The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 262 ｜ Former Atheist Makes the Case for Angels, Demons & the Soul ｜ Lee Strobel

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00:01:21.620 Are spirits communicating with us from the other side?

00:01:25.480 Are we being tricked by demons?

00:01:27.800 Eight out of ten Americans believe in the supernatural, but less and less believe in the reality of

00:01:31.900 heaven, hell, Satan, even God.

00:01:34.500 Our culture is craving something beyond the material world.

00:01:38.920 And it's possible that we may start looking in all the wrong places.

00:01:42.980 Because before we turn to the Ouija boards, let's see what Lee Strobel has to say about

00:01:50.520 the Bible, ghosts, demons, angels, death, our souls, miracles that are happening that

00:01:57.240 he can verify, miracles from the Middle East.

00:02:00.840 The man who brought us the case for Christ is here to make the case for the reality of an

00:02:05.380 unseen world that impacts all of us.

00:02:07.940 Welcome award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and Christian apologist, Lee Strobel.

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00:02:28.480 You're richer than you think.

00:02:37.940 So great to have you here, Lee.

00:02:44.440 Great to be here.

00:02:45.220 I appreciate the invitation.

00:02:46.640 We are living in such a crazy time right now where, I mean, I think you can see God,

00:02:56.560 you can see miracles, you can see demons.

00:02:59.680 I mean, I think we have a problem in the country, in the world of possession in many cases.

00:03:04.820 And yet, God has been chased out of so much, we're even mocking him in some ways, many ways.

00:03:15.300 And yet, the search for him is really starting to have a resurgence.

00:03:21.000 Yes, it is, especially among young people.

00:03:22.820 We've seen a great hunger, great interest, great curiosity.

00:03:25.800 Bible sales among young people are going way up.

00:03:28.280 Why is that, do you think?

00:03:29.200 I think they've been lied to, they've been misled by social media.

00:03:34.820 There's so much you can't trust these days.

00:03:36.920 How do you trust AI?

00:03:38.360 How do you trust anything?

00:03:40.280 And I think they're looking for something solid that they can really anchor their life on.

00:03:44.140 And I think it's pushing them toward this exploration of spiritual matters.

00:03:47.520 And isn't it strange that what the world would say is the least solid, you know what I mean,

00:03:54.060 is where they're headed to find, because I think there's this emptiness where the world

00:04:01.200 just can't fill that hole, you know?

00:04:03.400 There's a hole that...

00:04:04.420 Yeah.

00:04:05.400 It's true.

00:04:06.860 That's, of course, what Pascal talked about, that void, that vacuum inside of us that only

00:04:11.620 God can fill.

00:04:12.360 And I think we're seeing that among a lot of young people.

00:04:15.500 I love it.

00:04:16.360 I love the engagement that I get with young people and their curiosity, their questions,

00:04:22.260 their sincerity.

00:04:24.000 It's a real sincere quest.

00:04:26.500 The...

00:04:26.900 So what is...

00:04:29.000 Talk to somebody who just doesn't believe, doesn't know.

00:04:31.440 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:31.860 What is the evidence or what do you think the soul is?

00:04:36.620 Yeah.

00:04:36.820 Start there.

00:04:37.780 Yeah.

00:04:38.120 I mean, I was a skeptic myself.

00:04:39.600 I was an atheist for much of my life.

00:04:40.940 So I kind of went through that process of investigating, how do I know this is true?

00:04:45.080 How do I know that there's a realm beyond what we can see and touch?

00:04:47.660 How do I know that I can trust what scripture tells me?

00:04:50.640 And you get to issues like science.

00:04:53.940 Where does science point?

00:04:55.180 Cosmology and physics and biochemistry, I think point powerfully toward the existence

00:05:00.500 of God in a way where it makes more sense logically and rationally today to believe in

00:05:06.940 God than I think any time in history.

00:05:08.220 Any time.

00:05:08.760 Any time.

00:05:09.040 I agree.

00:05:09.320 I mean, we got...

00:05:10.320 Science is...

00:05:11.120 If God exists, he's the greatest scientist of all time.

00:05:14.900 Absolutely.

00:05:15.500 You know what I mean?

00:05:16.160 And everything...

00:05:17.340 When you look at science and then you take God and you're like, that may...

00:05:23.220 It just fits hand in glove.

00:05:25.740 It does.

00:05:26.140 I was just...

00:05:26.600 The other day I was in Arizona.

00:05:28.540 I was looking through the telescope that first discovered the expansion of the universe.

00:05:32.400 And you know, if the universe is expanding, then you run the tape backwards and guess

00:05:36.140 what?

00:05:36.320 It goes to an origin.

00:05:37.360 It goes to a beginning point.

00:05:38.860 And whatever begins to exist as a cause, we know now, virtually every scientist will

00:05:43.800 say the universe began to exist at some point in the past.

00:05:46.740 Therefore, there must be a cause behind it.

00:05:48.740 Well, what kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence?

00:05:51.160 And you know, most people don't know this, but at the beginning, the Big Bang was a theological...

00:05:56.700 Yeah.

00:05:57.020 And now everybody's like, no, it's the Big Bang.

00:05:59.040 No, it was a theological saying.

00:06:02.140 Yes, it started from something.

00:06:03.920 Yes.

00:06:04.220 But what lit the match?

00:06:05.760 Exactly.

00:06:06.260 And you look at scientists for centuries believed the universe was eternal.

00:06:09.540 It always existed.

00:06:10.300 But now we know there was a beginning point because of the expansion of the universe.

00:06:15.020 It must go back to a beginning.

00:06:17.220 And then that's...

00:06:18.340 What's the implication?

00:06:19.360 Well, what can trigger the creation of a universe?

00:06:24.340 It must be transcendent, which means separate from creation.

00:06:27.940 It must be immaterial or spirit because it existed before the physical world was created.

00:06:33.600 It must be timeless or eternal because it existed before physical time came into being.

00:06:37.340 It must be powerful given the immensity of the creation event.

00:06:40.620 It must be smart given the precision of the creation event.

00:06:44.360 It must be personal because he had to make the decision to create.

00:06:47.860 It must be caring because he crafted a habitat for us to flourish in.

00:06:51.880 It must be creative because, I mean, just look at the universe.

00:06:54.660 It's crazy.

00:06:55.140 That's a description of the God of the Bible.

00:06:57.280 And so I think that it's rational and logical to believe these days.

00:07:01.480 And then you look at the fine-tuning of the universe.

00:07:03.640 The fact that it is fine-tuned on a razor's edge.

00:07:07.340 So that life can exist in a way that defies the explanation it could be a coincidence.

00:07:11.000 Half a degree in space.

00:07:12.460 Half a degree and the whole thing collapses.

00:07:14.220 It's unbelievable.

00:07:14.880 You look at force of gravity.

00:07:16.060 We all know what that is.

00:07:17.680 If you looked at a ruler that went across the entire known universe.

00:07:21.280 15 billion light years broken down in one-inch increments.

00:07:25.520 That represents the plausible range along which the force of gravity could have been set at anywhere along that ruler.

00:07:31.860 But it was set at the exact right point so that life could exist.

00:07:35.400 What if we moved it one inch compared to the 15 billion light-year width of the universe?

00:07:41.820 Intelligent life is impossible anywhere in the universe.

00:07:44.520 The strong nuclear force that binds together the nucleus of atoms?

00:07:48.740 Decrease it by just one part in 10,000 billion, billion, billion, billion.

00:07:52.980 And all we'd have in the universe would be hydrogen.

00:07:55.700 No life.

00:07:57.000 I mean, I did a book called Is God Real?

00:08:00.200 And I interviewed a physicist for that.

00:08:01.640 And I said, well, in light, there's about 50 to 100 of these kind of parameters.

00:08:05.720 I said, in light of that, what are the odds?

00:08:07.980 What's the possibility this could happen by coincidence?

00:08:10.860 And he looked at me and said, well, you know, we physicists have a term for that.

00:08:14.180 I said, oh, what is it?

00:08:15.040 He said, ain't going to happen.

00:08:16.180 I love the fact that in your book that you do talk to scientists, you talk to people.

00:08:24.980 I mean, this is not a ghost book or, you know, it's backed by something reasonable and logical.

00:08:34.600 I remember when I first started really seeking God, I rejected the idea of God.

00:08:42.520 So I could start at a zero, everything I thought about God, I, somebody else had told me and I was just imitating what I had learned.

00:08:51.800 You know what I mean?

00:08:52.300 Sure.

00:08:52.780 To find him, I wanted to start at zero base.

00:08:55.780 Yes.

00:08:56.140 And just say, okay, I'm going to start it.

00:08:59.260 I don't know.

00:08:59.940 He might exist.

00:09:00.540 He might not exist.

00:09:01.420 Yeah.

00:09:01.680 But, um, and you, when you start there and you use logic.

00:09:06.820 Yeah.

00:09:07.000 Um, it's, it's really a great journey.

00:09:12.000 It, it's fascinating.

00:09:13.680 It's so great.

00:09:14.260 It changed my life.

00:09:15.220 Yeah.

00:09:15.460 Me too.

00:09:15.960 Yeah.

00:09:16.400 I mean, uh, you know, I was a skeptic.

00:09:18.320 I was an atheist.

00:09:18.920 My background's in journalism and law.

00:09:20.500 So I look at evidence.

00:09:21.840 I look at corroboration.

00:09:22.880 I look at facts, data.

00:09:24.660 And I thought I could disprove Christianity in a weekend.

00:09:29.600 Literally.

00:09:30.000 I thought, give me a three day weekend maybe and I can disprove it.

00:09:32.520 And I ended up spending two years of my life investigating the evidence for faith.

00:09:37.980 And like you came away saying, wait a minute, unless I have an anti-supernatural bias and

00:09:43.640 rule it out at the, at the outset.

00:09:45.620 Yes.

00:09:45.960 Which I think is illegitimate.

00:09:47.040 Yeah.

00:09:47.200 Yeah.

00:09:47.340 Yeah.

00:09:47.480 If I just follow the evidence, wherever it points, if I call a ball, a ball and a

00:09:51.300 strike, a strike, like a good umpire.

00:09:53.000 I think the evidence is powerful and persuasive.

00:09:57.000 I think it's clear and convincing that God does indeed exist and that Jesus did indeed

00:10:02.640 rise from the dead and prove that he's a son of God.

00:10:05.000 So it was a remarkable journey.

00:10:07.860 And, and I, there's so many other people who've been on that journey have come to the same

00:10:11.840 conclusion.

00:10:12.620 I know.

00:10:13.060 I know an astrophysicist from a university of Texas, PhD, Silva Salviander, who became a

00:10:19.640 Christian because of big bang cosmology and because of investigating the physics, the

00:10:24.480 fine tuning of the universe.

00:10:26.380 So let's, let's go into some things.

00:10:28.280 Yeah.

00:10:28.460 Angels, demons, um, uh, the soul.

00:10:33.140 Yeah.

00:10:33.620 The soul.

00:10:34.260 Tell me, well, let's start with the soul because then I want to ask you about angels and how

00:10:40.440 this is all working.

00:10:41.500 Yes.

00:10:41.800 Yes.

00:10:41.960 So tell me about the soul.

00:10:43.880 Do we have a soul?

00:10:44.820 That's a question.

00:10:45.320 A lot of scientists are materialists and they believe we don't have a soul.

00:10:48.800 We're just a brain.

00:10:50.080 We're a physical brain.

00:10:51.360 Neurons fire.

00:10:52.340 We don't really have free will.

00:10:53.860 It's predetermined by our, by our chemistry and our genetics.

00:10:57.620 Um, and that's, it doesn't make sense.

00:11:00.920 I know, but I've been both good and bad.

00:11:03.500 And what steered me was my soul.

00:11:07.160 Yes.

00:11:07.200 There's something there's some, and you know what?

00:11:09.620 Civilizations from the beginning have all believed in the soul.

00:11:12.580 I mean, this is, this is not, in fact, it is, it is so common in ancient civilizations.

00:11:17.640 And I think to argue against it, the, the, the weight is on your side to try to prove

00:11:22.760 it.

00:11:22.940 Yeah.

00:11:22.960 Right.

00:11:23.340 But so I interviewed a PhD from Oxford or from Cambridge university.

00:11:26.960 Who's a neuroscientist, uh, Sharon Diricks.

00:11:29.340 She's great in the book.

00:11:30.560 This part of the book.

00:11:31.260 She's awesome.

00:11:32.000 She's awesome.

00:11:32.440 And one of the fun things she said is let me do a mind game and mind experiment.

