Lee Strobel: Possession, Miracles, Visions, and Encounters With Angels & Demons

27:10And so he's got things he's doing. He probably never been in the same zip code you have, but his demons probably have been. And they carry out his will, which is to pull people away from God, to discourage people in finding God and to drag as many people to hell with him as they can. Now, his existence, he's sort of on a leash by God at this point. His ultimate destination in the lake of fire is already predicted. So he has no future really, but he has influence and he has certain powers. And he and the demons are very intuitive. You'll think they know more than they know and they go after people.

27:55I tell the story in my book about a very prominent psychiatrist named Richard Gallagher, educated Ivy League University. I have a quote from the former president of the American Psychiatric Association calling him highest integrity, totally trained and prominent in his field of psychiatry. Of course, he's a medical doctor because he's a psychiatrist, just extolling him as an individual and as a scientist, as a psychiatrist. And about 25 years ago, he had two cats and they got along great. They slept together. They played together. The thing was fine until one night, the cats started to attack each other viciously.

28:39I mean, they're trying to kill each other. They're clawing each other. They're snarling each other. They're biting each other. It was unbelievable. And they pulled them apart and put them into separate rooms and thought, what in the world was that all about? At 9 a.m. the next day, the doorbell rings. And it was a preset appointment. A Catholic priest was bringing by a woman to be examined by Dr. Gallagher. She claimed that she was a high priestess of a satanic cult. And he wanted her to be examined. Was she demonically possessed? Was she just crazy? Or what is this all about? So at 9 a.m., the doorbell rings for his appointment.

29:13and Dr. Gallagher opens the door and here's this woman who claims to be a high priestess of a satanic cult who kind of looks up at him and sneers at him and says, so how'd you like those cats last night? Ooh, yeah. There's something going on and that took him on a journey where he as a psychiatrist who understands what mental illness is and comes to understand what demon possession and demon oppression is like. He spends the next 25 years as kind of the go-to guy in the medical realm for exorcists of the Catholic faith and has witnessed amazing things that he documents. And I quote him in the book, cases where we have a woman who in front of eight eyewitnesses levitates off a bed for 30 minutes.

30:08Another case where people are speaking in Latin and other languages that they don't know, where they spontaneously are bruised and clawed, where one petite woman picked up a 200-pound Lutheran deacon and threw him across a room. I mean, these are things, as he said, they go beyond psychiatry. He believes these are actual demonic possessions. Now, a true Christian cannot be demonically possessed. And the reason is a true Christian is indwelled by the Holy Spirit. He can't be indwelled by evil and good like that in the same way at the same time. So Christians cannot be possessed, but they can be oppressed.

30:50They can be hectored. They can be bothered. They can be attacked by demons. And there are some amazing examples of that. I just mentioned a couple of people who are hectored or bothered by demons. Now, for Christians, the book of James says if you rebuke Satan, he'll go away. So if you're a Christian, you don't have to be afraid that these demons are going to somehow possess you or kill you or whatever. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world, the Bible says. And so the Bible says if you shun Satan, he has no choice. He's got to leave you. So, for a Christian, you're protected.

31:42But I fear for those that don't have that kind of protection. There are cases of demon possession that, as Dr. Gallagher and others have documented, are corroborated in ways that I don't think they can be denied. How can you corroborate a supernatural event? I think when there's no naturalistic explanation for what occurs. So you have a woman, for instance, in front of eight eyewitnesses levitating off a bed for 30 minutes. I don't know what the natural explanation for that would be. That's right. So I think it points towards something beyond that. For me, as I investigate, another area I investigate in the book are miracles.

32:25And for me, if you have solid documentation, medical documentation, if you have multiple eyewitnesses with no motive to deceive, if you have no natural explanation that seems logical that can account for the phenomenon, and if it takes place in the context of prayer, then I think it's logical to conclude that a miracle has taken place. Yes. And there have been miracles published in peer-reviewed medical journals. I talk about one in my book. Here's a woman who was blind for 12 years with incurable condition. She went to a school for the blind. She learned to read Braille. She walked with a white cane, and she married a Baptist pastor.

33:07And one night, they're getting ready to go to bed. She's already in bed. He comes over to her, and he puts his hand on her shoulder, and he begins to cry. And he begins to pray, and he says, Lord, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can heal her right now, and I pray that you do it tonight. And with that, she opened her eyes to perfect vision. She said, I was blind when my husband prayed for me. She prayed. I opened my eyes. I can see. It's a miracle. That was researched by multiple medical researchers and published in a medical journal as a case study. What do you do with that? What do you do with that?

33:43What did they do with that? I think it kind of leaves it up to the reader to say, what's your conclusion? I bet they were upset by it. Well, yeah, it certainly does point toward a supernatural event. But here's what's interesting. There's a woman with a PhD from Harvard who's a professor at Indiana University, major secular university. And she said, I'd like to test whether miracles are possible. How can we scientifically test that? So here's what she did. Miracles tend to cluster in places where the gospel is just breaking in. And so we see them in China, in Mozambique, in Brazil, places where the gospel is taking root.

34:24We see miracles taking place in a disproportionate number. So she says, I'm going to put it to the test. So she sends a team of scientists to Mozambique and researchers to Mozambique. And they go into the bush and they say, bring us all your deaf and blind. So they bring all the people deaf, blind or with severe hearing or vision problems. They bring them and they test them scientifically right there. What is your level of vision? What is your level of hearing? They get that scientifically established. Then immediately, they are prayed for in the name of Jesus by people who tend to have a track record of God using them that way.

35:00And then immediately after that, they're tested again. Guess what they found? Improvement in virtually every case. In fact, get this, the average improvement in visual acuity was tenfold. There was a woman named Martine. When they first encountered her, she could not hear the equivalent of a jackhammer next door. After 10 minutes of prayer, she could now hear normal conversations. Well, this team is flummoxed by this. It's like, something is going on here. Virtually every person improves, some of them dramatically so, like Martine. Let's see if we can replicate it. So we'll go to another place where miracles are breaking in, Brazil.

35:41They did the same test, they got the same results. In fact, there was a woman in Brazil. She couldn't see me holding up three fingers from nine feet away. And after prayer for her healing, she could read the name tag of the person praying for her. Tucker, this was published. This is a scientifically rigorous study that was published in a peer-reviewed secular scientific medical journal, major medical journal, the Southern Medical Journal, published this. And I interview in my book, I interviewed the scholar that did that study. And I say, what do you make of this? And she said, something's going on.

36:21She said, we're not playing on people's emotions. This is not some televangelist trying to get people to send in their money. This is not some people at a predisposition for anything. Something is going on. And I think she's right. I think it's miraculous. us. It sounds it. And I think every person who's awake has experienced something that just doesn't have a natural explanation. 38%. I did a study. I hired a public opinion firm to do a scientifically accurate study of American adults. And I asked the question, have you ever had one experience, at least in your life, that you can only explain away as being a miracle of God?

36:5938 % of American adults said yes. And by the way, let's say 99 % of them are wrong. Let's say they think it was a miracle, but it was just a big coincidence. So let's just wipe out 99 % and say, no, no, no, you thought it was a miracle. It really wasn't. Let's wipe away 99%. Guess what? That would still mean there would be a million miracles nearly in the United States alone. So you're right. So many people have experienced something in their life that they can only attribute to being a miracle of God. The official story on 9-11 is a complete lie. The 9-11 report is a joke. You have the CIA following two men all over the planet and then eventually even to America, right?

37:46And you don't tell the FBI. 9-11 Commission, cover it.

37:56So what did happen? What did the government know? What did foreign governments know? There was a cover-up. Why? It's been nearly 25 years in its time Americans learned what actually happened. We're going to tell you. We're releasing one episode per week. You're not going to want to wait. If you're a member, you don't have to. You get all five episodes the day it drops. Right then, ad-free. Our first episode airs Thursday, 9-11, September 11th. You will not want to miss it. Join us now at TuckerCarlson.com.

38:33Hey, Chicago. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits. Handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Croc store today. When Jesus performs miracles, healing people, making the lame walk, fixing the man with the withered hand, even when he casts out demons from the man in the cemetery on the Sea of Galilee, the reaction he gets from particularly religious authorities, the Pharisees, they hate it.

39:24Yes. They hate it. Yes, they do. It's funny you say that. Why is that? Well, I wrote a novel once, fiction, book of fiction. It was like a John Grisham thriller. Nobody read it. It was a big bomb. Nobody bought my book. But in that book, I have a politically ambitious pastor. And there's a miracle. Is there anything worse? Yeah, that's right. And there's a miracle that happens in his congregation. And a reporter comes to question him about it. And the reporter's thinking, oh, my gosh, the evidence is overwhelming. And the pastor is downplaying it. No, no, no, no, no. That's just a coincidence.

