The Michael Knowles Show - "When You Die, You See It" Michael & Near-Death Experiences | Lee Strobel

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

What happens when you die? Is there truly life after death?   In this gripping episode of Michael &, Michael Knowles sits down with bestselling author and investigative journalist Lee Strobel to explore the astonishing evidence surrounding near-death experiences (NDEs). From clinical death to out-of-body encounters and glimpses of the afterlife, Strobel breaks down the most compelling cases that challenge materialist assumptions—and reveal a spiritual reality science can’t explain.   Don't miss this mind-opening conversation on faith, eternity, and the soul.   - - -   Today’s Sponsor:   Good Ranchers - Visit https://goodranchers.com and subscribe to any box using code KNOWLES to claim $40 off + free meat for life!   - - -   Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song. Book direct at choiceotails.com. I was watching from the ceiling of the room in the hospital as they were trying to resuscitate my body. They were able to resuscitate her body. Her spirit returned to her body.

And she said, by the way, see the ceiling fan? There's a sticker, a red sticker on the top of one of the blades. Sure enough, on the top of the blade, here's a sticker just as she described it. What do you do with that? That tells me that when the Bible talks about the fact that when we die, our spirit separates from our body, at least for some period of time when a person is clinically dead, they're still conscious. When you have these, not just near-death experiences,

but even just broader, numinous experience, you think you encounter an angel. What's it mean? Michael, there is a certain percentage of people who go through a near-death experience who have a hellish experience. What have you heard? What happens when we die?

We have revelation. We have speculative philosophy. We have all sorts of accounts of it. We also have the accounts of people who've died, and they can tell journalists and thinkers exactly what happens to them. And then it's up for us to see if we buy it. I am joined by a man who needs no introduction. That would be Lee Strobel, best known for the Case for Christ, and of the new book, Seeing the Supernatural. And speaking of Case for Christ, that's actually a book that I first encountered when I was an atheist.

at Yale, as you were once in ath. Yeah, that's right. And an evangelist guy in the Commons passed me mere Christianity and Case for Christ. That's awesome. And I said, wow, that's pretty cool. Now I've got to, maybe 15 years later, I'll meet that guy. I love that. That's awesome. Wonderful to see you. God's

bless you. Great to meet you. You are a journalist by trade. Yes. Though you've got all sorts of affiliations, Yale Law School. You've got to downplay that one on the resume. Right, that's right. You were an atheist? Yeah, I was. When you were at Yale, much like me. And you converted later because of the preponderance of evidence. In fact, when I was in the

process of reverting an evangelist handed me your book. And now I'm just meeting you for the first time. That's so awesome. So you've written about a bazillion books. You're one of the most influential writers on faith, certainly in the country, and really around the world. And now you've got a book out on near-death experiences, angels, demons, mystical visions, all the kind of fairy, airy, ethereal stuff that our modern materialist culture doesn't want to acknowledge. Yes. And a lot of Christians don't want to acknowledge some of this stuff. Because we live in a culture in America where a lot of Christians are embarrassed by the supernatural.

You know, we want to be respectable. We want to be respected by our neighbors. And so it's okay if they know we're Christian. It's okay if they know we go to church. But I'm not in any of that weird stuff like angels or demons or anything. well, wait a minute, Jesus was an exorcist. So, you know, you got that going. And so I think a lot of Christians kind of downplay the miraculous, the supernatural. And, you know, I've been a Christian since November the 8th of 1981. I've never heard a sermon on the topic of angels. I've never heard one.

Wow. You know, so I think even for Christians, this is kind of new territory, even though eight out of ten Americans have a general belief that there's something beyond what we can see in touch and put in a test tube. Well, since the Enlightenment, the so-called enlightenment, it has become cliche to mock these scholastic Christian philosophers and theologians as the sort of people who debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. They mock this as though that were a stupid question. It's actually a very good question about the nature of angels and reality and the sort of thing advanced by some of my favorite theologians and philosophers like St. Thomas Aquinas, when our civilization, and when Christendom was really at its most powerful.

So you're delving back into the supernatural. I want to hear some of these stories. Yeah. Because I agree with you. Even, as a Christian, even I don't always get into all of this. And I believe in it. But I feel much safer when talking about natural philosophy. Or talking about, you know, deductive arguments for the existence of God in the abstract.

But when it gets down to like an angel walks up to someone and tells him to do something, I believe it, but it makes me a little uncomfortable. So what did you say? On near-death experiences in particular, what have you heard? Well, by the way, I agree with you that we need to be discerning because there is a lot of stuff that is counterfeit and that is not true and so forth. So we have to be discerning. My background being in journalism and law, I look for evidence. I look for corroboration. I looked, how do I know this is true? And so I was a skeptic about near-death experiences. I thought

that was kind of a new agey thing. Yeah. Until I found there are 900 scholarly articles about near-death experiences in scientific and medical journals over the last 40 years. This is a well-researched area. And what you find is that in a near-death experience, a person is clinically dead, generally. They have no brain waves, no heartbeat, no respiration. But they're going to come back. And during the time that they are clinically dead, they say later, I was conscious the whole time. And this is what happened to me. And there's a common core to what generally happens.

They often meet divine figure. They often have a life review with that divine figure. They often meet people who had preceded them in death and things like that. But here's where the corroboration comes in for me. often they will see things or hear things. It would have been impossible for them to see or hear had their spirit not actually separated from their body and they're able to experience this as an out-of-body experience. So I'll give you an example.

There was a woman who was dying, taking to the hospital in London named Maria, as I recall. And here she is in the hospital and emergency room and she's passed away. But she says later, I was conscious the whole time. And her spirit separated from her body. and she said she met a divine figure. It was like nothing she'd ever experienced. It was overwhelming. But then she said, I was watching from the ceiling of the room in the hospital as they were trying to resuscitate my body.

So she's watching all this. And then they were able to resuscitate her body. Her spirit returned to her body. And she said, by the way, see the ceiling fan here in this room? There's a sticker, a red sticker on the top of one of the blades. You couldn't see it from the room. But she saw it from her perspective looking down. And she described it in great detail.

Well, they got a ladder. They went up. Sure enough, on the top of the blade, and nobody could see from the room, here's a sticker just as she described it. That's the kind of corroboration I'm looking for. There was a little girl named Katie. I think she was nine years old.

She drowned in a YMCA swimming pool. Her brain had swollen. She had no respiration, no heartbeat, and so forth. They take her to the hospital. She goes to the emergency room. They're keeping her body alive. She's basically dead. But they're trying to, what are they going to do?

They don't know yet. Let's keep her going. She says later, I was conscious the whole time. And I met Jesus during this experience. And the doctors are skeptical. Yeah, yeah, of course you did. Tell you what, here's a crayon and a piece of paper. Why don't you draw for us the emergency room that we took you to when you were dead?

So she draws it just as it appears. But then she said, by the way, when my parents came to visit me in the hospital, I followed them home. And she described what her mother made for dinner, chicken and rice. She described where her father was sitting and what he was doing. She described how her brother went into his room as playing with a G.I. Joe Jeep and a G.I. Joe doll. She described what they were wearing, and it all checked out. What do you do with that? That tells me that when the Bible talks about the fact that,

when we die, our spirit separates from our body, to be absent from the body to be present with the Lord, our spirit separates from our body. And that certainly establishes, I think, beyond a reasonable doubt, that at least for some period of time, when a person is clinically dead, they're still conscious. They're still alive. You know, that doesn't surprise me at all, even from the standpoint of natural philosophy. Yeah. Because, you know, we're hyalomorphic creatures, body and soul, joined together. That's right.

I totally, totally buy that. But one of my main men, St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, has, I think, a pretty simply laid out explanation of why the intellect can't be part of your body. We have this idea in modernity that everything's material. And so what I think of as my intellect is just my brain. Just neurons firing off. But Aquinas says, well, that can't be the case because a substance needs to be. needs to be, cannot receive forms that are sort of beyond it. So like the eye, without the confusing Aristotelian language, the eye receives what receives

color. Yeah. The eye can't receive smells. The eye can't receive, you know, textures, but it receives color. What does the intellect receive? The intellect receives not only, not material things, but immaterial. Yes. Abstract ideas.

That's right. So it is not possible for the intellect as a body to receive that which is not material, therefore the intellect is not material. And I understand that because we just don't even think in that way anymore, there are going to be people who hear that and say, well, I don't know, I'm not totally persuaded. But that is really sound reasoning, and we've known it for all of history. That's very true. For my book, Seeing the Supernatural, I interviewed Dr. Sharon Diericks, the PhD from Cambridge University in neuroscience.

So she knows what she's talking about. And she said, here's a little mind experiment. Because a lot of scientists will say, you're just your brain. Just as you said, you're just a physical brain. And she says, here's why we know it isn't. First of all, near-death experiences. If just one of those is true, that shows. Yeah, yeah.

But she said, here's a mind experiment. Pretend there's a woman named Mary, and she is a world's leading expert on vision. Yeah, yeah. She understands how the eye works. She understands how the optic nerve carries impulses to the brain. She understands how the brain processes visions. And so she gets it, she understands the process, but she's blind. What if one day she received her sight?

