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

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00:00:30.000 I was watching from the ceiling of the room in the hospital as they were trying to resuscitate my body.

00:00:36.680 They were able to resuscitate her body.

00:00:38.520 Her spirit returned to her body.

00:00:39.980 And she said, by the way, see the ceiling fan?

00:00:42.680 There's a sticker, a red sticker on the top of one of the blades.

00:00:46.800 Sure enough, on the top of the blade, here's a sticker just as she described it.

00:00:50.220 What do you do with that?

00:00:51.160 That tells me that when the Bible talks about the fact that when we die, our spirit separates from our body,

00:00:56.100 at least for some period of time, when a person is clinically dead,

00:01:00.000 they're still conscious.

00:01:01.380 When you have these, not just near-death experiences, but even just broader, numinous experience,

00:01:06.040 you think you encounter an angel.

00:01:09.040 What's it mean?

00:01:10.140 Michael, there is a certain percentage of people who go through a near-death experience

00:01:14.140 who have a hellish experience.

00:01:16.660 What have you heard?

00:01:17.380 What happens when we die?

00:01:27.300 We have revelation.

00:01:29.600 We have speculative philosophy.

00:01:32.120 We have all sorts of accounts of it.

00:01:35.860 We also have the accounts of people who've died.

00:01:39.420 And they can tell journalists and thinkers exactly what happens to them.

00:01:43.540 And then it's up for us to see if we buy it.

00:01:46.700 I am joined by a man who needs no introduction.

00:01:50.540 That would be Lee Strobel, best known for The Case for Christ,

00:01:54.060 and of the new book, Seeing the Supernatural.

00:01:58.860 And speaking of Case for Christ, that's actually a book that I first encountered

00:02:02.520 when I was an atheist at Yale, as you were once an atheist at Yale.

00:02:06.460 That's right.

00:02:07.380 And an evangelist guy in the commons passed me Mere Christianity and Case for Christ.

00:02:13.400 That's awesome.

00:02:13.880 And I said, well, that's pretty cool.

00:02:15.200 Now I've got to, maybe 15 years later, I'll meet that guy.

00:02:17.960 I love that.

00:02:18.760 That's awesome.

00:02:19.520 Wonderful to see you.

00:02:20.260 God bless you, Michael.

00:02:21.040 Great to meet you.

00:02:22.200 You are a journalist by trade.

00:02:24.720 Yes.

00:02:25.300 Though you've got all sorts of affiliations, Yale Law School.

00:02:28.540 You've got to downplay that one on the resume.

00:02:30.120 Right, that's right.

00:02:31.260 You were an atheist.

00:02:32.480 I was.

00:02:32.980 When you were at Yale, much like me, and you converted later because of the preponderance

00:02:38.180 of evidence.

00:02:38.660 In fact, when I was in the process of reverting, an evangelist handed me your book, and now I'm

00:02:44.620 just meeting you for the first time.

00:02:45.920 That's so awesome.

00:02:46.820 So you've written about a bazillion books.

00:02:49.020 You're one of the most influential writers on faith, certainly in the country, and really

00:02:53.320 around the world.

00:02:53.900 And now you've got a book out on near-death experiences, angels, demons, mystical visions,

00:03:04.720 all the kind of fairy, airy, ethereal stuff that our modern materialist culture doesn't

00:03:10.920 want to acknowledge.

00:03:11.500 Yes.

00:03:12.120 And a lot of Christians don't want to acknowledge some of this stuff because we live in a culture

00:03:17.220 in America where a lot of Christians are embarrassed by the supernatural.

00:03:21.080 You know, we want to be respectable.

00:03:23.900 We want to be respected by our neighbors.

00:03:26.640 And so it's okay if they know we're a Christian.

00:03:28.720 It's okay if they know we go to church, but I'm not into any of that weird stuff like angels

00:03:32.640 or demons or anything.

00:03:34.020 Well, wait a minute.

00:03:34.860 Jesus was an exorcist.

00:03:36.360 So, you know, you got that going.

00:03:38.520 And so I think a lot of Christians kind of downplay the miraculous, the supernatural.

00:03:44.220 And, you know, I've been a Christian since November the 8th of 1981.

00:03:48.100 I've never heard a sermon on the topic of angels.

00:03:51.780 I've never heard one.

00:03:53.320 Wow.

00:03:53.740 You know, so I think even for Christians, this is kind of new territory, even though

00:03:59.180 8 out of 10 Americans have a general belief that there's something beyond what we can see

00:04:04.620 and touch and put in a test tube.

00:04:05.800 Well, since the Enlightenment, the so-called Enlightenment, it has become cliche to mock

00:04:11.320 these scholastic Christian philosophers and theologians as the sort of people who debate

00:04:17.480 how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

00:04:19.860 Right.

00:04:20.120 They mock this as though that were a stupid question.

00:04:23.080 It's actually a very good question about the nature of angels and reality and the sort

00:04:29.540 of thing advanced by some of my favorite theologians and philosophers like St. Thomas Aquinas when

00:04:34.260 our civilization and when Christendom was really at its most powerful.

00:04:38.140 So you're delving back into the supernatural.

00:04:40.740 Yes.

00:04:41.480 I want to hear some of these stories.

00:04:42.980 Yeah.

00:04:43.140 Because I agree with you.

00:04:44.840 Even as a Christian, even I don't always get into all of this.

00:04:51.660 And I believe in it.

00:04:52.760 Yes.

00:04:53.020 But I feel much safer when talking about natural philosophy.

00:04:56.980 Yes.

00:04:57.500 Or talking about, you know, deductive arguments for the existence of God in the abstract.

00:05:01.680 But when it gets down to like an angel walks up to someone and tells him to do something.

00:05:06.460 Yeah.

00:05:08.040 I believe it, but it makes me a little uncomfortable.

00:05:10.260 So what did you see on near-death experiences in particular?

00:05:14.240 What have you heard?

00:05:14.980 Well, by the way, I agree with you that we need to be discerning because there is a lot

00:05:19.720 of stuff that is counterfeit and that is not true and so forth.

00:05:22.580 So we have to be discerning.

00:05:24.420 My background being in journalism and law, I look for evidence.

00:05:28.820 I look for corroboration.

00:05:30.900 I look, how do I know this is true?

00:05:33.580 And so I was a skeptic about near-death experiences.

00:05:36.900 I thought that was kind of a new agey thing.

00:05:39.040 Yeah.

00:05:39.320 Until I found there are 900 scholarly articles about near-death experiences in scientific

00:05:45.820 and medical journals over the last 40 years.

00:05:48.000 This is a well-researched area.

00:05:50.760 And what you find is that in a near-death experience, a person is clinically dead generally.

00:05:56.940 They have no brain waves, no heartbeat, no respiration, but they're going to come back.

00:06:01.960 And during the time that they are clinically dead, they say later, I was conscious the whole

00:06:06.740 time and this is what happened to me.

00:06:09.880 And there's a common core to what generally happens.

00:06:12.400 They often meet divine figure.

00:06:14.320 They often have a life review with that divine figure.

00:06:17.240 They often meet people who had preceded them in death and things like that.

00:06:22.240 But here's where the corroboration comes in for me.

00:06:25.040 Often, they will see things or hear things.

00:06:28.180 It would have been impossible for them to see or hear had their spirit not actually separated

00:06:32.900 from their body.

00:06:33.780 And they're able to experience this as an out-of-body experience.

00:06:37.320 So I'll give you an example.

00:06:38.580 There was a woman who was dying, taken to the hospital in London named Maria, as I recall.

00:06:44.520 And here she is in the hospital in the emergency room, and she's passed away.

00:06:50.400 But she says later, I was conscious the whole time.

00:06:52.840 And her spirit separated from her body.

00:06:55.220 And she said she met a divine figure.

00:06:57.460 It was like nothing she'd ever experienced.

00:06:59.640 It was overwhelming.

00:07:00.820 But then she said, I was watching from the ceiling of the room in the hospital as they

00:07:06.980 were trying to resuscitate my body.

00:07:09.040 So she's watching all this.

00:07:10.740 And then they were able to resuscitate her body.

00:07:13.260 Her spirit returned to her body.

00:07:14.800 And she said, by the way, see the ceiling fan here in this room?

00:07:19.360 There's a sticker, a red sticker on the top of one of the blades.

00:07:23.500 You couldn't see it from the room.

00:07:24.820 But she saw it from her perspective looking down.

00:07:27.620 And she described it in great detail.

00:07:30.460 Well, they got a ladder.

00:07:32.000 They went up.

00:07:32.880 Sure enough, on the top of the blade, nobody could see from the room.

00:07:36.060 Here's a sticker just as she described it.

00:07:38.620 That's the kind of corroboration I'm looking for.

00:07:41.380 There was a little girl named Katie.

00:07:43.400 I think she was nine years old.

00:07:45.180 She drowned in a YMCA swimming pool.

00:07:47.660 Her brain had swollen.

00:07:49.020 She had no respiration, no heartbeat, and so forth.

00:07:52.340 They take her to the hospital.

00:07:54.340 She goes to the emergency room.

00:07:55.780 They're keeping her body alive.

00:07:57.120 She's basically dead.

00:07:58.020 But they're trying to, what are they going to do?

00:07:59.800 They don't know yet.

00:08:00.780 Let's keep her going.

00:08:02.280 She says later, I was conscious the whole time.

00:08:04.500 And I met Jesus during this experience.

00:08:08.400 And the doctors are skeptical.

00:08:10.040 Yeah, yeah, of course you did.

00:08:11.780 Tell you what, here's a crayon and a piece of paper.

00:08:15.000 Why don't you draw for us the emergency room that we took you to when you were dead?

00:08:19.400 And so she draws it just as it appears.

00:08:23.400 But then she said, by the way, when my parents came to visit me in the hospital, I followed them home.

00:08:29.380 And she described what her mother made for dinner, chicken and rice.

00:08:34.640 She described where her father was sitting and what he was doing.

00:08:37.660 She described how her brother went into his room and was playing with a G.I. Joe Jeep and a G.I. Joe doll.

00:08:44.640 She described what they were wearing, and it all checked out.

00:08:48.700 What do you do with that?

00:08:49.900 That tells me that when the Bible talks about the fact that when we die, our spirit separates from our body,

00:08:55.160 to be absent from the body, to be present with the Lord,

00:08:57.420 our spirit separates from our body.

00:08:59.700 And that certainly establishes, I think, beyond a reasonable doubt,

00:09:04.220 that at least for some period of time, when a person is clinically dead, they're still conscious.

00:09:10.400 There's still a lie.

00:09:11.180 You know, that doesn't surprise me at all, even from the standpoint of natural philosophy.

00:09:16.560 Yeah.

00:09:17.060 Because, you know, we're hylomorphic creatures, body and soul, joined together.

00:09:21.740 That's right.

00:09:22.120 I totally buy that.

00:09:23.760 But one of my main men, St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle,

00:09:27.620 has, I think, a pretty simply laid out explanation of why the intellect can't be part of your body.

00:09:36.280 We have this idea in modernity that everything's material,

00:09:39.680 and so what I think of as my intellect is just my brain.

00:09:42.900 Just neurons.

00:09:43.360 Neurons firing off.

00:09:44.400 But Aquinas says, well, that can't be the case, because a substance needs to be, cannot receive forms that are sort of beyond it.

00:09:57.420 Yeah.

00:09:57.880 So, like, the eye, without the confusing Aristotelian language, the eye receives what receives color.

00:10:05.320 Yeah.

00:10:06.160 The eye can't receive smells.

00:10:08.300 The eye can't receive, you know, textures.

00:10:10.840 Yeah.

00:10:10.940 It receives color.

00:10:11.980 What does the intellect receive?

00:10:13.760 The intellect receives not only, not material things, but immaterial.

00:10:18.440 Yes.

00:10:19.340 Abstract ideas.

00:10:20.720 That's right.

00:10:21.300 And so, it is not possible for the intellect, as a body, to receive that which is not material.

00:10:28.040 Therefore, the intellect is not material.

00:10:29.640 And I understand that because we just don't even think in that way anymore,

00:10:34.120 there are going to be people who hear that and say, well, I don't know, I'm not totally persuaded.

00:10:37.160 Yeah.

00:10:37.560 But that is really sound reasoning, and we've known it for all of history.

00:10:40.720 And it's very true.

00:10:41.840 For my book, Seeing the Supernatural, I interviewed Dr. Sharon Diericks.

00:10:45.760 Yes.

00:10:46.020 The PhD from Cambridge University in neuroscience.

00:10:48.840 So, she knows what she's talking about.

00:10:50.180 Yeah, yeah.

00:10:50.500 And she said, here's a little mind experiment.

00:10:52.680 Yeah.

00:10:52.980 Because a lot of scientists will say, you're just your brain, just as you said.

00:10:56.560 You're just a physical brain.

00:10:58.420 And she says, here's why we know it isn't.

00:11:00.380 First of all, near-death experiences.

00:11:01.840 If just one of those is true, that shows.

00:11:03.680 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:04.000 But she said, here's a mind experiment.

00:11:06.940 Pretend there's a woman named Mary, and she is a world's leading expert on vision.

00:11:11.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:11.580 She understands how the eye works.

00:11:13.300 She understands how the optic nerve carries impulses to the brain.

00:11:16.700 She understands how the brain processes visions.

00:11:19.460 She gets it.

00:11:20.460 She understands the process.

00:11:22.140 But she's blind.

00:11:25.120 What if one day she received her sight?

00:11:28.760 Would she learn anything new on that day?

00:11:32.900 Yeah, I think she would.

00:11:34.800 But that shows that the physical brain cannot account for the first-person experience of consciousness.

00:11:41.960 That we have a separate consciousness or spirit or soul that is distinct from our brain but interacts with our brain.

00:11:48.180 Yes.

00:11:48.640 And I thought that was an interesting thought because, of course, she would have new information.

00:11:54.800 Because that first-person experience is what consciousness provides.

00:11:59.080 So then, in principle, you don't need to be a Christian.

00:12:01.900 Yeah.

00:12:01.960 You don't even really...

00:12:03.440 You do kind of need to believe in God to think that anything has meaning, but let's put that aside for a second.

00:12:07.520 You don't even need to consciously believe in God to accept the principle that...

00:12:12.720 In a near-death experience, or a death experience, you could perceive the room outside of your body.

00:12:20.120 That's right.

00:12:20.560 That part you can get to just through natural reason.

00:12:22.880 That's right.

00:12:23.440 And you say, okay, well, you believe these experiences because of corroborating evidence like the sticker and like the diagram.

00:12:29.940 Yeah.

00:12:30.280 Okay, so we're there.

00:12:32.400 We believe at least some of these experiences.

00:12:35.780 What do they tell us?

00:12:37.160 About death?

00:12:37.920 Yeah.