40:02That can't be true. The pastor's true. Why? Because he wants to be—he doesn't want to be seen as being weird by the community at large, and it would poison his political chances. So there is something true to that in Americans that we tend to suppress it. Yeah, but I mean, this is an account from 2 ,000 years ago. no Americans in the New Testament, and they had the same reaction. But they did not like Jesus. They did not like his message. They did not like who he was. I get it. I think they'd be happy that the lame man can walk after 30 years. At least they could say, hey, good for you. That's great.

40:36By the way, we don't like this Jesus guy. But no, they didn't. They just said, we don't like this Jesus guy. No, actually, they plotted to kill the man he healed. Yeah, exactly. So there's a couple references, at least a couple references, in the New Testament to Satan being the ruler of the earth? Yes. What does that mean? It means that in this realm, he in many ways has his way. In other words, he has access to be able to influence people and point them away from the one true hope that there is, which is God. And so he prowls about, as the Bible says, as a lion, hoping to tear people apart spiritually.

41:20I mean, if that's not true, then explain the First World War. Yeah. I mean, there is just no, there's no explanation, even now, over a hundred years later, for why that war started. Oh, you know, Archduke Ferdinand got shot in Sarajevo. Really? Okay, that's not a real explanation, actually. Why did Christian Europe commit suicide? Yeah. And there are many other wars and many other tragedies in all of our lives. We're like, that doesn't make any sense. That's clearly supernatural forces are acting on people. I agree. And so what I try to do is say, okay, what evidence is there that there's more than what we can see and touch?

42:03And because I'm fascinated by this. And the reason I say that, Tucker, is because if this is true, if demons do exist, we ought to be heads up about it. Because the two biggest mistakes we can make about the demonic realm, number one, is to deny that they exist. And number two, to see a demon behind every bush and think they're more powerful than they are. They're both problems. But I think the biggest problem in our culture is to deny that there is a demonic realm, pretend like there isn't. So what are the hallmarks of it then? Well, I think some things you mentioned, we see manifestations of it in ways that defy natural explanations.

42:39And I think that's probably the best way of— Disorder, distraction, chaos, violence, hate, division. And you think if Satan were smart, which he is, would he go around the country and around the world trying to possess or bother average everyday people? Well, you know what? Much more efficient to go to Hollywood and to influence a bunch of people there who are very influential in, let's say, the entertainment industry. And let's say he encourages them to create films and television shows that are funny and that are creative and they're fun. But there's an underlying message to them that there's a normalization of immoral activity that makes it normal.

43:27Because, you know, when we laugh, it opens us up to various possibilities. When we laugh, our defenses come down. So I'm thinking of a wonderful, funny TV show like Friends. Remember Friends, the TV show? It was on TV for years. Very popular show. Only American who never saw it, but yeah. But underlying that is a very ugly sexual ethic that normalizes multiple sexual partners and that sort of thing. The kind of thing that Satan would love to inculcate into American culture. And you know what? I think it's much more efficient for Satan to influence movie makers and TV makers in Hollywood to create products that feed us stuff that without us even realizing it, open us up to the occult, open us up to immoral activity, normalize it in ways that, well, if Monica can do that on Friends, I can certainly have sex on the first date with this guy I meet.

44:24So the way I as a non-theological ignorant person try and figure out whether something's good or bad, because it is an open question very often. Yeah. Is that good or bad? I'm not sure. Yeah. Are the people doing it at peace, joyful, happy? Yeah. Are they tormented? Yeah. And I know a lot of people in Hollywood, a lot of people I like actually, not too many happy people. Yeah. So really tormented people. It's true. For real. Yeah. String of wrecked relationships, kids who hate them, trans kids, drug problems. Like there's so much of that. Do you think that's a fair way to assess? I think because it is logical that if Satan were to try to influence a culture in a mass way, that that is a logical way that he would do it.

45:08And oh, guess what? By the way, look at all the dysfunction we see in that community. It does seem to match up. So if evil is acting through you, you are harmed too. Generally, I would say yes. You're going to be someone who's trying to influence others. You may not realize the full reason why. But it destroys you. Yeah, it does destroy you. It certainly seems to. Yeah, I think so. God created us so we could have a relationship with him, so he taught us how we can live in a way that maximizes who we are. And when we stray from that in egregious ways, as many people have and do, there are implications for us.

45:54If I were trying to subvert and destroy, I would go after religious leaders. Yeah. I'd have them like molest kids or get freaky sex lives or steal money from the church. Yes. And I've always noticed that the leadership of Christian churches, numerically, way more likely to be screwed up than the people in the pews. Interesting. Do you know what I mean? You see these sex scandals with pastors and you're like, how many people who are going to church every Sunday have sex lives like that? Probably not very many, but a pretty high percentage of pastors. And I feel like that is outside influence. Like teachers too.

46:30Teachers who young kids look up to. You can imagine when you were kindergarten, first grade, second grade, you looked up to your teacher. Not one time. There's not one teacher I liked. Oh, really? Oh, I sure did. I never know. I felt it was an authoritarian situation. I was totally opposed from kindergarten on until I left college. There was not one day where I respected or liked any of them, not a single one. That is so funny. That is so funny. I happened to go to public school growing up. And yet back then in the 50s and 60s, most of the teachers are Christians. Yeah. And so, no, I had some wonderful teachers that taught me great lessons about life.

47:09You grew up in a better America than I did. In Southern California in the 70s, I thought they were all buffoons, freaks. I wasn't taking orders from them. I really disliked them. Sorry, excuse me. That's funny. Sorry. But if you want to lead people astray, you subvert their leaders, I guess. Yes, yes, very much so. I mean, yeah, just put yourself in Satan's place. How are you going to impact the maximum number of people? You're going to want to go after leaders. You're going to want to go after religious leaders. You're going to want to go after children. You're going to, you know, and influence them at a young age.

47:48Well, you see all of that. I often think this is such a wonderful country despite all its problems. I'm totally convinced it's the best country having been to a lot of countries. Yeah. But our leadership is the worst. Yeah. They're the worst. They're like the worst people I've ever met. And maybe that's not accidental. Yeah. I mean, could it be, I'll just raise the question, could it be that some people have received some assistance from demonic. Certainly seems that way. In terms of achieving what they've achieved. How many happy, I don't know how many political leaders you know, but how many happy ones have you met?

48:23Gosh, not a lot I trust, put it that way. Right, but they're all like tormented, sweaty and nervous and afraid. Don't you think those are signs? I do. I do. And you look at if Satan's going to go after children, what is all this stuff about libraries doing children's readings and drag shows to little kids? Why? Why would that happen? You know what? Because if you can capture the mind of a child very young, it could influence them for the rest of their life. What happens? Because we put up with that. Yeah, we do. A healthy society would not put up with that. That's true. For five minutes. That's true.

48:59Yeah. Sorry, they'd drive them out of the temple immediately with a whip. Right. Sorry, excuse me. So you think that you believe that demons roam the earth. Yes. How do you protect yourself? The Bible talks about, in Ephesians, talks about the full armor of God. And I talk about this in a book. I have half a chapter that looks at ways that we can protect ourselves. I think the key number one way is to be knowledgeable about Scripture. Because if the Bible is really from God, then that is the plumb line of truth. And if it's the plumb line of truth, we can measure everything against it. And so if we're tempted by something that violates that plumb line of truth, then we can be assured that's not from God.

49:46And so I think being familiar with what are the teachings of the Bible so that we can deter any effects, any attempts by Satan to lead us down a path that's clearly not biblical. So I think that's probably the number one way. I think prayer is important. I think honestly, and I say this granted as an evangelist who wants to drag as many people to heaven with me as I can. That's my life goal now as a former atheist. I will say the best way to protect yourself is to come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Because if you are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, you can't be possessed by Satan.

50:27And you can tell Satan to flee, and the Bible says he will flee. What is the Holy Spirit? Holy Spirit, you know, the God is one what and three who's. The Bible teaches there is one God. That's clear. But it also teaches that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. And so we have three, we have one what, which is God, and three persons. And so the Holy Spirit, being disembodied and so forth, comes into the life of someone when they repent of their sin, receive forgiveness through Christ. John 1, 12 says, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name.