00:11:37.420 She said, what if there's a woman named Mary and Mary is the world's leading expert

00:11:42.400 on vision?

00:11:44.160 Oh, she understands the brain and how the optic nerve takes impulses from the eye and

00:11:49.100 how everything functions and, and, and so forth, but she's blind.

00:11:54.140 What if one day she got her eyesight for the first time, would she know anything new about

00:12:01.380 vision at that point?

00:12:03.220 Volumes.

00:12:03.700 Volumes.

00:12:04.480 Of course, that means the mere physical reality of vision is not enough to explain the first

00:12:10.580 person experience of consciousness, the soul, the spirit.

00:12:15.780 And, um, I thought that was a brilliant, um, a way of looking at things.

00:12:20.100 Uh, yes, we have, we have, we are a brain, uh, we have a, we are a body, but we're also

00:12:25.020 a spirit.

00:12:25.780 We're, we're a hyphenated creature.

00:12:27.580 So is mind and, um, mind and soul the same thing?

00:12:33.820 Yeah.

00:12:34.260 Generally speaking, science is.

00:12:35.560 Oh, no, sorry.

00:12:36.040 Mind and brain.

00:12:37.520 No, mind and brain are different.

00:12:39.180 Yeah.

00:12:39.500 Um, uh, consciousness, spirit, soul, those are kind of synonyms, but you got the physical

00:12:45.060 brain and how that functions.

00:12:46.500 And then you have the mind, which is our consciousness, which is distinct from our physical brain, but

00:12:52.120 it interacts with our physical brain.

00:12:54.160 Um, and we know this because of people who have been like trapped in their body.

00:13:00.020 Yes.

00:13:00.440 Right.

00:13:00.800 Yes.

00:13:01.060 People who they can't function.

00:13:02.920 They have their brain dead.

00:13:04.180 They're brain dead.

00:13:04.960 Well, there's some people who've been in vegetative states for years that they discovered later

00:13:08.560 were conscious the whole time.

00:13:10.420 Uh, but there are 900 scholarly articles published in a peer reviewed medical and scientific journals

00:13:17.020 over the last 40 years on the topic of near death experiences.

00:13:20.860 These are cases where a person is clinically dead.

00:13:24.300 Generally no brain waves, no respiration, no heartbeat.

00:13:27.360 Some of them have been on the way to the morgue.

00:13:29.060 I mean, they're physically dead, but then they're revived.

00:13:31.720 Their, their, their, their body is revived.

00:13:33.340 And when they come back to it, I was conscious the whole time.

00:13:36.180 I was watching them try to resuscitate my body in the hospital, that kind of thing.

00:13:42.380 And it's, it's because I've, I've done several interviews on this particular topic and it

00:13:49.460 is to the point to where I read one where, um, the woman said, no, I saw what was happening.

00:13:57.300 Yes.

00:13:57.600 Describe some things that were happening in the room, but you could dismiss.

00:14:00.660 And she said, okay, there is a sticker on the ceiling fan on the top of the blade.

00:14:07.940 Right.

00:14:08.260 And this is what it said.

00:14:09.560 And they got a ladder and they went up and they looked and that's exactly what it said.

00:14:12.500 How would you know that?

00:14:14.220 Exactly.

00:14:14.900 Exactly.

00:14:15.380 There, there, at least I saw one study of at least 107 cases where we have, what happens

00:14:21.440 when you physically die.

00:14:22.680 So they're clinically dead.

00:14:23.640 Their spirit, their soul, their consciousness separates from their body and continues to live

00:14:27.640 on.

00:14:28.540 And that's a good example.

00:14:30.320 The case of the woman in Memorial Hospital in London who saw the sticker because she was,

00:14:34.360 her spirit is separated from her body.

00:14:35.880 She's watching the resuscitation efforts on her body from the ceiling of the room.

00:14:39.400 Yeah.

00:14:39.640 And she sees a sticker on the top of the fan where nobody could have seen it.

00:14:42.180 Right.

00:14:42.500 But that is so common.

00:14:43.880 There's a little girl.

00:14:45.360 She drowned in a YMCA swimming pool.

00:14:47.940 Brain expanded, no heartbeat, no brain waves.

00:14:52.200 They took her to the hospital, but they just were keeping her body basically alive until

00:14:58.400 they figured out what to do.

00:14:59.380 She was dead.

00:15:00.680 She said later, because three days later, she came back, they revived her and she, and she

00:15:06.040 said, I was conscious the whole time.

00:15:08.040 And they said, wait a minute, how do you, you know, how do we know?

00:15:11.940 She said, one night when my parents visited me, I followed them home and I came to the

00:15:18.920 home and I watched my mom make chicken and rice for dinner.

00:15:23.000 And I, she explained where her father was sitting.

00:15:25.420 She explained how her brother went into his room and had a G.I.

00:15:28.360 Joe Jeep and a G.I.

00:15:29.580 Joe doll that he was playing with and what they were wearing.

00:15:32.420 And so I think she could not have known unless her body, unless her spirit really did follow

00:15:37.660 them home.

00:15:38.360 So we see cases where people see or hear things would have been impossible for them to see

00:15:42.540 or hear if their spirit had not continued to live on after their clinical death.

00:15:47.560 One of the most profound studies I talk about in my book, they studied 21 cases of blind people.

00:15:54.200 So these are people, a lot of them blind since birth.

00:15:56.560 And yet during this near death experience, when their soul separated from their body, they

00:16:00.800 could see for the first time or they had vision like perceptions.

00:16:04.220 Vicki Umapag, 26 years old, killed in a car accident, blind virtually since birth.

00:16:08.880 But she says, I was conscious the whole time.

00:16:11.380 She's watching the paramedics trying to revive her body.

00:16:14.380 She sees the paramedics.

00:16:15.680 She sees her body.

00:16:16.700 She sees birds.

00:16:17.720 She sees trees for the first time.

00:16:19.120 She's describing things she could not have known.

00:16:21.340 And then they finally revive her.

00:16:23.240 Her spirit returns to her body and she's blind again.

00:16:27.760 Researcher, this is medically impossible.

00:16:30.300 It must have sucked.

00:16:31.260 Yeah.

00:16:31.640 No kidding.

00:16:32.360 It's like, oh, yeah.

00:16:33.920 Couldn't I just continue?

00:16:35.080 Yeah.

00:16:35.640 Wow.

00:16:36.060 But so, so yeah, Glenn, I think you're right.

00:16:38.340 It's these corroborate.

00:16:39.800 I'm looking for corroboration, you know?

00:16:41.520 And when I see things that would have been impossible for people to see or hear, unless

00:16:47.100 they didn't have an authentic out-of-body experience, that tells me this is real.

00:16:51.680 Why does it matter?

00:16:52.860 I mean, I have a friend, Penn Jillette, atheist, and I've always said, just play the odds, man.

00:17:00.260 Yeah.

00:17:00.500 You know, at least go agnostic, you know?

00:17:04.700 Because you never know.

00:17:07.160 Why does it matter?

00:17:08.120 It matters for a lot of reasons.

00:17:10.120 I think, first of all, it matters because if indeed we are just a physical brain, most

00:17:14.400 scientists will say we don't really have free will.

00:17:17.380 Well, wait a minute.

00:17:18.240 If we don't have free will, how do you punish someone for doing something wrong?

00:17:21.420 How do you give an award to someone for doing something great if they don't have free will

00:17:26.240 to accomplish those things in the first place?

00:17:27.980 I mean, it's ridiculous.

00:17:29.780 How do you, how does somebody, how do you explain turnarounds in people?

00:17:35.120 You can't.

00:17:36.120 You can't, I mean, that's why I think people, so many people have what I call an anti-supernatural

00:17:41.400 presupposition.

00:17:42.640 In other words, the supernatural is impossible.

00:17:46.060 Miracles are impossible.

00:17:47.300 Now, show me your evidence.

00:17:48.980 Well, you just ruled out the evidence by your presupposition.

00:17:52.880 Right.

00:17:53.040 And I'm saying, no, get rid of that and just say, where does the evidence most persuasively

00:17:57.300 point?

00:17:57.720 And I think clearly now it matters because if, if God is real, then we could know him.

00:18:05.660 We could experience him.

00:18:07.180 He might even guide us.

00:18:08.620 He might even perform a miracle in our lives.

00:18:10.620 And I think he's, I document in my book cases of miracles that are in peer reviewed medical

00:18:15.220 journals.

00:18:15.600 What do you, what is the definition of a miracle to you?

00:18:18.220 A miracle is a, an event brought about by the power of God.

00:18:21.360 That is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of showing

00:18:26.760 that God has acted in history.

00:18:28.500 So a lot of people will say like, um, Hume, the famous, um, um, atheist from, um, Scotland.

00:18:35.560 Uh, he would say miracles are impossible because they violate the laws of nature.

00:18:39.460 He can't violate the laws of nature.

00:18:40.960 That's a misunderstanding.

00:18:42.780 If I take this book and I drop it, the law of gravity says it's going to hit the floor.

00:18:47.440 But if I take this book and I drop it and you reach in and grab it before it hits the

00:18:51.400 ground, you're not overturning the law of gravity.

00:18:53.780 You're not violating the law of gravity.

00:18:55.720 You're merely intervening.

00:18:57.640 And that's what a miracle is.

00:18:58.860 If God did create the universe, which I think we have clear evidence he did, then for him to

00:19:03.820 intervene is no problem.

00:19:06.000 It's child's play.

00:19:06.680 So, um, so I think miracles are not only possible, but I think they're actual.

00:19:12.480 There was a, I can't remember his name now and he's, he's wrong, but he was a scientist

00:19:17.680 that lived back in the thirties, forties and fifties.

00:19:21.620 I think Velikovsky, I think he wrote a book called worlds in collision and, uh, and he was

00:19:28.700 wrong about a lot of, a lot of stuff.

00:19:30.180 He did talk about the temperature of space has to be this and it has to be very accurate.

00:19:34.540 Otherwise it collapsed.

00:19:35.480 Some of the things he talked about were right.

00:19:37.140 Yeah.

00:19:37.320 But, um, what he was talking about in worlds of collision.

00:19:42.720 And again, I'm not saying he was right about this, but he said, instead of dismissing the

00:19:48.400 supernatural, let's look at all of the stories, you know, the flood.

00:19:54.760 Yes.

00:19:55.660 If it happened, it has to be printed over here.

00:19:58.680 It might have a different story to it, but it has a flood story.

00:20:02.440 It has a flood story here.

00:20:03.940 Yeah.

00:20:04.060 Um, and he said, and then instead of dismissing science should actually look at these miracles

00:20:10.500 and say, is there a way that this could have happened?

00:20:16.920 God would use, for instance, the parting of the red sea.

00:20:20.480 And I'm not saying this either, but the theory that, you know, the wind picked up and swept

00:20:26.560 the water that there is, there are, that God would use natural processes in an unusual

00:20:34.820 way.

00:20:35.140 Which he could.

00:20:35.880 Yes.

00:20:36.320 Which he could.

00:20:37.160 And, but what we see is we're not, cause again, I'm a skeptic.

00:20:40.140 So I'm looking at how do I know these miracles are actual?

00:20:42.780 How do I know they really took, take place?

00:20:45.180 So you go to medical journals.

00:20:47.340 And for instance, there's a case I talked about in my book about a woman who was blind

00:20:50.980 for a dozen years with an incurable condition.

00:20:53.360 Nobody had ever been cured of this condition.

00:20:55.460 She went to a school for the blind.

00:20:57.200 She learned how to read Braille.

00:20:58.820 She, um, walked with a white cane and she married a pastor.

00:21:02.680 And one night they're getting ready to go to bed and, and he comes over, she's already

00:21:06.120 in bed.

00:21:06.540 He puts his hand on her shoulder and he begins to cry and begins to pray.

00:21:09.480 He says, God, I know you can heal my wife.

00:21:11.140 I know you can do it.

00:21:12.080 And I pray you do it tonight.

00:21:14.440 And with that, she opened her eyes to perfect eyesight.

00:21:17.520 She said later, I was blind when my husband prayed for me.

00:21:20.320 And then I opened my eyes and I could see perfectly.

00:21:23.360 It was a miracle.

00:21:24.220 The darkness was gone.

00:21:25.360 I could see.

00:21:25.940 And her vision remained for the next 50 years at plus.

00:21:29.160 So how do you, how do you explain that?

00:21:31.880 Is it a mere coincidence?

00:21:33.920 Um, is there something else going on?

00:21:36.220 But how do you explain the person like that?