00:12:38.160 About life?

00:12:38.720 About what we should do?

00:12:39.660 Yeah.

00:12:40.120 Well, they tell us, first of all, that there is more than what we can see and touch and put in a test tube.

00:12:45.720 That our life does...

00:12:47.500 I think near-death experiences, as documented as they are...

00:12:50.160 By the way, in 2009, a researcher combed through the scientific literature and identified 107 cases, like the one with the sticker that I mentioned, where there's external corroboration of the near-death experience.

00:13:03.320 107 of them.

00:13:03.900 And that's just touching the...

00:13:05.020 That's just tip of the iceberg.

00:13:06.200 So, because those are true, I think we can know beyond a reasonable doubt that we continue to exist for some period of time, at least, after our clinical death.

00:13:19.540 Well, that's kind of important.

00:13:21.280 Yeah.

00:13:21.680 Because, first of all, it's corroborative of what the Bible, for instance, teaches.

00:13:24.900 And secondly, golly, what does that mean for our future?

00:13:30.020 Is there an eternity and so forth?

00:13:32.540 Because, Michael, there is a certain percentage of people who go through a near-death experience who have a hellish experience.

00:13:39.720 I was just going to ask you about that.

00:13:41.280 Yes.

00:13:41.420 Because when you read about these stories, most of the time, I guess in the medieval Catholic history and even more modern, you get a little more fire and brimstone, a little more flames.

00:13:55.100 But in most of the pop books about this, it's all, you know, I saw grandma and it was on my puppy.

00:14:01.920 Maybe I don't know.

00:14:03.060 Okay.

00:14:03.540 You know, great.

00:14:04.780 What about the negative experiences?

00:14:06.600 There's...

00:14:06.960 I'll give you an example.

00:14:07.840 And one study showed 24% are negative.

00:14:10.740 But I think what happens is a lot of people who come back from a negative experience, they don't want to talk about it.

00:14:15.700 Many of them have post-traumatic stress from it.

00:14:18.560 Many of them are embarrassed because I don't want to tell you I had a near-death experience.

00:14:22.060 I went to hell.

00:14:22.740 I mean, who wants to say that?

00:14:24.460 So I think 24% may be a little conservative.

00:14:27.760 But I'll tell you a story about Howard Storm.

00:14:31.080 Howard was an atheist, very successful in art.

00:14:34.020 He had a tenured position at a secular university.

00:14:36.420 He was chairman of the art department.

00:14:38.300 He's visiting Paris, dies of a heart attack.

00:14:41.540 So he's in the hospital.

00:14:42.960 He says, I was conscious the whole time.

00:14:44.780 And I'm standing next to my body, looking at my dead body.

00:14:49.100 And some people from the corridor began calling, Howard, Howard, we've been waiting for you.

00:14:54.160 Come on, Howard, come on.

00:14:56.060 So he followed them.

00:14:58.020 And they're walking these people with him down this long...

00:15:02.000 And the hallway didn't seem to ever end.

00:15:04.120 It went on and on.

00:15:05.060 And it got darker and more foreboding.

00:15:07.120 And they started to get stern.

00:15:09.000 And they started to get obnoxious.

00:15:10.260 Come on, Howard, you're lagging.

00:15:11.640 Come on, come on, let's go, come on.

00:15:13.160 And they started punching him and hitting him.

00:15:16.360 Ultimately, they assaulted him so bad.

00:15:19.640 He said, no horror movie can ever capture the extent of how they violated and hurt me.

00:15:27.860 It was, you know, the gouged out his eyes.

00:15:29.700 They ripped off his ears.

00:15:30.780 I mean, it was unbelievable.

00:15:31.800 And in the midst of that, he called out, Jesus, save me from this.

00:15:36.780 And this orb of light comes.

00:15:38.900 And he's embraced.

00:15:40.620 And Jesus takes him away.

00:15:42.020 Now, when his body is revived and his spirit returns to his body,

00:15:49.080 this was such a traumatic and profound experience.

00:15:52.580 This wasn't like some dream he had.

00:15:54.560 This was so dramatic.

00:15:56.340 He quit his tenured position at a secular university.

00:15:59.960 He renounced his atheism.

00:16:02.340 He became a Christian.

00:16:03.780 He went to seminary.

00:16:05.900 And now he's a pastor of a tiny little church in the middle of nowhere,

00:16:08.600 I think Kentucky or Oklahoma or somewhere,

00:16:11.320 serving God in a very humble way.

00:16:14.320 It changed his life.

00:16:16.900 Lives don't get changed by a hallucination or a vague dream.

00:16:20.980 I mean, he had an experience that transformed him.

00:16:24.320 Now, some people will say, wait a minute.

00:16:25.920 The Bible says you were appointed once to die and then the judgment.

00:16:29.440 So why did he get a second chance?

00:16:31.320 Because he wasn't dead.

00:16:33.200 He was clinically dead, but he was going to come back.

00:16:36.620 This is not permanent death.

00:16:38.740 And so I don't think that verse is particularly relevant here.

00:16:41.280 I think God did give him an opportunity to reach out for salvation.

00:16:45.760 And Jesus met him in that moment.

00:16:47.700 Even the notion of clinical death has changed in the 20th century,

00:16:52.600 which is why you now have this, I think, ethically dubious concept of brain death,

00:16:57.320 which sometimes allows people to harvest organs that actually could be the immediate cause of death.

00:17:03.220 But all of that to say, I remember I read a popular news story within the last 5, 10 years,

00:17:07.200 said, we're learning that death is a process, not exactly a moment.

00:17:12.320 And so, yes, he had all the markers that he was dead.

00:17:15.320 Yeah.

00:17:15.400 But, I don't know, why did God give him a second chance?

00:17:19.580 I don't know, are you God?

00:17:20.420 Where were you when I laid the foundation?

00:17:21.500 Yeah.

00:17:23.440 So these people have these experiences, some of which are heavenly, some of which are hellish.

00:17:29.720 Yeah.

00:17:32.300 What should we do with that in practical terms?

00:17:36.780 Because, you know, I think God wants us to do specific things.

00:17:42.440 Yeah.

00:17:42.660 I don't think every religion is true.

00:17:44.420 Yeah.

00:17:44.700 I don't think they could be because they contradict each other.

00:17:47.400 So, when you have these, not just near-death experiences, but even just broader numinous experience.

00:17:54.500 Yeah.

00:17:54.820 You think you encounter an angel.

00:17:56.380 Yeah.

00:17:56.620 You see a really weird coincidence.

00:17:58.260 Yeah.

00:18:00.380 What's it mean?

00:18:01.220 Yeah.

00:18:02.060 Yeah.

00:18:02.240 I mean, for me, it means, could it be that Jesus and specifically in scripture as a whole

00:18:10.660 is telling me the truth about eternity?

00:18:14.320 You know, if you want to sum up, in my opinion, the entire central teachings of the Bible in

00:18:19.320 one verse, it'd be Romans 6.23, it says, for the wages of sin is death.

00:18:23.840 In other words, the consequence of living a life where I don't want anything to do with

00:18:27.540 God.

00:18:27.960 I want my own God.

00:18:29.300 And you walk down that path and you ignore God your whole life.

00:18:32.320 You don't want anything to do with them.

00:18:33.440 The consequence of that is eternal separation from God, which is what hell is.

00:18:38.140 But, the verse says, the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, our Lord.

00:18:43.380 In other words, he went to the cross.

00:18:44.960 He paid the penalty we deserve for the sins that we've committed.

00:18:48.040 And he offers forgiveness and eternal life as a gift of his grace.

00:18:51.360 It tells me that, you know what?

00:18:53.700 Maybe that's true.

00:18:54.900 Maybe near-death experiences are an affirmation that, indeed, when we die, unlike what some

00:19:02.080 secular scientists will tell you, we do continue to live on.

00:19:05.820 And that's confirmatory of what Scripture is trying to tell me.

00:19:09.800 Well, then, golly, I'm going to spend a lot longer time in eternity than I am in this world.

00:19:16.020 I better think about, what does that mean?

00:19:18.240 What does that mean?

00:19:19.080 Which road am I going to take in life?

00:19:21.060 God's given us free will, and I need to make a decision and say, am I going to follow this

00:19:26.320 path of God?

00:19:27.280 I'm going to follow my own path.

00:19:29.000 And God opens up that opportunity for each of us to take whichever path we choose.

00:19:34.280 Because it does kind of seem like people whistle past the graveyard, don't they?

00:19:37.080 They do.

00:19:37.800 They do.

00:19:38.420 And yet, at the same time, the Bible says in the Old Testament that eternity has been

00:19:44.000 written into our hearts.

00:19:46.100 Something in us wants to live forever.

00:19:48.080 And I actually wrote a book once called The Case for Heaven.

00:19:51.280 And in that book, I interviewed a scholar who researched this phenomenon of people who

00:19:56.320 try to be remembered.

00:19:58.720 They have this desire for eternity.

00:20:00.920 And so they'll try to achieve some great thing, like write the great American novel or

00:20:05.700 paint a masterpiece or to do something horrific.

00:20:10.160 John Mark Chapman, I think it was his name, who killed John Lennon, he said why he did it.

00:20:15.060 I wanted a piece of his fame.

00:20:16.720 He wanted to live on.

00:20:18.860 And so we see people motivated to try to achieve eternity in our naturalistic way so our name

00:20:25.260 will be remembered.

00:20:26.000 Put my name on a building.

00:20:27.420 You know, I'm going to earn a million, 10 million, 100 million dollars and endow a building,

00:20:32.800 pay for a building on a university to have my name on it.

00:20:35.860 Why?

00:20:36.440 So I'll be remembered.

00:20:38.820 I think that's part of this eternity that's been planted in our hearts.

00:20:42.300 I think we desire it.

00:20:43.920 And I think there's evidence that in reality, there is an eternity during which we're conscious.

00:20:50.020 Of course.

00:20:50.600 Of course.

00:20:51.040 I like that explanation, though, that we know, well, C.S. Lewis makes this point that we don't

00:20:55.720 have desires that are insatiable.

00:20:58.120 Exactly.

00:20:58.480 And so we have a desire for God.

00:21:00.260 But even specifically on this point of eternity, the fact that we want something that impels

00:21:06.320 us toward terrestrial glory, which is ultimately unsatisfying because Sictranci Gloria Mundi

00:21:11.100 is evidence that, no, we're right.

00:21:14.320 You're right, actually.

00:21:15.020 You're right.

00:21:15.780 You're just not totally perceiving how to satisfy that longing.

00:21:19.760 You know what's funny?

00:21:20.660 They did a movie on my life back in 2017.

00:21:22.920 And I was all excited when they told me we cast Faye Dunaway in the movie because she

00:21:28.000 had become a Catholic.

00:21:29.060 Yeah, yeah.

00:21:29.500 And she wanted to be in a faith film.

00:21:31.500 Yeah.

00:21:31.700 And so they told me, oh, my goodness, Faye Dunaway, Academy Award, Emmys, every acting

00:21:39.140 honor, you know, great actress and everything.

00:21:41.820 I was so excited.

00:21:42.800 So I went to a friend of mine.

00:21:43.680 I was like 25 years old, about your age.

00:21:45.500 Yeah.

00:21:46.040 And I said, we got Faye Dunaway in the movie.

00:21:49.780 And he looked at me and said, who?

00:21:50.920 Who?

00:21:51.320 Yeah.

00:21:51.740 No idea.

00:21:52.020 How crazy is that?

00:21:52.920 No idea.

00:21:53.480 We're going to be forgotten.

00:21:54.880 I bet you a lot of the audience doesn't know who Faye Dunaway is.

00:21:57.220 I bet they don't.

00:21:58.020 Yeah.

00:21:58.180 In my generation, that would be like saying today, I don't know who Taylor Swift is.

00:22:02.700 Or, you know, so she was huge in my generation.

00:22:05.900 And yet now, among many people, she's being forgotten, even though she's still alive, still

00:22:09.680 making movies and things.

00:22:11.020 And I think this is the phenomenon that scares a lot of people.

00:22:14.780 They're going to be forgotten.

00:22:16.220 And because they don't, they have a materialistic viewpoint, they don't believe in an afterlife.

00:22:20.780 And you know what?

00:22:21.740 This is all I got.

00:22:22.880 And if I die, are you telling me that within five years, nobody's going to remember me?

00:22:27.240 Right.

00:22:27.740 Because do you, let me ask you a question.

00:22:29.560 Do you know the first names of your great, great grandparents?

00:22:32.440 I know, I know more about my, up to the 12th generation, great grandparents than maybe

00:22:42.140 almost anyone in the country.

00:22:43.280 Okay, did I ask the wrong person?

00:22:44.500 No, no, no.

00:22:44.900 No, you asked the right person.

00:22:46.560 Because I have a keen insight in genealogy.

00:22:49.020 Yeah.

00:22:49.280 Going back to the Mayflower, I named my cigar company after the Mayflower, the Sons of the

00:22:52.720 American Revolution.

00:22:53.580 I have a keen interest in this.

00:22:55.680 And you want to know my answer to your question?

00:22:57.380 Yeah.

00:22:57.700 No.

00:22:57.980 Well, I don't know the names of my great, great grandparents.

00:23:02.300 And so, guess what?

00:23:03.580 We're going to be forgotten.

00:23:04.620 Some people, longer than others, will be remembered longer than others.

00:23:06.980 The key, we're going to be forgotten in this world.

00:23:09.020 Yes.

00:23:09.460 But this world isn't all there is.

00:23:10.940 Yeah.

00:23:11.120 There is something to come.

00:23:12.200 And that's what is planted inside of us, this desire for eternity.

00:23:16.200 I think that's a powerful lesson from near-death experience, as well as deathbed visions, which

00:23:22.620 is a kind of related area.

00:23:23.840 Speaking of grandparents, have you heard of this subject?

00:23:28.320 I'm certain you have, actually.

00:23:31.340 What's the phrase they use in the newspaper?

00:23:33.300 Terminal lucidity.

00:23:34.400 Yeah.

00:23:35.040 Terminal lucidity.

00:23:36.080 Yeah.

00:23:36.480 Which is, you've got relatives who have dementia, they're declining, they don't know who you are,

00:23:43.560 they don't know what end is up, and they're right at the end.

00:23:47.440 Nancy Reagan talked about this with Ronald Reagan.

00:23:49.300 Right at the end, he opened his eyes, and he was totally with it, looked right at her.

00:23:53.560 Yes.

00:23:55.040 I had a touch of this.

00:23:56.440 My beloved grandmother died a couple years ago, and she was really out of it.

00:24:01.300 But she was, when I was with her, she caught up.

00:24:05.700 Yeah.

00:24:06.320 Which I guess would be an argument that, also for the intellect being distinct from the brain.