51:10But in practical terms, like what is the Holy Spirit? So the Holy Spirit comes into you, then what happens? Yeah, the Holy Spirit indwells you. Now you've got a plumb line inside of you, so to speak. And you recognize, I'm sure you see things in your life now as a Christian that you did before you were a Christian. You say, why did I even do that? What was I messing with that? I certainly have those examples. because now being indwelled by the Holy Spirit as a follower of Jesus, I have that plumb line to tell me what's godly and what's not. And so it aids our conscience in understanding that. And by being indwelled by the Holy Spirit, it means we cannot be possessed by Satan as we see these demon possessions.

51:53And those are increasing in numbers. The Catholic Church has just added a whole bunch of people who are trained in exorcisms. You see in charismatic ministries, deliverance ministries, I think we're seeing an increase in demonic activity and in demons hectoring and harassing and oppressing and possessing people. I think we're seeing an increase in that. Are there certain places? I mean, there are physical places I have been where the hair on my arm go up. Yeah, me too. And without any, you know, foreknowledge. Yeah. Not like, there's a really spooky place. Watch this. It's like some place, I can think of a few of them in my life where it's like, ooh, I don't know what this is about.

52:39What is that? Think of Haiti. Think of Haiti. I've been to Haiti. Yeah. I feel that strongly. I have a good friend who has a ministry in Haiti, and that's a place that has opened itself up to the demonic. Through human sacrifice. Through voodoo, through all these things. and it is a place where you palpably feel evil often. I was in some remote parts of India and felt the same thing in many places. So I think there is, just as miracles tend to break out in a positive way in places where the gospel is breaking in, I think we probably see pockets around the globe where Satan has a stronghold. And I would think that - Physical places.

53:19Physical places, yeah. Yeah, like I think Haiti is a good example of that. I've been to some places in the U.S. where I felt that really strongly. I've been, I was in a house once. I lived in a house once as a child. We're part of the house. There's something so wrong with it. And every person who lived in the house knew that. Interesting. Does that sound? Could be, could be, could be an occultic thing. Yeah.

53:45What's a mystical dream? Mystical dreams, I talk about these in the book, is so fascinating to me. We have seen more Muslims become Christians in the last couple of decades than in the 1400 years since Muhammad. And it's been estimated that a quarter to a third of them before they became a Christian had a Jesus dream. Now, what's interesting about that is that these are corroborated dreams. I'll tell you what I mean by that. First of all, a devout Muslim has no incentive in a, let's say in a closed country, or it's even illegal to share the Christian gospel, they have no incentive to have a dream as a product of their subconscious mind about Jesus, the Jesus of Christianity, because it might lead them into apostasy.

54:35It might lead them to a death sentence in certain countries. So there's no incentive for a devout Muslim to have a dream about Jesus. And yet, we are seeing this all over the Middle East, in closed countries, in oppressive countries where Christians are persecuted and so forth. But here's what I found most fascinating. In these cases, people are not going to sleep as a Muslim, having a dream about Jesus and waking up as a Christian. That's not how it works. There is always something that points to a phenomenon or an event or a person outside the dream that corroborates the dream. Let me give an example to clarify it.

55:17There was a woman named Noor in Cairo, mother of eight, devout Muslim. She goes to sleep. She has a dream in which Jesus visits her. It's unlike any dream she's ever had. And she feels the love and the grace and the beauty of Jesus in such a profound way. She said, here I am, a woman in the presence of a man. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel shame. I felt love. And she's just overwhelmed by this. And they're walking along a lakeshore. And she says, Jesus, why do you appear to me? I'm just a poor mother of eight in Cairo. And Jesus said, my friend will tell you tomorrow. And she said, who's your friend?

55:55And Jesus gestures to a man she didn't even realize was walking with them along the lakeshore because she was so mesmerized by Jesus. She didn't notice this guy. And he says, my friend will tell you tomorrow. She wakes up. The next day, she goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on a Friday afternoon, and she sees the man from her dream. She goes up to him. She said, you're the one. He said, whoa, what are you talking about? You're the man. Same glasses, same face, same clothes. You're the one. He said, did you have a dream about Jesus last night? She said, yes. Turned out he was an underground church planter.

56:32He didn't want to go to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on Friday afternoon. It's chaotic, but he felt God had an assignment for him. So he went that day. Noor encounters him from the dream. He pulls her aside, opens the Bible, and shares the gospel with her. That's the external corroboration that I'm talking about. It's not just something that takes place in your subconscious mind. There is an external factor to it. I'll give you another example. So one of the miracles, there are at least two in the story you just told. And one of them is that the pastor felt the call to go to the marketplace on a Friday and be obeyed.

57:10Have you had that experience in your life where you just feel like you're being told to do something and you obediently do it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember as a new Christian, I... And I felt a really strong urging, I believe it was from God, to empty our bank account and send an anonymous cashier's check to a woman, a single woman in our church. Send it anonymously and to do it on Friday. I don't know why, but to do it on Friday. My wife and I both prayed about it and said, yeah, we're both feeling this. It's odd, but we feel it's legit. To empty your bank account and send it to a stranger?

57:50We emptied the bank account. It's odd. Leah, that is odd. Yeah. Fair. Hey, it was only$500, but still for us, that was a lot of money back then. So we send this check. Did you know the woman? Yeah, we knew her. Yeah. Nice woman. She had come to faith. She had actually had a lot of negative experience with Christians growing up, but she ended up coming to faith through a debate on Christianity we did in our church between an atheist and a Christian. And so I knew who she was and so forth. So on Monday morning, she calls me out of the blue. and she's crying. She said, Lee, I don't know what to do.

58:24I said, what's going on? She said, my car broke down over the weekend. They say it's going to cost$500 for me to fix my car. I don't have$500. I'm going to lose my car. I'm going to lose my job because I got to have my car for the job. Would you pray for me that I would get this$500 somehow? And I said, absolutely. I'll pray for them. Let's pray. And sure enough, that afternoon, because I'd mail in Friday, Monday afternoon, she gets this anonymous$500 check. Did you ever tell her? No, she doesn't. Not unless she's listening. Is she still around? Oh, yeah. She's still, yeah. She actually quit her nursing job and joined the staff of our church.

59:05She used to deliver my mail every day at the church. Wow. Yeah. So I guess if she's listening, now she'll know. You've never told her. What year was that? No. Oh, gosh. This was when I was a new Christian at the church. It was probably 1987, somewhere in there. Yeah, yeah. Almost 40 years ago. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think that does happen where God influences you. Do you try to be open to that? I do. I do. When I pray, I try to leave time at the end of the prayer. Say, God, I'm just gonna be quiet for a while. If there's anything you wanna tell me, anything you need to alert me to, any way you wanna lead me, I'm just going to be quiet.

59:45I'm just going to listen. And I just spend, and normally there's nothing. That day there was$500, but normally I don't feel anything that specific. But it's okay because what's important is saying I'm open, God, to anything you want me to do or what you want me to do. I'm open to it. Of course, anything, the Bible says, test the spirits. So if I'm feeling something, I want to test it to make sure it's scriptural because God's not going to tell me, You're not going to go tell me to poison my neighbor, right? So it's going to be consistent with scripture. But I want to leave myself that opportunity to open myself up and say, God, I'm listening.

1:00:23And just pause for a while and see, is there something? And on that day, there was something. It doesn't happen that often. But every once in a while, something will take place like that. Amazing. So you, sorry for the cul-de-sac there. you believe there has been an uptick in mystical dreams. Oh, definitely in Middle East. In fact, get this, in Cairo, there's often an ad in the newspaper. And the ad says, call this number and we'll tell you about the man in white you met in your dream last night. Really? Because there's so many of these. I interviewed for my book, Seeing the Supernatural, I interviewed Tom Doyle, who's the world's leading expert on this.

1:01:04And Tom said, Lee, I could pick up the phone right now. and I could call Syria. I could call Iraq. I could call Iran. And I'll give you five more stories. They are so common. I'll give you one from my church in Houston, Texas. So I'm part of a church. I live part-time in Houston, part of a church there. I used to be on the staff. And there was a woman who was born in the Middle East in a closed country where you can't share the gospel legally. And she had a dream when she was about 16 years old. And she said it was unlike any dream ever had because it was like a projector, was projecting an image of Jesus.

1:01:42And it influenced her, it touched her, but she didn't know what to do with it. And she said, I was having problems with my life. I called out for help and that's what happened. Well, she ended up marrying a Muslim gentleman who was transferred to Houston, Texas because of the oil industry. So she moves into near our church and she has another dream. And in this dream, she's up to her waist in a body of water. And there's a man with her with a book that's open and the man is weeping. And she's thinking, what does that mean? What is that supposed to be about? Well, a neighbor of hers goes to our church and she invited her to come to Easter services at our church because her husband was out of town.