Would she learn anything new on that day? Yeah, I think she would. That shows that the physical brain cannot account for the first person experience of consciousness, that we have a separate consciousness or spirit or soul that is distinct from our brain, but interacts with our brain. Yes. And I thought that was an interesting thought because of course she would, of course she would have new information. Because that first person experience is what consciousness provides. So then in principle, you don't need to be a Christian. You don't even really, you do kind of need to believe in God to think that anything has meaning.

But let's put that aside for saying, you don't even need to consciously believe in God to accept the principle that in a near-death experience or a death experience. Yes. You could perceive the room outside of your body. That's right. That part you can get to just through natural reason. That's right. And you say, okay, well, you believe these experiences because of corroborating evidence like the sticker and like the diagram. Yeah.

Okay. So we're there. We believe at least some of these experiences. What do they tell us about death, about life, about what we should do? Yeah. Well, they tell us, first of all, that there is more than what we can see and touch and put in a test to. that our life does, I think near-death experiences, as documented as they are, by the way, in 2009, a researcher combed through the scientific literature and identified 107 cases like the one with

a sticker that I mentioned, where there's external corroboration of the near-death experience. 107, and that's just touching the, that's just tip of the iceberg. So because those are true, I think we can know beyond a reasonable doubt that we continue to exist. for some period of time, at least, after our clinical death. Well, that's kind of important. Yeah. Because, first of all, it's corroborative of what the Bible, for instance, teaches. And secondly, golly, what does that mean for our future?

Is there an eternity and so forth? Because, Michael, there is a certain percentage of people who go through a near-death experience who have a hellish experience. I was just going to ask you about this. Because when you read about these stories, most of them, the time. I guess in the medieval Catholic history and even more modern, you get a little more fire and brimstone, a little more flames. But in most of the pop books about this, it's all, you know, I saw grandma and it was my puppy, maybe, I don't know, puppies. Okay, you know, great.

What about the negative experiences? There's, I'll give you an example. And one study shows 24% are negative, but I think what happens is a lot of people who come back from a negative experience, They don't want to talk about it. Many of them have post-traumatic stress from it. Many of them are embarrassed because I don't want to tell you I had a near-death experience. I went to hell. I mean, who wants to say that? So I think 24% may be a little conservative.

But I'll tell you a story about Howard Storm. Howard was an atheist, very successful in art. He had a tenured position at a secular university. He was chairman of the art department. He's visiting Paris, dies of a heart attack. So he's in the hospital. he says, I was conscious the whole time. And I'm standing next to my body, looking at my dead body. And some people from the corridor began calling Howard. Howard, we've been waiting for you. Come on. Howard, come on. So we followed him.

And they're walking these people with him down this long, and the hallway didn't seem to ever end. It went on and on. And it got darker and more foreboding. And they got, they started to get stern. And they started to get obnoxious. Come on. Howard, you're lagging. Come on. Let's go. Come on. And they start punching him and hitting him. Ultimately, they assaulted him so bad. He said, no horror movie can ever capture the extent of how they violated and hurt me. It was, you know, they gouged out his eyes. They ripped off his ears. I mean, so it was unbelievable. And in the midst of that, he called out, Jesus, saved me from this. And this orb of light comes and he's embraced and Jesus takes him away. Now, when his body is revived and his spirit returns to his body, this was such a traumatic and profound experience. This one's like some dream he had. This was so dramatic. He quit his tenured position at a secular university. He renounced his atheism.

He became a Christian. He went to seminary. Now he's a pastor of a tiny little church in the middle of nowhere, I think Kentucky or Oklahoma or somewhere, serving God. in a very humble way, it changed his life. Lives don't get changed by a hallucination or a vague dream. I mean, he had an experience that transformed him. Now, some people will say, wait a minute, the Bible says you were appointed him once to die and then the judgment. So why did he get a second chance? Because he wasn't dead. He was clinically dead, but he was going to come back. This is not

permanent death. And so I don't think that verse is particularly relevant here. I think God did give an opportunity to reach out for salvation and Jesus met him in that moment. Even the notion of clinical death has changed in the 20th century, which is why you now have this, I think, ethically dubious concept of brain death, which sometimes allows people to harvest organs that actually could be the immediate cause of death. But all of that to say, I remember I read a popular news story within the last 5, 10 years, said, we're learning that death is a process, not exactly a moment. And so, yes, he had all the markers that he was dead.

Yeah. But, I don't know, why did God give him a second chance? I don't know. Are you God? Where were you when I laid the foundation? Yeah. So these people have these experiences, some of which are heavenly, some of which are hellish. Yeah. What should we do with that in a practical terms?

Because, you know, I think God wants us to do specific things. Yeah. I don't think every religion is true. I don't think they could be because they contradict each other. So when you have these, not just near-death experiences, but even just broader, numinous experience, you think you encounter an angel. You see a really weird coincidence. What's it mean?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, it means, could it be that Jesus and specifically in scripture as a whole is telling me the truth about eternity? You know, if you want to sum up, in my opinion, the entire central teachings of the Bible in one verse, it would be Romans 623, says, for the wages of sin is death. In other words, the consequence of living a life, I don't want anything to do with God. I want my own God. And you walk down that path and you ignore God your whole life.

You don't want anything to do with them. The consequence of that is eternal separation from God, which is what hell is. But the verse says, the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, our Lord. In other words, he went to the cross. He paid the penalty we deserve for the sins that we've committed. And he offers forgiveness and eternal life as a gift of his grace. It tells me that, you know what, maybe that's true. Maybe near-death experiences are an affirmation that indeed, when we die, unlike what some secular scientists will tell you, we do continue to live on. And that's confirmatory of what scripture is trying to tell me.

Well, then, golly, I'm going to spend a lot longer time in eternity than I am in this world. I better think about what does that mean? What does that mean? Which road am I going to take in life? God's given us free will. And I need to make a decision and say, am I going to follow this path of God? I'm going to follow my own path. And God opens up that opportunity for each of us to take whichever path we choose.

Because it does kind of seem like people whistle past the graveyard, don't they? They do. They do. And yet, what other, at the same time, you know, the Bible says in the Old Testament that eternity has been written into our hearts. Something in us wants to live forever. And I actually wrote a book once called The Case for Heaven. And in that book, I interviewed a scholar who researched this phenomenon of people who try to be remembered. They have this desire for eternity.

And so they'll try to achieve some great thing like write the great American novel or paint a masterpiece or or to. to do something horrific. John Mark Chapman, I think it was his name, who killed John Lennon, he said why he did it. I wanted a piece of his fame. He wanted to live on. And so we see people motivated to try to achieve eternity in our naturalistic way, so our name will be remembered.

Put my name on a building. You know, I'm gonna earn a million, 10 million, $100 million and endow a building, pay for a building on a university, to have my name on it. Why? So I'll be remembered. I think that's part of this eternity that's been planted in our, so I think we desire it.

And I think there's evidence that in reality there is an eternity during which we're conscious. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice.

Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. Of course, of course. I like that explanation, though, that we know, we'll see us Lewis makes this point. We don't have desires that are insatiable. Exactly. And so we have a desire for God.

But even specifically on this point of eternity, the fact that we want something that impels us toward terrestrial glory, which is ultimately unsatisfying because Siktranzi Gloria Mundi, is evidence that, no, we're right. You're right, actually. You're right. You're just not totally perceiving how to satisfy that longing. You know what's funny?

They did a movie on my life back in 2017, and I was all excited when they told me we cast Faye Dunaway in the movie because she had become Catholic. Yeah, yeah. And she wanted me in a faith film. And so they told me, oh, my goodness, Faye Dunaway, Academy Award, Emmys, every acting honor, you know, great actress.

and everything. I was so excited. So I went to a friend of mine. He was like 25 years old, about your age. And I said, we got Faye Dunaway in the movie. And he looked at me and said, who? Who? Yeah. How crazy is that? We're going to be forgotten. I bet you a lot of the audience doesn't know who Faye Dunaway is. I bet they don't. Yeah. I mean, in my generation, that would be like saying today. I don't know who Taylor Swift is. Yeah. Yeah. So she was huge in my general. And yet now, among many people, she's being forgotten, even though she's still alive, still making movies and things.

And I think this is the phenomenon that scares a lot of people. They're going to be forgotten. And because they have a materialistic viewpoint, they don't believe in an afterlife. And you know what? This is all I got. And if I die, are you telling me that within five years, nobody's going to remember me? Right. Because do you, let me ask you a question.

Do you know the first names of your great, great grandparents? I know more about my up to the 12th generation great grandparents than maybe almost Anyone in the country? Okay, so I asked the wrong person. No, no, no. No, you ask the right person. Because I have a keen insight in genealogy. Yeah.

Going back to the Mayflower, I'd name my cigar company after the Mayflower, the sons of the American Revolution. I have a keen interest in this, and you want to know my answer to your question? Yeah. No. I don't know the names of my great, great grandparents. And so guess what? We're going to be forgotten. Some people longer than others, we remember longer than others.