00:24:11.920 I mean, dementia, you have plaque on the brain, but the intellect is a little different.

00:24:15.420 Yeah.

00:24:16.240 She did something else that was really weird, as she was dying in the hospice.

00:24:21.020 She kept reaching her arms up.

00:24:23.120 Yeah.

00:24:23.440 And at first, I thought she was stretching, because she's on a bed.

00:24:25.660 Yeah.

00:24:26.140 But then I've heard other people do this.

00:24:28.760 What is that?

00:24:29.240 That is extremely common.

00:24:30.920 I have a chapter in my book, Seeing the Supernatural, about death, what I call deathbed visions,

00:24:35.420 which is basically what you're talking about.

00:24:37.140 This is incredibly common.

00:24:41.540 Researchers went to a huge hospice facility in New York State and told all the dying people

00:24:46.040 there, would you please tell us if you have a vision, unlike anything you've ever had in

00:24:50.420 your life, we would like to know.

00:24:52.940 Because a lot of people won't talk about it, because they're embarrassed for some reason.

00:24:56.720 They're going to think, oh, I got dementia.

00:24:58.360 They're going to think the medication is too strong, whatever it is.

00:25:01.500 So please tell us, 88% of them had a vision before they died of what's to come.

00:25:09.080 And this is biblical in the book of Acts.

00:25:11.140 We see Stephen, who's described as being full of the Holy Spirit, who's about to be stoned

00:25:15.540 to death, and he looks up, and he sees the heavens open up, and he sees the Father and

00:25:19.440 the Son together.

00:25:20.280 So it's biblical.

00:25:21.620 But it is incredibly common.

00:25:23.320 I was having a dinner with Steve Green, the head of the Museum of the Bible, and some

00:25:29.180 friends out in Oklahoma City.

00:25:30.960 There were seven of us having dinner.

00:25:32.720 And we said, how many of you have a story from your family about a relative having this

00:25:38.880 kind of pre-death vision?

00:25:40.460 Four out of the seven.

00:25:41.880 Yes.

00:25:42.340 It's extremely common.

00:25:44.020 But here, I go back to corroboration.

00:25:48.100 How do I know it's not just the product of their imagination or something?

00:25:52.420 Or the brain is breaking down.

00:25:54.720 Exactly.

00:25:55.360 I don't know.

00:25:55.640 Well, on one level, one team of researchers took 3,000 of these cases and analyzed them

00:26:01.060 in depth.

00:26:01.720 And their conclusion is these are not hallucinations.

00:26:05.080 These are not something conjured up by a subconscious mind.

00:26:09.060 These are not medically induced or medicine induced, drug induced.

00:26:13.660 There's something else going on here.

00:26:15.760 But here's where the corroboration hits me.

00:26:17.900 Secondly, we have numerous cases where people in this pre-death vision will see what's coming

00:26:24.060 for them in eternity.

00:26:26.240 They'll see someone there who they didn't know had died.

00:26:30.240 For instance, there was a very well-documented case of a woman named Doris in London.

00:26:34.620 She's dying.

00:26:35.880 And she sees it just before she dies.

00:26:37.620 She sees the heavens open up.

00:26:38.680 She sees angelic beings.

00:26:40.380 She sees her father who had died several years earlier.

00:26:42.600 And he's kind of almost welcoming her.

00:26:44.980 And then she gets this puzzled look on her face.

00:26:46.980 And she says, wait a minute.

00:26:48.600 Why is Vida with my dad?

00:26:50.620 Why would Vida be?

00:26:52.780 That makes no sense.

00:26:53.900 Why is Vida there?

00:26:55.920 And then she died.

00:26:57.660 Vida was her sister.

00:26:59.160 She had died a couple of weeks earlier.

00:27:01.240 Nobody had told Doris because she was ill and they didn't want the shock to kill her.

00:27:05.100 So they withheld the news that her sister had died.

00:27:07.500 And yet she saw her in heaven.

00:27:10.320 That, to me, is a kind of corroboration.

00:27:14.160 My wife, I was telling my wife about, you know, when I'm researching these books, I'm interviewing.

00:27:17.880 My approach is to interview experts and scholars and so forth.

00:27:20.900 So I'm telling my wife this stuff.

00:27:22.240 She said, Lee, don't you remember what happened to my dad?

00:27:25.800 And I had forgotten.

00:27:26.680 Her dad died about, I don't know, 15 years, 20 years ago.

00:27:30.180 And just before he died, she went to visit him in hospice.

00:27:33.160 And here he is in his deathbed.

00:27:34.200 She walks in.

00:27:35.080 He's agitated.

00:27:36.300 And he says, where's Marge?

00:27:38.780 Where's Marge?

00:27:39.580 And what do you mean?

00:27:40.780 Where's Marge?

00:27:41.380 She was just here.

00:27:42.360 I was just talking to her, talking about eternity.

00:27:44.340 Where is Marge?

00:27:45.700 She was just here.

00:27:47.220 Marge was his sister.

00:27:49.000 She had died two days earlier, but nobody had told him yet.

00:27:52.820 And yet here he is having a conversation with her on his deathbed.

00:27:56.980 Something is going on there.

00:27:58.800 And these deathbed, another form of corroboration, two things.

00:28:01.880 Number one, the fact that they're so common, I think, argues for their legitimacy.

00:28:06.020 Yeah.

00:28:06.500 Because if they happen once in a blue moon, then an atheist would say, oh, well, you know,

00:28:10.140 hundreds of millions of people die.

00:28:11.780 Sure, there's an anomaly from time to time, you know, and that's one bit of corroboration.

00:28:16.580 But the other one comes from children who are dying.

00:28:20.260 Think of this.

00:28:21.480 For a child of five years old, six years old, or whatever, what is their image of an angel?

00:28:27.560 Well, like a cartoon.

00:28:29.760 Yeah, wings.

00:28:30.360 Big wings, maybe feathery, but certainly big wings.

00:28:33.760 That's not what dying children see.

00:28:36.540 In the Bible, Jesus tells the story about a rich man who had ignored the poor during his life

00:28:43.140 and a beggar who both died.

00:28:44.720 The rich man went to a place of torment.

00:28:46.740 The beggar went to a place of bliss.

00:28:48.640 Yeah.

00:28:48.820 But in verse 22, it says that angels carried him to that place of bliss.

00:28:54.680 And so often, the deathbed vision that people have are angels coming for them.

00:29:00.660 Now, go back to children who are dying.

00:29:03.480 We have cases documented, one particular doctoral dissertation about a little girl who was dying.

00:29:09.120 And she says to her, mommy, mommy, can you see them?

00:29:12.280 What, honey, what?

00:29:13.220 The angels, they're here in this room.

00:29:14.760 Oh, they're so beautiful.

00:29:15.940 Look at their eyes.

00:29:17.280 Oh, they're singing.

00:29:18.300 It's so wonderful.

00:29:19.440 I'm going with them, mommy.

00:29:21.420 And her mother didn't want to disappoint her.

00:29:23.020 So she said, oh, yeah, yeah, I see them.

00:29:25.520 Look at their big wings.

00:29:27.880 And the little girl said, oh, mommy, you don't have to lie.

00:29:31.600 They don't have big wings.

00:29:33.200 And she went on to describe them in great detail because angels don't have big wings.

00:29:38.140 In the Renaissance paintings.

00:29:39.960 Yeah, in the Renaissance paintings.

00:29:41.440 So this was not something being conjured up by the imagination of this child.

00:29:45.940 What did they look like?

00:29:47.420 I don't have the account of how she described them, but it was not with wings.

00:29:51.740 And that's very common.

00:29:54.760 By the way, the most famous atheist in Canada, Charles Templeton, who was Billy Graham's pulpit

00:30:00.700 partner, who lost his faith at a liberal seminary, became an atheist, agnostic at least.

00:30:07.340 But he wrote an ugly book called Farewell to God, My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian

00:30:10.900 Faith.

00:30:11.520 And I became friends with him because I did a book answering all his objections to the

00:30:16.260 faith called The Case for Faith.

00:30:17.600 So I interviewed him and we got to be friends and so forth.

00:30:22.180 Several years passed and his friends believe he came back to faith in Jesus.

00:30:27.940 On his deathbed, this was in the Toronto newspaper on the front page, on his deathbed, he says to

00:30:35.180 his wife, Madeline, can you see them?

00:30:37.340 What, Chuck?

00:30:37.940 What are you talking about?

00:30:38.540 The angels.

00:30:39.420 They're here.

00:30:39.940 I'm going with them.

00:30:40.960 I'm going to heaven.

00:30:41.660 Oh, they're so beautiful.

00:30:42.980 They're right in this room.

00:30:44.400 You can't see them?

00:30:45.940 And then he died.

00:30:48.960 Very interesting.

00:30:50.040 This is an extremely common experience.

00:30:54.180 This is going to sound really weird when you talk about angels don't always look the way

00:30:57.660 you think they would be.

00:30:58.680 And it's going to sound almost like a punchline and it's kind of funny.

00:31:01.180 But I think I have, we're told we entertain angels as a wares.

00:31:05.540 Yeah.

00:31:05.620 I think I could point to at least two circumstances, two instances when I'm quite confident I entertained

00:31:14.020 an angel.

00:31:15.460 Wouldn't that surprise me?

00:31:16.540 They were both black guys.

00:31:17.740 Yeah.

00:31:18.240 I don't know why that is.

00:31:20.580 I'm not saying.

00:31:21.420 But there was one time I've actually mentioned on the show before where I was, a short version

00:31:25.820 of it is, I was on a subway.

00:31:26.940 It was a young guy.

00:31:27.840 I was an actor.

00:31:28.560 Yeah.

00:31:28.700 And we're going on the sixth train, downtown towards City Hall.

00:31:33.740 I forget if it was downtown or uptown, but it doesn't matter for the story.

00:31:36.900 And I'm sitting on the subway, reading my Kindle.

00:31:39.680 Guy gets on.

00:31:40.420 Black guy, black girl.

00:31:41.360 They get on.

00:31:42.000 They get on together.

00:31:43.020 They go in different directions.

00:31:44.160 Guy sits next to me.

00:31:44.920 Looks a little weird.

00:31:46.300 Turns to me, insists on striking up a conversation.

00:31:48.680 Yeah.

00:31:49.980 Oh, hey.

00:31:50.660 How you doing?

00:31:51.300 Yeah.

00:31:51.520 Hey.

00:31:52.000 Yeah, man.

00:31:52.560 What do you do?

00:31:53.760 So, oh, me, I'm an actor.

00:31:54.720 So, you know, that and a buck fifty gets you a cup of coffee.

00:31:56.680 And he says, he says, oh, no, don't worry about that.

00:32:01.320 You're going to be great.

00:32:02.960 Huh.

00:32:03.460 So, oh, thanks.

00:32:04.360 He goes, what's your name?

00:32:07.260 I said, Michael.

00:32:08.760 He said, I'm Michael, too.

00:32:11.340 We're angels.

00:32:13.480 And then this is the part that gets really crazy.

00:32:16.160 He got on, forget which direction, but let's just say it was 33rd Street.

00:32:20.200 Next stop is 28th Street, which is like the shortest block for the sixth train.

00:32:27.600 He gets up, doesn't look at the woman he walked on with, gets off the train.

00:32:32.860 No New Yorker would ever get on the train at 33rd Street, get off at 28th Street.

00:32:37.920 You just walk.

00:32:38.880 It'd be faster to walk.

00:32:39.760 Right, right.

00:32:40.160 Or in the other direction, too.

00:32:41.180 Yeah.

00:32:41.340 So, anyway, that was the first one.

00:32:42.260 I've mentioned that before in the show.

00:32:43.900 Here's another weird one.

00:32:45.400 I'm walking around New York.

00:32:46.360 It's around this time.

00:32:47.240 I'm reverting to the faith.

00:32:49.120 And so it's, you know, I've gone through a few years of intellectual convincing that

00:32:53.320 God exists, and now I'm really coming back into it.

00:32:55.440 And the whole experience was quite disorienting and blurry.

00:32:58.320 So I'm walking around New York, and I'm feeling my thoughts and my whole being racked by lust.

00:33:06.060 Racked.

00:33:06.300 As is true for a lot of young men, as I was probably 22 or 23 or something, racked by lust.

00:33:14.700 But I'm walking alone.

00:33:16.320 I'm not walking with a girl on each arm.

00:33:18.160 I'm not at a strip club.

00:33:19.620 I'm not, I don't know.

00:33:21.860 I'm not, there's no indication, there would be no indication from my body that I were, you

00:33:27.720 know, thinking about girls or whatever.

00:33:29.060 Another black guy walks up out of nowhere.

00:33:34.240 I walk fast in New York.

00:33:35.860 Walks up faster than me.

00:33:37.280 Walks right up to me.

00:33:38.280 He goes, hey, watch out for women.

00:33:41.420 They'll get you.

00:33:43.020 Walks away.

00:33:44.440 Interesting.

00:33:46.380 Now, you could imagine it if I were, you know, in old Times Square, actually before.

00:33:52.700 Yeah, right.

00:33:53.160 But like old Times Square, I'm like by a porn shop.

00:33:54.880 Right, right.

00:33:55.460 It was not that.

00:33:57.060 I'm just walking around Midtown like, okay.

00:33:59.400 How do you explain that?

00:34:00.480 Well, you look at the book of Hebrews in the Bible and it predicts, as you said, that sometimes

00:34:05.120 we will encounter angels.

00:34:06.780 We'll provide hospitality, not knowing it's to an angel.

00:34:09.720 So the Bible foretells this.

00:34:12.040 But in my book, I have a chapter on angels.

00:34:14.440 And one of the stories I recount, an account that's been well-documented, is a guy named

00:34:19.200 John G. Payton, P-A-T-O-N.

00:34:21.100 He was a missionary from Scotland and he was on a tropical island in the South Pacific with

00:34:27.720 his wife, sharing the message of Jesus to these tribespeople and the local people on

00:34:31.860 the island.

00:34:32.260 Well, they didn't like it so much.

00:34:34.360 And so one night, a mob began to form to burn down their cottage and kill them.

00:34:39.460 Well, so they're inside.

00:34:40.520 They don't, all they can do is pray.

00:34:42.260 God, help us, protect us, save us.

00:34:44.460 This mob is for me.

00:34:45.740 They're going to kill us.

00:34:46.360 They're going to burn down the place.

00:34:47.240 So, um, and then by dawn, they prayed all night.

00:34:50.500 And by dawn, the mob dissipates and nothing happened to him.

00:34:55.220 A year later, he leads the head of that tribe to faith in Jesus Christ.

00:34:59.720 And he's having a conversation with him.

00:35:01.260 And he said, do you remember that night when y'all came as a mob to burn down our house and

00:35:06.260 kill us?

00:35:06.700 Do you remember that?