1:02:24So she came to Easter services. She's sitting on the aisle in the auditorium waiting for the service to begin. And she sees the man who was with her in the pond with the book. And she said, that's the guy. He was one in my dream when I was in this pond for no reason whatsoever, but I saw him. Well, his name is Alan Splawn. Alan is our pastor of baptism. Alan comes over, they introduce her. This woman ends up receiving Jesus Christ as her forgiver and leader. She becomes a Christian and she learns about baptism. And sure enough, Alan Splawn takes her to the pond on our property where we baptize new believers.

1:03:04And with her water up to her waist and with Alan, with the Bible open and weeping at the joy, baptizes her in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So there's a case in my own church in Texas like that. What did her husband say when he got home? He doesn't know. to this thing. He doesn't know. He doesn't know because she can't tell him. She said he would, who knows what he would do. She can't, she can't, so she keeps, she has a Bible that we gave her. She keeps it hidden and she doesn't go to church because she can't. So she has to keep it hidden from her husband. Wow. Yeah, it's sad. But again, she didn't know nothing about baptism.

1:03:47What kind of a mystical dream you're standing up to your waist in water with a guy with a book who's crying. I mean, what in the world is that all about? How do you tell a difference between a conventional dream and a mystical dream or are all dreams mystical? We don't know what dreams are just for the record as a matter of science. I mean, no one's ever been able to explain what that is. You know, it's interesting. God is in control of all. And so in a sense, everything is spiritual, right? I mean, God rules and so forth. So in a sense, any dream is spiritual. I think to me, a mystical dream is one that has a strong spiritual overtones, and there's no natural explanation to say this could come from your subconscious mind.

1:04:31You know, I think sometimes people will write off a dream as saying, well, that's just something that came from your subconscious. Maybe you saw something on television, didn't even realize it, and it was in your subconscious. But when you have examples like the one I gave, that doesn't make sense. I'll give you another example. There was a guy named Omar. And Omar grew up in a refugee camp in the Middle East, hated Jewish people, hated Jewish people. His life goal was to murder as many Jews as he could. And so he wanted to join Hamas. This is about a dozen years ago. He wanted to join Hamas. So he makes arrangements to meet with some leaders of Hamas.

1:05:09So he's walking down the road toward that meeting, and he's blocked by a vision of Jesus who stops him and says, Omar, this is not the plan I have for your life. I want you to turn around. I want you to go home. This is not what I want for your life. Well, it freaks him out, right? And so what does he do? He turns around. He goes home. That afternoon, he lived in an apartment building. That afternoon, an American family was moving into the apartment across the hall. And he goes over there and he says, I just had this vision of Jesus telling me that. And he explained the vision and he said, as a Christian, can you tell me what it means?

1:05:56And this Christian man said, well, let me just do this. And he opens the Bible and he shares the gospel with him. And Omar not only becomes a Christian, but today he himself is an underground church planter in the Middle East. Omar's not his real name, by the way. So there you have, again, external corroboration. The image, the vision he had pointed him ultimately towards somebody else who then explained the gospel. That to me tells me this is more than a subconscious manifestation of something in our heads. Yes. And that's what, as someone trained in journalism and law, I'm looking for those kind of instances of corroboration.

1:06:42Visions are something we associate with hallucinogenic drugs. Yes. What is that? What are the visions produced by ayahuasca and LSD? There are what I would call naturalistic visions. In other words, visions that are caused by things that we can determine are natural. I mean, natural, medically natural. Chemicals. Chemicals. I'll give you an example. In 2011, I had a condition called hyponatremia. Hyponatremia is a severe drop in your blood sodium level. And it causes your brain to expand in your head. Well, there's no room for your brain to expand very much. And so you have hallucinations. and almost died as a result of it.

1:07:27Just out of the blue, you had this. Well, it was a combination of several things I had. I was allergic to a drug that they'd given me because I'd lost my voice and they gave me a steroid and I was allergic to the steroid. I didn't know I had pneumonia, which can be a factor. I'd lost a kidney, which I wasn't aware of, and that regulates sodium. So I had all these weird things going on. This was the Job period. Yeah, it was the Job period. That's right. So here I am. I had hallucinogen. I saw demons. I saw weird things. Do I believe they were from God? No. Do I believe they're from Satan? No. Do I believe they were demons?

1:08:00No. I think they were a product of the medical problem I had of my sodium dropping so low. How long did this go on and where were you when you saw these visions? I was at home and I finally felt unconscious. They called the paramedics. I woke up in the emergency room and the doctor looked down at me and said, you're one step away from a coma, two steps away from dying. And then I went unconscious again. That was the message the doctor gave. I know. Pretty reassuring. I know. You'd think he could have sugar-coated it a little. The last thing you heard was you're dying. Yeah, I know. It's like, hey, give me the sugar-coated first.

1:08:37But the problem is they have to raise the sodium level very carefully because 25 % of people with this condition end up mentally or physically disabled. So they have to raise it. So I was in the hospital about a week and they had to gently, slowly raise one potato chip at a time. Exactly. So do I think those were mystical? Do I believe I really saw a demon? Probably not. I think that was a medically induced phenomenon. I don't have any external corroboration other than to say it was these low sodium that it's known to cause hallucinations. And I had hallucinations. So I think there are medical things that can cause that.

1:09:16There are drugs that can cause hallucinations. Now, God is over all. I get that. But as a skeptic, I'm always looking for those cases where we have evidence that it's true beyond the experience itself. There are certain forms of what we refer to as mental illness, which is like a phrase invented by people pretty recently. And clearly there are forms of mental illness, I think, I guess, whatever that is. But there are certain people who have visions that are very unpleasant. Yes. And that bear like almost a precise resemblance to the demonic possession described in the New Testament. And they may be demonic.

1:09:59I don't know. I have to evaluate each one to try to determine. Of course. These are broad brushes. but you do, is it fair to conclude that maybe not everything the shrink tells you is mental illness? They can never describe where it comes from or how to fix it. They have no idea, but whatever. They know nothing, to be clear. But is it fair to assume that maybe some of that is spiritual? Yes, I think it can very well be. I would look at, you know, all of the factors involved. where we have the external corroboration like people left with scratches on them or bruises that cannot be explained, where we have levitation, where we have people speaking in a language they don't know, spontaneously speaking Latin, things like that, then that is the external corroboration to me that there's something demonic going on.

1:10:52It doesn't mean it couldn't be demonic. I'm just saying those are the cases I'm more comfortable in concluding that they're demonic when I've got that kind of external corroboration. But speaking in languages you don't know can also be as described as, in the Acts of the Apostles, as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, of God indwelling. That's right. There are other languages people speak, but not when they're spitting at clergy who are trying to exercise. Oh, is that a sign? Yeah, that could be a sign. When you're cringing before a crucifix and you're trying to bite people. But what about glossolalia?

1:11:30What about speaking in tongues? Yeah, that is a spiritual gift. There are Christians who believe that those gifts have ended with the apostolic age and are no longer applicable. There are other Christians who believe they are still active in this world. I believe they are still active. I've met Christians who speak in other tongues and others who interpret that. So I believe it's a gift that still takes place. I have not experienced that personally, but I have credible people who do and have experienced that. There are other Christians, though, who say, no, no, no, that ended with the apostles.

1:12:07So that's one of those side issues theologically that when we get to heaven, we can raise our hands and ask God, hey, what about that speaking in tongues thing? Yeah, no, I know that there is a debate over it. I have no idea what I think about it, but it is, I guess, just as a factual matter, it's true that there are people who, seized by some unseen force, begin speaking in languages they have never learned. Yes, and often this is, generally I would say, this is not a language that other people speak. It is a - Or have ever spoken? Yeah, river smoke is a spiritual language. But then there's someone, and this is a good corroboration, someone who can interpret that.

1:12:44And they understand it, this language, even though it is a spiritual language. It's not Latin. It's not Greek. It's a spiritual language. And that someone else is able to hear. And they have a gift as well to interpret what is being said. I got to take it down one other back alley here really quick. So, both the Hebrews and the early Christians wrote extensively about the concept of a name. Yeah. God's name. Holy be your name. Yes. In the name of God. The name of Jesus. What does that mean exactly? Why the name? It means a couple things. I mean, to do things in the name of God, Yahweh, in the name of God, is to do something consistent with how God is leading you and how scriptures would suggest that you act.