The key, we're going to be forgotten in this world. Yes. But this world isn't all there is. Yeah. There is something to come. And that's what is planted inside of us, this desire for eternity. I think that's a powerful lesson from near-death experience, as well as deathbed visions, which is a kind of related area. Speaking of grandparents, have you heard of this subject, I'm certain you have, actually.

What's the phrase they use in the newspaper? Terminal lucidity. Yeah. Terminal lucidity, which is you've got relatives who have dementia, they're declines. They're declining. They don't know who you are. They don't know what end is up. And they were right at the end.

Nancy Reagan talked about this with Ronald Reagan. Right at the end, he opened his eyes, and he was totally with it. Looked right at her. Yes. I had a touch of this. My beloved grandmother died a couple years ago, and she was really out of it. But she was, when I was with her, she was, she caught up. Yeah.

Which I guess would be an argument that also for the intellect being distinct from the brain, dementia, you plaque on the brain, but the intellect is a little different. Yeah. She did something else that was really weird as she was dying in the hospice. She kept reaching her arms up. And at first I thought she was stretching because she's on a bed. But then I've heard other people do this. What is that?

That is extremely common. I have a chapter in my book, Seeing the Supernatural, about death, what are called Deathbed visions, which is basically what you're talking about. This is incredibly common. they went to researchers went to a huge hospice facility in New York State and told all the dying people there would you please tell us if you have a vision unlike anything you've ever had in your life we would like to know because a lot of people won't talk about it because they're embarrassed for some reason they're going to think oh I got dementia they're going to think I'm on my

the medication is too strong whatever it is so please tell us 88% of them had a vision before they died of what's to come and this is in the book of Acts. We see Stephen, who's described as being full of the Holy Spirit, who's about to be stoned to death, and he looks up, and he sees the heavens open up, and he sees the Father and the Son together. So it's biblical. But it is incredibly coming. I was having a dinner with Steve Green, the head of the Museum of the Bible, and some friends out in Oklahoma City. There were seven of us having dinner. And we said, how many of you have a story from your family about a relative having this kind of pre-death vision, four out of the seven.

Yes. It's extremely common. But here, I go back to corroboration. How do I know it's not just the product of their imagination or something? Or the brain is breaking down. Exactly. I don't know. Well, on one level, one team of researchers took 3,000 of these cases and analyzed them

in depth. And their conclusion is this is not, these are not hallucinations. These are not something conjured up by a subconscious mind. These are not medically induced or medicine induced, drug induced. There's something else going on here. But here's where the corroboration hits me. We have numerous cases where people in this predest vision will see what's coming for them, eternity. They'll see someone there who they didn't know had died.

For instance, there was a very well documented case of a woman named Doris in London. She's dying. And she sees it just before she dies. She sees a heavens open up. She sees angelic beings. She sees her father, who had died several years earlier, and he's kind of almost welcoming her. And then she gets this puzzled look on her face. And she says, wait a minute. Why is Vita with my dad? Why would Vita be? That makes no sense. Why is Vita there? And then she died. Vita was her sister. She had died a couple of weeks earlier. Nobody had told Doris because she was ill and they didn't want the shock to kill her. So they withheld the news that her sister had died, and yet she saw her in heaven. That to me is a kind of corroboration. My wife, I was telling my wife about, you know, when I'm

researching these books, I'm interviewing, my approach is to interview experts and scholars and so forth. So I'm telling my wife this stuff. She said, Lee, don't you remember what happened to my dad? And I had forgotten. Her dad died about, I don't know, 15 years, 20 years ago. And just before he died, she went to visit him in hospice. And here he is in his deathbed. She walked. in, he's agitated. And he says, where's Marge? Where's Marge? What do you mean? Where's Marge? She was just here. I was just talking to her, talking about eternity. Where is, where is Marge? She was just here. Marge was his sister. She had died two days earlier, but nobody had told him yet. And yet, here he is having a conversation with her on his deathbed. Something is going on there. And these deathbed, another

form of corroboration, two things. Number one, the fact that they're so common. argues for their legitimacy. Because if they happen once in a blue moon, then an atheist would say, oh, well, you know, hundreds of millions of people die. Sure, there's an anomaly from time to time. That's one bit of corroboration. But the other one comes from children who are dying. Think of this.

For a child of five years old, six years old, or whatever, what is their image of an angel? Well, like a cartoon. You know, big wings, maybe feathery, but certainly big wings. that's not what dying children see. In the Bible, Jesus tells the story about a rich man who had ignored the poor during his life and a beggar who both died. The rich man went to a place of torment. The beggar went to a place of bliss. But in verse 22, it says that angels carried him to that place of bliss.

And so often the deathbed vision that people have are angels coming for them. Now, go back to children who are dying. We have cases documented one particular doctoral dissertation about a little girl who was dying and she says to her mommy mommy Can you see them? What honey? What the angels? They're here in this row. Oh, they're so beautiful. Look at their eyes. Oh, they're singing. It's so wonderful. I'm going with them. And her mother didn't want to disappoint her. So she said, oh, yeah, yeah, I see them. 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 great detail because angels don't have big wings going to the past. In the Renaissance paintings.

Yeah, in the Renaissance paintings. So this was not something being conjured up by the imagination of this child. What did they look like? I don't have the account of how she described them. But it was not with wings. And that's very common. By the way, the most famous atheist in Canada, Charles Templeton, who was Billy Graham's pulpit partner, who lost his faith. at a liberal seminary, became an atheist, agnostic at least.

But he wrote an ugly book called Farewell to God, My Reason for Rejecting the Christian Faith. And I became friends with him because I did a book answering all his objections to the faith, called The Case for Faith. So I interviewed him, and we got to be friends and so forth. Several years passed, and his friends believe he came back to faith in Jesus.

On his deathbed, this was in the Toronto newspaper on the front page. his deathbed, he says to us like, Madeline, can you see them? What, Chuck? What are you talking about? The angels, they're here. I'm going with them. I'm going to have, oh, they're so beautiful. They're right in this room. You can't see them. And then he died. Very interesting. This is an extremely common experience. I, this is going to sound really weird when you talk about angels don't always look the way you think they would be. It's going to sound almost like a punch on it. That's kind of funny. But I think I have, we're told we entertain angels and wearers.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I could point to at least two circumstances in, two instances. Yeah. When I'm quite confident I entertained an angel. Wouldn't that surprise me? They were both black guys. Yeah.

You know, I don't know why that is. I'm not saying, but there was one time I've actually mentioned on the show before where I was, a short version of it is. I was on a subway. It was a young, young guy. I was an actor. Yeah. And, uh, I'm going on the show.

on the sixth train, downtown, Twin City Hall. I forget it was downtown or uptown, but it doesn't matter for the story. And sitting on the subway, read my Kindle, guy gets on, black guy, black girl, they get on. They're on together, they go in different directions, guy sits next to me, looks a little weird.

Turns to me, insists on strike up a conversation. Oh, hey, how you doing? Yeah, hey, yeah, man, what do you do? So, oh, me, I'm an actor. So, you know, that in a buck 50, gets you cup of coffee. And he says, he says, oh, no, Don't worry about that. You're going to be great. So, oh, thanks. He goes, what's your name?

I said, Michael. He said, I'm Michael, too. We're angels. And then this is the part that gets really crazy. He got on, forget which direction, but let's just say it was 33rd Street. Next stop is 28th Street, which is like the shortest block for the sixth train. He gets up, doesn't look at the woman he walked on with, gets off the train. No New Yorker would ever get on the train at 33rd Street, get off at 28th Street. You just walk. It would be faster to walk or in the other direction too. So anyway, that was the first one.

I've mentioned that before in the show. Here's another weird one. I'm walking around New York. It's around this time. I'm reverting to the faith. And so it's, you know, I've gone through a few years of intellectual convincing that God exists. And now I'm really coming back into it. And the whole experience was quite disorienting and blurry.

So I'm walking around New York and I'm feeling my thoughts. And my whole being, racked by lust, racked, as is true for a lot of young men, as I was probably 22 or 23 or something, racked by lust. But I'm walking alone. I'm not walking with a girl on each arm. I'm not, I'm not at a strip club. I'm not, I don't know, I'm not, there's no indication, there would be no indication from my body. Yeah. That I were, you know, thinking about girls or whatever.

another black guy walks up out of nowhere I walk faster in New York walks up faster than me walks right up to me goes hey watch out for women

they'll get you walks away interesting now you could imagine it if I were you know in in old time square actually before even

but like old time square I'm like by a porn shop right it was not that I'm just walking around Midtown like How do you explain that? Well, you look at the book of Hebrews in the Bible, and it predicts, as you said, that sometimes we will encounter angels.

We'll provide hospitality, not knowing it's to an angel. So the Bible foretells this. But in my book, I have a chapter on angels. And one of the stories I recount, an account that's been well documented, is a guy named John G. Payton, P.A.T.O.N. He was a missionary from Scotland. And he was on a tropical island in the South Pacific with his wife, sharing. the message of Jesus to these tribes people and the local people on the island.

Well, they didn't like it so much. And so one night, a mob began to form to burn down their cottage and kill them. Well, so they're inside. All they can do is pray. God, help us, protect us, save us. This mob is forming. They're going to kill us.

