe there's anything. Now, there is some extra biblical stuff, and I think Roman Catholics do pray to angels. So I disagree with that. But we can pray to God about angels. And we see in Martin Luther in his small catechism, one of his prayers, evening prayers,

is, God, send your holy angels to protect me from the evil one. So I've started in my life as 73 years old, I've started to pray, God, send your angels to protect me and my wife and my children and my grandchildren and my ministry. And I think that's good. I think it makes sense. I think it's biblical. I never used to do that. Is it a change the way you think about spiritual warfare? Oh, definitely.

Okay. Definitely. I mean, oh, okay, I got to tell you guys story. Oh, my gosh. Spiritual warfare. Yeah. So I wrote this book. Did I have any weird supernatural encounters right?

No, not really. Nothing blurry. But then I'm doing a, yeah, then blurry came along. So then I'm doing a national live radio show on the Moody Network. Chris Fabry is interviewing me. He's based somewhere out west at his home. He's interviewing me. The studio is in Chicago, and it's a call-in show, live show.

Woman calls in from Florida, very well-spoken woman. And she says, you know, when I was a new Christian, I made some mistakes. One of the mistakes I made was I tried to contact my dead great-great-grandparents to learn about the afterlife. And she said, at the time, I didn't know that you shouldn't do that. The Bible says, don't do that. It was a mistake. I regret it.

But when I did it, it was like a static in the line. And there was almost a demonic. And as soon as she said the word demonic, we heard on this live show a guttural growl. From the call in? No, we didn't know where it came from. And I'm sitting there going, am I hearing that?

Maybe it's my earphones only, okay, it's just an anomaly. After the show, I call Chris Fabry. I said, Chris, did you hear that? He said, yeah. He said, we've already called the woman. Wasn't her. Wasn't the studio. Wasn't you, wasn't me.

Yeah. We don't know what it was. Yeah. But I'll send you the tape. That's crazy. So I've got the tape. Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline? That's bullspend.

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Go to LinkedIn.com slash campaign, turns the conditions apply. And you hear it? You want to hear it? Can you hear it? Yeah, you can hear it. Yeah. But it gets a copy of that. We'll run it on the show. Yeah, you can, yes, yes, I'll give you the copy. You can play it in the show. Yeah. It's a little soft, but it is distinctive and it's like nothing I've ever heard. It's almost a guttural growl. Kayla's in Tennessee. Kayla Yarned with Lee Strobel.

Go right ahead. Hi. Thanks, Chris. And thanks, Chris. for all your work I've read. I think all your books and look forward to reading this one. Thank you. I just wanted to call in with my experience. So I was a fairly young believer, probably, you know, three, four years in my faith. And my father had an incurable cancer and he was dying. And one particular night, I just started crying out to the Lord, why? You know, why? Why does he have to go through this? you know, how you do.

And I was off and on asleep doing this throughout the night, and all of a sudden it came to me. You know, I knew afterwards it was a temptation, but it came to me to ask my great-grandparents. And I was like, oh, yeah, a genius idea. They're already there. I don't know if they were, I don't know, I wasn't a Christian as a child.

I don't know if they're in heaven or not. But I'm like, they've already gone before us. I can ask them. And as soon as I was like, genius. I started hearing static and these voices. And I was like, it was like, it was asked Pap and Granny. It kept coming to me and asked Pap and Granny. And I was like, that's a good idea.

And they got closer and just staticky and different voices. And I could hear them getting closer. And I was like, ask them. I was like, that's genius. I can ask them. And all of a sudden it was like, not supposed to communicate to the dad. That's against God's word. Right when she mentioned the word demons for the first time in the show.

Yeah. It comes up. Satan can hector us. He can bother us. He can tempt us. He can lure us. Some people say, like, we interview Bob Larson, and he was saying that you can't physically be taken over, but they can still. They can oppress you. There's parts of you. They can. Well, they can, they can oppress you, which is pretty close to possession. Yeah. But to be oppressed is to be externally influenced. Yeah. And yes, they can. It's not like they're pulling the strings, like in a possession, right? Where they're sort of like they're. Yeah. Yeah. They've been they've, they crave embodiment. They're