1:13:34So in other words, to act in God's name is to do something consistent with his character. So if I do something charitable to my personal loss and yet to someone else who's in great need, I do that in God's name. I do that because this is what the Bible teaches me, that I should be generous and helpful to where people are hurting. Right. Names, you know, names in Scripture, you know, you look at the name of Jesus is called Emmanuel. Well, he's never called Emmanuel. It said it was his name. But what that means in the ancient language is that he is God with us. That's what Emmanuel means, God with us.

1:14:18And that was the name given to Jesus. But that wasn't the name he was called. But it was a name that was associated with Jesus. So names have all kinds of implications in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. Sure seems that way. Now we just name people according to what everybody's— What we see on Friends. Yeah, that's right. But I mean, you know, observant Jews do not spell out the name of God, right? They leave the vowels out because the name is itself holy. Just the name. Yes, that's right. The name—that's right. They would—and they would talk around the name. There's a verse in Luke 15 where it says that there is rejoicing in heaven.

1:15:05How does it go?

1:15:10Yeah, I can't think of the exact terminology. But basically, it's a way of saying there's rejoicing in heaven whenever a person becomes a Christian without saying the name of God rejoicing. It kind of talks around that a bit. So there's a hesitation. And in fact, something you didn't want to do in ancient Jewish world is to use the name of God that was forbidden. Like at all. Yeah, you wouldn't use it. And you wouldn't spell it out. You'd talk around it. Because it's so powerful. So holy, yeah. It could hurt you. So near-death experiences. Walk toward the light, Leahy. What's a near-death experience?

1:15:49A near-death experience is when a person is clinically dead. That is generally no brain waves, no respiration, no heartbeat. Yeah, they're clinically dead. Yet, they're going to be revived. And so they're dead for a period of time, clinically dead, but they're not permanently dead. So the body will be revived at some point. So by the measurements of science, they're dead. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So maybe right there, if we just pause, like maybe right there we have further evidence that science, while useful, of course, and life-improving in some ways, does not have the tools to measure the totality of the experience.

1:16:27Well, you know, it is. So they're actually like, that's the failure. Like, they're obviously not dead. Yeah, that's right. They are coming. That's right. All the signs are that they're dead. But, you know, the Bible says that, and Christianity teaches that when a person dies, their spirit separates from their body. And this is what we see in a near-death experience. This is evidence for the soul, for the spirit. So the physical body is clinically dead. There's no sign of life in the body. They're still working on you. Has, once again, has there ever been a culture that we're aware of in the entire span of human history that did not believe in the soul?

1:17:06They all did. That thought that people were just meat puppets. I quote experts in the book that talk about that, that every civilization believed in the spirit, a spirit, a soul that continues to live on after we die. Our leaders don't believe that. Well, that's not only tragic, it's dangerous. Because if you believe we are only our brain, we're only neurons that are firing, that means technically we have no free will. And seriously? You're saying we don't have free will? How do you punish someone for doing something wrong if they really didn't have free will? Well, it also means we have no inherent rights.

1:17:41We have no right and wrong. Does a rock have a right? No. Exactly. Right. So maybe that should be the acid test for leadership. if you don't believe human beings have souls, if that's not the basis of the way you understand other people, this is a separate person with a distinct and unique soul. Right. If you don't believe that, you can have no power. Yeah. In our society, is that fair? I like that. I like that. I never thought of that before, but I certainly wouldn't trust a person personally, morally, if they believed only that we are a brain. I wouldn't give them a driver's license. That's scary.

1:18:16It is scary. You don't think other people have souls? Exactly. What? You're a psychopath? Exactly. I have an interview in my book with a PhD from Cambridge University in neuroscience who says the evidence is so persuasive that, yes, indeed, we do have a soul. We do have a spirit. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, neuroscientists. Yeah. Thank you for confirming. What's interesting is that we have cases where people are clinically dead, their spirit separates from their body, and they see or hear things that would have been impossible for them to see or hear if their spirit had not actually separated from their body.

1:18:56So this is confirmation that the soul exists. Interesting. And let me give you some examples. There's a woman named Maria. She was dying in a hospital in London, England. But she said, I was conscious the whole time. And so here they are working on her body, trying to bring her back. She said, my spirit floated out of my body. I met a divine being. But mainly, I'm looking down from the ceiling of the hospital room at the resuscitation efforts. I'm watching them trying to revive my body. And then at some point, the reviving works and the spirit returns to the body. And she says, by the way, see the ceiling fan here in this room, the hospital room?

1:19:40There's a red sticker on top of one of the blades of the ceiling fan. Now, you couldn't see it from the room because it's on the top of one of the blades of the ceiling fan. But she saw it because from her perspective near the ceiling watching resuscitation, she was looking down. So they got a ladder. They went up there. Sure enough, on the top of this blade, here's the sticker exactly as she has described it. That tells me that she really did have an out-of-body experience just as the Bible describes. And this is extremely common. We have a woman, a young girl. She was nine years old, so I recall eight or nine.

1:20:21She drowned in a swimming pool at YMCA. Horrible, horrible. Her brain had swelled. She had no respiration, no heartbeat. She was clinically dead. So they brought her to the hospital to keep her body alive mechanically until they decided what to do, you know. And they continued to try to revive her. But as it turns out, three days later, she was revived and with no brain damage. And she said, by the way, I was conscious. Yeah. And she said, I was conscious the whole time. And they said, oh, that's not possible. And so the doctors who were skeptical said, here, here's a piece of paper and a crayon.

1:21:01Why don't you draw the emergency room where we took you when you were dead? So she picks up the crayon. She draws the emergency room exactly as it appears. And then she said, by the way, one night when my parents visited me in the hospital, I followed them home. And I watched as my mom, she was making chicken soup with rice on the stove. and my dad was sitting in a certain chair and he was looking in a certain direction and her brother, she said, was playing with a G.I.O. Joe Jeep in his bedroom and these are the clothes that they were wearing. Everything was exactly correct. How do you explain that if she didn't have an authentic out-of-body experience while she was clinically dead?

1:21:46So this is affirmation that near-death experiences do point toward a spirit, a soul that separates from our body at the time of death. Now it can return to our body if we're revived, and that's what happens in these cases. Interestingly, there was a study done of 21 blind people, either blind since birth or shortly thereafter. They were able to see or had visual-like perceptions during their near-death experiences. So there's a woman named Vicki. Wait, what? Yeah, yeah. Vicki Umapeg, 26 years old. She's blind, virtually since birth. She is killed in a car crash. She's a passenger in a car. She's killed.

1:22:26But she said later, I was conscious the whole time. And her spirits floated out. She watched, she's able to see the resuscitation efforts. She was able to see childhood friends who she'd never seen in person, but she knew intuitively who they were. Oh, that's Mary. That's Jimmy. She sees birds for the first time. She sees trees and so forth. And then when her body is revived and her spirit returns to her body, she's blind again. Medical researchers said this is impossible based on current medical knowledge. How does this happen? So there's a phenomenon here that tells me that there's corroboration, that there's something to this idea that we have a soul, a spirit that is different than our physical brain and body.

1:23:17And I'll add this. This is really important. John Burke is—I interview him for my book. John Burke is a Christian pastor with an engineering degree and science background who studied 1 ,500 cases of near-death experiences in depth. He has video interviews with people and so forth. And here's his conclusion. He said, Lee, if you look at not how people interpret what happens, because we all interpret things through our worldview. Of course. If you're a Muslim, if you're a Hindu, you're going to interpret things differently. Forget that. Set that aside. Just look at what actually takes place during a typical near-death experience.

1:23:56That is consistent with the Christian Bible. And what is it that's consistent? Well, things like encountering a divine being, things like encountering people who had preceded you in death, things like a life review where your life is reviewed and you not only experience with this divine figure next to you who's encouraging you. It's not a judgmental kind of a way. You're judging yourself. You're reviewing every little action you took, but you're able for the first time to see the ripple effects of that. So I may have done something that hurt you years ago, and I never realized the impact that had on you and how that caused you to do this, that, and the other thing.

1:24:48And yet in this life review, you see not only what you did, and you did good and you did bad, but the ramifications of it. Yes. That takes place. Now, you're not permanently dead. The Bible says in Hebrews, we're appointed once to die and then the judgment. So you would think that, biblically speaking, you would die and then you would encounter judgment. Well, you're not permanently dead. You're coming back. This is not your permanent death. So this is kind of a taste, a foretaste of what death is like, but you're not permanently dead. You're just clinically dead. But you still have some of the attributes of what the Bible talks about in terms of a judgment.