They're going to burn down the place. And then by dawn, they prayed all night. And by dawn, the mob dissipates. And nothing happened to him. A year later, he leads the head of that tribe to faith in Jesus Christ. And he's having a conversation with him. And he said, do you remember that night? When y'all came as a mob to burn down our house and kill us? Do you remember that? Why didn't you do it? And the guy said, well, who are all those men you had? I said, I didn't have any men. It was just my wife

and I. The guy said, oh, no, your house was surrounded by these big muscular men in white garments with drawn swords. There's no way we could have hurt you that night. What do you do with that? I think they were angels that came that God had sent. And it's interesting, as Jesus was being arrested in the Garden of Gisemite, he said, do you not think I could ask my father right now? And he wouldn't send legions of angels to protect me? Well, if Jesus has the potential to ask for angelic protection, we do too. And angels came, I believe, to protect John and his wife.

So people have these things. I had an encounter with an angel when I was 12 years old. and I was always embarrassed by this. Didn't tell many people at the time, but I'm making a sandwich in the kitchen. And this angel, I knew intuitively was an angel, he appears. And he starts extolling heaven, how wonderful heaven is. And I listened for a moment, and I said offhandedly,

well, I'm going to go there someday. And he looked at me, he said, how do you know? What do you mean, how do I know? I'm a good kid. I get good grades. I'm nice to my dog. I do what my parents say pretty much. I'm trying to justify my goodness as a means of getting to heaven. And he looked at me and said, that doesn't matter. And a two went down my spine. I said,

wait a minute. How could that not matter? It makes no sense. What are you talking about? And then he said, someday you'll understand. And then he disappeared. 16 years later, as an atheist, because I suppressed that thing. I thought it was a bad pizza. It can't be real. I suppressed it. 16 years later, my now Christian wife, who had been agnostic, dragged me to a church. And I heard the message of Jesus. And I heard that, guess what? Salvation is not based on, if we do a lot of nice things in our life. There is a gift of grace that God offers us and so forth.

And all of a sudden, I remember that dream for two reasons. That angel told me something that night that I didn't know. And secondly, he made a prediction. that someday I would understand that came true 16 years later. So here I am at my, later, I'm being ordained as a pastor, and all these theologians who ask you questions, just theologically make sure you're Orthodox and everything. And I'm thinking, do I tell them this?

Do I, because they're going to kick me out? They're going to not ordain me? And then I thought, well, if they do, I should at least, I should tell them. So I said, well, can I tell you something that happened to me? And I told them this story. And all these stayed theologians, their response was? Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. So, hold on. This was a dream you had. Yeah. You weren't literally making it. No. No.

There was one time, as I was reverting, I think it was in L.A. at this point, I was in L.A. I was in L.A. I had a dream. And there was this phrase in the dream, nuncta metis. I don't know what that is. What is that? I'm trying to Google versions of what I thought I heard. and it was, I landed on Nunc Dimitis, Lord now let us thy servant to part in peace.

So, this is, we, one, I don't know, I'm not that biblically literate. Two, I guess it's possible I'd heard, maybe it's possible I'd heard that. That's not an ordinary part of the liturgy or anything. Which, and my Latin is no good. Yeah. So, now, you're telling me, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, heard part of the Bible, and I've learned some Latin in my dream. I, like, I guess it's possible that I had heard it at some point and been unaware. Or no, maybe, maybe I just learned something

in my dream that I didn't previously know. It's, some of these cases are very compelling of angelic interactions. And, and, um, I tell this, report the case in my book of a pastor in Ohio who's car lost control of his car and it hit a tree or a utility pole. And the wire came down on the car. So his car is being electrified. His windshield was actually melting. This is one of this. I didn't read the whole book. It'll be on my list, but I have book lists going back like 10 years because I'm a slow reader. But as I was reading, I was doing a bit of a read of a book. This one spooked me. Yes. Yes. So the guy's in the car. It's being electrocuted. The doors are jammed shut.

He's in the car. There's electricity shooting through the metal of the car. He doesn't know what to do. He's praying, of course, he's a pastor. And this guy walks up. He's kind of a scruffy guy. And he walks up and he opens the door. And he takes this guy out and he takes him about 50 feet away and the car blows up.

And the guy says to him, look, you're going to be okay. The police are on their way. I can't be here when they get here, but you're going to be okay. And then he walks away and disappears. I have quotes from the news crew that reported on that case and the paramedic people. And so it's like, really? The pastor's convinced this was an angelic being who rescued him. So these things, and when you go back, the Bible says, we will interact, perhaps.

It could happen with angelic beings. But it's not something Christians talk about a lot. Right, because you feel weird. You do. I admit that. Even talk about miracles that take place. And in my book documents miracles from peer-reviewed medical journals and so forth. And scientific studies that have been done.

A lot of Christians don't want, you know, I'm not one of those weird ones. Yeah, you know, I believe in Jesus. I'm a good guy. But don't be putting in the class of these strange folks. Don't make me affirm that there are visible expressions of faith in the world. Exactly. So on all of the, I mean, the thing is, we could sit here, I bet just the two of us could sit here for hours, remembering these kinds of experiences that we've had that were so shocking

in the moment that we then, you just kind of forget, you could see a miracle happen. It's like, to me, this is a proof of miracles, you could see a miracle happen, you could say, wow, that's going to change my life, and then you just go back to being your rotten self. Right, that's right. But all day long. I'm remembering one. I was 10 years old. My grandpa, my beloved grandfather died when I was 10.

I was in school. I said, I've got to go to the nurse's office out of the blue. Oh, my stomach is killing me. I got to go to the nurse's office. I walk down the hallway. I make a right into the bathroom because I said, I don't know, I'm just doubled over in pain. This is so awful.

I can't even walk to the nurse's office. Then it just all went away. This is like 10.30 in the morning. It went away. so quickly, I didn't go to the nurse's office, I went back to class. I'm 10 years old, 5th grade. Go home that day, my grandpa died. The medical examiners think he died, about 1030. Yeah. Yeah. I have several cases like that in the book of people who have, you know, Dan Bonjino? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Dan was asleep at 3 a.m. This is within the last couple years. He's asleep at 3 a.m.

and he just wakened up at 3 a.m. by the feeling of being hugged like a mother would hug a child, just this hugging. And he freaked out. He went to get his gun because he figured, somebody's in a house, you know, I'm going to take care of this.

But then nothing, and he goes back to sleep. Phone call comes in that morning. His mom had died at 3 a.m. What do you do with that? You know, I remember in 1994, Back when you used travel agents, I had to fly to Canton, Ohio, I guess. And so I called travel agents, can you book me a flight? Sure, sure, sure.

You fly to Pittsburgh and you get on a commuter plane, takes you right across the street from where you're going in Canton or Akron. I can't remember where it's going. And I said, great, book it. So I'm listening to her type. Something in my spirit said, don't take that flight. Don't. So I said, wait a minute. Is there another way to go?

She said, no. She said, well, okay, you could fly United and fly to Cleveland or wherever it was, and then rent a car and drive for three hours. You could do that. And I said, I want to do that. So she unbooked me from that first flight, which was U.S. Air Flight, and puts me on United. Both of those flights took off at the same time from O'Hare Airport.

My flight arrives in Cleveland or wherever I was. rented a car, went to dinner, had dinner, got in the car, turned on the radio, And the news flash came over, that other plane had crashed. That was a U.S. air flight that crashed in Pittsburgh. 94 people killed. And that was the flight I was being booked on. Something my spirit said, take another way. Could it be a coincidence?

Yeah, it could be a coincidence. I don't think it was. How could you say it's a mere coincidence? I know. I mean, I think it was a prompting by God. Could it be naturalistically explained? Yeah, it could be. It could be just a feeling I had.

And, you know, USA or it had kind of a sketchy safety record before then. Maybe that was just my subconscious saying, eh, I don't like them as much as United. Who knows? But as a follower of Jesus, I've seen these cases where God has protected in ways that I think are best explained. If you rule out the possibility, like I used to, to do, rule out the possibility of the supernatural at the outset. Now give me your evidence. That's how I acted as an atheist. But then I said, wait a minute, just give me all the evidence

wherever it points I'm going to follow it. That to me is more logical and rational. So you know what the atheist is going to say right now? The atheist who is watching this, he's got this pulled up on one corner of his screen. He's got Reddit pulled up on the other corner. He's, you know, he's being all snark. He's going to say, oh, well, that's really nice. God, did you to switch your flight. What about the 94 people on the U.S. air flight? Right. What about them, Mr. Christian? Yeah. How do you defend your God then? Yeah. And I think the question of why doesn't God always answer prayers for miracles? Because he clearly doesn't answer them in ways that everybody wants them answered at that time.