spirits. They crave to be embodied. And so they will choose a body to become embodied and then they take control. What do you think about, I mean, so writing a book on this, obviously being a Christian, like, what do you think, what do you think this you would want to say to Christians about supernatural? Because we know what Paul says, right, this is more real than what we don't see or what is unseen is more real than we see. Yeah. We battle not against flesh and blood. The New Testament's pretty explicit about sort of the way. Yeah. And how we live. And how we live. And how we live. live, right? Put on the foot. They had the armor of God. Like, what would be your... I think Christians make two mistakes when it comes to supernatural, especially when it comes

of demons. Because the Bible says, you know, reject Satan and he will flee. He will flee. It doesn't say might, says he will. So we shouldn't necessarily be too afraid of Satan. We had greater as he was in us and he was in the world. God has him on a leash at this point, basically. We know his ultimate destination. So we ought not to get over. overly freaked out. But I think the two mistakes are to ignore it and pretend like doesn't exist or I'm not going to get into that because then we're not prepared. And the second mistake I think is to see a demon behind every bush. Yeah. And you know, the extremes, right? The two extremes. I think the logical things, as you said, the Bible does tell us to be prepared. Yeah, C.S. Lewis has a

quote about that. It's a good one somewhere. I can't remember it, but not smart enough. Yeah, it's so funny because I know the quote and I can't remember it either. All right. We're a good company. We should look at it. But I'm 73. So I got an excuse. Hey, I've just heard too many weird things.

So that's my excuse. Lee, what about when you, like, when you're giving a defense of like, you know, talking about Gallagher, for example. Yeah. He's a doctor, blah, 20 years. Why do we need 50 lists of accolades to believe what somebody says? Yeah, that's a good question.

I think that, you know, the evidence is evidence and is the testimony reliable? Is it coming from somebody who's trustworthy who's trained? Because we're skeptical. Because we're skeptical. And yet, if I have Richard Gallagherer researching this for 25 years and telling me what he's discovered and so forth, a man of his character and integrity and professionalism and so forth, I got to believe it. Because it just lines up exactly what the Bible talks about. Sure. I mean, it's not something that's contrary.

You know, the Bible says test the spirits. Yeah. And so that's our plum line. And so, you know, some spirit is not going to tell us to do something that's contrary to the Bible. If I have the Bible, I can know what my plum line is. And I think that's when we put on the full armor of God. Part of that is understanding scripture, understanding the Bible to the point where we can use it to fend off any attacks. I mean, I think human beings, like, as a year,

young kid, I didn't have a belief problem. It wasn't something that I, but I've run into many people that are like this. Yeah. And endless debates. I mean, I played music for 10 years and it was just like eight hour drives and a ton of debating and just this clash. And I was like, man, I am not wired like a lot of people are. Yeah. Where they, I mean, we see this in modern culture. Yeah. A video comes out. People look at the video and there's two different interpretations. And I'm like, We're looking at a video. Yeah, or is it AI? Is it real?

But I'm saying like before AI is taken over the last like year and a half, before that, it was like you look at it and you go, okay, something's not right about this. And everyone's like, look at it. And there's two interpretations of a video. Yeah. And. So in other words, two eyewitnesses, so to speak, who are seeing the same video and coming to different conclusions. Yeah.

And it seems as though there's something spiritual. And I think as a young child, I sensed that that like, we are more than just a biological creature. This whole thing is miraculous. But I've bumped up against the skeptical people a long time. And I think we started the show speaking to skeptics. Here's the data. We brought on the Bigfoot scientist who's like the foot expert and says,

look at the feet. You can't replicate these. I know there's like three people that know footprints in the world better than me. This I'm convinced by the evidence. But still, people look at it. Like the original big foot footage of it walking. Oh, that's fake. It's a guy in a suit.

There's always an answer. It's built into human nature. But when some people say, why is God so hidden? Why doesn't he show himself? Well, look through history at places where he has shown the evidence of himself in an irrefutable way when he parted the Red Sea. Yeah. How did the Israelites react?

They fell back into apostasy. Right away. So why would we think that if Jesus put in the sky, I am here, we would all say, oh, God is real. No, you know what people would say? Oh, that's probably drones. Yeah. They're doing that with drones now. It's an optical illusion. That's skeptics will always find something. I read a skeptic magazine I read. You would. That's great. You have a subscription to the skeptic magazine.