1:25:29So I think that's reassuring for Christians like me who used to think, oh, that's new age stuff, near-death experience. There have been, Tucker, 900 scholarly articles written about near-death experiences in medical journals and scientific journals over the last 50 years. This is a very well-researched area. And they have concluded that there is no natural explanation that can account for all of the aspects of a near-death experience. It's a fascinating area. And so I interview, as I said, John Burke, who's an expert on them, to give examples of this sort of thing. What about pre-death? Yes, this is— Pre-death visions.

1:26:11This is new. Can I just add one editorial comment? Yeah. I'm so filled with rage, I have to do it. That our culture systematically excludes real conversations about death. Obviously, we're very pro-death. You know, kill your baby, euthanize your parents, whatever. We're all about death. But the actual experience of death is kind of cloaked for most people. And I don't think they have any idea what it is when someone dies, the process of dying. And so this is a welcome conversation. Tucker, it's fascinating, these deathbed visions. The difference between a near-death experience and a deathbed vision is in a near-death experience, a person is going to come back.

1:26:53Right. In a deathbed vision, this is a vision someone has just before they die. They're not coming back. I mean, they're permanently going to die. but we see a biblical example of this in the book of Acts. We see Stephen, who is described as being full of the Holy Spirit, who is on the verge of being stoned to death, and he looks up and he sees the heavens open up and he sees the Father and the Son together. So this has a biblical precedent. But what is fascinating, and I think what you said is so true, people don't like to talk about it. At all. Yeah, at all. Because if you have one of these experiences before you die, Now, you think they're going to think I've got dementia.

1:27:30They're going to think I'm nuts. They're going to think, you know. So a lot of people don't like to talk about it. So there's a researcher. He went to a huge hospice facility in New York State. And they went to all the dying people. And they said, please, as a favor, if you have a vision, a dream unlike any you've ever had, tell us. Would you tell us? and so 88 % of those dying people had a pre-death vision that they reported on before they died. 88%. I think the other 12 % probably had one, but they died before they were able to say anything. Or they were so high on morphine, they couldn't talk.

1:28:11That's true. People get drugged up. That's true. So there's that. I mean, obviously, you don't want people to suffer. You want to alleviate suffering and alleviate pain. I'm totally for that. I want to be clear about it. But there's also this custom, which has grown to ubiquity. Now it's just, it's everybody who dies, gets from the hospice nurses. Yeah. They kill you with morphine. I mean, no one wants to say that out loud, but I've seen it. They kill you with morphine. Yeah. And okay, first, we should just be honest about what's happening. Yeah. Always. But second, we should be clear about the cost.

1:28:45Yes. So if people, if everybody on the way out is getting visions of some kind. Yes. Maybe there's a purpose to those visions. Maybe we shouldn't short-circuit that. And Tucker, there's also corroboration for these. So in other words, they did one study of 3 ,000 of these, and they determined this is not just something coming from the subconscious mind. There is something else here. And I'll give you the example of the corroboration. There was a woman named Doris. She's dying on her deathbed, and she has a pre-death vision. and she sees the heavens open up and she sees angelic beings and she sees her father who had died several years earlier.

1:29:26And he's kind of almost welcoming her to the next realm. But then she gets this confused look on her face and she says, wait a minute, why is Vida with my father? Why would Vida be there? It makes no sense. Why would Vida be there? and then she died. Vida was her sister. Her sister had died two weeks earlier, but no one had told Doris because she was so ill, they didn't want the news to kill her. So they withheld the news that her sister Vida had died. And yet on her deathbed, she sees Vida in the world to come. That is fairly common. It actually happened with my father-in-law. So that to me is a corroboration.

1:30:07Another form of corroboration, get this, in the Bible, in Luke 16, there's a story of a rich man and a beggar who both die. And the rich man goes to a place of torment. Yeah. And the beggar goes to a place of bliss. The rich man, by the way, has walked past the poor man every day. That's right. And ignored him. And ignored him. So, the beggar, according to Jesus in verse 22, is accompanied by angels to heaven. that angels accompany him to heaven. And what's particularly fascinating is people who have pre-death visions often see angels coming for them, just as Jesus suggested in that parable. So, for instance, the most famous skeptic in Canada, Charles Templeton.

1:30:56Charles Templeton was the pulpit partner of Billy Graham. He was going to be the great evangelist, but then he went to a liberal seminary. He lost his faith. He wrote an ugly book called farewell to God, my reasons for rejecting the Christian faith. And I got to know him. He became a friend. I actually wrote a book called The Case for Faith, where I answered all his objections to Christianity, and we became friends. Anyway, he ended up coming back to faith in Christ before he died. And then he's on his deathbed, and he calls out to his wife, Madeline. Madeline, what, Chuck? Can you see them? What are you talking about?

1:31:32They're in the room. You can't see them? They're right here in this room. They're the angels. They're coming for me. Oh, they're so beautiful. Look at them. The singing is so beautiful. They're coming for me. I'm going to heaven. I'm going to be with God. That is incredibly common that people will see angels coming for them in that vision they had before they died. Now, here's another bit of corroboration. Children who are dying will see angels, but not like you would expect them to be seen. In other words, let's say a five-year-old who's dying. What is their image of an angel? Well, it's a feathery thing with big wings, right?

1:32:12It's a cartoon, right? It's a cartoon. They all have big wings. And so there's a case from a doctoral dissertation I read of a little girl who's dying. And she says, mommy, mommy, can you see the angels? They're coming for me. Oh, they're so beautiful. They're so beautiful. Their eyes, look at their eyes. and the mother didn't want to disappoint her. So she said, oh yeah, yeah, I see them. Look at their big wings. And the little girl said, oh mommy, they don't have wings. And she was able to describe them in vivid detail before she died. Wow. You would think if a child of that age was going to have just a vision from their imagination of angels coming for them, they would have big wings.

1:32:55They don't. It would be the Hallmark version, yeah. That's right. And in case after case, they don't see the big wings. And by the way, the Bible doesn't say that all angels have wings. So that to me is another very interesting dynamic of these pre-death visions. Not all people on their deathbed have joyful visions. That's right. Or reunited with loved ones in the next world. Yes. There are many people who are in terror. Yes. And horrified. Yes. And can you describe that and what is it? Yes. We have this in near-death experiences and in deathbed visions where people who are about to die have a glimpse, I believe, of a hellish experience to come.

1:33:38And they are frightened beyond belief and scared beyond words. I'll give you an example of a near-death vision where this happened. There's a man named Howard Storm. Howard was an atheist. He was a professor of art at a secular university, chairman of the art department. and he was visiting France and he died of a heart attack. So here he is, he's in a French hospital, he's dead. But he said later, I was conscious the whole time. It was a near-death experience. His spirit had separated from his body. And there were some people in the hallway say, Howard, we've been waiting for you. Come with us, come with us.

1:34:13So he does. And he's walking down the hallway, his spirit is walking down the hallway with these people. And it goes on and on and on and it gets darker and darker and then they're becoming abusive and they're saying, come on, come on, why are you so slow? And then they start to attack him. And he said, he said, no horror movie can ever capture the horror of what they did to me. I mean, he was absolutely mauled. He said, I was roadkill. And he said, I called out to God. Like physically mauled. Yes. Eyes gouge out, ears ripped off. And he calls out to Jesus, Jesus, rescue me. And this white orb comes and brings him and rescues him from that.

1:35:01And he is restored. Well, ultimately, his body is revived. His spirit returns to his body. This is such a profound experience that he not only renounced his atheism, He not only quit his tenured position as chairman of the art department at a secular university, he not only became a Christian, he went to seminary, he became a pastor, and today he's a pastor of this little church. I think it's in Kentucky or Oklahoma or somewhere, in the middle of nowhere, serving God. That's how transformative this experience was. But there are multiple cases of people having horrific—in fact, one study of near-death experiences said it was 24%.

1:35:44had negative experiences, not positive ones. Doesn't feel like a good sign. No, no. I mean, what it does to me is it's affirmation that, you know what? What the Bible tells us is true. There is a heaven, there is a hell. And these are real places. Every society ever has thought that. Yeah, that's right. Every society. And I think everyone intuitively knows that. Yeah. I've never had a near-death experience, but the one time I thought I was gonna die many years ago, I was in a plane crash. I was filled with sadness. I had no peace at all. Yeah. Yeah. None. Only regret. Yeah. So I did take that as an indication I should change the way I was living.

1:36:23And I did. Well, God used that in your life. Well, I felt that way. And certainly in retrospect, I think that. Yeah. But I remember thinking, wow, I'm going to die. I was certain of it. And I thought later, I thought that when people knew they were going to die, they were filled with like peace and warmth and walk toward the light. That was not my experience at all. It was like, man, I can't believe I did a few things. And I've really felt sad about it. So that's the reality. Well, but I guess it's, yeah. Well, it was the reality that I experienced for sure. But I also think that it's what a blessing.