Yeah, yeah. My wife has a neuromuscular condition. She's been in pain for 20 years. She will be in pain every day for the rest of her life unless God intervenes because it's an incurable condition. God has not chosen to do a miracle and heal my wife. She is a godly woman who loves Jesus. Why doesn't he heal her? Well, look in the New Testament. Miracles were not automatic in the New Testament either. Jesus didn't do many miracles in Nazareth. Paul had a buddy named Trofamus, and Trofemus got sick. Did Paul heal him? No, he went off on a missionary journey, he left him behind. In Matthew, the disciples are given the authority to heal in the name of Jesus. Seven chapters later, they failed to heal an epileptic boy.

Paul talks about a thorn in the flesh. We don't know what that was, but whatever it was, it was never healed supernaturally. So miracles were not automatic in New Testament times either. And I think one of the, to me, one of the simple answers is, wait a minute, if God were to answer every prayer for a miracle right now, we couldn't do science. Because science is based on predictability.

And if everybody is getting healed like this, right and left, right and left supernaturally, I can't do science experiments because I can't trust that you have a repetitive outcome and so forth. That's just one simple way of looking. And also God is the Logos, divine logic of the universe. So that means there has to be a kind of Logos that the universe is, in fact, circumscribed. And it's a fallen world because we sin against God. And God does heal that. He actually does, you know, quite gloriously in the crucifixion and resurrection, but maybe not in the way that we

specifically, yes. That Lee on a Tuesday afternoon wishes that God did it, right? And, you know, I believe that God will heal all his people, but it may be as a transition to the life to come because heaven is described as a place of no pain, no sorrow, no tears, and so forth. So will he ultimately heal it? Will my wife ultimately be healed? Yes, she will.

When she passed into heaven, if not before, she will be healed for eternity. And 5,227,000, 221 years from then, she's going to look back. Right. And I'm going to say, do you remember when you were living in that world, how you had that pain? She'd go, oh, yeah. Maybe? Kind of forgot about it. Five million years in the perfect presence of God.

It's been so overwhelmingly wonderful. I just St. Avala, St. Teresa of Avalo once said, in light of the glory of heaven, a life lived of torturous life in this world, in light of heaven, will seem like no worse than one night in a not so good hotel. You're right. I think we'll get that perspective, and heaven will answer that. But, you know, I actually wrote a book called The Case for Miracles, and I interviewed a philosopher with a PhD from University of Oregon, who's wife was dying at the time. And he, they prayed for a miracle. It didn't happen. She ended up dying. And it's a very profound interview. He's a Christian man, a theologian, and gives an incredible analysis of why aren't all miracles granted in the way we want them when we want them. He ended up writing a book about it called Walking Through Twilight, I believe.

Douglas Groteheis is his name. So, yeah, it's a legitimate question, legitimate question. And, you know, atheists love to raise all kinds of questions, which is fine. I did it too when I was an atheist. But to me, they're like spiritual sticking points, you know, and they're holding them up in their journey toward God. And often there's a good answer that can get them past that. But I always say, wait a minute, I've got about 20 lines of evidence. from cosmology, from physics, from biochemistry, from logic, from philosophy, from the resurrection,

I go down the line. I've got about 20 lines of evidence to point powerfully and persuasively toward the truth of Christianity. Yeah. And it's like arrows pointing in a direction. Now, a few of the arrows are a little bit askew. I get that, you know. Why does God allow pain and suffering in this world? That's a good, is that arrow, I think we have an answer, but it's a little skew? Why doesn't he grant every miracle when we ask for it? That's another one. But the overwhelming evidence points in the direction, I believe, of the truth of the faith. When it comes to the heavenly visions, are there any commonalities between all of the visions, or are they all tailored and personal? The near-death experiences? Yeah. There is a common core. What's important

is to separate how people interpret it, because you see it through the lens of your worldview. Yeah. So a Muslim's going to see something a little different than a Christian. But, so let's strip that away. Let's only look at what actually takes place in a common near-death experience. And that's been reduced by scientists to, you know, certain percentages will meet a supernatural deity. A certain percentage will have a life review with that deity. Meaning, you know, we hear it in the natural sense, your life flashes before your eyes. But meaning like, all right, buddy. Let's open the account. And what's interesting is you not, and everybody says this, you not only go through the things you did in your life that maybe hurt other people, disappointed other people, you can feel the impact on that person and how they reacted in ways you didn't know at the time.

So it ripples down. It sounds horrible. That sounds horrible. It is horrifying. And what is interesting, they say to a person, they say this Jesus who's with me, he's not condemning me. as I go through this, I'm condemning myself.

Stop this. I don't want it anymore. But he's, it's okay. It's okay. You've been forgiven, if that's the case. And so they feel the affirmation of Jesus through forgiving them for these sins that they've committed. So their condemnation is coming from themselves. They're feeling bad about it. Certain percentage will see dead relatives

or friends who have preceded them in death. So there's a common core. that typically takes place. But as John Burke has established, who's a researcher, studied 1,500 of these instances as a Christian pastor, he said, when you do strip away how people interpret him and look at what actually takes place, it's consistent with Christian teachings and the scriptures. This episode is brought to you by Welch's fruit snacks. Big news for your kids' lunchbox. Welch's fruit snacks are now made without any artificial dyes. A snack parents can feel good about and the same delicious taste

kids can't get enough of. All made with no artificial dyes. Try Welch's fruit snacks today. That thought is so horrifying. Yeah. I don't, if I had to see every, much less feel, but it did to other people,

every bad thing I ever did. Even if Jesus has his hand on your shoulder, it's a horrifying thought. I mean, I arranged an abortion for a woman when I was in college. And you want to see the ripple of that in her life? And it's going to be horrible. But if you're a follower of Jesus, he's forgiven us.

And we're going to feel his affirmation. And these people describe it. Some people say, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it. And I don't go any further. Other people endure it because of Jesus being with them and not being condemning. Right. Yes. Hamlet, in his despair, or feigned despair.

says, you know, I could accuse myself of such things that it were better my mother had not born me. Yeah. And we could all say that. I mean, you, you use one example, but I think, I don't know, you could, I'm sure we could all pick dozens and dozens, hundreds of examples of this all the time. Yeah. Wow. You couldn't, yeah, you certainly couldn't survive that if you didn't have, um, if you didn't, yeah, what do you do if, yeah, if that life review leads the other direction towards someone who has not received forgiveness through Jesus? That's a frightening thought. You need to go to good ranchers.com. Use promo code Knowles.

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You can get that beef that is born, raised, and harvested right here in the USA. No antibiotics ever. No hormones added. No seed oils. And when you go to good ranchers.com right now, it will get 40 bucks off and free meat for life using code Knowles. K&W. L-E-S. Good Ranchers, American Meat, delivered. No, I have a nuts and bolts question, which is we're sitting here talking about, you know, angels, perhaps speaking to us in particular ways. It's specific times.

Your car is on fire or you're, you know, a punk young man actor in New York or whatever, or anything in between. Or your mother hugs you. You feel like your mother's hugging you at three in the morning, which he dies. Or you feel like your grandpa is saying goodbye to you when he dies, but you don't know he's dying. Well, what does that mean? Are they really doing that? Can they do that? Is it God?

Is it something else that's figurative, but not quite literal, is what are the mechanics of it? That's great. You see your sister, your aunt. in heaven. What about your uncle in hell? Is your uncle in hell? What? Yeah. Nuts and bolts. Yeah. Beyond the soft soap and, you know, happy, clappy images. What's really happening? Yeah. I think one thing is happening is we're getting a glimpse into the supernatural realm when those things happen. There's a story in the Old Testament in Second King's chapter six about Elisha, the prophet. He was being hunted by the Persian army because they were mad at him because they were

trying to ambush the king of Israel and he thwarted them. So they're pissed off. So they're hunting him. Well, he's got a servant who takes care of him. The servant's freaking out because he knows whatever they do to Elisha, they're going to do to me. So they're going to kill me or enslave me or whatever. So he's freaking out. So he gets up early one day. They're in a town called Dothan. And he looks out and in the fields, he sees the Syrian army coming for them. And he says, oh no, my Lord, what do we do? They're coming for us. And Elisha is. says, hey, hey, greater is he who is in us than he was with them. But that didn't satisfy. Yeah, yeah, but hey, they're coming. So Elisha prayed and said, Lord, open his eyes.

Open his eyes. And God opened the eyes of that servant of Elisha. And all of a sudden, he saw the angelic army that was going to protect them. And with chariots of fire, as he described it. And that vision, and they were saved from this, they were rescued, they ended up living through it miraculously. That vision of seeing the supernatural, the angels that come to protect him, deepened his faith, encouraged him spiritually, gave him courage that he clearly didn't have at the time. And I think that's what God does when we get a glimpse of the supernatural, whether it's a deathbed, whether it's a mystical dream that's corroborated in some way, whether we see deathbed visions or other permutations, miracles that are documented and published in peer review medical journals and so. When we see this sort of thing, I think for a Christian, the practical implication is it deepens my faith.