Yeah. You do? What's that? You have a subscription to skeptic magazine. I still read it. It feels like the punchlines coming. Yeah. Yeah. This is a real thing. Yeah. I interviewed the editor of it for one of my books on the case for Miracles. That's what you're in deep. You know, you're like, I actually subscribe to the magazine, all right? Nothing you're saying, I believe. And in one of the editions, there was a woman who was a medical doctor and a skeptic, an atheist.

And she said, what would it take for me to believe that there's a supernatural realm or to believe that there's a God? She said, well, if a chicken learned how to read and beat a grandmaster at chess, maybe then I start to think that something was up. And this is typical because I was an atheist too, you tend to ratchet up your skepticism to irrational levels. Yeah. Because I can find a reason not to believe anything. If you say to me, I'm Nate and I say, I don't believe that. Well, I'll show you my driver's license.

Those can be counterfeited. I'll bring my wife in. anybody can be paid to say something. Well, I've got me. You could go through everything and I could make it. You're like crisis actor, of course. This isn't real. I could make up any excuse not to believe that you're Nate.

And I think that's what happens. If you have, if you don't want to believe, you won't find the evidence to believe. And I think that's what the ancient religious people of Jesus' day, that's the core of the way they saw the world. Yeah. And the Son of God surely couldn't walk in. to the room. They couldn't even sense it. They couldn't understand it.

But yet this is the thing that they've been trained to see. And they're the most skeptical. They subscribed with Skeptic Magazine themselves. And so what is that? What is the difference that happens in a person you think that goes, I see now? Yeah. I've been blind, but now I see. That's a great question.

What is that trigger? And could it be the Holy Spirit, who is leading them? to something. They hear, you know, the gospel, it says, has the power of salvation is when they hear the gospel, there's something that opens their curiosity and makes them want to pursue it. You know, for me, it was, it was hearing this message and understanding it for the first time and saying, I don't believe it, but, golly, if that's true, that's huge. That has huge implications for my life. Maybe I ought to check it out. Sir Lionel Luckoo. I, I mentioned. He was willing to check it out because he was challenged by it.

Yeah. And I think God's got to kind of open our eyes to the reality along the way. I think that's our human nature. When you're telling the story, I think of Gideon, the story of Gideon. Yeah. And he's like, God's telling him to do this. And he goes, well, okay. Yeah. If you're really doing that and put this fleece out and it's going to be wet and everything else is dry. God's like, well, if you really mean that, I'm going to put it out again. Now it's got to be dry and everything else is wet. And God's like, gotcha. Doesn't he have the army too, Gideon's army where they he whittles it down was that getting it does and then they start leaving bibles and everybody's hotel room it's really crazy it's a crazy story i don't know yeah but it's interesting it wittles down to

thousands of soldiers down to 400 400 400 yeah it's like the original 300 story and you know it was like he needed yeah 300 believers yeah get all the skeptics out get the skeptics out get them go send him home yeah and we can we can weed out the skeptic that guy's drinking water like a dog then he's out you know this is a great story you know one of the one of the phenomena i talk about the book is where God, in a supernatural way, intersects with someone's life out of the blue. And they weren't even looking for God. And it's random. It's random.

There was a guy named Robert, multimillionaire, lived in Florida, narcissist, total narcissist, womanizer, drunk, gambler, lived a very ungodly life. Gets later in his years, he's standing on the beach in Florida. and he said, God spoke to me. He said, it wasn't through my ears. I heard it inside of me. And God said to me, Robert, I've rescued you more times you'll ever know. Now you need to come to me through my son, Jesus. Wow.

And he's rocked by this. And he says, I don't even know who Jesus is. Is this a swear word to me? So he called the only Christian he knew, Frank Gifford. I know if you know that name, former sportscaster. What a night football. Yeah. And so he calls Frank.

He says, Frank, I just had this experience. and who is Jesus? And Frank said, get that book the case for Christ by least trouble. That'll kind of explain it. There we go. Robert gets the book.

Robert has a radical experience with God. He is 180 degrees turned around. His values, his character, his morality, everything, almost instantaneously change. He becomes so on fire when he gets baptized. He tells his story,

and the pastor rips up his sermon and says, if you want to come up right now, receive Jesus and be baptized, like I'm about to baptize Robert. Come on up. 700 people came up. He couldn't stop talking about Jesus. When he died about a year and a half later, on his tombstone, thousands of people came to his funeral. And on the tombstone, he had at his request, it says, believe in Jesus Christ. Now, you'd probably wonder, well, who's Robert that thousands of people came to his funeral and so forth? Because you don't know him by Robert. You knew him by his nickname. Evil. Evil. Evil.