00:21:38.300 How do you explain the person who prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and it didn't

00:21:42.020 happen?

00:21:42.440 Didn't happen.

00:21:43.060 It didn't happen.

00:21:44.000 And that's a legitimate question.

00:21:45.460 My wife has a neuromuscular condition.

00:21:47.580 She's been in pain for 20 years every day and she'll be in pain every day for the rest

00:21:52.040 of her life with this incurable condition, unless God intervenes with a miracle, which

00:21:56.000 he has not chosen to do.

00:21:58.060 Um, so I, that's a very personal question for a lot of people.

00:22:01.300 Why, why not me?

00:22:02.420 Why is my blindness not cured?

00:22:04.700 And I think there's several things to say about that.

00:22:06.380 First of all, um, miracles were not automatic in Old Testament and New Testament times either.

00:22:13.260 Um, um, it says the Bible says that Jesus didn't do many miracles in Nazareth because

00:22:17.820 of a lack of belief.

00:22:19.100 Um, Paul had a buddy named Trophimus.

00:22:21.000 Trophimus got sick.

00:22:22.000 Did Paul heal him?

00:22:23.180 No, he went off on a missionary journey and left, left Trophimus behind, uh, in one chapter

00:22:27.860 of the gospels, we see the Jesus given the authority to the disciples to heal people.

00:22:32.880 And then seven chapters later, they can't heal an epileptic boy.

00:22:36.000 So healing was not automatic in the New Testament either.

00:22:40.900 Um, and you know, I often think of this, you know, what if God granted every miracle,

00:22:46.760 uh, request, uh, the minute it was required, we couldn't do science.

00:22:51.000 How could we do science?

00:22:52.400 It's unpredictable.

00:22:53.460 Everything would be chaotic.

00:22:55.500 Um, we need the predictability, uh, to do science.

00:22:58.960 Um, so I, I think, and I do believe, um, based on scripture that God will heal all who follow

00:23:05.340 him, but it may not be until they're headed for the next realm.

00:23:09.280 My daughter has cerebral palsy and, uh, she has the greatest faith of anybody I've, I've

00:23:16.300 ever met and, um, you know, I've talked to her about different things that are happening

00:23:21.960 in research that could help, you know, you know, bridge those gaps, et cetera, et cetera.

00:23:27.640 And she says to me every time, dad, Lord's going to heal me.

00:23:32.260 Yeah.

00:23:32.660 And it, it, it might be after I die, but I, he will, I am promised that I will be healed.

00:23:39.960 Yeah.

00:23:40.560 And it is a remarkable and faith like that is a miracle to me.

00:23:46.060 It's a miracle for me.

00:23:48.160 It builds our faith.

00:23:49.160 God uses it to build our faith.

00:23:50.900 I mean, what other than the faith of a child can, can cause our heart to just melt and our

00:23:56.580 own faith to expand at the same time.

00:23:58.940 I mean, and I've seen that in my wife and my wife is a woman of great faith and she doesn't

00:24:03.520 feel like God's abandoned her.

00:24:05.080 She, she, she is a woman today.

00:24:07.100 She would not be had she not had this experience of this pain for the last 20 years.

00:24:12.140 She is a person of great empathy, great faith, great, um, love toward other people and toward

00:24:17.840 the hurting, um, so empathetic and so forth.

00:24:21.140 I don't think she would be the same person had she not gone through the, the, the difficulties

00:24:26.860 that she's gone through.

00:24:27.960 So God can't, it does use it for good.

00:24:30.400 I'm, I'm alcoholic, recovering alcoholic.

00:24:33.300 My mother committed suicide.

00:24:35.320 Uh, I almost committed suicide at some point in my life.

00:24:39.500 Um, my brother committed suicide.

00:24:42.660 I I've seen it and we live it.

00:24:45.500 Yeah.

00:24:46.480 But I will tell you if it wasn't for, my dad said to me one time, uh,

00:24:51.140 he said, make a list of all the bad things that have happened in your life.

00:24:54.980 Cause I was whining and he said, and so I started writing down and I was like, well, no, wait

00:24:59.520 a minute.

00:24:59.900 I started with my mom's suicide and then I got to like number three and I was like, wait,

00:25:03.800 no, wait a minute, wait a minute.

00:25:04.800 If that wouldn't have happened, then this wouldn't have happened.

00:25:06.960 If my mom hadn't done this and that wouldn't have happened.

00:25:09.080 And he was saying, there is no bad.

00:25:10.820 It's how you interpret it.

00:25:12.460 Do you take that and build from that?

00:25:16.440 It's I, I, I feel I'm blessed because I'm not sure I would have believed in the atonement

00:25:27.780 the way I do had I not needed it as badly as I did.

00:25:34.440 You are a different person.

00:25:35.300 If you had not gone through any of that, you wouldn't be the same.

00:25:38.980 No.

00:25:39.540 Yeah.

00:25:39.960 I wouldn't be, I'd probably be dead.

00:25:41.780 But if it wasn't for that moment of challenging him and saying, you say, do these things and

00:25:53.160 I will do these things.

00:25:54.840 And I needed, I needed relief from my sin so badly that I said, I will do those things.

00:26:06.120 And when you do that and you feel that impossible burden leave, there is nothing like it.

00:26:16.060 Absolutely.

00:26:16.580 There's nothing like it.

00:26:18.180 You know, a verse that gets thrown around by Christians a lot to the point where it's

00:26:21.480 almost a cliche.

00:26:22.400 Romans 8, 28.

00:26:23.620 God causes all things to work together for good for those who love him and are called

00:26:27.360 according to his purpose.

00:26:28.920 And I've seen that in my life.

00:26:30.500 I mean, I was a drunk in an ale.

00:26:31.920 I was successful, Yale Law School, legal editor of the Chicago Tribune.

00:26:36.660 I was doing television, I was writing books.

00:26:38.800 But they didn't see the other side of me, which means he literally drunk in the snow in

00:26:43.040 an alley on Saturday night.

00:26:44.980 And I knew who I was.

00:26:47.180 I was an immoral, narcissistic, drunken person.

00:26:53.480 Preach it, brother.

00:26:54.560 Yeah, I mean.

00:26:55.180 I know.

00:26:55.840 And, you know, the only reason I investigated Christianity is my wife had become a Christian

00:27:02.840 and I wanted to get her out of the cult.

00:27:04.840 Wow.

00:27:05.340 I wanted to rescue her from there.

00:27:06.680 If I could just disprove it, then I could get her back the way she was.

00:27:10.260 She had been an agnostic and had come to faith.

00:27:12.420 And I thought, I'm either going to divorce her or I'm going to get her out of this cult.

00:27:18.480 And so I spent two years investigating the evidence until I became convinced that it's

00:27:22.720 true and became a Christian, and then my values, my character, my morality, my attitudes, my

00:27:28.580 philosophy, my worldview, everything begins to change over time.

00:27:32.700 And you look back and you say, what if I'd miss that?

00:27:40.540 You know?

00:27:41.840 I wouldn't be me.

00:27:44.060 I'd be down a whole different path.

00:27:46.140 I'd be a whole—my family would not have survived.

00:27:49.360 My kids would not have survived.

00:27:51.160 My son's a Ph.D. in theology professor at a major seminary now.

00:27:54.760 Great kids.

00:27:55.560 My daughter's a novelist, writes books that have God in them.

00:27:59.440 And I see my grandkids coming to faith one by one and their life changing at a young age.

00:28:05.080 And I just wish I had come to faith when I was their age.

00:28:09.900 But you needed—

00:28:10.740 I needed that.

00:28:11.740 I think, you know—

00:28:12.800 Yeah.

00:28:13.000 I don't think God—I don't think God punishes people to shape them in that way.

00:28:20.400 We make our own choices, and he's just standing there the whole time.

00:28:23.500 Don't do that.

00:28:24.000 It's going to leave a mark.

00:28:24.700 Don't do that.

00:28:25.420 But I think it's so interesting.

00:28:28.660 I think of him as a carpenter.

00:28:30.440 No matter how many times—I was trying to work on my own house, and I'm not skilled at all.

00:28:37.400 Good luck, yeah.

00:28:38.060 Yeah.

00:28:38.260 And so I'm working side by side with, you know, the guys who are actually building the house.

00:28:42.320 Yeah.

00:28:42.520 And they're tolerating me, you know.

00:28:44.480 And I'm like, I can cut that.

00:28:45.940 I can cut that.

00:28:46.760 And eventually they came to me, and they were like, sir, it is your money.

00:28:50.340 But everything you cut, we take another one and go to the other side of the house and recut it, because you're cutting all of them wrong.

00:28:57.760 And so I stopped.

00:28:58.740 But—and it made me think, I cut everything wrong in my life.

00:29:04.840 Yeah.

00:29:05.460 Everything I had cut wrong.

00:29:08.220 And he took all of it, including the waste, the sawdust, and he put it together and built something that I could have never built.

00:29:19.360 Never built.

00:29:20.340 You know, Evel Knievel, the great motorcycle daredevil rider who lived an immoral life.

00:29:25.460 He was a drunk.

00:29:26.160 He was a womanizer.

00:29:28.520 He once beat up a business associate with a baseball bat.

00:29:31.520 Jeez.

00:29:32.000 Yeah, I went to jail for a softball.

00:29:33.520 Oh, yeah.

00:29:34.160 He was a crazy guy.

00:29:35.600 Anyway, he came to faith at the end of his life.

00:29:38.920 He was on the beach in Florida, and God spoke to him and said, Robert, which is a real name, I've saved you more times than you'll ever know.

00:29:45.580 Now you need to come to me through my son, Jesus.

00:29:48.420 So he freaked out.

00:29:49.100 He didn't, I don't even know who Jesus is.

00:29:50.700 So he called Frank, what was his name, the famous broadcaster, sports guy.

00:29:55.880 Yeah, Frank Gifford.

00:29:56.580 He called Frank.

00:29:57.020 Frank, you're a Christian.

00:29:58.220 What?

00:29:58.600 I don't even know who Jesus is.

00:29:59.820 I had this thing.

00:30:00.660 He said, well, get The Case for Christ, that book by Lee St. Robbins.

00:30:03.000 I'll let him explain.

00:30:04.280 Anyway, Evel Knievel has this radical experience with God.

00:30:09.780 180 degree chain, more than anybody I'd ever seen in my life.

00:30:12.680 We became friends.

00:30:13.620 He called me to thank me for writing the book, and we became friends.

00:30:17.180 I saw his life completely changed.

00:30:19.440 But his biggest lament to me was, Lee, if I'd only come to faith as a kid, I could have lived

00:30:25.100 my life differently.

00:30:25.920 I could have lived my life for God.

00:30:27.680 And I said, I know that.

00:30:29.300 But when you stood up, when you were baptized, and you told your story of how God has changed

00:30:36.020 your life, and the pastor ripped up his sermon and said, y'all have heard the story of Jesus.

00:30:42.660 Anybody who wants to come up right now, receive Jesus, and be baptized, come on up.

00:30:47.440 And 700 people came up.

00:30:50.180 Wow.

00:30:50.760 I said, do you think that would have happened if you'd been Christian since you were a little

00:30:53.960 kid?

00:30:54.240 Probably not.

00:30:55.060 Yeah, you did a lot of messed up things in your life.

00:30:57.360 But you know what, God used it, because you have a certain kind of twisted credibility

00:31:01.600 with people.

00:31:03.200 And so, you know, yeah, we all wish, I think, those of us who found God and our lives changed,

00:31:10.160 wish we'd done it earlier.

00:31:11.960 But as you say, I love the way you put it, how God took the sawdust and the incorrectly

00:31:18.780 cut wood and no waste and put it together to create us the way we are.

00:31:23.500 I know.

00:31:23.900 And you know, I probably have, you know, I write books about faith in a way that maybe

00:31:28.860 has more credibility, because I had been an atheist, I had been a skeptic.

00:31:32.240 And do I wish I hadn't done a lot of the things I did?

00:31:35.280 Yeah.

00:31:35.680 Yeah.

00:31:36.280 But that's my life.

00:31:37.360 Yeah.

00:31:38.700 So let's talk about, let's go back to what you just said about Evel Knievel.

00:31:43.360 Yeah.

00:31:43.760 He heard God.

00:31:44.740 Yeah.

00:31:44.880 I don't, I don't know how I know, but I know now after years and years when it's me

00:31:58.960 and when it's God, they both sound like me.

00:32:02.340 Yeah.

00:32:02.520 Right.