And it gives me courage that, you know what, I'm really not alone in this. I'm really not. And you know what? I never used to do this. But as I research all this about angels, and I realize, and there's a difference between how Catholics and Protestants view angels, not a huge difference, but a slight difference. But I realize. The Catholic angels drink wine. The Protestant ones there. That's a good one. That's a good one. But I realized it is certainly permissible. And Martin Luther said it was a good idea to pray to God about angelic. protection. I'd never done that. And I've done it. Now, now I do it. Now when I pray, I pray God, send your angels to protect me and Leslie and the grandchildren and my children and my ministry. Send angels to protect me. And that's totally legitimate to do it. I never used to do that. But so the study of the supernatural gave me that confidence to do that and encouraged to do that. And it's made a huge difference in my life. You know, we have a new Pope, Pope, Pope Leo.

Yeah. A Chicago in. You know what? I got to give you some. something. I'm not Catholic, but when I see the Pope in a socks hat, I cheer. I'm sorry. Talk about, you know what, you want to talk about having hope in the face of adversity and great daunting odds, you know, a white socks fan. Be the Cubs or the White Sox, either one, but white socks more recently. Someone, someone on the internet recently posted, said, someday 500 years from now, a church historian is going to see that. And he's going to say, the Pope changed the zucetto to include S-O-X, successor of Christos. That's probably how those legends come up.

That's hilarious. You know, I saw a video of him the other day, and he was greeting some people, I think, in the Pope Mobile or something, you know. And it was a crowd there, and a woman lifted up a little girl, her daughter, to be kind of blessed by the Pope, and the daughter handed him a cookie. And so he blessed her, he took the cookie, and he tossed it in his mouth. I thought that is so, that is so human. I love that.

I like this guy. What are the stories that I tell you, obviously we're all very shortly into the pontificate. Yeah. I loved the signs right away, especially that he chose the name Leo. Because you mentioned praying for angelic protection. Yeah. Pope Leo the 13th, you know, the last Leo before this one. Last Leo.

He had a vision. He had a vision of a conversation between God and Satan and that God would permit Satan to try to destroy the church for 100 years. And it was scary enough to Leo. that he created a new prayer, the St. Michael Prayer, to the Archangel. And the prayer was previously, for a long time, said after every Catholic Mass. And then, I don't know, in the 60s and 70s,

they did away with it, but it's kind of coming back. And the prayer is, say, Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou a prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits,

who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. very hardcore, kind of masculine in an age of a feminacy in the church, and well aware of the spiritual battle that is all around us. I heard, I think it was from a priest who said, 20 years ago I had to convince people not to be atheists. Now I have to convince them not to be a cult. Yeah, yeah, because there's an awareness of the supernatural, but the people get involved in the paranormal, the occult, and so forth, very dangerous, very important to disqual.

what is true and what is not, what is biblical and what is not, the Holy Spirit's never going to lie, the Holy Spirit is never going to lead you into something authentically that is contrary to the Word of God. And so in my book, I talk about ghosts. And, you know, the technical definition of a ghost is someone who has died, but who refuses to go into the afterlife. And sticks around to kind of bother people or whatever. I don't see an example of that in Scripture. Right. personal opinion, I think the apparitions that people see and interpret as being ghosts are probably

demonic. Yeah, I think that's true a lot of the time, though this would be one maybe Catholic Protestant difference, which you see in Hamlet. It's actually the point of that first seen in Hamlet with the ghost of the fire. Is it a ghost? Is it not a ghost? He comes from the University of Wittenberg. But the one biblical example would be the Witch of Endor. And that's a good example, But it's interesting in the Witch of Endor, how she was shocked when Samuel actually appeared. Yeah, yeah. So for those who don't know, Saul goes up, even though he's outlawed, no divination, no necromancy. But then he goes to this witch.

He says, hey, you know, call up a ghost, call up Ghost of Samuel. And she does. And you kind of wonder, is she a fraud? You know, because she's surprised that actually works. She doesn't want to do it. And I think she was a fraud. And I think that she was so shocked that this actually happened that it's an example of her saying, I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. So, yeah, I mean, that's an interesting story.

And I have in my book several examples of people who have encountered people who have dead people who've appeared to them. Yeah. And some of them have some pretty convincing corroboration. So what's your, because I agree with you. I think most of it's probably demonic, actually. But in principle, I accept that there could be such a thing as a ghost, really just drawing from the Sandhiel and the Witch of Endor. But so what's your take? You say that it seems like there's corroborating evidence that these are ghosts? I think it's corroborating evidence that sometimes someone who is dead appears to someone alive. I have two stories in my book.

One of them is a business woman, business trips in a hotel. And her, I believe it was her father appears to her. And he had been deceased. and tells her, hey, everything's okay, and take care of the family and blah, blah, blah, I love you, and so forth. And then he disappears. Her son, who was with her in the trip, but staying in another room, comes up the next day and says, I saw Grandpa last night. Grandpa was here. He was in my room. He was at the foot of my bed. Is that corroboration that something was going on? Now, there are some Christian theologians. I interview one in my book

who believe, yeah, that could be biblical because of the Witch of Endor, the Medi of Endor story. Yeah. And because we see the story of Elijah, the prophet, you know, in the Transfiguration. Yeah, yeah. So those are two examples of some people say, okay, this is consistent with Bible. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, right, of course. Yeah. Transfiguration.

I guess you're seeing ghosts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are some Christian theologians. I interview one in the book who think, yeah. This is consistent with Christianity.

Others will say, wait a minute, if you go by the technical definition of a ghost, someone who refuses to go into the afterlife, those don't really fit. Yeah, yeah. All the sort of ghost stories are like spooky. Right, right, right. So, you know, I would be careful with it personally. I'd be careful. And I've stories in the book.

I mean, I investigate the ghostly apparitions. And there's some spooky stuff, no question about it. But what is that coming from? Is it demonic? Right. And, you know, let's face it, you know, Jesus was an exorcist. Jesus believed in demons. Jesus realized that there is a demonic realm. And I have in my book, an amazing story about a guy who's a very highly respected psychiatrist. So he's a medical doctor as well, trained in psychiatry. Ivy League educated, teaches at major colleges, very prestigious.

I have a quote from the former president of the American Psychiatric Association saying he's a man of great integrity, great learning. highly credible individuals named as Richard Gallagher lives up in New York and 25 years ago he and his wife had two cats and they got along great slept together no problem to one night they started trying to kill each other they're attacking each other clawing each other they're snarling each other they're biting each other it's like oh they never seen anything like it they tear them apart and separate room what the heck was that and 9 a.m. the doorbell rings it's a Catholic priest he had made an appointment to come to Dr. Gallagher to have him examine a woman who was with him who claimed to be the high

priestess of a satanic cult. And he was going to examine her to see if she's crazy or is she demon possessed or what? Doorbell rings. He opens the door. This woman who claims to be high priestess of a satanic cult sneers at him and says, so, how'd you like those cats last night? I mean, and for 25 years, Dr. Gallagher has been involved with Catholic exorcists. and documented things that he said, look, I'm a psychiatrist. I know the difference in somebody who's mentally ill and someone who's demon possessed. They ain't the same thing. And he has cases, he documents with one woman, petite woman who picked up a 217-pound Lutheran deacon and threw him across the room.

People who speak in Latin, the language they don't know. One case with eight eyewitnesses of a woman who levitated off a bed for half an hour. supernatural strength, knowing things that they shouldn't have known, there is a demonic realm. And, you know, Christians cannot be possessed by a demon because we're already indelved by the Holy Spirit. But they can hector us, they can bother us, they can try to lead us into sin and so forth. There's a very real phenomenon. And, of course, the two big mistakes we make is to ignore it and we're not prepared or think of a demon behind every book. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Those are two errors, but we've got to be aware. The Bible says put on the full armor of God, protect yourself, because they'll come after you. And I'll tell you a funny story. This happened just recently. I was doing a live radio show, a national program on the Moody Bible Network, and Chris Fabry is interviewing me remotely. And it's a call-in show, and a woman calls in.

Very nice woman, very well-spoken, from Florida. And she says, you know, when I was a new Christian, I didn't realize this was not permitted by God, but I tried to contact my great-great-grandfather who had died. And I realize now that's not something we should do, but she said, I tried to. And there was kind of the static in the line and almost a demonic feeling. And when she said demonic, I hear this guttural growl on the radio show.

And I'm thinking, okay, just ignore it. Yeah. There's nothing. As soon as the show's over, I call the host. Did you hear that? Yeah, yeah. He said, we called the woman, didn't come from her, didn't come from me, didn't come from you, didn't come from Chicago at the studio. I don't know what it was, and he sent me the recording. So I've got the recording. What you heard her.

Really? Yeah. And as soon as she mentions the word demon, you hear, is not real loud, but it is definitely distinctive. A sound like I've not heard before that is a... that happened to come when she mentioned the demonic. Yeah. I'm not, I don't know. I'm just saying, you know what? The demonic realm is real.

And if I was still an atheist today like I used to be and like you used to be, we should have been quaking in our boots. Right. Of course. We should have been quaking in our boots. It also shouldn't, like if one is reasoned about things, then this shouldn't be surprising. Like earlier we were talking about how the intellect is distinct from the brain.

That's right. The intellect is immaterial and the brain is material. Yeah. So, okay, if immaterial things exist, then, you know, if we acknowledge that we have an immaterial aspect as well as a body, and we're both of those things together, in our human nature, then, yeah, spirits exist, of course. Exactly. Of course.