Caneval. Evil can evil. The great motorcycle there did a writer. Became a radical born-again follower of Jesus Christ. Yeah.

I tell this story. We became friends. He called me up to thank me for writing the book. So I'm in my office. I get a phone call. I say, hi. And the voice says,

is this Lee? I said, yeah. He said, this is evil. I thought Satan has got my phone number. Can he do that? Is that even possible? No, no, no. Evil can evil.

Oh, okay. I used to have your lunchbox when I was a kid, you know? Anyway, we became friends and radically changed by God. He wasn't looking for God, God. I mean, God just supernaturally. How do you account for that?

That wasn't something that was naturally in him. This guy was such a narcissist. He had two jets that he owned with his name painted on the tails. And he used to take both of them up, sitting in one of them, eating champagne or drinking champagne and eating caviar, just so he could watch his name flying on the tail of the other plane through the clouds. That is a narcissistic. That is like a dictionary definition. That was evil can evil. And yet totally, totally transformed.

He called you. He did, yeah. Is that in the book? Yeah, I do tell that in the book. But also from Frank Gifford is such wild. I know. Frank Gifford, Al Michaels, John Madden. Yeah. Oh my gosh. This is like my childhood, Washington football. Of course, Kathy Lee Gifford is his wife. And she was apparently there. And she said later, no, I was the one who said to go get your book. But Frank's the one that told. evil. What is the, I mean, I think a lot of times, like a big project, like, like, like, this podcast was like turned from an idea into a podcast because of Michael Heiser, right? That was the impetus of, of what be, put the episode one out. What about this book? What is the story, if you have one? Yeah. Is that a similar, am I on to the creative process here? Well, I'm totally off. I've written a lot of books. And this is one of the rare times when the publisher came to me

and barely got the words out of their mouth. They said, you should do a book that looks into the super, oh, oh, yes. I thought I've always wanted to do that. I've always wanted to delve into this stuff. I don't hear about it a lot in churches. And I've never, you know, really explored some of it. And so you hear about it in basements. That's what, that's what, yeah, there you go. That's where you need these basements sometimes. It's kind of blurry, but you do. It's, you to see it. So I embarked on it, kind of drawing on some of the previous stuff I've done, new interviews and so forth, and had the time of my life doing it. It was a great experience delving into, because my approach, I'm not the world's leading expert on all these 12 different

areas I look at, but I find the experts. I find the John Birx and the people who are the leading experts on things like, Kenner, Tom Doyle, and so forth, Tom Doyle. And I, and I, and I, and I, I asked the questions I had when I was a skeptic, when I was an atheist, to see if they can give good answers. And then my hope is that Christians will read the book and their faith will be deepen, but then they'll give it away to someone who's spiritually curious. There's an account in the Old Testament that really triggered it for me after I thought, maybe I should do a book on this. And it's a story in 2nd Kings chapter 6, where Elisha is being pursued by the Syrian army. They're pissed off at them because they tried to ambush the Israel-Israelite king, and he

foiled them. So they're pissed off at Elisha and they're trying to hunt him down. And his servant is freaking out because he figures whatever they do to Elisha, it's going to be worse for me. They're going to enslave me. They're going to kill me. So he's freaking out. So they're in a town called Dothan. And the servant gets up early one day and he goes outside and he looks and he sees the hills in the distance full of the Syrian troops. And he's freaking out. He says, oh no, my Lord, referring to Elisha. Oh, no, my Lord. What do we do? And he said, hey, basically, greater he was in us and he was in them. But that didn't seem to satisfy him.

So then Elisha prayed. And Elisha prayed, God opened his eyes. And God opened the eyes of the servant of Elisha. And what did he see? He saw, as he described it, flaming chariots protecting them, angels who God had sent to protect them. And sure enough, they emerged safe and sound from this experience. And what did that do to him? It deepened his faith.

It gave him courage. And so that's why I wrote the book to say, you know, when we understand more about this supernatural realm, that we're not crazy when we hear stories about angels and demons and things like that. I think it deepens our faith. But it also is a bridge to these other people who are into the paranormal and the Ouija boards and all this stuff to say, well, wait a minute. Why don't you look at this perspective? Because this is using the plum line of the Bible to say, is it consistent with scripture and so forth? So I'm an evangelist at heart.