00:35:07.620 Why didn't you do it?

00:35:09.480 And the guy said, well, who are all those men you had?

00:35:12.620 He said, I didn't have any men.

00:35:13.940 It was just my wife and I.

00:35:15.680 The guy said, oh no, your house was surrounded by these big muscular men in white garments

00:35:21.540 with drawn swords.

00:35:22.900 There's no way we could have hurt you that night.

00:35:27.300 What do you do with that?

00:35:29.460 I think they were angels that came that God had sent.

00:35:32.660 And it's interesting as Jesus was being arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, he said, do you

00:35:36.240 not think I could ask my father right now?

00:35:38.260 And he wouldn't send legions of angels to protect me.

00:35:41.180 Well, if Jesus has the potential to ask for angelic protection, we do too.

00:35:47.680 And angels came, I believe, to protect John and his wife.

00:35:52.420 So people have these things.

00:35:54.040 I had an encounter with an angel when I was 12 years old.

00:35:57.760 And I was always embarrassed by this.

00:36:00.040 Didn't tell many people at the time.

00:36:02.380 But I'm making a sandwich in the kitchen.

00:36:06.240 And this angel, I knew intuitively was an angel.

00:36:08.740 He appears.

00:36:09.800 And he starts extolling heaven.

00:36:11.500 How wonderful heaven is.

00:36:13.260 And I listened for a moment and I said offhandedly, well, I'm going to go there someday.

00:36:18.020 And he looked at me and said, how do you know?

00:36:21.140 What do you mean, how do I know?

00:36:22.180 I'm a good kid.

00:36:22.940 I get good grades.

00:36:24.100 I'm nice to my dog.

00:36:26.460 I do what my parents say pretty much.

00:36:28.600 I'm trying to justify my goodness as a means of getting to heaven.

00:36:33.200 And he looked at me and said, that doesn't matter.

00:36:36.680 And a chill went down my spine.

00:36:38.240 I said, wait a minute.

00:36:39.280 How could that not matter?

00:36:40.220 It makes no sense.

00:36:41.140 What are you talking about?

00:36:42.420 And then he said, someday you'll understand.

00:36:45.880 And then he disappeared.

00:36:47.520 16 years later, as an atheist, because I suppressed that thing.

00:36:52.320 I thought it was a bad pizza.

00:36:53.540 It can't be real.

00:36:54.520 I suppressed it.

00:36:56.040 16 years later, my now Christian wife, who had been agnostic, dragged me to a church.

00:37:02.280 And I heard the message of Jesus.

00:37:04.020 And I heard that, guess what?

00:37:06.820 Salvation is not based on, if we do a lot of nice things in our life, there is a gift

00:37:11.760 of grace that God offers us and so forth.

00:37:14.440 And all of a sudden, I remember that dream for two reasons.

00:37:19.560 That angel told me something that night that I didn't know.

00:37:23.220 And secondly, he made a prediction that someday I would understand that came true 16 years

00:37:28.980 later.

00:37:30.260 So here I am at my, later, I'm being ordained as a pastor.

00:37:33.780 And they have all these theologians who ask you questions theologically, make sure you're

00:37:38.280 orthodox and everything.

00:37:39.940 And I'm thinking, do I tell them this?

00:37:41.720 Do I?

00:37:42.540 Because they're going to kick me out.

00:37:43.540 They're going to kick me out.

00:37:44.500 They're going to not ordain me.

00:37:45.560 And then I thought, well, if they do, I should at least, I should tell them.

00:37:50.120 So I said, well, can I tell you something that happened to me?

00:37:53.020 And I told them the story.

00:37:54.480 And all these staid theologians, their response was, yeah.

00:37:58.420 Yeah.

00:37:59.300 Yeah.

00:38:00.140 Right.

00:38:00.860 Yeah.

00:38:01.340 So hold on.

00:38:01.780 This was a dream you had.

00:38:02.980 Yeah.

00:38:03.220 You weren't literally making it.

00:38:04.460 No, no.

00:38:05.580 There was one time as I was reverting, I think it was in LA at this point.

00:38:09.700 I was in LA.

00:38:10.600 I had a dream and there was this phrase in the dream, nunc dimetis.

00:38:17.380 I was like, I don't know what that is.

00:38:18.640 Nunc, what is that?

00:38:19.360 I'm trying to Google versions of what I thought I heard.

00:38:23.560 And it was, I landed on nunc dimetis.

00:38:27.160 Lord, now let us thy servant depart in peace.

00:38:31.980 So this is, one, I don't know.

00:38:36.160 I'm not that biblically literate.

00:38:37.380 Yeah.

00:38:37.440 Two, I guess it's possible I'd heard, maybe it's possible I'd heard that.

00:38:44.700 That's not an ordinary part of the liturgy or anything.

00:38:46.880 That would have been a long, long shot.

00:38:47.440 Which, and my Latin is no good.

00:38:49.420 Yeah.

00:38:50.200 So now you're telling me I've heard part of the Bible and I've learned some Latin in my dream.

00:38:57.740 I, like, I guess it's possible that I had heard it at some point and been unaware.

00:39:05.000 Or no, maybe, maybe I just learned something in my dream that I didn't previously know.

00:39:10.400 It's, some of these cases are very compelling of angelic interactions.

00:39:15.300 And, and I tell this, report the case in my book of a pastor in Ohio whose car lost control, he lost control of his car and it hit a tree or a utility pole.

00:39:28.180 Yeah.

00:39:28.360 And the wire came down on the car.

00:39:30.720 So his car is being electrified.

00:39:32.160 His windshield was actually melting.

00:39:33.820 This is one of the, I didn't read the whole book.

00:39:36.520 Yeah.

00:39:36.600 Uh, it, it'll be on my list, but I, I have book lists going back like 10 years because I'm a slow reader.

00:39:42.240 But as I was reading, I was doing a bit of a read of a book.

00:39:45.420 Even though just, you know, this one spooked me.

00:39:47.900 Yes.

00:39:48.460 Yes.

00:39:48.900 So the guy's in the car, it's being electrocuted.

00:39:51.560 The, the, the, the doors are jammed shut.

00:39:54.240 Um, he's in the car.

00:39:56.040 It, there's electricity shooting through the metal of the car.

00:39:58.720 He doesn't know what to do.

00:40:00.220 He's praying, of course, he's a pastor.

00:40:02.280 And this guy walks up, he's kind of a scruffy guy.

00:40:05.040 And he walks up.

00:40:06.600 And he opens the door and he takes this guy out and he takes him about 50 feet away.

00:40:13.240 And the car blows up and the guy says to him, look, you're going to be okay.

00:40:19.340 The police are on their way.

00:40:21.160 I can't be here when they get here, but you're going to be okay.

00:40:24.860 And then he walks away and disappears.

00:40:27.760 I have quotes from the news crew that reported on that case and the paramedic people.

00:40:33.400 And so it's like, really?

00:40:36.240 The pastor's convinced this was an angelic being who rescued him.

00:40:40.560 You know, so these things, and you know, when you go back, the Bible says we will interact, perhaps.

00:40:45.080 It could happen with angelic beings.

00:40:47.060 But it's not something Christians talk about a lot.

00:40:51.240 Right.

00:40:51.560 Because you feel weird.

00:40:52.580 You do.

00:40:53.820 I admit that.

00:40:55.600 Even talk about miracles that take place.

00:40:58.240 And my book documents miracles from peer-reviewed medical journals and so forth.

00:41:02.280 And scientific studies that have been done.

00:41:04.380 A lot of Christians don't want, you know, I'm not one of those weird ones.

00:41:09.640 Yeah, yeah.

00:41:10.080 You know, I believe in Jesus.

00:41:11.440 I'm a good guy.

00:41:12.560 But don't be putting me in the class of these strange folks.

00:41:15.920 Don't make me affirm that there are visible expressions of faith in the world.

00:41:21.320 Exactly.

00:41:21.580 So, on all of the, I mean, the thing is, we could sit here, I bet just the two of us, could sit here for hours.

00:41:30.540 Remembering these kinds of experiences that we've had that were so shocking in the moment that we then, you just kind of forget.

00:41:37.320 You could see a miracle happen.

00:41:39.360 It's like, to me, this is a proof of miracles.

00:41:41.080 You could see a miracle happen.

00:41:42.780 You could say, wow, that's going to change my life.

00:41:44.400 And then you just go back to being your rotten self.

00:41:47.040 That's right.

00:41:47.660 But all day long.

00:41:48.760 I'm remembering one, I was 10 years old.

00:41:52.040 My grandpa, my beloved grandfather died when I was 10.

00:41:55.420 I was in school.

00:41:57.300 I said, I got to go to the nurse's office.

00:41:59.660 Out of the blue.

00:42:00.420 Oh, my stomach is killing me.

00:42:02.620 I got to go to the nurse's office.

00:42:04.180 I walk down the hallway.

00:42:05.460 I make a right into the bathroom because I said, I don't know, I'm just doubled over in pain.

00:42:09.600 This is so awful.

00:42:10.540 I can't even walk to the nurse's office.

00:42:12.660 Then it just all went away.

00:42:14.140 This is like 1030 in the morning.

00:42:16.180 It went away so quickly.

00:42:19.500 I didn't go to the nurse's office.

00:42:20.400 I went back to class.

00:42:21.080 I'm 10 years old, fifth grade.

00:42:24.600 Go home that day.

00:42:26.040 My grandpa died.

00:42:27.540 The medical examiners think he died about 1030.

00:42:30.440 Yeah.

00:42:31.200 Yeah.

00:42:31.600 I have several cases like that in the book of people who have, you know, Dan Bongino?

00:42:38.520 Yeah, of course.

00:42:39.320 Dan was asleep at 3 a.m.

00:42:43.080 This is within the last couple of years.

00:42:44.980 He's asleep at 3 a.m.

00:42:46.520 And he gets wakened up at 3 a.m.

00:42:49.820 By the feeling of being hugged like a mother would hug a child.

00:42:54.760 Just this hugging.

00:42:56.200 And he freaked out.

00:42:58.260 He went to get his gun.

00:42:59.820 Because he figured, somebody's in the house.

00:43:02.040 You know, I'm going to take care of this.

00:43:04.160 But then nothing.

00:43:06.520 And he goes back to sleep.

00:43:08.320 Phone call comes in that morning.

00:43:10.960 His mom had died at 3 a.m.

00:43:12.660 What do you do with that?

00:43:16.040 You know, I remember in 1994, back when you used travel agents, I had to fly to Canton, Ohio, I guess.

00:43:24.760 And so I called travel agents.

00:43:26.160 Can you book me a flight?

00:43:26.940 Sure, sure, sure.

00:43:27.560 You fly to Pittsburgh and you get on a commuter plane.

00:43:30.260 It takes you right across the street from where you're going in Canton or Akron.

00:43:33.640 I can't remember where I was going.

00:43:34.400 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:34.900 And I said, great, book it.

00:43:36.180 So I'm listening to her type.

00:43:38.560 Something in my spirit said, don't take that flight.

00:43:41.740 Don't, that's, don't.

00:43:43.860 So I said, wait a minute.

00:43:44.800 Is there another way to go?

00:43:46.280 She said, no.

00:43:47.460 She said, well, okay, you could fly United and fly to Cleveland or wherever it was.

00:43:52.400 And then rent a car and drive for three hours.

00:43:54.580 You could do that.

00:43:55.540 But, and I said, I want to do that.

00:43:58.640 So she unbooks me from that first flight, which was a U.S. air flight, and puts me on United.

00:44:03.440 Both of those flights took off at the same time from O'Hare Airport.

00:44:06.740 My flight arrives in Cleveland or wherever I was.

00:44:09.580 I rented a car, went to dinner, had dinner, got in the car, turned on the radio, and the newsflash came over.

00:44:17.580 That other plane had crashed.

00:44:18.860 That was a U.S. air flight that crashed in Pittsburgh.

00:44:21.560 Ninety-four people killed.

00:44:24.760 And that was the flight I was being booked on.

00:44:28.480 But something in my spirit said, ah, take another way.

00:44:33.380 Could it be a coincidence?

00:44:34.580 Yeah, it could be a coincidence.

00:44:35.820 It is a coincidence.

00:44:36.440 I think it was.

00:44:37.180 Yeah, I mean, it's not a, how could you say it's a mere coincidence?

00:44:41.080 Yeah, I mean, I think it, I think it was a prompting by God.

00:44:45.700 Could, could it be naturalistically explained?

00:44:48.160 Yeah, it could be.

00:44:49.080 It could be just a feeling I had.

00:44:50.940 And, you know, U.S. air had had kind of a sketchy safety record before then.

00:44:55.840 Maybe that was just my subconscious saying, eh, I don't like them as much as United.

00:44:59.900 Who knows?

00:45:02.460 But as a follower of Jesus, I've seen these cases where God has protected in ways that I think are best explained.

00:45:11.220 If you rule out the possibility, like I used to do, rule out the possibility of the supernatural at the outset.

00:45:17.340 Now give me your evidence.

00:45:19.080 That's how I acted as an atheist.

00:45:21.220 But then I said, wait a minute, just give me all the evidence.

00:45:24.800 Wherever it points, I'm going to follow it.

00:45:27.140 That, to me, is more logical and rational.

00:45:29.760 So, you know what the atheist is going to say right now.

00:45:32.200 The atheist who is watching this, he's got this pulled up on one corner of his screen.

00:45:36.720 He's got Reddit pulled up on the other corner.

00:45:39.220 He's, you know, he's being all snark.

00:45:41.100 He's going to say, oh, well, that's really nice.

00:45:43.660 God prompted you to switch your flight.

00:45:46.600 What about the 94 people on the U.S. air flight?

00:45:49.120 Right.

00:45:49.660 What about them, Mr. Christian?

00:45:51.380 Yeah.

00:45:51.720 How do you defend your God then?

00:45:53.000 Yeah.

00:45:53.180 And I think the question of why doesn't God always answer prayers for miracles, because

00:45:58.720 he clearly doesn't answer them in ways that everybody wants them answered at that time.

00:46:02.500 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:02.960 My wife has a neuromuscular condition.

00:46:05.220 She's been in pain for 20 years.

00:46:07.040 She will be in pain every day for the rest of her life unless God intervenes, because it's

00:46:12.020 an incurable condition.

00:46:13.920 God has not chosen to do a miracle and heal my wife.

00:46:16.720 She is a godly woman who loves Jesus.

00:46:19.520 Why doesn't he heal her?

00:46:20.840 Well, look in the New Testament.

00:46:24.800 Miracles were not automatic in the New Testament either.

00:46:27.680 Jesus didn't do many miracles in Nazareth.

00:46:30.280 Paul had a buddy named Trophimus, and Trophimus got sick.

00:46:34.380 Did Paul heal him?