1:36:58Yes. To have an opportunity to, you know, to turn back and change. That's the thing about these near-death experiences, that you have another chance. You don't have it in deathbed vision, but you're going to be revived, and then you have a choice to make. Is that the road I continue to want to go down? Yes, yes. The first thing I did was quit drinking and then had a fourth child. Wow, that's awesome. It was awesome. It was awesome. It was literally awesome. So, yes, I think that there's something real there, and it does seem like a crime of some kind to deprive people of that with drugs. I know, I know.

1:37:35If everyone experiences it just like anything else, like maybe there's a reason. It's not random. Maybe. You know, I'd encourage people who are watching or listening to this podcast. Next time you have a big family get together with the cousins and the uncles and the aunts and everything, ask people, do we have any family stories about deathbed visions or near-death experiences? I bet you you'll find, oh, Uncle Bob had that experience or Cousin Jim had that experience. I was having dinner with seven people in Oklahoma City, and four of them, we talked about this, four of them had relatives who had pre-death visions.

1:38:15I'm not surprised. It's incredibly common. I've never asked that question at a dinner party, but I have asked, has anyone seen a ghost? Yeah. 100 % of the time, there's someone at the table who has. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. What is that? Ghosts, I have a chapter on ghosts and psychics in my book. the technical definition of a ghost is someone who dies but refuses to go into the afterlife. Their spirit refuses to go into the next life. I don't see that in the Bible. So I don't think that ghosts per se are from God. I think most likely an apparition that we interpret as being ghosts is most like a demonic apparition.

1:38:57I think people feel that. I think so. Ghosts have a bad rep. Yes. Yeah. No one is summoning ghosts. It's not like Casper who's going to bring you some flowers. Generally, people are anti-ghost. Yes. Ghost stories. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Ghosted. Yeah, it's not a good connotation. So I don't think that surprises anyone. So I do talk about ghosts and I talk about psychics and the tricks that they use to convince people that they're more than a little. Are you pro-psychic? Sorry? Are you pro-psychic? I'm anti-psychic. Yeah, I am too. Why are you anti-psychic? Because the Bible says, do not consult mediums.

1:39:33Do not consult psychics. I mean, it's very clear. Multiple places in scripture, do not do it. Oh, well, among the ancient Hebrews, that was a death penalty offense. Exactly, it was. And so, it's not something we want to mess with. And I think there's got to be a reason for that. I think it's because it opens the door to the demonic. That you're trying to consult the dead. You're trying to find out something apart from what God might reveal through a psychic, through a medium who supposedly has a cultic wherewithal and is able to take you down that pathway. It's dangerous. And I talk in the book about the tricks that they use to, you know, there's things like cold readings and warm readings and hot readings where people who want to fool you into thinking they know more about you than they do will employ that.

1:40:23and they think, oh my gosh, this person knows all about me. No, they don't. They're just very clever people who are able to read certain things about you. No, I mean, of course, there's a lot of BS, gypsy tricks. But I'll tell you one case that's real. But it's also true in the Bible that, at least in my read of it, that they're taken seriously. Well, there are cases. That's why it's a death penalty offense, not because it's fake, because it's real. Because it can be real. And yeah, that's a good way to argue it. There is a case in contemporary times when President Carter was president and a two engine aircraft went down and crashed in Africa and the United States government was trying to find it.

1:41:04I don't know why, but they wanted to find that aircraft and they had satellites repositioned looking for they could not find the wreckage of this airplane. And so the Stansfield Turner, who was the head of the CIA, consulted a medium, a psychic in California. She went into a trance and she gave the longitudinal and latitude of where to find the plane. They went, they reoriented the satellites and boom, there was a wreckage of the plane, just as she had said. What do you do with that? That tells me she was in connection with something there. Now, if the Bible says, don't be connecting with psychics, it was probably demonic.

1:41:46And why would she do that? Because now she's got credibility. Now, the next time they want to know something, let's go to that woman in California, told us where that plane was. She seems to have these abilities to know the future, to know things that we don't know. And now she has credibility. I think that was a way for Satan to give her credibility so that we'd be fooled into thinking into the future to take advantage of her psychic power. Yeah, best not to play with that stuff. No, no. It's best to stay away from that. So, contacting dead relatives through a medium, Ouija boards, all that stuff, scary bad.

1:42:18Yeah. On the other hand, I mean, that's my position. Yeah. I'm sure it's yours. Yeah. I came to that position through experience, not just guessing. It's bad. However, I know a lot of decent, God-fearing people who have said, well, I really feel like I was contacted by a dead relative, a dead loved one. Yeah. That's an interesting—and I have a couple cases I talk about in the book of that that seemingly are corroborated. What do you do with that? Because— How is that inconsistent with your theology? On the one hand, there are a couple of cases in Scripture where the dead have come back like that.

1:42:55Elijah came back, the transfiguration. So there's an example of a dead person coming back. There's the other example in the Old Testament of going to a medium and a dead person coming back, not because of the power of the medium, because she was surprised it happened, But through the power of God, he allowed that dead person to come back. So there are a couple of perhaps precedents in Scripture of dead people coming back. One of the reasons I'm skeptical is because when Jesus was talking about in Luke 16 about the rich man who died and the beggar who died, he talked about a gulf between the living and the dead.

1:43:39That concerns me. So that raises some questions in my mind. I think the transfiguration and the incident with what's called the medium of Endor in the Old Testament may be one-offs. And those are unusual circumstances. So, Tucker, I'm not quite sure what to do with it because I talk about a couple of cases in the book where a dead relative returns and a person talks to that relative and then they disappear. and then their child comes in, eight-year-old child, and says, I just saw grandpa. I just talked to him. So he experienced the same vision. Well, that's pretty weird. Is that corroboration and so forth?

1:44:25Well, here's my concern. So many times people have contact with these dead people. These are people that lived ungodly lives. And yet they say, everything's fine. I'm fine. Everything's good. Just take care of the family. tell everybody I love them. I'm good. Don't worry about me. That's the general message people get. Well, what does that say to someone who is thinking about what do I need to do to live a life that will bring me to heaven and to God? Well, Uncle Tom came and told me he's fine. He didn't, he was a, he was a adulterer and a, he never came to faith in Jesus. He's a bad guy. And yet he says he's fine in the afterlife.

1:45:06Wouldn't that be something that a demon might want to imitate to send a false message? I think maybe. So I guess I'm giving you two answers. One is there is some biblical precedent for a dead coming back, but I think they may be one-offs. I'm not sure. I think there'd be a good motive for Satan to counterfeit that. It says Satan can appear as an angel of light, as a counterfeit. He can fool us into thinking he's something he's not, would that be to his advantage to do, to mislead people? I think it could be. So I'm not quite sure where I'm at. Are UFOs what we call UFOs spiritual entities? I don't know.

1:45:51I didn't get into UFOs in the book. It's a fascinating topic. Maybe I'll do another book on that. So I didn't research it thoroughly. Having said that, though, it would not be an affront to my faith if indeed we found intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The Bible doesn't say that we are unique in that. No, it doesn't. But I wonder. Could they be spiritual is the question. Yeah. Yeah. Could be. It could be. Yes. Is it? I don't know. I'm just not as knowledgeable on that to be able to give a strong opinion. Last question. Miracles. Yeah. What is a miracle? A miracle is an event brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history.

1:46:44So, in other words, a lot of people, skeptics. Nice definition. Thank you. That's from Robert Pertil, who was a philosopher. I thought that was the best definition I'd heard. Here's the problem. A lot of skeptics will say, I don't believe in miracles because you can't violate the laws of nature. So by definition, a miracle is impossible. We haven't even settled on the laws of nature. They're so dumb. Well, here's how I answer it. Like the laws of nature, really? Science every day challenges the laws of nature. And especially with quantum physics and everything. Exactly. But I say, look, I have this glass of water here.

1:47:18If I were to drop it, the law of gravity would say it would hit the floor. Yeah. But if I drop it and you reached in and grabbed it before it hit the floor, you're not violating the law of gravity. You're not overturning the law of gravity. You're just intervening. And that's what a miracle is, is God intervening temporarily into his creation. He brought it about. So, of course, he could intervene. And, man. But again, our understanding of nature and its laws changes every day. And it's so shallow. It's so shallow what we know. Yeah, but, I mean, our view of what is natural is different now from what it was five years ago.