My life mission is to drag as many people in heaven with me as I can. And everything I do is in furtherance of that mission. And that's what that book's about. Yeah, I love that story because that was kind of what I was referencing earlier. We told the story of the guy that came to the house and they saw the men in the house. That was the story. I couldn't remember. Yes.

But it's like, people will come, Ray. People will come. You know, like when I think about the field of dreams, I talk about it. That's one of my favorite movies. But this idea that there's some people who can see the field of dream. They see that they see behind the veil. They have interactions with things and it's only a matter of time. And they're sort of calm and comfortable. At some point you'll figure it out. At some point you'll see what I see. Someday you'll tune into blurry creatures. Someday you'll check it out. I think that's the cool thing if you read that story too is Elisha sees it already. Yeah. That's right. He Which is interesting. He's like, I see this. Let him see it, which is a really interesting thing about that aspect of what his experience with the supernatural guy. But he was also, you know. When the servant says, oh, no, Lord, what do we do? Elijah wasn't freaking out.

I said, look, you know, more of us. But it's crazy because it's like, you know, in that movie, he's like, he sees the cornfield and then he sees the baseball field. He gets a vision. He doesn't get all the answers. And I think so much of the Bible is those stories. Yeah. Of like a prophet or somebody that needed to do something. Got a little piece of the puzzle. and so faith is a piece of the puzzle. It's not the whole thing. And I think that we have such a modern skeptical view. Until I have the whole puzzle on my table, I'm not going to believe. The way I look at it is this. We talk about faith. I think a lot of skeptics say faith is believing something even though you know in your heart it can't be true. That's not faith. Faith. Biblical faith is a step we take in the same direction the evidence is pointing, which is logical. And we do that every day of our life intuitively. We take a step of faith. of a step of action in alignment with the evidence that we see. So I spent years of my life as a skeptic investigating the evidence for the truth of Christianity. And I see, say, 20 arrows of evidence pointing in a direction that Christianity is true. Now, there's some arrows that are a little bit of skew, you know? And I don't have, as you say, I don't have the perfect answer for some of this stuff.

But you know what? I've got these 20 arrows, dogg on it. And what those 20 arrows, you know, tell me is I'm on the right track and that some I may have to raise my hand in heaven and get an answer to some question. I may say Jesus, how does this our mean? We'll get you on the Gen 6 train, Lee. Don't worry about it. We know we'll get you on the Giants discussion. But yeah, I love that. I love that you brought that to the table because I've had a confession like I don't have a lot of patience with those types of people. I tend to go, man, you just don't see. Yeah. Yeah. Like,

you just can't see the evidence. It doesn't matter if this thing comes out of the bushes. I'm way more skeptical than you are. It shakes you. Like a Bigfoot shook you and said, ah, you still would be like, oh,

that was a dude in a suit. That's right. You know? I need a chicken who can read, who can be a grandmaster of chess. What are you talking about? Yeah. Well,

I love what you said, though, because I think like, like, what that kind of echoes where we're, I think we're running the same race in some ways. Like, the impetus of this show,

really at its core is that people have had paranormal experiences or they have questions about things in Christiandom that they don't get a, rest on Sundays. And our hope, too, is that they, they tune in to hear about these things and encounter the gospel. And we can, we can drag them as well all the way, all the way into the promised land. But I love that. I got to admit, when somebody asked me, hey, do you want to be on blurry creatures? I said, no. That just sounds too weird. Thanks, Pamela. It sounds too weird. And they said, no, these are great guys. They're great. You love them. You're like, okay. So I check

it out. And I'm looking at your stuff. I'm thinking, this is really great stuff. This is really thoughtful stuff. These guys are good guys. So I'm so glad that we got together and got to chat about this kind of stuff. I got one more question, though. So the biblical story, Elisha, what about the modern day story? What is the one story in your book that you feel like was the most, like the thing you can't put down, the thing you remember is that rattles around your brain at late a night or the one story in your book that really moved you the most?

golly. I think as someone who cares about people and their eternal destination, it's stories like evil can evils. Yeah. That, where there's a radical intervention by God that he wasn't looking for, but for some reason God intervened and transformed him instantaneously and so forth. And in an undeniable way, unanticipated, couldn't be something that he wanted in his subconscious. I mean, this is, I look at those kind of story, and I have several in there along those lines. Yeah. That I just kind of rejoice with them and say, isn't that just like I? It's like the dreams in the Muslim countries.