00:46:35.340 No, he went off on a missionary journey and left him behind.

00:46:38.220 In Matthew, the disciples are given the authority to heal in the name of Jesus.

00:46:42.780 Seven chapters later, they fail to heal an epileptic boy.

00:46:45.280 Um, Paul talks about a thorn in the flesh that was, we don't know what that was, but whatever

00:46:52.260 it was, it was never healed supernaturally.

00:46:54.780 So miracles were not automatic in New Testament times either.

00:46:59.720 And, um, I think one of the, to me, one of the simple answers is, wait a minute.

00:47:05.680 If God were to answer every prayer for a miracle right now, we couldn't do science.

00:47:12.120 Yeah.

00:47:12.440 Because science is based on predictability.

00:47:14.180 Yeah.

00:47:14.400 And if everybody is getting healed like this, right and left, right and left supernaturally,

00:47:18.180 I can't do science experiments because I can't trust that they have a repetitive outcome and so forth.

00:47:24.220 Um, that's just one simple way of looking at it.

00:47:26.180 And also God, God is the logos, divine logic of the universe.

00:47:29.420 So that means there has to be a kind of logos that, that the, that the universe is in fact

00:47:35.200 circumscribed and it's, it's a fallen world because we sin against God and God does heal

00:47:40.780 that.

00:47:41.420 He actually does, you know, quite gloriously in the crucifixion and resurrection, but maybe

00:47:49.180 not in the way that, that we, we always, that Lee on a Tuesday afternoon wishes that

00:47:54.160 God did it.

00:47:54.780 Right.

00:47:55.140 And, you know, I believe that God will heal all his people, but it may be as a transition

00:48:00.480 to the life to come because heaven is described as a place of no pain, no sorrow, no tears

00:48:05.760 and so forth.

00:48:06.440 So will he ultimately heal it?

00:48:08.500 Will my wife ultimately be healed?

00:48:09.920 Yes, she will.

00:48:10.840 When she passes into heaven, if not before she will be healed for eternity and 5,227,221

00:48:18.500 years from then, she's going to look back.

00:48:22.020 Right.

00:48:22.420 And I'm going to say to her, do you remember when you were living in this, that world,

00:48:26.720 how you had that pain?

00:48:27.780 She'd go, oh yeah.

00:48:30.040 Yeah.

00:48:30.420 Maybe.

00:48:31.060 Kind of forgot about that.

00:48:32.880 Five million years in the perfect presence of God.

00:48:36.300 It's been so, so overwhelmingly wonderful.

00:48:40.260 I, I just, St. Avila, St. Teresa of Avila once said, um, in light of the glory of heaven.

00:48:47.860 Yeah.

00:48:49.500 A life lived of torturous life in this world, in light of heaven will seem like no worse

00:48:57.660 than one night in a not so good hotel.

00:49:00.640 You're right.

00:49:01.360 You know, and I, I think we'll get that perspective and heaven will answer that.

00:49:06.380 But, um, you know, I actually wrote a book called The Case for Miracles and I interviewed

00:49:10.620 a philosopher, uh, with a PhD from University of Oregon, uh, whose wife was dying at the time.

00:49:17.240 And he, they prayed for a miracle.

00:49:18.840 It didn't happen.

00:49:19.480 She ended up dying.

00:49:20.660 And it's a very profound interview.

00:49:23.780 Um, he's a Christian man and a theologian and, uh, gives an incredible analysis of why

00:49:31.640 aren't all miracles granted in the way we want them when we want them.

00:49:35.500 Um, he ended up writing a book about it called, uh, Walking Through Twilight, Twilight, I believe.

00:49:40.900 Uh, Douglas Groatheis is his name.

00:49:43.300 Um, so yeah, it's a legitimate question, legitimate question.

00:49:46.960 And, you know, atheists love to raise all kinds of questions and, and which is fine.

00:49:51.660 I did it too when I was an atheist.

00:49:52.760 Um, but to me, they're like spiritual sticking points, you know, and they're holding them

00:49:58.140 up in their journey toward God.

00:49:59.320 And often there's a good answer that can get them past that.

00:50:01.920 But I always say, wait a minute, I've got about 20 lines of evidence from cosmology,

00:50:06.560 from physics, from biochemistry, from logic, from philosophy, from the resurrection.

00:50:11.260 I go down the line.

00:50:13.000 I've got about 20 lines of evidence that point powerfully and persuasively toward the truth

00:50:17.880 of Christianity and it's like arrows pointing in a direction.

00:50:21.720 Now, a few of the arrows are a little bit askew.

00:50:24.920 I get that, you know, why does God allow pain and suffering in this world?

00:50:28.440 That's a good, that's that arrow.

00:50:30.040 I think we have an answer, but it's a little askew.

00:50:31.880 Why doesn't he grant every miracle when we ask for it?

00:50:33.940 That's another one.

00:50:34.980 But the overwhelming evidence points in the direction, I believe, of the truth of the faith.

00:50:40.820 When it comes to the heavenly visions, are there any commonalities between all of the visions

00:50:46.220 or are they all tailored and personal?

00:50:49.640 The near-death experiences?

00:50:50.820 Yeah.

00:50:51.320 There is a common core.

00:50:53.680 What's important is to separate how people interpret it because you see it through the

00:50:59.120 lens of your worldview.

00:51:00.320 Yeah.

00:51:00.720 So a Muslim is going to see something a little different than a Christian.

00:51:03.660 But, so let's strip that away.

00:51:05.700 Let's only look at what actually takes place in a common near-death experience.

00:51:09.500 And that's been reduced by scientists to, you know, certain percentages will meet a supernatural

00:51:15.780 deity.

00:51:17.900 A certain percentage will have a life review with that deity.

00:51:24.260 Meaning, you know, we hear it in the natural sense, your life flashes before your eyes.

00:51:28.640 But meaning like, all right, buddy, let's open the account.

00:51:31.020 And what's interesting is you not, and everybody says this, you not only go through the things

00:51:38.180 you did in your life that maybe hurt other people, disappointed other people, you can

00:51:42.160 feel the impact on that person and how they reacted in ways you didn't know at the time.

00:51:49.000 So it ripples down.

00:51:51.360 It sounds horrible.

00:51:51.980 Yeah.

00:51:52.240 That sounds horrifying.

00:51:52.940 It is horrifying.

00:51:53.800 And what is interesting, they say to a person, they say, this Jesus who's with me, he's not condemning

00:51:59.800 me as I go through this.

00:52:01.260 I'm condemning myself.

00:52:02.980 They say, stop this.

00:52:04.180 I don't want any more.

00:52:05.200 But he's, it's okay.

00:52:07.240 It's okay.

00:52:08.060 You've been forgiven.

00:52:09.320 You've been forgiven, if that's the case.

00:52:11.060 And so they feel the affirmation of Jesus through forgiving them for these sins that they've

00:52:17.420 committed.

00:52:18.120 So their condemnation is coming from themselves.

00:52:21.020 They're feeling bad about it.

00:52:23.080 Certain percentage will see dead relatives or friends who have preceded them in death.

00:52:27.380 Um, so there's a common core that typically takes place, but as John Burke has established,

00:52:34.500 who's a researcher, studied 1500 of these instances as a Christian pastor, he said, when

00:52:39.240 you do strip away how people interpret them and look at what actually takes place, it's

00:52:42.880 consistent with Christian teachings and the scriptures.

00:52:46.880 That thought is so horrifying that I don't, if I had to see every, much less feel, but

00:52:57.120 it did to other people, every bad thing I ever did.

00:53:00.700 Even with, even if Jesus has his hand on your shoulders, it's a horrifying thought.

00:53:04.960 I mean, I, I arranged an abortion for a woman when I was in college and I'm, you want to see

00:53:09.660 the ripple of that in her life and the baby, it's going to be horrible.

00:53:14.540 Yeah.

00:53:14.880 But if you're a follower of Jesus, he's forgiven us.

00:53:18.660 Yes.

00:53:18.900 And we're going to feel his affirmation.

00:53:21.060 And, and these people describe it and some people say, stop it, stop it, stop it.

00:53:25.020 I don't go any further.

00:53:26.560 Yeah.

00:53:26.740 Other people endure it because of Jesus being with them and not being, uh, condemning.

00:53:34.540 Right.

00:53:35.440 Yes.

00:53:36.040 Hamlet in his despair or feigned despair says, uh, you know, I could accuse myself of such

00:53:42.060 things that it were better.

00:53:42.840 My mother had not born me.

00:53:44.160 Yeah.

00:53:44.560 And we could all say that.

00:53:46.060 I mean, you, you use one example, but I think, I don't know, you could, I'm sure we could all

00:53:49.600 pick dozens and dozens of hundreds of examples of this all the time.

00:53:53.180 Yeah.

00:53:53.480 Wow.

00:53:54.120 You couldn't, yeah, you certainly couldn't survive that if you didn't have, um.

00:53:57.160 If you didn't, yeah.

00:53:57.920 What do you do if, yeah, life, if that life review leads the other direction towards someone

00:54:03.320 who has not received forgiveness through Jesus?

00:54:05.880 That's a frightening thought.

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00:55:17.700 Now, I have a nuts and bolts question, which is we're sitting here talking about, you know,

00:55:22.360 angels perhaps speaking to us in particular ways, specific times, your car is on fire

00:55:28.580 or you're, you know, a punk young man actor in New York or whatever, or anything in between.

00:55:35.320 Or your mother hugs you.

00:55:38.000 You feel like your mother's hugging you at three in the morning when she dies.

00:55:40.700 Or you feel like your grandpa's saying goodbye to you when he dies, but you don't know he's

00:55:44.860 dying.

00:55:45.040 Well, what does that mean?

00:55:48.000 Are they really doing that?

00:55:51.740 Can they do that?

00:55:54.240 Is it God?

00:55:56.080 Is it something else that's figurative but not quite literal?

00:56:01.540 What are the mechanics of it?

00:56:03.060 That's great.

00:56:03.440 You see your sister or your aunt in heaven.

00:56:06.540 What about your uncle in hell?

00:56:07.860 Is your uncle in hell?

00:56:08.640 Nuts and bolts beyond the soft soap and, you know, happy, clappy images.

00:56:16.400 What's really happening?

00:56:17.680 Yeah.

00:56:18.000 I think one thing that's happening is we're getting a glimpse into the supernatural realm

00:56:23.160 when those things happen.

00:56:24.620 There's a story in the Old Testament in 2 Kings 6 about Elisha, the prophet.

00:56:29.620 He was being hunted by the Persian army because they were mad at him because they were trying

00:56:34.980 to ambush the king of Israel and he thwarted them.

00:56:38.240 So they're pissed off.

00:56:39.720 So they're hunting him.

00:56:41.160 Well, he's got a servant who takes care of him.

00:56:43.560 The servant's freaking out because he knows whatever they do to Elisha, they're going to

00:56:46.560 do to me.

00:56:47.400 So they're going to kill me or enslave me or whatever.

00:56:49.940 So he's freaking out.

00:56:51.120 So he gets up early one day.

00:56:52.580 They're in a town called Dothan and he looks out and in the fields, he sees the Syrian army

00:56:59.100 coming for them.

00:57:01.080 And he says, oh no, my Lord, what do we do?

00:57:03.340 They're coming for us.

00:57:04.200 And Elisha says, hey, hey, greater is he who is in us than he who is with them.

00:57:09.880 But that didn't satisfy.

00:57:11.600 Yeah, yeah.

00:57:12.440 But hey, they're coming.

00:57:14.240 So Elisha prayed and said, Lord, open his eyes.

00:57:20.160 Open his eyes.

00:57:21.180 And God opened the eyes of that servant of Elisha and all of a sudden he saw the angelic

00:57:27.860 army that was going to protect them and with chariots of fire, as he described it.

00:57:35.080 And that vision and they were saved from this.

00:57:39.480 They were rescued.

00:57:40.520 They ended up living through it miraculously.

00:57:44.660 That vision of seeing the supernatural, the angels that come to protect him, deepened his

00:57:49.840 faith, encouraged him spiritually, gave him courage that he clearly didn't have at the

00:57:57.280 time.

00:57:58.200 And I think that's what God does when we get a glimpse of the supernatural, whether it's

00:58:03.680 a deathbed vision, whether it's a mystical dream that's corroborated in some way, whether

00:58:08.900 we see deathbed visions or other permutations, miracles that are documented and published

00:58:16.240 in peer-reviewed medical journals and so.

00:58:18.300 When we see this sort of thing, I think for a Christian, the practical implication is it

00:58:24.220 deepens my faith and it gives me courage that, you know what, I'm really not alone in

00:58:30.640 this.

00:58:31.060 I'm really not.

00:58:32.320 And you know what?

00:58:33.500 I never used to do this.

00:58:35.020 But as I researched all this about angels, and I realized, and there's a difference between

00:58:39.760 how Catholics and Protestants view angels, not a huge difference, but a slight difference.

00:58:44.560 But I realized...

00:58:46.180 The Catholic angels drink wine.

00:58:48.400 The Protestant ones there.

00:58:50.800 That's a good one.

00:58:51.960 That's a good one.

00:58:53.480 But I realized it is certainly permissible.

00:58:56.840 And Martin Luther said it was a good idea to pray to God about angelic protection.

00:59:02.420 Yeah.

00:59:03.100 I'd never done that.

00:59:04.120 And I've done it.

00:59:05.580 Now I do it.

00:59:06.640 Yeah, yeah.

00:59:06.780 Now when I pray, I pray, God, send your angels to protect me and Leslie and the grandchildren

00:59:12.500 and my children and my ministry.

00:59:14.540 Send angels to protect me.

00:59:15.820 And that's totally legitimate to do.

00:59:17.320 I never used to do that.

00:59:18.620 But so the study of the supernatural gave me that confidence to do that and the courage

00:59:22.640 to do that.

00:59:23.740 And it's made a huge difference in my life.

00:59:26.320 You know, we have a new pope, Pope Leo.

00:59:28.200 Yeah.

00:59:28.660 A Chicagoan.

00:59:30.360 You know what?

00:59:31.100 I got to give you something.

00:59:32.040 I'm not Catholic, but when I see the pope in a Sox hat, I cheer.

00:59:36.020 I'm sorry.

00:59:37.820 Talk about, you know what?

00:59:39.200 You want to talk about having hope in the face of adversity and great daunting odds.

00:59:44.600 You know, to be a White Sox fan.

00:59:45.820 Be the Cubs.

00:59:46.880 Cubs or the White Sox.

00:59:48.140 Either one.

00:59:48.700 But White Sox more recently.

00:59:49.820 Someone on the internet recently posted, said, someday, 500 years from now, a church historian

00:59:55.040 is going to see that.

00:59:55.780 And he's going to say, the pope changed the zucchetto to include S-O-X, successor of Christos.