This then leads me into something that's troubled me about people I know, in fact, including some of my friends. They recognize that there's something more going on. They think they've gotten glimpses into the supernatural. But not because of a near-death experience necessarily, not because of some religious ecstasy, but because they took a drug or something. You know, they did LSD or shrooms or something.

And they, I mean, I've talked to multiple friends who say, oh, man, changes everything. Because you really see beyond the veil, man. And I was talking to some friends about this. I heard one thing, it just gave me this peace because I wasn't really worried about sin anymore. Well, now, where's that coming from? Now you should worry.

Yeah, that's right. Exactly. I mean, certain things open the door to the demonic. You know, as silly as they are, Ouija boards. I think that's an attempt to contact the demonic. And they can open the door to something. I think drugs like that with that intention. How many people will take a drug like that

and will have an experience to lead them to the true God of the Bible? Not a lot. Not a lot. So you've got to ask yourself, who's really behind that? What's really driving that? When we have these cases, we mentioned earlier, of dead people appearing alive, what message are they giving? For instance, if Uncle Bob lived a raunchy life,

didn't care about God, was an atheist, a skeptic, and died, and now he appears to me and says, yeah, just here and tell you, everything's fine. Right. Everything's going to be okay. Wait a minute. Are you sure about that? Are you sure about that? What might have motivated someone to counter, in a counterfeit way, as Satan can do,

it says he can appear as an angel of light, he can counterfeit things? Wouldn't it be to his advantage to send a message to you from who you think is your father, or grandfather, whatever, telling you everything's okay, knowing that they lived a life where they rejected God. Yes. So, you know, during the Carter administration, there was a twin-engine airplane that crashed in Africa. Yeah. And the CIA wanted to find it.

Because I don't know why, but apparently it was tied to the CIA. So they sent satellites over to try to find it, and they couldn't find it. Yeah. Couldn't find this plane. So Stansfield Turner, head of the CIA, goes out to California, meets with a medium. She goes into a trance, and she writes down the longitude and the latitude. They feed it in the satellite, boom, there's the plane. Now, you go, well, does that mean mediums are legitimately seen into the supernatural and so forth?

Because the Bible says, don't consult mediums, stay away from that stuff. I think the reason is, wouldn't it be logical, that if Satan were to try to give this credibility to this medium? Yeah. And he knows things. He could give the lunche student latitude. And now next time something comes up, let's go back to that medium. Right. What about this?

What about that? And all of a sudden, she's got credibility she didn't have before. I think there's some ways you can look at some of this stuff and say it could be demonically driven. Certainly. Yeah. Certainly. Yeah. Does that mean the medium?

Look, some are frauds, I guess. Yeah. Does that mean that some media, at least, don't... Wow, they're nice. You open up a can of worms. Noman est omen, I guess. Does that mean that some of these people are, you know, legitimately seeing into a supernatural realm?

Yeah, maybe they are. They could. And maybe that's not great. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So all of these... I've never seen it really work.

out with a friend or an acquaintance of that where they say, oh, yeah, I just did LSD and it's so great and it's done, made my life so much better. I've never really seen it make anyone's life better. I've only really seen it make people's lives much, much worse. However, what about the people who say, well, no, I've had a supernatural experience, or at least a weird experience? I saw an alien. Oh, yeah. I saw a UFO. Yeah. Or I saw, I don't know, any of this new agey weird stuff, what do you, where do you place those experiences? I mean, I look at, the way I look at a miracle, which that would be, I think if a, or it would be supernatural, be super normal if something like that happened.

It would definitely be super normal, but what they would say, no, it's not supernatural. It's a natural being. Could be. From planet Zebulon 7 or whatever. Yeah, yeah, could be. What I would say is, is there, what is the evidence that is true? Yeah. Secondly, is there a naturalistic explanation that better explains it? Thirdly, how much evidence do we, is the evidence convincing?

Is it beyond a reasonable doubt? or is it interesting? Is it possible? Is it? And I think you look at, I mean, look through history. Look at the Yeti in the Himalayas. Look at Sasquatch. You know, look at UFOs.

Look at witches and all kinds of things. And you go, well, what is the evidence? I'm evidentially driven. And I want to pin that down. And I don't see convincing to me evidence of UFOs, Especially when that report came out recently. Did you see the one about the fact that they intentionally misled people in the military to believe that we have the remains of UFO aircraft? And don't tell anybody knowing it would leak out because they were trying to hide other things they were doing.

It's so funny. When this news report came out, I think I read it on an airplane. Yeah. And I've been saying this from, I've been a hardcore, the UFO is the alien, the, the, T's. it's all nonsense. And it's either hallucinations or our own military equipment or potentially even demonic. But I said, the one thing it's not is E.T. The one thing I'm quite convinced of it's not E.T. And I've been called a lunatic, a denier of the evidence of the Congress. I said, if you're in the government, and you already think the government lies to you anyway, you don't think they're potentially misdirecting or something. And I saw that. And generally, Lee, until this moment, I haven't bragged about being totally right about that on this show. But I did see that come up recently. And I think, boy, that explains a lot, doesn't it?

Because we have these very sincere people in the military. I was told by a high-ranking person that we have the wreckage of UFOs and reverse engineering and everything. Yeah, because that's why you were told. But it ain't true. I'm exactly where you're at in terms of your analysis. I think that's totally right. I think some of it could be demonic. I think some of it is hallucinations.

I think some of it is things that we misunderstand and so forth. I just don't see the convincing evidence. No. And I do see it intersecting with a lot of new age, Gnostic, stuff that alternately denies the divinity of Christ or key aspects of Christian doctrine. Meanwhile, you got the faith. Yeah. Ever ancient, ever new. Attacked for opposite reasons, as Chesterton observes, not, maybe not always fashionable with the spirit of the age.

maybe never fashionable with the spirit of the age, but it seems more reliable than, you know, some shaky video of the flying sauce. Yeah, and that gives you a plum line to measure things against. And we need that. We need, because there is so much junk out there. The internet is a cesspool of claims and assertions and blind faith in who knows what. And, you know, I worry about kids that are walking away with all kinds of stuff that's, wait a minute, have you thought that through? Right. You know, I was talking to an astrophysicist about what are the possibilities that UFOs could really be visiting. Yeah.

No. You know, I mean, zero. Zero. It ain't happening. So, I mean, I'm willing to have my mind change if the evidence presents itself. And I think that's healthy. I think, you know, I don't want to rule out anything at the outset. Show me the evidence.

Yeah. What does it show? Where does it point? And I want to go in that direction. and that's how I became a Christian, is by looking at the evidence and following those arrows toward the truth of the faith.

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at 9.30 a.m. Eastern from the Daily Wire. So tell me about the relation then between private revelation, which is essentially the whole topic of your book, is different kinds of private revelation and public revelation. You know, even in like, I love the Rosary. Yeah. I'm not bound to believe the story of how the rosary came to be.

I'm not bound as a matter of faith. I'm not bound as a matter of faith. I believe the miracle of the sun at Fatima. I'm not bound as a matter of faith. Yeah. I could not believe the miracle of the sun. I certainly have to believe in the Transfiguration. I have to believe in the incarnation, crucifixial resurrection.

So what is the relation between, you know, if you come to me, if Dan Bongino comes to me, says, it's funny, even reading that in the book, it didn't occur to me that was Dan. Yeah, I know. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. I said, wait, it was funny. So, okay, so Dan, now I've got to talk to him. Yeah.

So, you know, if Dan says, hey, I felt, I was hugged at 3 o'clock in the morning when my mother died. Yeah. I can say, okay, well, I don't have to believe that. That's just a thing for you. But what is the point of private revelation? What is the relationship? I think the Bible says test the spirits. The Bible's given us a plumb line.

And I want to measure any claim of a supernatural experience against that plum line. I give you an example. There was a guy named Robert, successful businessman, multi-millionaire, narcissist, extreme narcissist, womanizer, drunk, gambler, lived a very ugly life, very successful. He's standing on the beach in Florida in his later years, and he said, God spoke to me. He said, it wasn't through my ears. I heard him on the inside.

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. And he said, I was rocked by it. I don't even know what Jesus is. I thought he was a swear word. Yeah, yeah. So he called the only guy he knew was a Christian, Frank Gifford, the old sportsman. Kathy Gifford's husband and said, Frank, I just had this experience.

God spoke to me. Who's Jesus? I don't even know. And Frank said, get that book the case for Christ. That'll my book. He said, they'll explain it. Anyway, Robert reads a book. He is radically changed.

But it's consistent with scripture. That's how I measure. Was this an authentic experience he had? he had a 180 degree turn in his values, in his character, in his morality, in his attitudes, in his relationships, 180 degrees. The Bible says in 2nd Corinthians, when we come to faith in Christ, the old is gone, the new is here. And what is the evidence when someone claims to have a supernatural experience like that? What's the evidence of it?

And for him, it was a transformed life like that. And he couldn't tell enough people about Jesus. He went on national TV at a major church when he was baptized and told his story and then appeal to people. Do you know Jesus? Do you want to meet him? And 700 people came up to put their faith in Jesus at that moment. He died about a year and a half later. And on his tombstone, at his request, it just says, believe in Jesus Christ.