I love those stories. If there's one story that kind of encapsulates that, I'll do it quickly. But there was a woman, I tell this story from Tom Doyle in the book about, We call her Knorr, and she was a Muslim mother of eight, and she's in Cairo, and she has a dream where she encounters Jesus, and Jesus, she's mesmerized by Jesus and just can't, the love and the grace, and she just enveloped by him. And she says, why do you come to me? I'm just a poor woman living in Cairo.

Why do you come to me? And he says, my friend will tell you why tomorrow. And she's, who's your friend? and they had been walking along a lake shore and she was so mesmerized by Jesus she didn't notice there was a man with him and he says my friend will tell you she wakes up the next day she goes

to a crowded marketplace in Cairo and she sees that man from her dream she goes up you're the one whoa what are you talking about you're same glasses same face same clothes you're the one he said did you have a dream about Jesus last night yes he was an underground church planter who didn't want to go to the crowded marketplace

in Cairo on Friday afternoon because it's chaotic, but he felt like God had a mission for him. He went that day, but here's the corroboration. He opened his Bible, pulled her aside, and shared the gospel. That shows this was not just something coming from her subconscious mind, not that she would have any incentive to see Jesus could lead her to into apostasy and Islam and maybe a death sentence. So she had no incentive to have a dream about Jesus. But nevertheless, that's the external corroboration that tells me that this is more

than just wishful thinking. God had to orchestrate. He had to get up and wear exactly what he had. That's the other thing. I know. I know. I'm going to wear this shirt. I'm going to wear this shirt.

I'm going to wear this shirt. I'm going to wear that. Do we have a couple minutes left or no? Oh, yeah. You can keep going. I got one story from our church in Houston, Texas. Let's go. Where there was a woman, you know,

we have a lot of oil industry people from the Middle East, right? So we had this woman who when she was a teenager, she was going through some trouble and she called out, God, where are you? And she had this dream, unlike anything, she ever had. She said it was like a motion picture being projected on a screen. And it was Jesus. And I said, what did he say? And she said, that's not, that doesn't matter. That wasn't important. It was who he was. The love. So she had this experience. She didn't know what to do with it. She ends up

marrying a Muslim guy and he's in the oil industry. He gets transferred to Houston, Texas. And so she comes to Houston. She has another dream. It's unlike any other dream she ever had again. And in this dream, she's up to her waist in water. And there's a man with her open a book. And he's crying. And she, what is that all about? Well, her husband goes out of town on business. A neighbor goes to our church, Woodlands Church in Houston, Texas.

And so a neighbor said, hey, would you like to come to church with me? I know your husband's out of town, of course he was a Muslim who wouldn't want her going to church. But you want to, she said, yeah, I'll go to church. with you. She comes to our church. She sits in the auditorium on an aisle seat waiting for the service to begin, and she sees the man who had been with her in the pond. That's the guy. That's the guy. His name is Alan Splann. He's our pastor of baptisms. Alan comes up. They introduce them. She ends up coming to faith in Jesus. And sure enough, just like her vision, we have a little pond on our property where we baptize people. She goes into the pond with him who opens a body. And

Bible to read the verses about baptism. He's weeping as he does, and he baptizes her in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, just as her vision foretold. That's in our church in Texas. And I go, I love that. I love that. That God said, oh, you think you're going to close a country to the gospel in Middle East? Watch this. Yeah. And he'll do something to reach a people he loves. Yeah. This is the profound, the profound love of our father. Yeah. That he pursues us even, that he gives behind enemy lines, as Tom would say, like in just meaning in these strongholds of Islam, he's giving people dreams, right? And, and he's always pursuing. Yes. You know, it's like, we just have a, we have, we have, we have a daddy issues. We have a good dad. We have a good dad. And you know,

CS Lewis had a great answer to this question about the daddy issues. Yeah. And if you think that God's going to be worse than your heavenly father, he said, imagine what a perfect father would be like. He'd be loving. Everybody can imagine what the perfect father's like. Yeah. He's loving, he's gracious, he's kind. Your biggest cheerleader pulls you up in his lap and gives you a hug. That's the picture of God. Yeah. He's not like your earthly.