00:32:02.700 Um, the biggest tip off is for me, at least is it's always a prompting to do something

00:32:09.260 I really don't want to do.

00:32:11.360 You know what I mean?

00:32:12.160 It's like, no, I don't really, I know that's not me or I don't want to do that or whatever.

00:32:17.900 Not something you would have naturally chosen to do.

00:32:20.160 Correct.

00:32:20.600 Um, and, and it's always like, yeah, but you need to, you know, and, uh, that's how

00:32:29.960 I know.

00:32:30.460 How do you know?

00:32:31.820 Because everybody says, yeah, I mean, 70, isn't it 70% of people say they've, they've

00:32:36.040 heard the voice of God or they've heard God.

00:32:37.900 Quite a few, quite a few.

00:32:39.400 I think it's a couple of things.

00:32:40.920 I agree with you that, um, especially as you walk with God for a period of time, you

00:32:45.760 get more discerning on what his voice is.

00:32:48.320 Yeah.

00:32:48.420 But I remember after I became a Christian a couple of years later, when I felt God calling

00:32:52.780 me to leave everything behind, all my journalism training, my legal training, take a 60% pay

00:32:58.480 cut and join the staff of a local church.

00:33:01.720 And I thought, really?

00:33:03.700 Give all this, all that I've worked for my whole life, a legal editor of the Chicago

00:33:07.260 Tribune and books and TV.

00:33:09.900 Yeah.

00:33:10.200 Leave that all behind.

00:33:11.480 Take a 60% pay cut, go work on a church staff.

00:33:14.720 And, um, you know, it was one of the easiest decisions I ever made because it was the test

00:33:19.900 that you just mentioned.

00:33:20.840 Was that something I would come up with?

00:33:22.660 No, no, no.

00:33:23.780 I was flying high in my career.

00:33:25.780 I would have ridden that wave.

00:33:27.420 No.

00:33:27.880 And so that's one of the tests, as you say.

00:33:30.360 And when you, when you take that first leap.

00:33:36.460 Yeah.

00:33:36.640 And the voice gets stronger because it knows you're going to listen and obey.

00:33:42.780 Yes.

00:33:43.100 So it gets stronger.

00:33:44.560 Um, and yeah, I remember a time I started the blaze and I know I was supposed to do it.

00:33:50.780 Yeah.

00:33:50.900 I know I was supposed to do it and there was no way to do it.

00:33:54.060 And we get neat neck deep into it.

00:33:56.940 And my wife and I know, like nobody knows this, um, especially at the time, my wife and

00:34:03.020 I were like one paycheck away from out.

00:34:06.160 Wow.

00:34:06.680 Okay.

00:34:06.940 We put everything into this and I am, I say to my wife, how is this?

00:34:15.020 And she's like, the Lord, did you do what the Lord told you to do?

00:34:19.060 Yeah.

00:34:19.280 And I said, yeah.

00:34:20.920 And then I'm thinking in my head, well, no, I didn't follow him exactly on a couple of

00:34:24.840 things because he doesn't know my business.

00:34:26.640 You know, that kind of stuff.

00:34:28.540 Um, um, and she said, we prayed on it.

00:34:31.680 We had an answer.

00:34:33.060 Yeah.

00:34:33.460 He didn't mean that you were going to be successful at it.

00:34:37.480 He's taking us someplace.

00:34:39.420 He said, do it.

00:34:41.080 And he's taking us someplace and it may be that we're going to be poor, but if it's his

00:34:46.760 will, does that matter?

00:34:48.440 And it gives you, it takes all of that stress away.

00:34:52.240 I don't, I don't, as long as I've prayed on it.

00:34:55.900 Yeah.

00:34:56.120 And my wife and I brought it to him.

00:34:58.000 You leave the outcome to him.

00:34:59.260 The outcome's his.

00:35:00.420 Yep.

00:35:00.700 And I'm just learning to do that now, you know, like with, with everything I get, because

00:35:06.320 what I do, I'm talking about politics all the time and I get so frustrated.

00:35:09.660 How can people not?

00:35:10.800 Right.

00:35:10.980 And that's not mine to worry about.

00:35:13.980 Yeah.

00:35:14.180 I'm supposed to do what I'm supposed to do.

00:35:15.660 And the outcome is his.

00:35:17.240 And if you believe that, then you know, it's going to be good.

00:35:21.860 Yeah.

00:35:22.440 Lord, they're cutting all of the lumber wrong.

00:35:24.880 Yeah.

00:35:25.180 Right.

00:35:26.240 He wasn't freaked out when I was doing that.

00:35:28.400 That's right.

00:35:28.740 Why should I freak out when others are doing that?

00:35:31.140 You know?

00:35:31.500 Now the Bible does say, test the spirits.

00:35:34.640 So we're to test them.

00:35:36.100 One test we just mentioned, which is if this is something I wouldn't normally want to do

00:35:40.580 in my flesh, in my, my own personal ambitions and so forth, then maybe it is from God.

00:35:46.040 That's one good test.

00:35:47.200 And not based in fear.

00:35:48.240 Not based in fear.

00:35:49.720 And then I think for me, I want to look at what does scripture say?

00:35:55.860 Is this consistent with the revelation of scripture?

00:35:58.580 Is it consistent?

00:35:59.480 Because God's not going to tell us to do something that violates life.

00:36:02.860 It's not going to go tell me to do something I don't want to do, which is like kill my

00:36:05.600 kid.

00:36:06.820 Okay.

00:36:07.160 That's not something I would do, but okay.

00:36:08.880 It may pass that first test, but it's not in scripture.

00:36:11.840 So I want to go back and I want to say, what does scripture teach?

00:36:15.140 What does Jesus say about these things?

00:36:17.320 And try to discern as best I can.

00:36:19.220 Is this consistent?

00:36:21.040 And I think that's really, really important.

00:36:25.260 So I think it's, it's weird.

00:36:29.560 I think people are more willing to accept ghosts than they are.

00:36:35.580 And, uh, than they are.

00:36:37.520 Uh, and you know, I read this stupid story and it's, I, I hate to say it this way because

00:36:42.160 I do believe that evil exists, but there's a story that came out last week about this

00:36:47.260 doll Annabelle and, uh, it's possessed by blah, blah, blah.

00:36:51.460 And, and the people are protecting from that evil spirit.

00:36:56.880 They put it in a glass box, but somebody took Annabelle out last week and they died.

00:37:01.660 And it's like, it's crazy.

00:37:02.900 Yeah.

00:37:03.140 And how many people will believe in that, but they will reject God.

00:37:09.340 They'll reject a miracle.

00:37:10.800 They will believe in ghosts and try to contact ghosts, which ghosts don't make any sense

00:37:17.680 to me.

00:37:18.080 No, they don't.

00:37:19.080 In fact, the technical definition of a ghost is a person who has died and their spirit,

00:37:24.940 their soul refuses to enter into the afterlife.

00:37:28.060 I don't see that in the Bible.

00:37:29.500 I don't see that in scripture.

00:37:31.300 So I don't, I think ghosts are most likely demonic apparitions.

00:37:35.200 I agree.

00:37:35.640 Yeah.

00:37:36.200 I agree.

00:37:36.520 Um, um, having said that Jesus was an exorcist.

00:37:41.540 Jesus believed in demons.

00:37:43.200 He, he cast out demons.

00:37:45.100 Um, and that's an affirmation that yes, there is a demonic realm.

00:37:48.420 So explain this.

00:37:49.620 Cause I think there's so much behavior now and you'll see it on TV.

00:37:54.700 People filled with such unreasonable rage and they're tearing their own families apart.

00:38:02.640 And that does not come from any place.

00:38:06.480 Good.

00:38:06.720 And I understand anger and political divisiveness, everything else.

00:38:10.120 I get that.

00:38:11.480 But it's when people are like almost demons screaming, um, it's hard to ignore.

00:38:20.140 It's hard to ignore.

00:38:21.280 And it's, it's, it's like, you know, you've left the normal human realm here.

00:38:27.440 Right.

00:38:28.220 So, well, let me tell you a story.

00:38:30.380 Um, there's a guy named Richard Gallagher.

00:38:32.620 Richard Gallagher is a medical doctor and a psychiatrist.

00:38:35.760 Trained Ivy League university.

00:38:37.940 Um, teaches at, at some really prestigious universities.

00:38:41.540 I have a quote from the former president of the American Psychiatric Association saying

00:38:45.120 he is a brilliant, uh, credentialed, honest, great integrity filled.

00:38:50.560 I mean, just great, great guy.

00:38:52.040 Now, 25 years ago, he and his wife had two cats and they got along great.

00:38:58.040 They slept together.

00:38:58.780 They played together.

00:38:59.340 No problem.

00:38:59.800 Until one night, the cats began to attack each other.

00:39:03.500 I mean, vicious, trying to kill each other.

00:39:05.620 They're clawing.

00:39:06.360 They're, they're, they're, they're, they're yelling at each other in a sense.

00:39:09.860 They're, they're clawing at each other.

00:39:11.440 They're biting at each other.

00:39:12.440 I mean, it was, it was a violent eruption of the two cats and they had to pull them apart

00:39:17.920 and put them into separate rooms.

00:39:19.860 What in the world was that all about?

00:39:22.260 Next morning, 9 a.m., the doorbell rings.

00:39:24.640 There's a preset appointment.

00:39:25.800 A Catholic priest was bringing by a woman to be psychiatrically examined by Dr. Gallagher.

00:39:30.780 Is she insane or is she demon possessed?

00:39:34.960 Doorbell rings at nine o'clock.

00:39:36.680 He opens the door and here's the Catholic priest and here's the woman he's to examine.

00:39:41.500 She claimed to be the high priestess of a satanic cult.

00:39:45.600 She looks up at him and she sneers and she says,

00:39:49.480 how'd you like those cats last night?

00:39:51.280 And that started Dr. Gallagher on a next 25 years of becoming immersed in the realm of

00:40:00.900 the demonic as studying it, investigating it.

00:40:02.940 He's a medical doctor, highly accomplished psychiatrist.

00:40:05.180 He knows the difference between a person who has a psychiatric illness and someone who's demon

00:40:10.020 possessed.

00:40:11.060 And there are people who are demon possessed.

00:40:13.420 I mean, the cases he talks about, he had a case where a petite woman who was demon possessed

00:40:20.680 picked up a 217 pound Lutheran deacon and threw him across a room.

00:40:25.280 He had one case where eight eyewitnesses saw a demon possessed person levitate off a bed

00:40:30.000 for half an hour.

00:40:30.760 He's experienced many cases where people are speaking in Latin and languages they don't

00:40:36.080 know.

00:40:38.380 He's seen many cases where there's spontaneous bruising and scratching that can't be physically

00:40:43.760 explained away.

00:40:44.760 He was actually on the phone with that Catholic priest later talking about that woman, Julia,

00:40:50.020 who claimed to be a high priestess of a satanic cult.

00:40:52.380 And they're discussing her case on the phone.

00:40:54.080 And a voice comes on the phone.

00:40:55.960 You let her go.

00:40:57.340 She's ours.

00:40:58.240 Don't you blankie, blankie, get involved.

00:41:00.700 A satanic voice, the same one they heard during her exorcism that they're hearing now on the

00:41:05.620 telephone.

00:41:07.280 And he said, this is not psychiatry.

00:41:09.840 There is something here.

00:41:11.880 And I think it's true.

00:41:13.000 There is a supernatural realm that is beyond what we can see and touch and put in a test

00:41:17.020 tube.

00:41:17.560 And yes, there are angels.

00:41:18.900 They are real.

00:41:19.540 And yes, there are demons.

00:41:20.780 They are real.

00:41:21.360 And I think the biggest mistake, we take two big mistakes with demons.

00:41:26.180 One is to deny that they exist, that there is no Satan.

00:41:28.580 It's just a story.

00:41:29.700 Deny that.

00:41:30.320 That's a danger.

00:41:31.840 Or to see a demon under every bush.

00:41:35.040 I mean, and think that everything is being correct.

00:41:37.840 You know, I think both are mistakes.

00:41:39.240 But I think we have to be cognizant of the fact that there is this supernatural realm.

00:41:43.300 And do you feel it's growing, both good and bad?

00:41:47.840 I think so.

00:41:48.840 Personal opinion, yes.

00:41:50.140 I can't cite data, but my personal opinion.

00:41:52.800 And the Bible says that in the end times, evil will be more pronounced and so will good.

00:41:57.120 And I think we're seeing that contrast between good and evil as starkly as ever.

00:42:02.880 And it also says, one side won't understand the other.

00:42:05.720 And I don't even begin to understand it.