01:00:03.120 That's probably how those legends come up.

01:00:04.920 That's hilarious.

01:00:05.540 You know, I saw a video of him the other day, and he was greeting some people, I think in

01:00:10.680 the Popemobile or something, you know, and it was a crowd there, and a woman lifted up

01:00:14.280 a little girl, her daughter, to be kind of blessed by the pope, and the daughter handed

01:00:19.960 him a cookie.

01:00:21.000 And so he blessed her.

01:00:22.820 He took the cookie, and he tossed it in his mouth.

01:00:25.080 I thought, that is so human.

01:00:27.880 I love that.

01:00:29.240 I like this guy.

01:00:30.480 What a story.

01:00:31.980 I'll tell you, obviously, we're all very shortly into the pontificate.

01:00:35.680 I loved the signs right away, especially that he chose the name Leo, because you mentioned

01:00:41.020 praying for angelic protection.

01:00:43.220 Pope Leo XIII, you know, the last Leo before this one.

01:00:47.200 The last Leo.

01:00:48.080 He had a vision.

01:00:49.120 He had a vision of a conversation between God and Satan, and that God would permit Satan

01:00:55.280 to try to destroy the church for 100 years.

01:00:57.720 And it was scary enough to Leo that he created a new prayer, the St. Michael prayer to the

01:01:04.100 archangel.

01:01:05.160 And the prayer was previously, for a long time, said after every Catholic mass.

01:01:10.620 And then, I don't know, in the 60s and 70s, they did away with it.

01:01:13.640 But it's kind of coming back.

01:01:14.800 And the prayer is, St. Michael the archangel, defend us in battle.

01:01:17.820 Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

01:01:20.420 May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.

01:01:22.760 And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and

01:01:27.400 all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

01:01:31.420 Very hardcore.

01:01:32.660 Yeah.

01:01:32.940 Kind of masculine in an age of effeminacy in the church.

01:01:35.780 And well aware of the spiritual battle that is all around us.

01:01:43.700 Yeah.

01:01:45.420 I heard, I think it was from a priest who said, 20 years ago, I had to convince people not

01:01:50.840 to be atheists.

01:01:51.940 Now I have to convince them not to be a cult.

01:01:53.940 Yeah.

01:01:54.820 Yeah.

01:01:55.360 Because there's an awareness of the supernatural, but the people get involved in the paranormal.

01:01:59.300 Yeah.

01:01:59.640 The occult and so forth.

01:02:00.940 Very dangerous.

01:02:01.680 Very important to discern what is true and what is not.

01:02:05.480 What is biblical and what is not.

01:02:06.900 The Holy Spirit's never going to lie.

01:02:08.920 The Holy Spirit's never going to lead you into something authentically that is contrary

01:02:12.400 to the word of God.

01:02:13.300 And so in my book, I talk about ghosts and, um, you know, the technical definition of a

01:02:19.620 ghost is someone who has died, but who refuses to go into the afterlife and sticks around to

01:02:25.860 kind of bother people or whatever.

01:02:27.680 I don't see an example of that in scripture.

01:02:30.480 Right.

01:02:31.600 Personal opinion.

01:02:32.720 I think the apparitions that people see and interpret as being ghosts are probably demonic.

01:02:37.200 Yeah.

01:02:37.540 I think that's true a lot of the time though.

01:02:39.180 So this would be one, maybe Catholic Protestant difference, which you see in Hamlet.

01:02:44.000 It's actually the point of that first scene in Hamlet with the ghost of the fire.

01:02:46.820 Is it a ghost?

01:02:47.340 Is it not a ghost?

01:02:47.960 Right.

01:02:48.180 He comes from the University of Wittenberg.

01:02:49.840 But the one biblical example would be the, uh, Witch of Endor.

01:02:54.340 And that's a good example, but it's interesting in the Witch of Endor, how she was shocked

01:03:00.000 when Samuel actually appeared.

01:03:03.200 Yeah, yeah.

01:03:03.660 She was, cause I don't know.

01:03:04.260 So for those who don't know this, Saul goes up, even though he's, he's outlawed, no divination,

01:03:08.640 no, um, necromancy, but then he goes to this witch.

01:03:12.060 He says, Hey, you know, call up a ghost, call up a ghost to Samuel.

01:03:15.180 And she does.

01:03:16.280 And you kind of wonder, is she a fraud, you know, cause she's surprised it actually works.

01:03:20.760 She doesn't want to do it.

01:03:21.780 And I think she was a fraud.

01:03:23.660 And I think that she was so shocked that this actually happened, that it's an example

01:03:28.620 of her saying, ah, yeah, I'm out here, you know?

01:03:31.860 So, so yeah, I mean, that's a, an interesting story.

01:03:35.780 Um, and I have in my book, several examples of people who have encountered people who

01:03:41.800 have, dead people who've appeared to them.

01:03:43.900 Yeah.

01:03:44.260 And, and some of them have some pretty convincing corroboration.

01:03:46.920 Um, so then what's your, because I agree with you.

01:03:50.240 I think most of it's probably demonic actually, but in principle, I accept that there could

01:03:55.260 be such a thing as a ghost, really just drawing from the Samuel and the witch of Endor.

01:03:59.220 But so what's your take?

01:04:00.420 You say that it seems like there's corroborating evidence that these are ghosts.

01:04:05.420 I think it was corroborating evidence that sometimes someone who is dead appears to someone

01:04:11.380 alive.

01:04:12.040 I have two stories in my book.

01:04:13.440 One of them is a woman, business woman's on business trips in a hotel and her, uh, I believe

01:04:18.720 it was her, her father appears to her and he had been deceased and, um, tells her, Hey,

01:04:24.060 everything's okay.

01:04:24.700 And take care of the family and blah, blah, blah.

01:04:26.820 I love you.

01:04:27.340 And so forth.

01:04:28.320 And, um, um, then he disappears.

01:04:31.120 Her son who was with her in the trip, but staying in another room comes up the next day

01:04:38.280 and says, I saw grandpa last night.

01:04:40.400 Grandpa was here.

01:04:41.520 He was in my room.

01:04:42.300 He was at the foot of my bed.

01:04:44.180 Is that corroboration that something was going on?

01:04:46.720 Now, there are some Christian theologians.

01:04:48.660 I interviewed one in my book who believe, yeah, that could be biblical because of the

01:04:52.920 witch of Endor, the media of Endor story.

01:04:54.960 Yeah.

01:04:55.440 And because we see the, um, um, story of, uh, Elijah, the prophet, uh, in, uh, you know,

01:05:03.280 in the transfiguration.

01:05:05.360 Yeah.

01:05:05.600 Yeah.

01:05:05.680 So those are two examples of some people will say, okay, this is consistent with Bible.

01:05:10.200 Oh, that's interesting.

01:05:10.880 Yeah.

01:05:11.000 Right.

01:05:11.260 Of course.

01:05:11.720 In the transfiguration.

01:05:12.600 Transfiguration.

01:05:12.980 I guess, I guess you're seeing ghosts.

01:05:14.540 Yeah.

01:05:14.820 Right.

01:05:15.260 Yeah.

01:05:15.420 Yeah.

01:05:15.540 Yeah.

01:05:16.220 There are some Christian theologians.

01:05:18.020 I interviewed one in the book who think, yeah, this is consistent with Christianity.

01:05:20.940 Others will say, wait a minute.

01:05:22.780 Um, if you go by the technical definition of a ghost of someone who refuses to go into the

01:05:26.920 afterlife, those don't really fit.

01:05:28.460 Yeah.

01:05:28.800 Yeah.

01:05:28.860 Yeah.

01:05:28.980 All the, all the sort of ghost stories are like spooky.

01:05:32.080 Right.

01:05:32.540 Right.

01:05:32.720 Right.

01:05:32.820 Right.

01:05:33.100 So, you know, I would be careful with it personally.

01:05:35.860 Right.

01:05:36.260 I'd be careful.

01:05:37.320 And I have stories in the book.

01:05:38.780 I mean, I investigate the ghostly apparitions and there's some spooky stuff.

01:05:43.080 No question about it.

01:05:44.320 Um, but what is that coming from?

01:05:45.940 Is it demonic?

01:05:47.040 Right.

01:05:47.300 Um, and, you know, let's face it, uh, you know, Jesus was an exorcist.

01:05:53.560 Jesus believed in demons.

01:05:54.820 Jesus realized that there is a demonic realm.

01:05:57.400 And I have in my book an amazing story about a guy who's a very highly respected psychiatrist.

01:06:02.520 So he's a medical doctor as well, trained in psychiatry, uh, Ivy league educated, uh,

01:06:07.540 teaches at major colleges, very prestigious.

01:06:10.420 I have a quote from the president of the former president of the American psychiatric association

01:06:15.100 saying he's a man of great integrity, great learning, highly credible individual.

01:06:19.180 His name is Richard Gallagher, lives up in New York.

01:06:21.640 And 25 years ago, um, he and his wife had two cats and they got along great, slept together.

01:06:27.700 No problem.

01:06:28.260 So one night they started trying to kill each other.

01:06:31.760 They're attacking each other, clawing each other.

01:06:33.740 They're, they're snarling each other.

01:06:35.420 They're biting each other.

01:06:36.340 It's like, oh, they never seen anything like it.

01:06:38.160 They, they tear them apart.

01:06:40.280 They're in a separate room.

01:06:41.320 What the heck was that?

01:06:43.200 At 9am, the doorbell rings.

01:06:45.100 It's a Catholic priest.

01:06:46.160 He had made an appointment to come to Dr. Gallagher to have him examine a woman who was

01:06:51.540 with him who claimed to be the high priestess of a satanic cult.

01:06:55.240 And he was going to examine her to see if she's crazy or is she demon possessed or what?

01:07:00.480 Doorbell rings.

01:07:01.740 He opens the door.

01:07:03.260 This woman who claims to be high priestess of a satanic cult sneers at him and says,

01:07:08.820 so how'd you like those cats last night?

01:07:13.880 Okay.

01:07:15.100 I mean, and for 25 years, Dr. Gallagher has been involved with Catholic exorcisms and

01:07:21.640 documented things that he said, look, I'm a psychiatrist.

01:07:25.140 I know the difference between somebody who's mentally ill and someone who's demon possessed.

01:07:29.340 They ain't the same thing.

01:07:30.420 And he has cases, he documents with one woman, petite woman who picked up a 217 pound Lutheran deacon and threw him across the room.

01:07:39.960 People who speak in Latin, a language they don't know.

01:07:42.400 Yeah.

01:07:42.540 One case with eight eyewitnesses of a woman who levitated off a bed for half an hour.

01:07:49.080 Um, supernatural strength, knowing things that they shouldn't have known.

01:07:53.740 Um, there is a demonic realm and, you know, Christians cannot be possessed by a demon because we're already indwelled by the Holy Spirit.

01:08:03.860 Um, but they can hector us.

01:08:06.280 They can bother us.

01:08:07.100 They can try to lead us into sin and so forth.

01:08:09.860 It's a very real phenomenon.

01:08:11.280 And of course, the two big mistakes we make is to ignore it.

01:08:14.400 Yeah.

01:08:15.000 And we're not prepared or, or think there's a demon behind every book.

01:08:18.660 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:19.460 That's the other, those are two errors, but we got to be aware.

01:08:22.760 Yeah.

01:08:22.980 The Bible says, put on the full armor of God, protect yourself because they'll come after you.

01:08:27.240 And I'll tell you a funny story.

01:08:28.260 This happened just recently.

01:08:29.320 I was doing a live radio show, a national program on the Moody Bible network.

01:08:34.440 And Chris Fabry is interviewing me remotely.

01:08:37.960 And it's a call-in show and a woman calls in.

01:08:40.560 Very nice woman, very well-spoken from Florida.

01:08:42.980 And she says, you know, when I was a new Christian, um, I didn't realize this was not

01:08:47.480 permitted by God, but I tried to contact my great, great grandfather who had died.

01:08:52.880 And I realized now that's not something we should do, but she said, I tried to.

01:08:56.360 And there was kind of the static in the line and almost a demonic feeling.

01:09:01.660 And when she said demonic, I hear this guttural growl.

01:09:06.980 On the radio show.

01:09:12.480 And I'm thinking, and I'm, okay, just ignore it.

01:09:15.040 Just, yeah.

01:09:16.240 There's nothing.

01:09:17.960 As soon as the show's over, I call the host.

01:09:20.660 Did you hear that?

01:09:21.780 Yeah, yeah.

01:09:22.980 Yeah.

01:09:23.640 He said, we called the woman.

01:09:25.300 Didn't come from her.

01:09:26.480 Didn't come from me.

01:09:27.720 Didn't come from you.

01:09:28.940 Didn't come from Chicago at the studio.

01:09:30.880 I don't know what it was.

01:09:32.840 And he sent me the recording.

01:09:34.320 So I've got the recording where you heard her.

01:09:36.720 Really?

01:09:37.120 Yeah.

01:09:37.380 And as soon as she mentions the word demon, you hear is not real loud, but it is definitely

01:09:42.300 distinctive.

01:09:42.880 A sound like I've not heard before.

01:09:45.760 That is a.

01:09:49.560 That happened to come when she mentioned the demonic.

01:09:52.080 Yeah.

01:09:53.340 I'm not.

01:09:54.180 I don't know.

01:09:55.160 I'm just saying, you know what?

01:09:57.260 The demonic realm is real.

01:09:58.240 And if I was still an atheist today, like I used to be, and like you used to be, we should

01:10:05.720 have been quaking in our boots.

01:10:07.000 Right.

01:10:08.020 Of course.

01:10:08.560 We should have been quaking in our boots.

01:10:09.840 It also shouldn't, like if one is reasoned about things, then this shouldn't be surprising.

01:10:16.560 Like earlier we were talking about how the intellect is distinct from the brain.

01:10:19.700 That's right.

01:10:20.140 The intellect is immaterial and the brain is material.

01:10:22.160 Yeah.

01:10:22.260 So, okay, if immaterial things exist, then, you know, if we acknowledge that we have an

01:10:29.900 immaterial aspect as well as a body, and we're both of those things together in our

01:10:34.520 human nature, then, yeah, spirits exist, of course.

01:10:39.040 Exactly.

01:10:39.600 Of course.

01:10:40.500 This then leads me into something that's troubled me about people I know, in fact, including

01:10:46.240 some of my friends, they got, they recognize that there's something more going on.

01:10:51.840 They think they've gotten glimpses of the supernatural, but not because of a near-death experience

01:10:57.840 necessarily, not because of some, you know, religious ecstasy, but because they took a

01:11:04.300 drug or something.

01:11:05.000 Yeah.

01:11:05.100 You know, they did LSD or shrooms or something, and they, I mean, I've talked to multiple friends

01:11:11.060 who say, oh, man, changes everything because you really see beyond the veil, man.