1:47:59Yeah. And what it'll be five years from now. Exactly. Yeah. So that's just the silliness and the shallowness of claims like that kind of shocked me. It does. So miracles, but you know, to the extent we can know, like, this is so unusual, like this couldn't have happened accidentally. Can I give you an example? Yeah, please do. And this one I personally investigated and it's been widely documented. A woman named Barbara, she was diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic. So we got all those records with multiple sclerosis. as a teenager. And it was progressive. She got worse very quickly. So she just got worse and worse and worse, multiple hospitalizations to the point where the doctor said, look, and her parents said, look, next time she gets pneumonia, which she would get on a regular basis, we're just going to let her die because we're just postponing the inevitable.

1:48:51So here she is on her deathbed. She hadn't walked in seven years, so her muscles had atrophy. Her fingers were, she was curled up like a pretzel. Her fingers were touching her wrists. Her feet were permanently extended. Her diaphragm was, one diaphragm was paralyzed. So one lung was collapsed. The other lung was at half full. She had a tube in her throat that went to oxygen canisters in the garage. She was in hospice at home so she could breathe. So she got a tube in her throat. She had lost her urination and bowels and control of those. She'd lost her eyesight, so all she saw was gray shapes, and she's on her deathbed.

1:49:32She's dying. Well, some people said, wait a minute, let's call WNBI, the Christian radio station at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and ask people on the radio show to pray for poor Barbara. She's dying. So they did. Well, we documented that at least 450 people began praying for Barbara because they wrote letters to Barbara saying, I'm praying for you to encourage her. So here we are in Pentecost Sunday, 1981. She is in her bedroom and her aunt and two girlfriends are reading her some of these encouraging letters from people praying for her. And from the corner of the room where nobody was, she heard the voice of God.

1:50:09And the voice said, my child, get up and walk. Well, she hadn't walked in seven years. She had no muscle tone in her legs. She pulled out the tube so she could talk. And she said, I don't know what you're going to think of this, but God just told me to get up and walk. Go find my parents. I want them to be here. So they ran out, but she couldn't wait. She jumped out of bed. She told me, she said, Lee, the first thing I noticed, my feet were flat on the floor. And they hadn't been flat for years. They'd been rigidly extended, but they were flat on the floor. Second thing I noticed, my hands had opened up like flowers.

1:50:45And they hadn't opened up in years. And then she said, the third thing I noticed, I could see. I said she said wouldn't you think that'd be the first thing I noticed it was actually the third thing I noticed she was instantaneously completely healed of multiple sclerosis her mother came running in fell to her knees and grabbed her calves and said your muscle tone has come back it was Pentecost Sunday there was a service at their church Wheaton Wesleyan Church they went they decided to go and thank God that she was fine she's dancing literally dancing around the house with her father. So they go to church.

1:51:21They're in the back. The pastor gets up and says, does anybody have any announcements? Barbara comes walking down. Yeah, that's a good announcement. Barbara comes walking down the center aisle. People freaked out because they haven't seen her except in a wheelchair for seven years. They began singing spontaneously, amazing grace. I once was blind and now I see. Totally healed. She goes the next day to her doctor, one of her doctors. He said later, he said, I saw her walking down the hallway toward my office. My first thought was, oh, she died and that's a ghost. He said, this is medically impossible.

1:51:57And it is medically impossible. She was instantaneously totally healed of multiple sclerosis. She ended up marrying a pastor, that little Wesleyan church in Fredericksburg, Virginia. And I got to know her, sweetest woman. Is she still alive? She just recently, this happened 1981, lived perfectly healthy all these years. She just died in Florida. They just retired just a few months ago. That's incredible. But completely healed. So, okay, that's a - What do you do with that? What do you do with that? Well, that's a challenge to like the most basic understanding of everything. Yes. Right. Yep. So, if she's on her deathbed from MS, which is a well-studied disease, you know, like you would think that, you know, Harvard Medical School would just like cease operations until they figured out what that was.

1:52:49I know. You know, I mentioned to my doctor, I said, I told him the story. He said, it'd be interesting to know, because there's plaque that develops in the brain in multiple sclerosis. It'd be interesting to know, did that plaque disappear? And I said, which is the greater miracle that the plaque would disappear or that God would totally heal her with the plaque still there? I don't know which a greater miracle would be. I guess my question is, how could we in an advanced country allow a case like that? To go unnoticed. And unstudied. I know. It was the next day. It was in the Chicago Tribune, which most newspapers don't cover stuff like that.

1:53:26I mean, it's too speculative. But did she get, yeah, but that's not speculative. No. I mean, so she had a team of physicians saying it's time for her to go and then she's dancing and singing Amazing Grace and hearing a pastor. So like, but were doctors calling in to say, I want to study this case? There are two doctors who wrote books about it. Wrote books about it? Yeah. Oh. Well, they wrote books and in the books, they talked about her case. Yes. So two of her physicians actually wrote about it in their books. That's incredible. I know. I know. And it's not the only one. I don't know. We don't have much time.

1:53:55Give you a real quick one. Yeah. There's a kid who was born, little baby, kept vomiting, couldn't keep down food, kept vomiting, vomiting. And they realize this baby has what's called gastroparesis, which is a paralysis of the stomach. It's an incurable condition. It happens from time to time. You can't live that way. So they operated and they put tubes in so the food would go directly into the small intestine. I don't know if it went through the stomach that was paralyzed or whatever, but that way he was able to live. And he lived that way for 15 years, 16 years. He lived that way. There were restrictions on what he could eat.

1:54:35It was uncomfortable, but at least he was alive, right? They bring him one day to a church, and they ask the pastor, would you pray for him? Pastor puts his hand on his shoulder, begins to pray, and the kid said later, I felt an electric shock go through me at the time he was praying. And he was instantly healed of gastroparesis. There has never been a documented case of anyone ever healed of gastroparesis, a paralyzed stomach. He was totally normal. They went in. They took the tubes out. And today he's totally healthy. He's a business guy doing great. I just emailed with him the other day. That, again, this was researched by multiple medical researchers and published as a case study in a medical journal.

1:55:23And in the medical journal, it's probably like, here's what happened.

1:55:30So, that's an incredible story. The girl being cured of MS is an incredible story. Everything you've said is amazing. But so many of the things you've said are also instantly recognizable to everyone listening, whatever their religious faith or lack of religious faith as things that do happen, actually. It's real. We all know that there are things that happen to us and people we know well and love that are outside the ability of science to explain. God is still active. That are supernatural. Yeah. So my final question to you, Lee Strobel, and this has been amazing, thank you. Oh, my pleasure. is why do we keep ignoring it?

1:56:08Yeah. I think it goes back to what I said earlier. I think we're embarrassed sometimes by the supernatural that we're going to think, people are going to think we're nuts. But if that's real and it clearly is real, then like it puts everything else into perspective. Yeah. When you take it seriously and when you look at it like I do. How could you not take it seriously? Well, I agree. If you grew up in a culture that tells you none of it's real and yet it's super obvious that it is super obvious that it's real in some most general sense. Like the supernatural is real. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Then why don't people talk about it all the time?

1:56:47Yeah. Yeah. I think the fact that I've been a Christian since November the 8th of 1981, and I've never heard a sermon on the topic of angels in my life tells you something. I think we shy away because we want to be accepted as normal. Why would you get out of bed on Sunday to sit in a church where they're like pretending that nothing they say is true? It's a good point. If it's not supernatural, why are you bothering? Exactly. If you believe in Jesus, you've got to believe in angels. You've got to believe in demons. You've got to believe in Satan. You've got to believe in heaven. You've got to believe in hell.

1:57:26Because if you believe in Jesus, he taught on all those things. So my goodness, how could you not? I agree with you. How could you not? Yeah. I mean, go on, move on to something else. Yeah. Go play tennis or something. And if 40 % of Americans have had an experience that they can only attribute to a miracle of God, that means the other 60 % probably know one of those 40%, right? And oh, my brother had this experience. My cousin had. And we kind of say, what do we do with that? And I think what we ought to do is look for that which is corroborated and which is consistent with what we trust to be true, which for me are the Christian scriptures.

1:58:05If you just fight against distraction consistently for just a day or two, like I'm not going to be distracted. I'm just going to notice. That's it. That's all you do is just notice. I'm just going to notice stuff. Yeah. if you do that as an exercise, literally for 48 hours, you will experience the supernatural. I think you're right. It's hard to do that. Yeah. Lee Struble, thank you. Hey, I enjoyed it. Wonderful. Great to meet you. Thank you.

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