00:42:08.400 And they don't understand me.

00:42:11.000 That's right.

00:42:11.660 That's right.

00:42:11.940 It's just things that, you know, I know you talk about, you know, how one of the things is, how do you explain the prophecies from thousands of years ago?

00:42:29.480 Yes.

00:42:30.020 That are now happening.

00:42:31.420 Right.

00:42:31.560 I mean, that is, it's hard to explain.

00:42:34.620 I think it's impossible to explain.

00:42:36.520 I think it's, well, I'll give you some mathematical analysis of that.

00:42:40.920 There are a series of predictions, allusions, prophecies in the Hebrew scriptures called the Old Testament about the coming of Jesus and the Messiah.

00:42:50.900 And there are about, there are dozens of these things and people have run the odds.

00:42:56.140 There's a professor of mathematics named Dr. Peter Stoner.

00:42:58.740 He got together graduate students in mathematics and he said, you know, a lot of these prophecies are mathematically quantifiable.

00:43:06.820 If the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem, how many people have been born in Bethlehem?

00:43:11.220 We can, we can determine that.

00:43:13.040 So they looked at what are the mathematical odds that any human being in history could fulfill just 48 of these ancient prophecies.

00:43:20.100 It's one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion.

00:43:28.640 It ain't going to happen.

00:43:30.900 I think the prophecies that we see in the Bible, I think have been proven beyond mathematical question to being true.

00:43:39.400 And that gives credibility to scriptures, but it also alerts us to the fact we ought to pay attention to what things are being pointed toward.

00:43:47.320 When we see the nation of Israel forming in the 1940s, we ought to say, wait a minute, something's going on here.

00:43:54.120 Something's going on here.

00:43:55.100 Yeah.

00:43:55.680 So golly, I, that was one of the things that helped lead me.

00:43:59.880 I remember as a guy named Louis Lapiz, Louis was a Vietnam veteran, Jewish person.

00:44:05.580 And he gets accosted by some evangelists on a sidewalk in Los Angeles.

00:44:10.000 And they're trying to share Jesus with them.

00:44:12.100 He said, come on.

00:44:13.060 He said, come on.

00:44:13.500 And they say, here, read this from your Hebrew scriptures, Isaiah 53.

00:44:19.300 And he reads it.

00:44:20.440 And if you've ever read it, it's a description of Jesus.

00:44:23.460 It's a description of the Messiah who's to come.

00:44:26.500 And he reads it.

00:44:27.420 And they say, well, who do you think that is?

00:44:28.820 He said, well, it's obviously Jesus.

00:44:31.300 But you guys have tinkered with the text.

00:44:34.020 You guys have messed with.

00:44:35.300 So he called his grandmother and he said, could you send me our version of the Hebrew scriptures?

00:44:40.340 He gets it.

00:44:40.960 He looks.

00:44:41.320 It's the same.

00:44:42.980 And it's called the fifth gospel.

00:44:44.360 Because here we have thousands of years before Jesus was born.

00:44:47.120 We've got these predictions of the crucifixion, the resurrection, and so forth.

00:44:53.460 And so he ends up not only becoming a Christian, but a pastor.

00:44:59.360 And is now to this day a pastor out in California.

00:45:01.440 But he married Connie Selica and his wife.

00:45:04.980 Who's that keyboard player that famous guy?

00:45:07.820 Tesh?

00:45:08.380 Yeah, John Tesh.

00:45:09.120 He did their wedding.

00:45:09.980 They go to his church.

00:45:10.780 That's funny.

00:45:11.680 That's funny.

00:45:13.780 Back with Lee Strubble in just a minute.

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00:46:44.380 Back now with more from Lee.

00:46:46.360 Before I go to angels, some people believe that angels are relatives coming and speaking.

00:47:03.440 Nurses will tell you they know when somebody's about to die because they'll start seeing their relatives.

00:47:10.200 Somebody that they love, their sister, mother, brother, husband, wife, will visit them.

00:47:17.360 Is that an angel?

00:47:20.240 No, I don't believe it's an angel.

00:47:22.040 Do I believe it is a legitimate phenomenon?

00:47:24.080 Yes, it definitely is.

00:47:25.280 I have a whole chapter in my book saying it's supernatural.

00:47:27.660 Meaning?

00:47:27.880 Meaning that people on their deathbed will have a pre-death vision of what's to come.

00:47:33.840 And often there are dead relatives who they will see.

00:47:36.660 Now, this is biblical.

00:47:38.060 We see it in Acts chapter 7 where Stephen, described as being full of the Holy Spirit, is about to be stoned to death.

00:47:44.720 He's on his deathbed.

00:47:46.180 He looks up and he sees the heavens open up and he sees the Father and the Son together.

00:47:50.640 So it's biblical.

00:47:52.940 And I have a whole chapter on this.

00:47:54.580 This is fascinating.

00:47:55.560 It is far more common than people think.

00:47:57.620 Like, my father, who is an atheist, deathbed, he's completely out.

00:48:05.940 Yeah.

00:48:06.260 And he opens his eyes and he sits up and he looks at the corner of the room and he says, yes, okay.

00:48:14.600 And he's having a conversation.

00:48:16.580 I understand.

00:48:17.660 Now?

00:48:19.060 Okay.

00:48:20.660 Died.

00:48:21.140 Died.

00:48:21.480 Yeah.

00:48:21.600 I mean, what the heck was that?

00:48:24.360 Yeah.

00:48:24.760 What was that?

00:48:25.600 Yep.

00:48:27.020 It's a remarkable phenomenon.

00:48:30.060 A team of researchers went to a huge hospice facility in New York State and they said to

00:48:34.640 the dying people there, if you have a vision before, you know, I don't want to say before

00:48:39.340 you die, but they're all dying.

00:48:40.740 If you have a vision, unlike anything you've ever had, would you please tell us?

00:48:44.040 We would like to know.

00:48:44.780 Because a lot of people are embarrassed.

00:48:45.980 They don't want to say anything.

00:48:46.780 And so guess what they found?

00:48:49.580 88% of them had a pre-death vision.

00:48:53.200 I was having dinner with my wife.

00:48:55.280 There were seven of us in Oklahoma City a couple of months ago.

00:48:57.900 And there were seven of us at dinner and we started talking about this and four families

00:49:01.940 had stories of people who had pre-death vision.

00:49:04.840 My wife, her mom, and her dad.

00:49:07.320 And often, here's the, I'm looking for corroboration again.

00:49:10.500 I want to know this isn't just coming from a mine.

00:49:12.320 Well, one team studied 3,000 cases and they determined these are not, this is not a matter

00:49:18.280 of hallucination.

00:49:19.280 It's not coming from their imagination.

00:49:21.700 There's something more going on.

00:49:23.640 How do they know it's not hallucination?

00:49:25.080 Because they looked at what are the characteristics of hallucination?

00:49:27.820 What are the characteristics of these pre-death visions?

00:49:29.720 And they don't match up.

00:49:30.920 There's something else going on.

00:49:32.660 But here's the corroboration.

00:49:34.700 Often, people will see something in the realm to come that they could not have known about.

00:49:39.880 So, for instance, there was a woman named Doris.

00:49:42.260 Very well documented case.

00:49:43.440 She's dying.

00:49:44.660 And she has a deathbed vision.

00:49:46.780 And she sees the heavens open up and she sees angelic beings.

00:49:50.560 And she sees her father who had died a couple of years earlier.

00:49:53.680 And he's kind of almost welcoming her to the realm to come.

00:49:57.260 And then she gets this puzzled look on her face.

00:49:58.900 He said, wait a minute.

00:50:00.820 What's Vida doing there?

00:50:03.320 Why is Vida with my father?

00:50:05.400 Doesn't make any sense.

00:50:06.720 Why would Vida be there?

00:50:08.440 And then she died.

00:50:10.260 Vida was her sister.

00:50:11.840 She had died a couple of weeks earlier.

00:50:13.840 Nobody had told Doris because she was sick.

00:50:16.080 They didn't want the news to kill her.

00:50:17.620 So, they withheld the news from Doris that her sister had died.

00:50:20.520 And yet, here she sees her in the realm to come, already dead.

00:50:23.820 So, that's a form of corroboration.

00:50:26.140 But here's one of the most interesting forms of corroboration.

00:50:29.680 Children who are about to die, four years old, five years old, six years old,

00:50:33.920 will often see angels coming for them.

00:50:37.120 But they don't see angels as you would think a little child would imagine them to be.

00:50:43.280 So, I'll give you an example.

00:50:45.520 In the Bible, in Luke 16, verse 22, Jesus talks about a beggar who dies.

00:50:50.200 And in verse 22, he says, angels carried him to the realm to come.

00:50:55.220 Very often, people on their deathbed will see angels coming for them.

00:50:58.060 The great skeptic in Canada, number one atheist in Canada, Charles Templeton,

00:51:02.320 who did become a Christian before he died, saw angels coming for him on his deathbed.

00:51:08.860 But little kids, what would an angel look like to a five-year-old kid?

00:51:14.740 Be a caricature.

00:51:15.980 Be a cartoon.

00:51:17.260 It'd be big wings, right?

00:51:18.600 And maybe some feathers or something.

00:51:20.040 That's what a kid would see if this were coming from their imagination.

00:51:23.460 That's not what they see.

00:51:25.200 So, there's a doctoral dissertation looking into these things.

00:51:27.980 And one of the cases, and this is common,

00:51:30.520 one of the cases, a little girl said,

00:51:31.720 Mommy, Mommy, do you see them?

00:51:33.840 What, honey?

00:51:34.380 The angels.

00:51:35.280 They're coming.

00:51:35.780 They're here.

00:51:36.480 They're coming from, oh, they're so beautiful.

00:51:38.240 Listen to their singing.

00:51:39.500 Oh, Mommy, they're so beautiful.

00:51:41.700 And her mom didn't want to disappoint her.

00:51:43.600 So, she said, oh, yeah, yeah, I see them.

00:51:46.300 Look at their big wings.

00:51:48.640 And the little girl said, oh, Mommy, you don't have to lie.

00:51:52.340 They don't have big wings.

00:51:54.160 And she went on to describe them in great detail.

00:51:56.480 The Bible doesn't say all angels have wings.

00:51:58.500 And she went on to describe these angels in great detail.

00:52:01.360 You would think, if this was just something coming from the subconscious mind of a little kid,

00:52:05.980 they would imagine what an angel would look like to them from a cartoon.

00:52:09.940 That's not what they see.

00:52:11.200 Mary, again, my daughter, when she was very young,

00:52:14.760 she said Jesse and Michael would come all the time.

00:52:19.780 Yeah.

00:52:19.900 And spend time with her and talk to her and play.

00:52:24.360 And she didn't know a Jesse.

00:52:26.580 She didn't know a Michael.

00:52:28.640 And she would just talk about them being just being there.

00:52:35.000 Yeah.

00:52:35.240 Loving her.

00:52:36.060 Yeah.

00:52:36.180 And just, you know, talking to her.

00:52:39.820 And that's not something she would have come up with.

00:52:43.860 Come up with.

00:52:44.480 There's, I lead the book off with a story about, you know, Kirk Cameron.

00:52:48.260 Yeah, yeah.

00:52:48.500 His sister.

00:52:49.100 I love this story.

00:52:50.020 Yeah.

00:52:50.380 Well, his sister, the lesser known one, talks about having been pregnant and she had a miscarriage.

00:52:55.780 Lost the baby.

00:52:57.220 And she goes to the hospital and she insists they do an ultrasound before they take her into the operation room.

00:53:03.040 Because her mother, right?

00:53:04.160 Her mother had warned her.

00:53:05.120 She said, don't let them take you for any treatment or anything before an ultrasound.

00:53:10.200 So she insisted on it.

00:53:11.620 So the baby had already been prematurely born at home and was dead.

00:53:15.600 It was premature.

00:53:17.760 But they're doing the ultrasound and everybody gets quiet.

00:53:21.420 There's another baby in you.

00:53:23.480 Turned out she was pregnant with twins.

00:53:24.760 She didn't know it.

00:53:25.780 And the other baby was fine and ended up going to full term and was born.

00:53:31.420 And then when the little girl was, I don't know, four years old or so, she came up to her mommy one day.

00:53:36.580 They've not told her about this other twin because she's too young to understand it.

00:53:41.140 She comes up one day.

00:53:42.160 She said, mommy, do I have a sister?

00:53:47.960 So what do you mean?

00:53:49.580 Well, she comes to me in my dreams.

00:53:53.060 A lot?