01:11:16.180 And, you know, and I've, talking to some friends about this, I heard one thing, it just gave

01:11:22.460 me this peace because I wasn't really worried about sin anymore.

01:11:26.440 Yeah.

01:11:27.940 Well, now.

01:11:29.200 Where's that coming from?

01:11:29.780 Now you should worry.

01:11:30.700 Yeah, that's right.

01:11:31.500 Exactly.

01:11:32.820 Exactly.

01:11:33.400 I mean, certain things open the door to the demonic, you know, as silly as they are Ouija

01:11:39.440 boards.

01:11:40.120 Yeah.

01:11:40.360 I think that's an attempt to contact the demonic and, and they can open the door to something.

01:11:44.360 I think drugs like that with that intention, how many people have, will take a drug like

01:11:48.860 that and will have an experience to lead them to the true God of the Bible?

01:11:53.120 Not a lot.

01:11:54.040 Not a lot.

01:11:54.340 So you got to ask yourself, who, who's really behind that?

01:11:58.080 What's really driving that?

01:11:59.600 Um, when we have these cases we mentioned earlier of dead people appearing alive, what

01:12:07.720 message are they giving?

01:12:09.680 For instance, if Uncle Bob lived a raunchy life, didn't care about God, was an atheist,

01:12:15.840 a skeptic and died.

01:12:17.740 And now he appears to me and says, yeah, just here to tell you, everything's fine.

01:12:21.380 Right.

01:12:21.720 Everything's going to be okay.

01:12:24.520 Wait a minute.

01:12:25.440 Are we sure about that?

01:12:26.240 Are you sure about that?

01:12:27.920 What might've motivated someone to, to, to counter in a counterfeit way as Satan can

01:12:32.980 do, it says he can appear as an angel of light.

01:12:34.720 He can counterfeit things.

01:12:36.520 Wouldn't it be to his advantage to send a message to you from who you think is your father or

01:12:41.900 grandfather, whatever, telling you everything's okay.

01:12:44.620 Knowing that they lived a life where they rejected God.

01:12:49.480 Salute, yes.

01:12:50.340 So, you know, in, in, during the Carter administration, there was a twin engine airplane that crashed

01:12:57.620 in Africa.

01:12:59.160 Yeah.

01:12:59.540 And the CIA wanted to find it because I don't know why, but apparently it was tied to the

01:13:03.920 CIA.

01:13:04.420 So they sent satellites over to try to find it and they couldn't find it.

01:13:08.360 Yeah.

01:13:08.580 Couldn't find this plane.

01:13:09.380 So Stansfield Turner, head of the CIA, goes out to California and meets with a medium.

01:13:15.100 She goes into a trance and she writes down the longitude and the latitude.

01:13:20.080 They feed it in the satellite.

01:13:21.440 Boom.

01:13:21.760 There's the plane.

01:13:23.480 Now you go, well, does that mean mediums are legitimately seen into the supernatural and

01:13:30.680 so forth?

01:13:31.380 And, um, cause the Bible says, don't consult mediums, stay away from that stuff.

01:13:35.700 I think the reason is, wouldn't it be logical that if Satan were to try to give this credibility

01:13:42.460 to this medium, and he knows things, he could give the longitude and latitude.

01:13:48.500 And now next time something comes up, let's go back to that medium.

01:13:51.820 Right.

01:13:51.960 What about this?

01:13:52.740 What about that?

01:13:53.880 And all of a sudden she's got credibility she didn't have before.

01:13:56.980 I think there's some ways you can look at some of this stuff and say it could be demonically

01:14:01.940 driven.

01:14:02.600 Certainly.

01:14:03.080 Yeah.

01:14:03.380 Certainly.

01:14:03.720 Yeah.

01:14:04.200 Does that mean the medium, look, some are frauds, I guess, but does that mean that some

01:14:09.280 media at least don't, uh, wow.

01:14:12.440 Yeah, they're nice.

01:14:13.320 Wow.

01:14:13.680 You open up a can of worms.

01:14:15.540 Truly.

01:14:16.200 Nomen est omen, I guess.

01:14:18.460 I, does that mean that some of these people are, you know, legitimately seeing into a supernatural

01:14:24.020 realm?

01:14:25.040 Yeah, maybe they are.

01:14:26.220 They could.

01:14:26.520 And maybe that's not great.

01:14:27.800 Exactly.

01:14:28.520 Exactly.

01:14:29.240 Yeah.

01:14:29.720 So all of these, I've never seen it really work out with a friend or an acquaintance

01:14:35.680 of mine where they say, oh yeah, I just did LSD and it's so great and it's done, made

01:14:39.300 my life so much better.

01:14:40.180 I've never really seen it make anyone's life better.

01:14:43.840 I've only really seen it make people's lives much, much worse.

01:14:46.280 Yeah.

01:14:46.300 Uh, however, what about the people who say, well, no, I've had a supernatural experience

01:14:51.100 or at least a weird experience.

01:14:52.640 I saw an alien.

01:14:53.560 Oh yeah.

01:14:53.800 I saw a UFO.

01:14:54.720 Yeah.

01:14:55.180 Or I saw, I don't know, any of this new agey weird stuff.

01:14:58.880 What do you, where do you place those experiences?

01:15:00.460 I mean, I look at, the way I look at a miracle, which that would be if I think if a, or it would

01:15:05.700 be supernatural, be super normal if something like that happened.

01:15:08.580 It would definitely be super normal.

01:15:09.860 But what they would say, no, it's not supernatural.

01:15:12.220 Right.

01:15:12.400 It's a natural being.

01:15:13.380 Could be.

01:15:13.760 From planet Zebulon 7 or whatever.

01:15:15.680 Yeah.

01:15:16.040 Yeah.

01:15:16.260 Could be.

01:15:17.060 What I would say is, is there, um, what is the evidence that it's true?

01:15:21.620 Yeah.

01:15:22.100 Secondly, is there a naturalistic explanation that better explains it?

01:15:27.340 Thirdly, how much evidence do we, is the evidence convincing?

01:15:31.940 Is it beyond a reasonable doubt or is it interesting?

01:15:35.240 Is it possible?

01:15:36.680 Is it, and I think you look at, I mean, look through history, look at the, the Yeti in the

01:15:41.980 Himalayas, look at Sasquatch, you know, look at a UFO.

01:15:45.680 Look at, um, witches and all kinds of things.

01:15:49.200 And you go, well, what is the evidence?

01:15:52.080 I'm evidentially driven.

01:15:53.880 Yeah.

01:15:54.320 And I want to, I want to pin that down.

01:15:56.320 And I don't see convincing to me evidence of UFOs, especially when that report came out

01:16:03.100 recently.

01:16:03.480 Did you see the one about the, um, uh, the fact that they intentionally, uh, misled people

01:16:08.700 to, uh, in the military to believe that we have the remains of UFO aircraft?

01:16:13.640 Um, and don't tell anybody knowing it would leak out because they were trying to hide other

01:16:19.200 things they were doing.

01:16:20.640 It's so funny when this news report came out, I think I read it on an airplane.

01:16:24.200 Yeah.

01:16:24.800 And I've been, I've been saying this from the, I've been a hardcore, the UFOs, the aliens,

01:16:31.240 E.T., it's all nonsense.

01:16:32.400 Yeah.

01:16:32.560 And it's either hallucinations or our own military equipment or, or potentially even

01:16:37.660 demonic.

01:16:38.220 Yeah.

01:16:38.520 But I said, the one thing it's not is E.T.

01:16:40.160 The one thing I'm quite convinced of is not E.T.

01:16:42.580 And I've been called a lunatic, a denier of the evidence of the Congress.

01:16:47.000 I said, if, if you're in the government and you already think the government lies to you

01:16:51.500 anyway, you don't think they're potentially misdirecting or something.

01:16:54.640 And I saw that.

01:16:55.540 And generally until this moment, I haven't bragged about being totally right about that

01:17:00.520 on this show, but I did see that come up recently.

01:17:03.060 And I think, boy, that explains a lot, doesn't it?

01:17:05.820 Because we have these very sincere people in the military saying, I was told by a high

01:17:09.920 ranking person that we have the wreckage of UFOs and we're reverse engineering and everything.

01:17:15.620 Yeah.

01:17:16.000 Cause that when you were, that's why you were told, but it ain't true.

01:17:19.200 I'm exactly where you're at in terms of your analysis.

01:17:21.840 I think that's totally right.

01:17:23.020 I think some of it could be demonic.

01:17:24.440 I think some of it is hallucinations.

01:17:25.940 I think some of it is things that we misunderstand and so forth.

01:17:30.520 I just don't see the convincing evidence.

01:17:32.660 No.

01:17:33.300 And I, I do see it intersecting with a lot of new, new age, Gnostic stuff that alternately

01:17:41.800 denies the divinity of Christ or, you know, key aspects of Christian doctrine.

01:17:47.160 Meanwhile, you got the faith.

01:17:49.820 Yeah.

01:17:50.480 Ever ancient, ever new.

01:17:51.900 Yeah.

01:17:52.820 Attacked for opposite reasons, as Chesterton observes, not, maybe not always fashionable with

01:17:59.260 the spirit of the age, maybe never fashionable with the spirit of the age, but it seems more

01:18:02.760 reliable than, you know, some shaky video of the flying saucer.

01:18:05.900 Yeah.

01:18:06.240 And that gives you a plumb line to measure things against.

01:18:09.220 And, and we need that.

01:18:10.540 We need, because there was so much junk out there.

01:18:12.540 The internet is a cesspool of, of, of claims and, and assertions and, and blind faith in

01:18:19.240 who knows what.

01:18:20.000 And, um, you know, I worry about kids that, that are walking away with all kinds of stuff

01:18:25.120 that's, wait a minute, have you thought that through?

01:18:27.140 Right.

01:18:27.380 You know, I was talking to a, uh, an astrophysicist about what are the possibilities that UFOs

01:18:32.820 could really be visiting?

01:18:34.000 Yeah.

01:18:35.120 No.

01:18:35.980 You know, I mean.

01:18:37.040 Zero.

01:18:37.520 Zero.

01:18:38.140 It ain't, it ain't happening.

01:18:39.060 Um, so, I mean, I'm willing to have my mind changed if the evidence presents itself.

01:18:45.680 And I think that's healthy.

01:18:47.760 I think, you know, I don't want to rule out anything at the outset.

01:18:51.280 Show me the evidence.

01:18:52.620 Yeah.

01:18:52.940 What does it show?

01:18:54.160 Where does it point?

01:18:55.220 And I want to go in that direction.

01:18:56.500 That's how I became a Christian is by looking at the evidence and following those arrows toward

01:19:01.760 the truth of, of the faith.

01:19:03.760 Don't just get the news.

01:19:05.540 Understand what the news means on the Michael Knowles show.

01:19:08.540 I will take you beneath the surface of daily political events to see their historical,

01:19:15.560 philosophical, even religious roots.

01:19:18.380 Catch it Monday through Friday at 9.30 a.m. Eastern on the Daily Wire.

01:19:23.140 So tell me about the relation then between private revelation, which is essentially the

01:19:28.280 whole topic of your book.

01:19:29.620 Yeah.

01:19:29.920 Is different kinds of private revelation.

01:19:31.980 Yeah.

01:19:32.780 And public revelation.

01:19:34.540 You know, even, even in like, like I love the rosary.

01:19:37.900 Yeah.

01:19:39.100 I'm not bound to believe the story of how the rosary came to be.

01:19:43.600 Yeah.

01:19:44.160 I'm not, I'm not bound as a matter of faith.

01:19:46.100 I'm not bound as a matter of faith.

01:19:47.220 I, I believe the, the miracle of the son at Fatima.

01:19:50.000 Yeah.

01:19:50.260 I'm not bound as a matter of faith.

01:19:51.580 Yeah.

01:19:51.820 I could not believe the miracle of the son.

01:19:53.240 I certainly have to believe in the transfiguration.

01:19:57.120 Right.

01:19:57.420 I have to believe in the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection.

01:20:00.000 Right.

01:20:00.100 So what is the relation between, you know, if, if you come to me, if Dan Bongino comes to me

01:20:04.940 and says, it's funny, even reading that in the book, it didn't occur to me that it was

01:20:07.440 Dan.

01:20:07.700 Yeah.

01:20:07.920 I know.

01:20:08.400 That's amazing.

01:20:09.260 If I didn't mention his name in the text.

01:20:10.560 I said, wait, it was funny.

01:20:11.840 So, okay.

01:20:12.400 So Dan, now I got to talk to him.

01:20:13.480 Yeah.

01:20:13.940 So, you know, if Dan says, Hey, um, I felt, I was hugged at three o'clock in the morning

01:20:19.140 when my mother died.

01:20:20.480 Yeah.

01:20:20.980 I can say, okay, well, I don't have to believe that.

01:20:22.580 That's just a thing for you.

01:20:23.620 Right.

01:20:24.140 But what is, what, what's the point of private revelation?

01:20:27.960 What is the relationship?

01:20:28.960 I think the, the Bible says, test the spirits.

01:20:33.640 The Bible has given us a plumb line and I want to measure any claim of a supernatural experience

01:20:38.940 against that plumb line.

01:20:41.020 Um, I'll give you an example.

01:20:42.600 There was a guy named Robert, successful businessman, multimillionaire, um, narcissist, extreme

01:20:49.200 narcissist, womanizer, drunk, gambler, lived a very ugly life, very successful.

01:20:55.860 And he's standing on the beach in Florida in his later years.

01:21:00.160 And he said, God spoke to me.

01:21:02.700 He said, wasn't through my ears.

01:21:04.420 I heard him on the inside.

01:21:06.160 And God said to me, Robert, I've rescued you more times than you'll ever know.

01:21:11.040 Now you need to come to me through my son, Jesus.

01:21:14.720 And he said, I was, I was rocked by it.

01:21:16.840 I don't even know who Jesus is.

01:21:18.020 I thought he was a swear word.

01:21:19.260 Yeah.

01:21:19.460 Yeah.

01:21:19.700 So he called the only guy he knew was a Christian.

01:21:21.920 Um, Frank Gifford, the old sports.

01:21:23.800 Yeah.

01:21:24.100 Yeah.

01:21:24.280 Yeah.

01:21:24.620 Yeah.

01:21:24.940 Kathy, the Gifford's husband and said, Frank, I just had this experience.

01:21:28.660 God spoke to me.

01:21:29.520 Who's Jesus.

01:21:30.260 I don't even know.

01:21:30.920 And Frank said, um, get that book, the case for Christ.

01:21:33.300 He said, that'll, my book, he said, they'll explain it.

01:21:36.040 Anyway, Robert gets a book, reads a book.

01:21:39.180 He is radically changed, but it's consistent with scripture.