He is the heavenly father who is fundamentally different than your earthly father. Well, I think that is something this show's taught me personally, is that I saw the relationship between Jesus and the father the first time because understanding characters and understanding the supernatural, understanding there is a family in heaven. And that was the first question really that we asked Heiser. I remember when he came on our show years ago, like, what is this? What would you say? And then he said, Jesus, that God has a family.

That's what I would tell people now. And when you were describing this, you know, maybe think of like Abraham and Isaac. And what do you think at your age now? Do you think that you could have done something with that much faith as a young man? or has your faith grown, has your supernatural understanding grown to where you could listen to God to do something as crazy

as take your kid on a mountain? Time up. Yeah, he had tremendous faith. I mean, that's a good question. I don't know the answer. Could you've done that when you were 30? No. Could you do that now?

I don't know. Yeah. Do I have that much faith? I don't know. Well, I think when we talked about faith, I thought the Centurian, they were just like, he knew

he knew who Jesus was. And so he just said, you don't even come to my house. And my favorite part of that part is that Jesus marveled at the faith. I think that's something we can all describe. I think I found the C.S. Lewis quote. Tell me if I'm wrong, but he says, the supernatural has not been forgotten. The moment one attends to this, it's obvious that one's own thinking cannot be merely a natural event.

That therefore something other than nature exists, supernatural is not remote and obtuse. It is a matter of daily and hourly experience, as intimate as breathing. C.S. Lewis from Miracles. That wasn't the quote, but that's a good one. That's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah, that's the one I think.

I think it fits what you're writing as well. Well, the reason I wrote it to Isaac Abraham's stories is because I think that you become a Christian, then you start to live the rest of your life, and are we growing closer to God in a way that is supernatural? Right. Because we understand it, right? but we're still learning things.

You know, that's a great point. My son is a professor. He's a PhD in theology, professor at Biola University, the Talbot School of theology on spiritual formation. And how do we grow in our relationship with God to that point of increasing our faith over time and so forth? And he's taught me a lot. He wrote a book on prayer called When Prayer Gets Real. It's a very powerful book.

and so we grow, you know, I would like to think I would have the faith of Abraham, but you don't know until that moment comes. But he's an old guy. Yeah, he's an old guy. And he's gone through a lot. Yeah. And so, you know, when we were young, you know, I think that I was telling a guest yesterday taking into the airport, like, there's no way we could have done this show in our 20s or 30s even.

We're just barely at that point where it's like, I don't know everything. Yeah. And I don't think that a posture of I got it all figured out is kind of how. It's a young man's game. Right. Yeah. I think so. And, you know, God does not mind our questions.

He does not mind our skepticism. I mean, you look at the example in scripture where John the Baptist is thrown in prison. Yeah. And now he's, if anybody should have known the identity of Jesus being the son of God, it was John the Baptist. But now he's got questions. he's not so sure. So he gets his buddies together and says, hey, go track him down, ask him once and for all. Are you the one we've been waiting for you to wait for somebody else? So his buddies go track down Jesus and say, hey, John got arrested. Now he's freaking out. Are you the one? We've

been waiting for it. How does Jesus respond? They say, how dare John, of all people, have the temerity to ask a question or express a doubt about me? No. He says, look, go back to John. Tell him what you have seen and heard, the blind received sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. In other words, go back, tell them about the evidence you've seen with your own eyes, it convinces you that I am who I claim to be. Now, is Jesus angry that John expressed hesitation or a doubt? Didn't have enough faith? No, it's later he gets up before a group and he says, among those born of women, there's no one greater than John. John, the guy who dared to ask a question and have a doubt.

It's okay for Christians. And I think some Christians think, oh, you're going to think less of me if I express a question or a doubt. No, I'm going to think more of you if you're willing to talk about it. Yeah, you could have been like, bro, you jumped in the womb. Yeah. What else do you name? Yeah, that's right. Hello.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's like a dream when you're a kid, where you're a little kid and you have a nightmare and you wake up and your heart's pounding and you're sweating. And what do you do? You run into your parents' bedroom and you jump into the bed. And they say, what's wrong? What's wrong?