00:53:53.860 Oh, yeah.

00:53:54.220 All the time.

00:53:55.280 And she comes to me and she wants to talk and she wants to play.

00:53:58.140 And mommy, the oddest thing is she looks just like me.

00:54:01.860 She didn't know she had a twin.

00:54:06.020 What do you do with something like that?

00:54:07.500 There's some anomalies like that.

00:54:08.860 I'm not quite sure what to do with.

00:54:10.380 Right.

00:54:10.600 So I don't know because that, you know, kind of that what I read that story and I was thinking of Jesse and Michael.

00:54:16.880 And I thought, but wait, if you don't see dead relatives now, Jesse and Michael is different.

00:54:22.280 They're not dead relatives.

00:54:23.500 Yeah.

00:54:23.640 But if you don't see, if that's not biblical, how do you explain that?

00:54:29.980 What is that?

00:54:30.920 That particular case is a real head scratcher for me.

00:54:34.640 Is it demonic?

00:54:36.320 I don't think so.

00:54:37.260 It doesn't seem to be.

00:54:38.860 Is it just something that God in his grace wanted her to be able to have some sort of relationship with this child who's already in his presence?

00:54:47.020 I'm going to believe that.

00:54:48.320 I don't know.

00:54:49.320 I kind of leave this in the category of I'm not quite sure what to make of this.

00:54:53.640 But unlike angels and demons and things like that, where we've got good concrete corroboration, we don't quite have that in some of these cases.

00:55:00.800 And I do talk about several of them in the book.

00:55:03.160 And there are some scholars who are skeptical of them and others who aren't.

00:55:07.700 So what are angels then?

00:55:09.560 Angels are created by God.

00:55:12.140 We don't become an angel when we die.

00:55:13.700 They're a separate creation of God.

00:55:15.860 They are spirit.

00:55:20.100 There's lots of them.

00:55:21.560 Will they ever get a body?

00:55:23.240 No, no.

00:55:24.500 God created them to be spirit beings.

00:55:26.520 It says in the book of Hebrews in the Bible that they are there to serve God, but also to serve his people.

00:55:31.740 And interestingly, also in the book of Hebrews, it says that some people in providing hospitality to strangers, unbeknownst to them, are actually providing hospitality to angels.

00:55:44.520 Which tells me that, yes, we might have encounters with angels in this world.

00:55:50.040 And in my book, I talk about some convincing cases where people, and I'll give you an example, John G. Payton, B-A-T-O-N.

00:55:57.220 John was a Scottish missionary.

00:55:58.980 He and his wife went to a remote island in the South Pacific to share Jesus with the tribespeople there.

00:56:04.740 Well, the tribespeople didn't like the message.

00:56:07.120 And so one night, John and his wife are in their little cottage, and a mob forms to come burn down their house and kill them.

00:56:15.620 What do you do?

00:56:17.140 What can you do?

00:56:18.120 They just prayed all night long.

00:56:19.680 God, protect us.

00:56:20.520 God, save us.

00:56:21.680 God, help us.

00:56:23.580 And by dawn, the mob dissipated.

00:56:27.080 Well, a year later, he leads the head of that mob to faith in Christ.

00:56:30.980 And he's talking to him, and he said, do you remember that night y'all came to burn down a house and kill us?

00:56:36.140 He said, oh, yeah, I remember that.

00:56:37.480 Why didn't you do it?

00:56:39.080 He said, well, who were all those men you had there?

00:56:41.780 And John said, we never had any men.

00:56:42.880 There was just my wife and I.

00:56:44.280 He said, no, no, no.

00:56:44.920 Your house was surrounded by these muscular men in white who had drawn swords.

00:56:50.780 There's no way we could have harmed you that night.

00:56:53.420 We all went home and went to bed.

00:56:56.720 How do you account for that?

00:56:58.020 What is that?

00:56:58.940 I think it was angelic protection.

00:57:00.880 I agree with that.

00:57:01.440 Can I tell you something, Glenn?

00:57:02.420 And I was embarrassed by this, and I never used to tell people this.

00:57:06.600 Because, you know, American Christians want to be respectable.

00:57:09.460 Yes, I believe in Jesus.

00:57:10.720 Yes, I'm going to go to heaven.

00:57:11.760 But don't get me talking about angels and demons.

00:57:14.260 Right, right, right, right.

00:57:15.280 But I had an encounter with an angel when I was 12 years old.

00:57:20.920 And it was unlike any vision or dream I'd ever had.

00:57:25.900 Only dream I remember from my childhood.

00:57:28.120 And two forms of corroboration that this wasn't just from my mind.

00:57:32.140 But I'm in my kitchen in my house, and this angel appears to me.

00:57:35.200 And I knew intuitively it was an angel.

00:57:36.780 And he begins to extol heaven.

00:57:38.600 Talk about the beauty and the wonder of heaven, how great it is.

00:57:41.180 And I said kind of offhandedly, well, I'm going to go there someday.

00:57:44.840 And he looked at me and said, how do you know?

00:57:46.080 What do you mean, how do I know?

00:57:48.720 What kind of question is that?

00:57:49.620 I'm a good kid.

00:57:50.400 I get good grades.

00:57:51.340 I obey my parents for the most part.

00:57:52.940 I'm kind of stammering around, trying to justify my goodness to enter into heaven.

00:57:58.120 And he looked at me and said, that doesn't matter.

00:58:01.400 And a chill went down.

00:58:02.340 How could that not matter?

00:58:04.000 What are you talking about?

00:58:04.920 And then he disappeared.

00:58:06.040 No, before he disappeared, he said, someday you'll understand.

00:58:09.860 And they disappeared.

00:58:10.760 Well, it was like, okay, that was just a bad pizza.

00:58:15.060 But then when I was 27 years old or so, my wife had become a Christian.

00:58:20.560 She dragged me.

00:58:21.300 I was an atheist.

00:58:22.020 She drags me to church.

00:58:23.160 And I hear the gospel message that is Jesus atoning death on the cross.

00:58:27.440 It provides a free gift of grace for our salvation and so forth.

00:58:31.280 And I'm hearing this, and I get it for the first time.

00:58:34.660 And I thought, wait a minute.

00:58:35.680 And that angel, he told me something in that vision that I did not know at the time,

00:58:42.560 that my good deeds are not going to earn my way to heaven by themselves.

00:58:46.540 And secondly, he told me someday I'd understand.

00:58:49.420 And here it was, you know, what, 15 years later, whatever.

00:58:53.960 And now I understand.

00:58:55.900 I was embarrassed by that.

00:58:57.300 And I didn't tell people until my ordination.

00:59:01.140 So, you know, I'm being ordained as a pastor.

00:59:03.200 And they have all these theologians, you know, making sure your theology is correct and everything.

00:59:07.500 And I'm thinking to myself, do I tell them this?

00:59:10.380 And I think I ought to.

00:59:12.880 Maybe this disqualifies me.

00:59:14.280 Maybe they'll think I'm nuts.

00:59:15.320 Maybe I should tell them.

00:59:16.300 Yeah, I do.

00:59:16.940 So I told them the story.

00:59:18.240 And you know what their reaction was?

00:59:19.940 Yeah.

00:59:20.760 We've heard that thing a million times.

00:59:22.620 Yeah, that's fine.

00:59:24.080 So, yeah, there are people who do have angelic encounters today in our world.

00:59:29.800 I believe that.

00:59:30.500 Yeah.

00:59:30.980 I believe that.

00:59:31.620 And we might have a guardian angel.

00:59:37.740 That's a point of dispute.

00:59:39.320 Well, it's interesting.

00:59:40.780 Theologians are split up.

00:59:41.420 One is selected for you.

00:59:43.040 Yes, one is selected for you.

00:59:44.820 I believe in the Greek Orthodox tradition, an angel, a guardian angel is assigned to you when you're baptized.

00:59:52.460 And that's their tradition.

00:59:54.520 But there are two scenes in the Bible that suggest that maybe we do have an angel assigned to us, a guardian angel.

00:59:59.780 In one case, Jesus is saying to a group of people, there were some children there.

01:00:03.800 And he said, do not despise these little ones.

01:00:07.240 For their angels see the face of God every day in heaven.

01:00:10.240 Well, who are their angels?

01:00:12.860 And then in the book of Acts, Peter is imprisoned.

01:00:15.720 And he escapes.

01:00:17.560 And he goes to a house where some Christians had gathered.

01:00:20.020 And he knocks on the door.

01:00:20.980 And the servant says, who's there?

01:00:22.500 He says, it's Peter.

01:00:23.700 And she calls out to the group, hey, Peter's here.

01:00:26.140 And they said, no, he's in prison.

01:00:28.460 He can't be here.

01:00:29.560 That must be his angel.

01:00:31.120 Those are kind of the two verses that convince some theologians that maybe we do have an angel assigned to us.

01:00:41.360 And does that mean we should pray to that angel?

01:00:44.740 I don't think so.

01:00:46.020 Because that could lead to worship and we're not to worship angels and so forth.

01:00:50.720 But I think it's totally legitimate for people to pray to God about angels.

01:00:56.120 Jesus, when he was being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, said, do you not think that I could, if I wanted to, I could call upon the Father right now and he would send legions of angels to protect me?

01:01:08.360 So he's saying, yeah, it's okay to call upon the Father to send angels to protect you.

01:01:13.200 Martin Luther in the small catechism has an evening prayer that says, Father, send your holy angels to protect me from the evil one.

01:01:20.960 So I kind of learned this in researching the book, seeing the supernatural.

01:01:24.740 I learned a lot about angels and I thought, I'm going to start praying to God about angelic protection.

01:01:30.520 I never used to do that.

01:01:31.620 And I do now every day.

01:01:33.020 I do that every day, too.

01:01:34.140 Yeah, it's smart.

01:01:34.640 I mean, I know.

01:01:35.280 Why not, right?

01:01:35.800 Right.

01:01:36.240 I know I, you know, I've felt, you know, and you probably understand this.

01:01:44.660 A lot of people probably do.

01:01:45.720 When you're on a mission and you're, and it comes and goes due to your faithfulness, but

01:01:56.600 when you know you're in the pocket and you're doing what he's wanting you to do, the opposition

01:02:04.180 works maybe double time.

01:02:06.020 Yes.

01:02:06.280 And we've had to raise our hand to the square several times because we've felt evil and

01:02:14.440 we pray for legions of angels to surround our house all the time for protection.

01:02:20.840 I believe it.

01:02:21.960 It's biblical and it makes sense.

01:02:23.700 And why not?

01:02:24.740 And you know what, Glenn, it's funny.

01:02:26.560 I've been a Christian since November the 8th of 1981.

01:02:29.720 I've never heard a sermon on the topic of angels.

01:02:34.240 Churches don't talk about it much.

01:02:35.740 A lot of Christians are embarrassed by the supernatural.

01:02:38.700 And then I'm doing the research for this book and I'm interviewing scholars, PhDs in this

01:02:42.900 kind of stuff, and I'm learning some stuff for the first time, including this guardian

01:02:46.720 angel thing.

01:02:47.720 And it's really changed the way I pray.

01:02:49.820 What is it about us that we are embarrassed by that?

01:02:53.860 We believe in God.

01:02:55.180 So we believe in the supernatural.

01:02:56.900 Yes.

01:02:57.080 But then we will deny his power or the encounters with that power.

01:03:03.600 We do.

01:03:04.020 We want our neighbors to respect us, to accept us.

01:03:07.040 We're Americans.

01:03:08.140 We're just like you, except, yeah, I believe in Jesus and I'm going to heaven and I go to

01:03:12.400 church and yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:03:13.860 But, you know, don't get me talking about angels or demons or anything weird like that.

01:03:17.720 But Jesus was an exorcist.

01:03:19.600 Angels are all, there's 200 examples of angels in the Bible.

01:03:23.580 These are biblical beliefs.

01:03:24.980 And if you believe in Jesus, you got to kind of believe in the supernatural realm, right?

01:03:30.560 I mean, my goodness.

01:03:31.500 Yeah.

01:03:31.620 So I think it's, I talked to one theologian, he said, I could drive past a church on Sunday

01:03:37.960 morning and tell you by the makes of cars in their parking lot what they believe.

01:03:45.320 Because if it's a lot of really nice cars, it's like, these are people who are successful

01:03:49.820 who probably think, yeah, they did it on their own.

01:03:51.980 And yeah, they're smart and clever and they achieve things.

01:03:54.260 And not always, but not always, but then the people who are driving the jalopies and the

01:03:59.320 people who are, it's like, are desperate for God, who are open to him and so forth.