Right. I measure whether that was an authentic experience based on what the outcome was. How was his life? Now, by the way, you may wonder why we were baptized in front of a major church and why did thousands of people come to its funeral? Because nobody knew him by his name, Robert. They knew him by his nickname. Evil. Evil can evil. No. Yeah. You're kidding me. Evil can evil became a radical born-again following. Oh, yes. Unbelievable. In fact, he called me to thank me for writing the book. And I pick up the phone. I said, hi, this is Lee? And he says, this voice says, is this Lee? Is this Lee? He said, yeah. He said, this is evil. And I thought Satan has got my phone number. Can he do that? Is that even he did? He said, evil, can he be? Oh, so we became good friends. He was radically transformed. So when a person claims to have a personal experience like that, I want to see what does it lead to? Yeah. And for him, it led to a life transformation that was staggering. And so I think that was an

authentic experience. Yeah, I see that as two errors that people can make. the faith. The one is this Pelagian error, you know, condemned many, many moons ago by the church, which is that we, you know, can earn our salvation, kind of deny original sin, all the rest. But then the other is this, I don't know, Gnostic kind of error, which is that, yeah, I can have a radical conversion. I can accept Christ, and that doesn't have to look like anything. Yeah, and that's such an error. That's not how it works. If there's no evidence of it, that's what James talks about in the Bible.

I mean, if there's no evidence of a life change, then I got to question whether or not there's an authentic conversion that's taken place. Right. And so there needs to be evidence of it, because if God does not redirect you and change your values and character and morality and attitudes and goals, I mean, then I got a question whether he's really in your life. Of course. So then what do you see now, especially with younger people? Yeah. There's this, there was a declining Christianity for decades that we've all been lamenting. Yeah.

It appears to have leveled off. Yes. So I hope it goes in the other direction. Yeah, me too. This is especially true of young people who are not only converting and reverting. Yeah. But converting, because a lot of them were raised without religion. Yeah.

They're drawn toward more orthodox, sturdy, liturgical, even traditional forms of Christianity. Yeah. Why now? It's a great question, and I'm not sure I have an answer. I think you're right, though. There is a desire to connect with God, and many people do through a liturgical worship experience, through sacraments, through certain kinds of prayers and so forth. And I think young people are looking for something solid. You know, they look at the internet. It's a cesspool. And they're looking for something I can really put my trust in. I got a friend as a Baptist, and his mission is to travel the country, and he speaks to groups of high school and college kids. That's his ministry. And he does, and he said, Lee, I have seen more young people come to faith in Jesus Christ in the last three years than the previous 18 years of ministry combined. Yeah, yeah. I'm not surprised. It's a phenomenon. And I think that, I think this quest for the, um, the sense of concrete connectedness to God may be driving. people toward a more historic traditional worship experience. I don't know. I don't know the answer.

No, no. I think you're right. I think the solidity in an age marked by subjectivism and you don't even know what biological sex is and it's all just wishy-washy. The attraction to solidity is such a big one. And it's an incarnational faith. Yeah. So like soul really falls off a horse. Yeah. You know, and Christ speaks to him. Yeah. And says, why do you persecute me?

Yeah. So that, it's a reminder, I guess, that it's all real. Yeah. I guess this is my point, reading the accounts in your book. Yeah. And hearing these accounts. Yeah. Having had some of these accounts.

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If something like this happens to you, you think you see a ghost or whatever, where you encounter an angel, where you have a near-death experience. That means it's all real. And in fact, even if someone you trust... Yes, that's right. Has one of these.

It means it's all real. That's right. And you can't just go about your day. That's right. What's wrong with you, people? You look at the scientific studies that are being done. Yeah. A woman with a PhD from Harvard University, professor in Indiana University, secular university,

heard about miracles breaking out in Mozambique. Miracles tend to cluster where the gospel is just breaking in. Brazil, Mozambique, China. So she said, I'm going to test it. I'm going to investigate it. She sent a team of researchers in Mozambique. They went into the brush. They said, bring us all your deaf and blind.

So all the people are deaf, blind, or severe hearing or vision problems. come forward. They tested them scientifically. What is your level of vision? What is your level of hearing? They just did vision tests and hearing tests. They got that data down. Then they were immediately prayed for in the name of Jesus by people who seem to have a track record of God using them that way. And then they were immediately tested again. Was there any change? Let's test it scientifically. What is your level of hearing? What is your level of vision? Guess what they found out? There was improvement in virtually every case, sometime extraordinary cases, there was a woman named Martine when they first encountered her. She couldn't hear the equivalent of a jackhammer next to her.

After prayer in the name of Jesus, she could hear a normal conversation. Get this, the average improvement in visual acuity was tenfold. So they thought, okay, this is just an anomaly. Let's see if we can replicate this. They went to Brazil, another place where the gospel was breaking in. They did the same test. They got the same results. One, guy, one woman in Brazil couldn't see someone holding up three fingers from nine feet away. After prayer in the name of Jesus, she reads a name tag of the person praying for. This is a rigorous scientific study that was published in a secular, scientific, peer-reviewed medical journal, highly respected journal, a Southern medical journal.

And so in my book, I interview the scholar who did that study, and I say, what do you make of this? Well, you know, you're a little restricted when you're in a secular, you know, she says, is going on. Oh, gee, you don't say. Something that she said, this is not an emotional atmosphere or playing on people's emotions. This is not a televangelist trying to get people to send in money. Something is going on, and I think it is something supernatural. Do you know if that researcher is Christian?

She is. She is. Okay. Because it would be amazing to me, though I wouldn't be totally surprised. Yes, I saw the blind made to see, the deaf made to hear, and I don't know, I mean, I guess there's a greater power. Yeah. It's like, no, no, it's not.

It's in the name of Christ, in the name of Jesus. Exactly. And there's a team of researchers now who are documenting these miracles and publishing them in medical journals. One case was a woman who was blind for a dozen years with an incurable condition. She went to a school for the blind. She learned to read Braille. She walked with a white cane.

She married a Baptist pastor. One night they're getting ready to go to bed. She's already in bed. He comes, oh, he starts crying. Put his hand in her shoulder and begins to pray. says, God, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can do it. And Lord, I pray you do it tonight. She opened her eyes of perfect vision. She said later, I was blind when my husband prayed for me. I opened my eyes. I could see him for the first time. It's a miracle. And her vision remained,

I think, latest, over 50 years. This was researched by multiple medical researchers and published as a case study in a medical journal. That's important. That tells me as a skeptic, something's going on here. It's not some story you read the internet or here in the halls of the church. These are things that they're trustworthy, I believe. So those are things that I find particularly compelling. And those are the kind of stories and accounts that I try to focus on when I looked at what is the evidence for the supernatural. Yeah. And it's funny. I was talking to some friends about these experiences that they've had to. Yeah. I said, what does it mean? You know, what does it mean when someone? something like that happens. What does it mean when some weird coincidence happens? And the conclusion

I've come to, I'm persuadable, is, well, it's not so much even about the thing that happens, though that matters too. It's that God exists. And he's reminding you of that fact. Kind of like when C.S. Lewis says, you know, there are three levels of scary. There's the tiger in the next room who could eat you. There's the ghost in the next room who's not going to eat you, but it's like there are ghosts. That's scary. That's uncanny. And then the numinical. You know, this kind of ultimate religious awe and fear. And to me, that seems to be it. Yeah.

Is that the whole point, you know, the signs, a wicked generation doesn't get a sign. None but the sign of Jonah. Yeah. Pretty good sign. Yeah. Is it just kind of don't, wow, you're impressed the blind can see. Yeah. Yeah, that's great.

And everything. That is basically nothing compared to the fact that God exists. That's right. And his son is incarnate and crucified and resurrected. for the forgiveness of your sins. And like, that's all real. Yeah, that's right. I agree with you. I think obviously it was a blessing to her that he restored her. Yes, I don't mean to diminish that. Exactly. That's obviously wonderful. But it deepened my faith. Yes. It encouraged me. It reminds me that my faith is well placed. Yes. That does not make believe. It's not wishful thinking. It's not

legend. It's not mythology. This is based on solid evidence and facts. The resurrection is one of the most well-attested events of the ancient world, if not the most well-attested. We've got these documented miracles and so forth. It's just every time I come across one of these cases, it's just, I just kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, and my faith is strong, my faith is deeper. And I'm willing then to follow Jesus, even in difficult circumstances. Right. Because I trust that this is not based on wishful thinking, but it's based on reality.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The miracles are very helpful for when you have to get through those. periods where you don't see the miracles. That's exactly. That's exactly right. Lee, first of all, to everyone out there, get this book, seeing the supernatural. Investigating angels, demons, mystical dreams, near-death encounters, and other mysteries of the unseen world. Go get it. I can memorize the title. Memorize, that's a long sub-time. I don't think I can remember it. Marvelous. And truly a great honor that I've looked forward to for some time now, Lee. Thank you so much for coming up. Great to meet you, Michael. God bless you.

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