And you say, oh, I had a nightmare. And they say, what was it about? Oh, well, I had this three-eyed monster under my bed, and he had big – and then you start talking about it, and you start to laugh because it's so silly. That is no monster in my bedroom. And so that releases the fear that you have. And when we have a doubt and we keep it in, it can start to erode our faith. If we talk about it and say, what about these things? We learn and we find evidence that points us toward confidence in our faith. faith. So I don't think God gets angry. No. Yeah. The disciples were hanging around. He had to ask him, who do you, who do you say I am? Yeah, that's right. You've been here the whole time. We had a conversation last week with

Mani Rango. He was a pastor. I don't know if you know, you know, Mani. I don't. He's a great guy. Look him up. Okay. But he says that that is the beast nature that humans have. And that that Jesus was restoring our humanity. Interesting. That's a lost part of the gospel that modern day Christians. We act like the beast. We act like the animal. Yeah. And Jesus is constantly trying to be, restore the humanity of us.

And it was a great conversation about that. And I think that's what happened in a lot of what happened in Eden is we, we do have this animal brain when we think about stuff. And then suddenly it's like Jesus gives us our humanity back and we see for the first time. And yet we're, Bible says in Old Testament, we have eternity planted in our hearts. Yeah.

There's something in us. us, and we're made in God's image as distinct from the animals. Yeah. And we have eternity planted in us. And that drives us. It drives some people toward material success. I want my name to continue to live on. I want to put my name on a building, so I'll always be remembered.

I want to do a terrible crime, so I'll always be remembered. That's why John Mark Chapman killed John Lennon. He said, I want a piece of his fame. He wanted to be remembered. Wow. And so there's something in us, I think, that, that, that, wants eternity to be true. Right. Or there'd be more than just this.

It'd be more than just what I see in touch, more than this world. And I think when we see the evidence that, yeah, there is, that near-death experience, these corroborated things, you can't just turn a blind eye to that and say that nothing's going on. There is a case to be made that we can see the supernatural. I believe we can. And I think it should open up people's eyes and hearts and lives. to what that means. So what would you say to your younger self now that you're here and you've written this book?

You know what? What would you say to him? Evil Caneval before he died, we became good friends. And he said to me, Lee, if I'd only come to faith as a kid, I could have lived my life differently. I wasted my life. He told me that. So I wasted my life. I'm sure he became a cultural icon and a million.

I wasted my life. I wish I had found Jesus when I was. I was a kid and I could have lived differently. And boy, that's haunted me. Whenever I talk to young people, I tell them that. And that's what I'd say to my younger self. You idiot, why don't you check things out? God's giving you a brain.

Investigate this stuff. Is there any evidence? See where the evidence points. And I wish I'd done that as a young man because I did some awful things. I orchestrated the murder of an innocent unborn child when I was in college with a young woman who came to me for help, her boyfriend had run out on her and she was pregnant and she didn't know what to do. Ah, no problem. Abortion's legal in New York. I'll set it up. We'll get the money together. Don't worry. If the baby's in your way, you get rid of it.

And I orchestrated the destruction of that innocent unborn child who would do nothing wrong except getting somebody's way. I did some awful things. And if I had come to faith as a kid, maybe that would have been never never have happened um i know god's forgiven me but it still haunts you yeah and um so that's what i would say to my younger self open your eyes open your eyes now yeah god will help you if you open your eyes lee thank you it's uh it's been an honor and i will say like this is the book seeing the supernatural and uh there is one supernatural story that we never thought starting a bigfoot podcast that you would come on our show that that is that is that is that as a miracle in itself.

We'll call Craig and tell them about it. Yeah. Like, you know, we were just two dudes talking about the, like, things that we never thought that would ever branch into, like, the bigger Christian space. That's awesome. It's amazing. Thank you for being willing to come on our show. I'm so glad I did.

It's great to meet you guys. At a great time. And I love the fact that you're just opening people's eyes and saying, check this out. Likewise. Yeah. See what you think. We're in the weird, we're in the, heavy in the weird, the weeds of the weird. The woo-woo.

Yeah, the woo-woo. Exactly. But tell people where they can follow you, hang out with you, buy your book and all the things. Yeah. Leastroble.com is my website. I do Twitter a lot. I'm very active on Twitter.

All right. And so it's at Lee Strobel on Twitter. All right. Or X or whatever it's called. Yeah. All of us, oh, geez, say Twitter. That's it. It's hard not to.

It's ingrained in us. We appreciate it. Thanks, sir. Thanks, guys. Great to meet you.