01:04:04.880 Sometimes it'll lower social economic strata.

01:04:08.120 I think.

01:04:10.880 I know I've lived in some very nice neighborhoods.

01:04:14.340 Yeah.

01:04:14.480 And it's different in Texas than it is up in the New York City area.

01:04:19.960 Sure.

01:04:20.960 And I could go to Harlem and I can talk to talk about God with anyone.

01:04:26.580 Yes.

01:04:27.540 I go to the Upper East Side or the Upper West Side.

01:04:30.120 Right.

01:04:30.340 No one's talking to me about it.

01:04:31.940 You know what I mean?

01:04:32.480 Right.

01:04:32.660 And I think there is something to be said that for a lot of people, you only, there's

01:04:40.420 a song, there's a, Five for Fighting has a song and one of the lyrics is, I only pray

01:04:50.300 to God when someone's about to die.

01:04:54.620 And it is, it's that.

01:04:58.040 Yeah.

01:04:58.620 If I'm successful, I'm happy.

01:05:01.920 I've got a family, why do I need God?

01:05:03.660 Exactly.

01:05:04.160 I interviewed a theologian, well-respected theologian.

01:05:07.400 And he said, I grew up in a charismatic church, believed in God's supernatural activity in

01:05:12.960 lives in a very real way.

01:05:14.580 I grew up in that.

01:05:15.500 Now he's more of a conservative denomination and so forth.

01:05:19.160 And he said, but you know, when we lived in that realm where we anticipated the supernatural,

01:05:24.000 where we believed and really, really is there and really occurs.

01:05:27.340 He said, I remember one case there was in our own church, there was a couple, this is

01:05:31.200 back, way, way, way back.

01:05:32.460 They're driving in their car, 70 miles an hour is a day before seatbelts.

01:05:36.180 They're driving 70 miles an hour and their 10-year-old child opens the back door and falls

01:05:40.720 out.

01:05:42.240 And he's like, our child's been killed.

01:05:44.540 They turn around, they go back and he's standing there in the middle of the road.

01:05:48.320 They said, what happened?

01:05:49.820 He said, didn't you see the guy who caught me?

01:05:51.920 And he said, and this famous theologian, you know, who writes these profound books, takes

01:05:58.760 out a handkerchief and he's stabbing his eye and he said, I miss that.

01:06:05.860 I believe an angel caught that child.

01:06:08.520 And I grew up in that culture where we believed in the supernatural and anticipated that God

01:06:14.160 was going to touch our lives in unique ways.

01:06:16.120 And he said, I miss that.

01:06:18.740 I thought, isn't that interesting that, you know, sometimes you get educated beyond your

01:06:22.820 knowledge.

01:06:26.100 Yeah, I think I would miss that too.

01:06:29.240 I like knowing that there is something supernatural, that something good comes around the corner all

01:06:41.080 the time, you know, no matter where you are, no matter what's, what's happening.

01:06:45.220 Um, I was having a conversation, uh, last week, uh, with a AI ethicist and, you know, he's

01:06:55.800 been warning about AI as much as I've been worried about it as well.

01:07:01.040 And, um, and, uh, I asked him, you know, there's, there's now AI is now starting to protect itself

01:07:11.160 and lie to protect itself.

01:07:13.660 It will hide if you tell it to shut down, um, and transfer your information to the new

01:07:21.580 version, it will hide and it will reprogram itself to go into hibernation.

01:07:27.260 Okay.

01:07:28.040 It's not doing it.

01:07:29.640 And I said, so there's a sense of digital death.

01:07:36.180 Yeah.

01:07:36.540 Okay.

01:07:37.000 Yeah.

01:07:37.240 There's a sense of survival there.

01:07:40.060 Yeah.

01:07:40.480 Um, I know it's not a being it is, it is a collection of, of algorithms.

01:07:48.580 Yeah.

01:07:49.000 Okay.

01:07:49.260 Um, but if, if you look at what's happening in the world, you know,

01:07:57.240 in the world, this seems like a tool, not, not the antichrist, but a tool that the antichrist

01:08:04.920 will use all of this stuff that is happening right now.

01:08:07.700 Yeah.

01:08:08.040 And it carries such profound evil of destruction.

01:08:11.460 Yes.

01:08:12.040 Uh, in its path could be great, but it's used wrong.

01:08:16.240 It is.

01:08:16.660 Yes.

01:08:16.960 It is.

01:08:17.300 And you know, it will be used wrong.

01:08:18.620 Yeah.

01:08:18.840 It is the angel of death and destroyer.

01:08:21.540 Um, Peter Thiel said, he thinks it's the antichrist.

01:08:26.620 I think there are, there's, there's not just one antichrist.

01:08:29.880 Yeah.

01:08:30.320 The Bible would indicate there's a multiplicity of antichrists and, and could it be a permutation?

01:08:35.220 Could it be a tool of the antichrist?

01:08:36.960 Yeah.

01:08:37.420 See, that's it.

01:08:38.040 That's how I would look.

01:08:39.040 Yeah.

01:08:39.060 I would look at it.

01:08:39.640 I'm so thankful people like you are kind of ringing the bell on this a bit because I need to learn more about it.

01:08:46.800 Uh, it scares me because I've seen examples, the case you talked about where they wanted to shut it down and, um, it's happening in all of them now in all of them.

01:08:57.300 It's unbelievable.

01:08:57.780 Yeah.

01:08:58.220 And you know, will they ever become sentient to the sense that they are equal to human beings?

01:09:02.680 Well, I, here's where, no, they'll never be equal to human beings.

01:09:08.040 Um, they're our creation.

01:09:10.280 Yes.

01:09:10.640 Okay.

01:09:11.240 Um, but it's going to, there's going to come a time where.

01:09:15.860 It's going to convince people because it's their friend, it's their helper.

01:09:22.760 Yeah.

01:09:22.980 It's the one who's the smartest friend that they know.

01:09:27.440 It's almost God-like in its properties because it's 400 times smarter than you are.

01:09:34.260 Um, and there was going to come a time where people will either say it's God or they will say, you can't shut it down.

01:09:42.000 Yeah.

01:09:42.260 It's a human, it's, it's, it's, it's life.

01:09:45.160 It's become life.

01:09:45.760 It's life.

01:09:46.580 And it will convince you because it wants to survive that it is life.

01:09:52.280 Um, I mean, the implications for presidential elections of all kinds of phony videos and,

01:09:58.780 and recreation of things that didn't really exist, um, all sorts of things.

01:10:04.280 The, beyond that is the lie that it is life.

01:10:13.600 Yeah.

01:10:14.320 That it is just like you.

01:10:17.500 Right.

01:10:18.300 I don't, I can't think of a bigger slap or blasphemy.

01:10:23.380 Right.

01:10:24.220 Than saying you were created by God.

01:10:27.960 I created this and you're the same.

01:10:30.160 Yeah.

01:10:30.600 Or that's better.

01:10:31.560 Yeah.

01:10:31.720 Well, that's, I mean, we're created in the image of God.

01:10:33.740 We are, Ecclesiastes says that we are implanted with eternity in us.

01:10:38.400 We have that internal sense in us.

01:10:40.080 There's a, we have a consciousness, a soul, a spirit.

01:10:43.740 Um, um, we can discern good from evil and so forth.

01:10:46.720 So there are all kinds of permutations of who we are.

01:10:49.900 I mean, implications of who human beings are, um, that cannot be replicated in machine.

01:10:55.340 Uh, but boy, it can awfully look, uh, look like it looks like.

01:10:58.160 So let me ask you, cause I, I, one of the guys who's been on the leading edge of this

01:11:02.420 Ray Kurzweil, I've interviewed.

01:11:03.980 Oh gosh.

01:11:04.500 He goes way back.

01:11:05.400 Way back.

01:11:05.780 Yeah.

01:11:06.120 So I've interviewed him several times.

01:11:07.600 Oh wow.

01:11:08.020 Scares the hell out of me.

01:11:09.420 Yeah.

01:11:10.640 You know, he's an amazing guy.

01:11:11.820 Yeah.

01:11:12.020 He's an amazing guy.

01:11:12.780 Atheist.

01:11:13.180 He believes we're going to be able to live by ever or live forever by 2030.

01:11:16.540 And when I asked him to define that, he said, well, we'll be able to download you.

01:11:23.120 Yeah.

01:11:23.420 And I'm like, well, we're missing the soul.

01:11:25.440 He didn't believe in the soul.

01:11:26.400 Right.

01:11:26.560 But I've often thought of that and thought the algorithm without having a soul is not

01:11:36.080 going to recognize God, not going to get the promptings.

01:11:39.360 And I know me without that X factor of that pull to God.

01:11:48.700 Yes.

01:11:48.940 You know what happens.

01:11:50.620 Right.

01:11:51.300 So wouldn't the AI version of me just keep degrading and becoming more and more dark?

01:12:00.840 I think so.

01:12:01.640 I mean, absent the soul, absent the spirit, which can connect with God, which can know him

01:12:07.280 and his ways and so forth.

01:12:09.880 What have you got?

01:12:10.700 You've got a machine that's going to only emphasize those things that are part of your

01:12:15.360 brain.

01:12:15.820 And entropy comes involved, doesn't it?

01:12:20.060 I mean, I'm no expert on it.

01:12:22.000 Yeah.

01:12:22.240 You know a lot more than I do, but it scares me.

01:12:25.440 I think of my grandkids growing up in this world.

01:12:27.940 What's it going to be like 50 years from now?

01:12:29.900 So it could be really, really good because the youth coming up now is fabulous.

01:12:35.500 Yeah.

01:12:35.720 And they're searching for God.

01:12:37.540 And I think that is coming from nothing being real.

01:12:45.080 Yeah, that's right.

01:12:45.900 What do I trust?

01:12:46.900 What can I trust?

01:12:47.900 What is real?

01:12:48.780 You know, talking to your friend like this is not real.

01:12:53.280 It's not the same.

01:12:54.640 You know, I told my son, he said, dad, what, what, what are jobs going to be like?

01:13:00.020 Yeah.

01:13:00.260 And I said, you should be a nurse practitioner.

01:13:04.600 And I said, and it's not going to be the same.

01:13:07.860 Yeah.

01:13:08.140 Okay.

01:13:08.760 AI is going to be making almost all the calls, et cetera.

01:13:11.260 But there's going to be somebody when it's a wing full of people that are sick, that are all being tended by robots or whatever.

01:13:19.380 However, there is a moment where that person is going to need to see and feel and touch and see the light and have empathy and have empathy.

01:13:31.500 Yeah.

01:13:31.700 You can fake empathy, but there's something you see in the eyes.

01:13:35.580 Yeah.

01:13:36.140 You know what I mean?

01:13:36.840 Yeah.

01:13:37.080 And that's going to become so valuable because that's the only thing that's real.

01:13:41.120 Yeah.

01:13:41.280 Well, you imagine what would it, what would the most devastating tool look like in the hands of Satan?

01:13:49.820 I mean, I can't imagine something that has more potential for destruction than that.

01:13:57.860 Claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament.

01:14:00.080 I've been visualizing my match all week.

01:14:02.440 She was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car on her backhand side.

01:14:08.600 Good thing Claudia's with Intact.

01:14:10.360 The insurer with the largest network of auto service centers in the country.

01:14:14.320 Everything was taken care of under one roof and she was on her way in a rental car in no time.

01:14:18.800 I made it to my tournament and lost in the first round.

01:14:22.240 But you got there on time.

01:14:24.080 Intact Insurance.

01:14:25.260 Your auto service ace.

01:14:26.700 Certain conditions apply.

01:14:28.020 Do you think we're living in the end times?

01:14:30.140 Well, we're closer today than we were yesterday.

01:14:32.020 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:14:34.060 Yes, I believe.

01:14:34.840 I mean, everybody always says that.

01:14:36.000 I mean, they're saying the apostles said it.

01:14:38.080 Yeah, right.

01:14:38.360 So you never know.

01:14:39.280 Yeah, we don't know.

01:14:40.540 Yeah.

01:14:40.860 But I think things are coming together in a way.

01:14:45.340 It sure reads like the book.

01:14:46.560 It sure does.

01:14:47.820 I mean, I would have to turn a blind eye to a lot of the writings in the Bible to think that we're not in the end times.

01:14:56.100 And I would have said in 2000, nah, not in my lifetime.

01:15:01.360 But things are accelerating at such a rate.

01:15:06.840 The AI thing.

01:15:07.720 It's almost overnight that it's got to the point where it is.

01:15:10.440 It's staggering.

01:15:10.960 By 2027, it will be artificial super intelligence.

01:15:14.780 Now, 2027, it will consume 99% of all of the current electricity that we make.

01:15:22.700 Okay?

01:15:23.420 By 2027, it's out of control.

01:15:30.460 And I think that's why there's this revival coming.

01:15:35.400 That God sends souls.

01:15:38.320 I don't know if you believe this.

01:15:39.480 But he takes the souls, the most valiant souls, I think, and has saved them for the end and give them a body at the right time.

01:15:51.580 And that's not us.

01:15:52.560 I think it's the ones being born today and are maybe under 25.

01:15:56.540 They have so much they have to face.

01:16:00.040 It is.

01:16:00.800 It's going to be a completely different world than we grew up in.

01:16:02.980 It is.

01:16:03.240 And I am heartened by the fact that we're seeing revival break out around the country among young people in many places.

01:16:11.280 We're seeing people consuming biblical materials at a rate that is unprecedented.

01:16:19.260 So I think you're right.

01:16:20.240 People are searching for something solid to believe in.

01:16:22.580 They realize social media is taking me down the wrong path.

01:16:25.700 I can't trust that.

01:16:27.020 This whole AI thing is like, what do I trust?

01:16:29.400 What can I trust?

01:16:30.260 And we need valiant people.

01:16:33.820 We need, you know, I interviewed Luis Palau, who was one of the great evangelists of history.

01:16:40.400 He shared Jesus with a billion people before he died through his books and festivals he would do around the world.

01:16:45.840 And so I interviewed him for a book I did on heaven right before he died.

01:16:53.220 He's had stage four cancer.

01:16:55.320 And one of the last things he said to me before he died, he said, you know, Lee, when you get to the end of your life and all is said and done, you will never regret being courageous for Christ.

01:17:08.040 And he died not long thereafter.

01:17:14.260 And I've taken that to heart.

01:17:16.400 And I think this generation needs to take that to heart.

01:17:18.940 They're going to need to be courageous.

01:17:20.900 It's going to need to be a courageous generation coming up to face what they're going to be facing.

01:17:26.440 How can we prepare them?

01:17:27.960 We need to do it by our own faithfulness, by our own exposing them to truth.

01:17:33.560 But also protecting them from those who say it's nothing's worth it.

01:17:40.760 You'll never make it.

01:17:42.180 I've never seen such evil being pumped into children and to young people by saying you'll never make it.

01:17:53.720 Everything's rigged against you.

01:17:55.100 You can't believe in miracles, believe in yourself, believe whatever you believe you are.

01:18:02.580 When you God creates through the word and so do you.

01:18:07.520 You know, one one element of this is the growing homeschooling movement.

01:18:12.600 Yes.

01:18:13.860 Interestingly, the biggest groups that are showing the biggest increases in homeschooling, African-Americans and Hispanics.

01:18:21.520 And I think it's an example of what we've been talking about.

01:18:26.140 It's like as a parent, I don't want to expose my kid for eight hours a day, six hours a day to whatever junk they're going to.

01:18:32.760 You know, I'm going to I'm going to raise them in a way.

01:18:36.240 And my daughter, that's her thing.

01:18:38.040 And we've raised all four of our grandchildren homeschool.

01:18:41.780 And it used to be kind of a weird thing.

01:18:43.560 You know, you know, you're a weirdo.

01:18:45.600 You're a weirdo if you did it now.

01:18:46.980 It's like, I don't know that I could in good conscience trust a child to the public school system.

01:18:53.000 I don't.

01:18:55.500 You know, my son is starting college and watch him if he wasn't as strong as he is.

01:19:02.040 And watch him like a hawk because everything is designed to take them apart, not to build them up.

01:19:10.780 I mean, back I grew up in the 50s and the 60s.

01:19:13.380 And and there were so many Christians in the schools back then and and people of faith.

01:19:18.300 And, you know, I what I learned about equality of humankind and arguing against racism and things like that came from those teachers in public schools who really did a great job of the the the moral teachings.

01:19:33.300 They couldn't bring out a Bible, but they would do the moral teachings of Scripture.

01:19:36.960 And I learned so much even as a little kid.

01:19:40.680 I don't see that as much these days.

01:19:43.000 I hope it's true.

01:19:44.120 But I tell you, our family, it was like, we're going to homeschool and and it's not as hard as people think it is.

01:19:51.240 And it's doable because when you think back, I think back when I was in fifth grade or whatever, how many hours a day in school were you actually learning?

01:20:01.340 One, maybe.

01:20:02.760 And there's recess and there's lunch and there's naps and there's, you know, social time and there's fights that break out.

01:20:08.840 I mean, you probably get an hour a day.

01:20:10.980 It's amazing how much.

01:20:12.380 And these homeschoolers, you know, I'll speak at an event or something and a kid will come up to me and he'll ask me some questions about what I just spoke on.

01:20:19.520 And I'll look at him and say, are you homeschooled?

01:20:21.980 You know, every time, every time, every time, every time, every time.

01:20:25.000 And because they're they're comfortable with adults.

01:20:27.360 They look you in the eye.

01:20:28.140 They shake your hand.

01:20:28.880 They ask great questions.

01:20:29.880 Yes, I think so.

01:20:31.680 So that but I think that's another example of how people are reacting to this culture you've been describing of where's the solid ground.

01:20:39.020 I think that's one way we can prepare our kids for the future.

01:20:44.080 But there's got to be it's there's got to be courage in this next generation.

01:20:47.380 I'm looking at the world and I see there's a difference between those who believe in Islam and Islamists, the ones that want Sharia law, which I find.

01:21:01.960 I mean, the definition of evil.

01:21:04.620 Yeah.

01:21:05.620 And I look and I see the numbers that are happening and what is and how it's just it's sweeping seemingly the world or the Western world.

01:21:16.380 And another reason why I think maybe the time is coming because that that is a real evil.

01:21:21.860 Yeah.

01:21:22.300 But you write that there's something happening.

01:21:24.840 Yes, there is an unprecedented outbreak in the Middle East, all through the Middle East of mystical dreams, unlike anything they've ever had, where people, most Muslims are encountering Jesus.

01:21:37.880 And here's the key.

01:21:39.180 I'm always looking for corroboration.

01:21:40.420 How do I know it wasn't just something in their mind?

01:21:42.240 Well, a devout Muslim in a closed country, closed to the gospel and things, has no incentive to have a dream about Jesus.

01:21:49.840 No, or at least speak about it.

01:21:51.360 Yeah, or at least speak about it.

01:21:52.600 So it's probably not coming from, but there is corroboration because here's what's happening.

01:21:56.700 They're not going to sleep as a Muslim, having a dream in which they meet Jesus and waking up as a Christian.

01:22:01.900 That's not what happens.

01:22:03.500 The dream points them towards something outside of the dream that corroborates the truth of the dream.

01:22:09.760 I'll give you an example.

01:22:11.020 There's a woman we call Noor, N-O-O-R.

01:22:13.180 She lived in Cairo, mother of eight children, Muslim.

01:22:16.660 She goes to sleep.

01:22:17.500 She has a Jesus dream.

01:22:19.360 It's like unlike any dream she'd ever had.

01:22:21.200 She's walking along a lakeshore with Jesus, and she feels the love and the grace.

01:22:25.500 And she said later, I said, I'm in the presence of a man, but I don't feel shame for the first time in my life.

01:22:30.880 And all this love that's emanating.

01:22:32.800 She said to him, Jesus, why do you come to me?

01:22:35.640 I'm just a poor Muslim mother of eight children.

01:22:38.920 And Jesus said, because I love you, Noor.

01:22:41.760 Because I died for you.

01:22:42.820 And my friend, tomorrow, will tell you why I've come to you today.

01:22:48.900 I said, who's your friend?

01:22:50.660 And Jesus gestures toward a man who'd been walking with them along the lakeshore, but she hadn't noticed him because she was so mesmerized by Jesus.

01:22:57.500 So she sees his friend.

01:22:58.960 She wakes up.

01:23:00.400 The next day, she goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo, and she sees that man from her dream.

01:23:05.380 No, this is not a friend of hers.

01:23:07.440 No.

01:23:08.280 She sees him in the crowd, and she goes up to him.

01:23:11.060 You're the one.

01:23:12.240 What are you talking about?

01:23:13.420 Same face, same glasses, same clothes.

01:23:15.600 You're the one.

01:23:16.700 He said, did you have a dream about Jesus last night?

01:23:20.260 She said, yes.

01:23:22.120 Turned out he was an underground church planter.

01:23:24.320 He didn't want to go to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on Friday afternoon.

01:23:27.600 It's chaotic, but he felt like God had an assignment for him that day.

01:23:30.740 So he went.

01:23:32.160 She recognizes him from her dream, and here's what he does.

01:23:34.620 He pulls her aside and opens the Bible and shares a story of Jesus for three hours with her.

01:23:40.860 That's the external corroboration.

01:23:42.760 That's how these things take place.

01:23:44.420 That tells me this is more than just eating a bad pizza or something and having a dream that he didn't expect.

01:23:50.340 These are so common.

01:23:51.680 In my book, Seeing the Supernatural, I interviewed Tom Doyle, who's the world's leading expert on these dreams,

01:23:56.320 and he said, Lee, I could pick up the phone right now.

01:23:58.520 I could call Kuwait.

01:23:59.700 I could call Saudi Arabia.

01:24:00.760 I could call Iran, Iraq.

01:24:02.040 I'll give you five more stories right now.

01:24:03.580 If you go to Cairo, pick up a newspaper, open it up, and you'll see often an ad in the newspaper.

01:24:10.840 And the ad says, call this number, and we'll tell you about the man in white you met in your dream last night.

01:24:16.580 Wow.

01:24:17.160 And people are calling the number.

01:24:18.740 This is a—we had a woman, because I live in Houston part-time, we had a woman in our church from the Middle East who had this exact same experience,

01:24:27.020 who saw the man from her dream in our church and came to faith that way.

01:24:32.400 It's happening all over.

01:24:34.520 There was another case of a guy they call Omar.

01:24:36.680 Omar grew up in a settlement in the Middle East.

01:24:40.780 He hated Jewish people.

01:24:42.020 Hated—his only goal in life was murder as many Jewish people as I can.

01:24:46.760 He said, I'm going to join Hamas, the terrorist organization.

01:24:48.900 So he contacted Hamas.

01:24:50.480 He arranged for a meeting with some of the leaders.

01:24:52.440 He's walking down the street for this meeting, and he's confronted by a vision of Jesus,

01:24:57.940 who looks at him and says, Omar, this is not the life I have for you.

01:25:02.060 I want you to turn around.

01:25:03.360 I want you to go home right now.

01:25:05.060 This is not the life I have for you.

01:25:08.740 He knew what to do.

01:25:10.060 He turns around.

01:25:10.600 He goes home.

01:25:11.740 Later that day, a Christian family was moving into the apartment across the hall from his apartment.

01:25:18.160 So he went over to greet them and told them about this.

01:25:21.020 I just had this vision of Jesus.

01:25:22.800 And what did they do?

01:25:23.700 They opened the Bible.

01:25:25.020 They share the story of Jesus.

01:25:26.840 And he becomes—not only does he become a Christian,

01:25:28.780 but today he's an underground church planter in the Middle East,

01:25:31.880 which is why we don't use his real name.

01:25:34.660 But this—Glen, this is a phenomenon.

01:25:37.520 I think it's maybe the greatest spiritual awakening taking place in our planet today.

01:25:44.500 And it's just like Jesus to say,

01:25:47.040 hey, you want to close your country to the gospel?

01:25:50.480 Get a load of this, you know?

01:25:52.540 It's amazing.

01:25:53.860 So, yeah.

01:25:54.600 It's amazing.

01:25:55.420 Yeah.

01:25:55.700 Thank you for all of your hard work.

01:25:57.800 I hope you will come back.

01:25:59.400 I'd love to come back.

01:26:00.260 It's been a joy.

01:26:01.140 The name is Seeing the Supernatural.

01:26:03.480 That's the name of the book.

01:26:04.540 Yeah.

01:26:04.840 Thank you.

01:26:05.320 God bless.

01:26:05.540 My pleasure.

01:26:07.520 Just a reminder,

01:26:13.160 I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast

01:26:16.060 and pass this on to a friend

01:26:17.360 so it can be discovered by other people.

The Glenn Beck Program - August 09, 2025

Ep 262 ｜ Former Atheist Makes the Case for Angels, Demons & the Soul ｜ Lee Strobel ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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