01:21:45.580 That's how I measure.

01:21:46.540 Was this an authentic experience he had?

01:21:48.820 He had 180 degree turn in his values, in his character, in his morality, in his attitudes,

01:21:54.740 in his relationships.

01:21:55.980 180 degrees.

01:21:57.600 The Bible says in second Corinthians, when we come to faith in Christ, the old is gone.

01:22:01.880 The new is here.

01:22:03.000 And what is the evidence when someone claims to have a supernatural experience like that?

01:22:07.780 What's the evidence of it?

01:22:09.340 And for him, it was a transformed life like that.

01:22:12.340 And he couldn't tell enough people about Jesus.

01:22:15.640 He went on national, um, TV at a major church when he was baptized and told his story and

01:22:22.440 then appealed to people.

01:22:23.680 Do you know Jesus?

01:22:24.560 Do you want to meet him?

01:22:25.520 And 700 people came up to put their faith in Jesus at that moment.

01:22:30.600 He died about a year and a half later.

01:22:32.820 And on his tombstone, at his request, it just says, believe in Jesus Christ.

01:22:37.140 Right.

01:22:38.340 I measure whether that was an authentic experience based on what the evidence, what the outcome

01:22:45.180 was.

01:22:45.880 Yeah.

01:22:46.040 How was his life?

01:22:46.700 Now, by the way, you may wonder why he was baptized in front of, in a major church and

01:22:52.360 why did thousands of people come to his funeral?

01:22:54.280 Because nobody knew him by his name, Robert.

01:22:56.860 They knew him by his nickname, uh, Evil, Evil Knievel.

01:23:00.020 Oh, yeah.

01:23:01.620 You're kidding me.

01:23:02.420 Evil Knievel became a radical born again follower.

01:23:05.360 Really?

01:23:05.380 I had no idea.

01:23:06.080 Oh, yes.

01:23:07.760 Unbelievable.

01:23:08.300 In fact, he called me to thank me for writing the book and I pick up the phone and I said,

01:23:12.820 hi, this is Lee.

01:23:13.460 And he says, this voice says, uh, is this Lee Strobel?

01:23:15.780 I said, yeah.

01:23:16.580 He said, this is evil.

01:23:18.920 And I thought Satan has got my phone number.

01:23:20.640 Is it, can he do that?

01:23:21.700 Is that even positive?

01:23:22.780 He said, evil, can you, oh, so we became good friends.

01:23:25.580 Wow.

01:23:26.020 And he was radically transformed.

01:23:28.440 So when a person claims to have a personal experience like that, I want to see what does

01:23:33.040 it lead to?

01:23:33.940 Yeah.

01:23:34.480 And for him, it led to a life transformation that was staggering.

01:23:38.600 And, um, uh, so I think that was an authentic experience.

01:23:42.360 Yeah.

01:23:42.520 I, I see that as two errors that people can make in the faith.

01:23:45.720 The one is this Pelagian error, you know, condemned many, many moons ago by the church,

01:23:51.360 which is that we, you know, can earn our salvation, kind of deny original sin, all the

01:23:55.100 rest.

01:23:55.780 But then the other is this, I don't know, Gnostic, uh, kind of error, which is that, yeah, I can,

01:24:03.460 I can have a radical conversion.

01:24:04.900 Yeah.

01:24:05.600 I can accept Christ.

01:24:07.260 And that doesn't have to look like anything.

01:24:09.760 Yeah.

01:24:10.100 And that is such an error.

01:24:11.660 That's not how it works.

01:24:12.540 If there is no evidence of it, that's what James talks about.

01:24:15.500 And in the Bible, I mean, if there's no evidence of a life change, then I got to question whether

01:24:20.380 or not there's an authentic conversion that's taken place.

01:24:22.700 Right.

01:24:23.100 And, um, so there needs to be evidence of it because if God does not redirect you and

01:24:28.700 change your values and character and morality and attitudes and goals and, um, uh, I mean,

01:24:34.540 then I got to question whether he's really in your life.

01:24:37.520 Of course.

01:24:38.220 So then what do you see now, especially with younger people?

01:24:41.140 Yeah.

01:24:41.340 There's this, there was a decline in Christianity for decades that we've all been lamenting.

01:24:46.220 Yeah.

01:24:46.720 It appears to have leveled off.

01:24:48.160 Yes.

01:24:48.980 So I hope it goes in the other direction.

01:24:50.360 Yeah, me too.

01:24:51.160 This is especially true of young people.

01:24:54.260 Yes.

01:24:54.500 Who are not only converting and reverting, but converting, because a lot of them were raised

01:25:00.780 without religion.

01:25:01.440 Yeah.

01:25:02.140 They're drawn toward more orthodox, sturdy, liturgical, even traditional forms of Christianity.

01:25:11.260 Yeah.

01:25:11.600 Why now?

01:25:12.560 It's a great question.

01:25:13.460 And I'm not sure I have an answer.

01:25:14.640 Um, I, I think you're right though.

01:25:16.580 There is a, there is a desire to connect with God and many people do through a liturgical

01:25:24.520 worship experience, through sacraments, through, um, um, certain kinds of prayers and so forth.

01:25:31.640 And I think young people are looking for something solid.

01:25:35.640 You know, they look at the internet, it's a cesspool and they're looking for something I

01:25:40.120 can really put my trust in.

01:25:41.500 I got a friend, uh, as a Baptist and his mission is to travel the country and he speaks to groups

01:25:47.560 of high school and college kids.

01:25:49.540 That's his ministry.

01:25:50.380 And he does.

01:25:51.440 And he said, Lee, I have seen more young people come to faith in Jesus Christ in the last three

01:25:56.200 years than the previous 18 years of ministry.

01:25:59.380 Yeah.

01:25:59.440 Yeah.

01:25:59.720 I, I'm not surprised.

01:26:00.960 It's a phenomenon.

01:26:01.180 And I think that, I think this quest for the, um, the sense of concrete connectedness to God,

01:26:10.120 maybe driving people toward a more, um, historic, um, um, traditional worship experience.

01:26:19.580 I don't know.

01:26:20.520 Right.

01:26:20.820 I don't know the answer.

01:26:21.360 No, no, no.

01:26:21.700 I think you're right.

01:26:22.460 I think that the solidity in an, in an age marked by subjectivism and we, you don't even

01:26:28.360 know what biological sex is and it's all just wishy-washy.

01:26:31.940 The attraction to solidity is such a big one.

01:26:34.700 And, and you know, it's an incarnational faith.

01:26:36.840 Yeah.

01:26:37.160 So like Saul really falls off a horse.

01:26:40.120 Yeah.

01:26:40.380 You know, and Christ speaks to him.

01:26:42.440 Yeah.

01:26:42.920 And says, why do you persecute me?

01:26:44.460 Yeah.

01:26:44.720 So that it's, it's a reminder, I guess, that it's all real.

01:26:51.500 Yeah.

01:26:51.720 I guess this is my point.

01:26:52.720 Reading the accounts in your book.

01:26:54.060 Yeah.

01:26:54.480 And hearing these accounts.

01:26:55.420 Yeah.

01:26:55.520 And having had some of these accounts.

01:26:56.580 How, if something like this happens to you, you think you see a ghost or whatever, or

01:27:04.940 you encounter an angel.

01:27:06.260 Yeah.

01:27:06.500 Or you have a near death experience.

01:27:07.680 Yeah.

01:27:07.780 You have this.

01:27:11.640 That means it's all real.

01:27:13.480 Yeah.

01:27:13.880 And in fact, even if someone you trust.

01:27:15.800 Yes.

01:27:16.300 That's right.

01:27:16.960 Has one of these.

01:27:17.780 That's right.

01:27:17.860 It means it's all real.

01:27:19.000 That's right.

01:27:19.380 And you can't just go about your day.

01:27:21.160 That's right.

01:27:21.900 What's wrong with you people?

01:27:22.940 You look at the scientific studies that are being done.

01:27:25.480 Yeah.

01:27:25.620 A woman with a PhD from Harvard University, professor at Indiana University, secular university,

01:27:30.900 heard about miracles breaking out in Mozambique.

01:27:34.720 Miracles tend to cluster where the gospel is just breaking in.

01:27:38.620 Brazil, Mozambique, China.

01:27:41.600 Yeah.

01:27:42.400 So she said, I'm going to test it.

01:27:44.680 I'm going to investigate it.

01:27:46.020 She sent a team of researchers in Mozambique.

01:27:48.040 They went into the brush.

01:27:49.120 They said, bring us all your deaf and blind.

01:27:51.260 So all the people are deaf, blind, or severe hearing, or vision problems.

01:27:55.720 Come forward.

01:27:57.100 They tested them scientifically.

01:27:59.100 What is your level of vision?

01:28:00.800 What is your level of hearing?

01:28:02.260 They just did vision tests and hearing tests.

01:28:04.000 They got that data down.

01:28:06.120 Then they were immediately prayed for in the name of Jesus by people who seem to have a track

01:28:12.320 record of God using them that way.

01:28:13.620 And then they were immediately tested again.

01:28:16.840 Was there any change?

01:28:18.300 Let's test it scientifically.

01:28:19.800 What is your level of hearing?

01:28:21.140 What is your level of vision?

01:28:22.140 Guess what they found out?

01:28:23.180 There was improvement in virtually every case, sometimes extraordinary cases.

01:28:27.660 There was a woman named Martine.

01:28:29.440 When they first encountered her, she couldn't hear the equivalent of a jackhammer next to her.

01:28:34.140 After prayer in the name of Jesus, she could hear a normal conversation.

01:28:37.140 Get this.

01:28:38.520 The average improvement in visual acuity was tenfold.

01:28:43.860 So they thought, okay, this is just an anomaly.

01:28:46.460 Let's see if we can replicate this.

01:28:48.180 They went to Brazil, another place where the gospel is breaking in.

01:28:50.740 They did the same test.

01:28:51.860 They got the same results.

01:28:52.840 One guy, one woman in Brazil couldn't see someone holding up three fingers from nine feet away.

01:28:59.500 After prayer in the name of Jesus, she reads a name tag of the person praying for her.

01:29:03.680 This is a rigorous scientific study that was published in a secular, scientific, peer-reviewed

01:29:10.200 medical journal, highly respected journal, the Southern Medical Journal.

01:29:15.200 And so in my book, I interviewed the scholar who did that study.

01:29:17.680 And I say, what do you make of this?

01:29:19.120 Well, you know, you're a little restricted when you're in a secular universe.

01:29:22.960 She says, something is going on.

01:29:24.860 Oh, gee, you don't say.

01:29:26.220 Something, as she said, this is not an emotional atmosphere playing on people's emotions.

01:29:30.800 This is not a televangelist trying to get people to send in money.

01:29:34.820 Something is going on.

01:29:36.800 And I think it is something supernatural.

01:29:38.920 Do you know if that researcher is Christian?

01:29:42.260 She is.

01:29:42.860 She is.

01:29:43.480 Okay.

01:29:43.760 Because it'd be amazing to me, though I wouldn't be totally surprised if she said, yes,

01:29:47.120 I saw, the blind made to see, the deaf made to hear, and I don't know, I mean, I guess

01:29:53.840 there's a greater power.

01:29:54.820 Yeah.

01:29:55.200 You know, it's like, no, no, it's not.

01:29:56.840 It's in the name of Christ, in the name of Jesus.

01:29:58.920 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:30:00.260 And there's a team of researchers now who are documenting these miracles and publishing

01:30:05.060 them in medical journals.

01:30:06.820 One case was a woman who was blind for a dozen years with an incurable condition.

01:30:11.140 She went to a school for the blind.

01:30:12.800 She learned to read Braille.

01:30:14.360 She walked with a white cane.

01:30:16.360 She married a Baptist pastor.

01:30:17.980 One night, they're getting ready to go to bed.

01:30:19.440 She's already in bed.

01:30:20.160 He comes over, he starts crying, puts his hand on her shoulder and begins to pray.

01:30:23.200 He says, God, I know you can heal my wife.

01:30:24.660 I know you can do it.

01:30:25.660 And Lord, I pray you do it tonight.

01:30:28.360 She opened her eyes to perfect vision.

01:30:30.820 She said later, I was blind when my husband prayed for me.

01:30:33.660 I opened my eyes.

01:30:34.720 I could see him for the first time.

01:30:37.280 It's a miracle.

01:30:38.220 And her vision remained, I think, the latest, over 50 years.

01:30:44.280 This was researched by multiple medical researchers and published as a case study in a medical

01:30:48.760 journal.

01:30:50.180 That's important.

01:30:51.600 That tells me as a skeptic, something's going on here.

01:30:55.440 It's not some story you read in the internet or here in the halls of the church.

01:30:58.960 These are things that are trustworthy, I believe.

01:31:03.020 So those are things that I find particularly compelling.

01:31:07.420 And those are the kind of stories and accounts that I try to focus on when I looked at what

01:31:12.200 is the evidence for the supernatural.

01:31:13.840 Yeah.

01:31:14.100 And it's funny.

01:31:15.360 I was talking to some friends about these experiences that they've had too.

01:31:19.460 Yeah.

01:31:19.900 I said, what does it mean?

01:31:21.660 You know, what does it mean when something like that happens?

01:31:23.900 What does it mean when some weird coincidence happens?

01:31:25.560 And the conclusion I've come to, I'm persuadable, is, well, it's not so much even about the

01:31:33.400 thing that happens, though that matters too.

01:31:36.340 It's that God exists and he's reminding you of that fact.

01:31:40.820 Kind of like when C.S.

01:31:41.820 Lewis says, you know, there are three levels of scary.

01:31:45.160 There's the tiger in the next room who could eat you.

01:31:47.500 There's the ghost in the next room who's not going to eat you, but it's like they're ghosts.

01:31:50.840 That's scary.

01:31:51.700 It's uncanny.

01:31:52.220 And then the numinous, you know, that's kind of ultimate religious awe and fear.

01:31:57.860 And that, to me, that seems to be it.

01:32:00.160 Yeah.

01:32:00.480 Is that the whole point, you know, the signs, a wicked generation doesn't get a sign.

01:32:05.260 Yeah.

01:32:05.460 None but the sign of Jonah.

01:32:06.760 Yeah.

01:32:07.000 Pretty good sign.

01:32:07.840 Yeah.

01:32:08.020 Is, it just kind of, don't, wow, you're impressed the blind can see?

01:32:12.900 Yeah.

01:32:13.080 Yeah, that's great.

01:32:13.820 And everything, that is basically nothing compared to the fact that God exists.

01:32:18.080 That's right.

01:32:18.500 Right.

01:32:18.980 And his son is incarnate and crucified and resurrected for the forgiveness of your sins.

01:32:24.680 And like, that's all real.

01:32:26.020 Yeah, that's right.

01:32:26.980 I agree with you.

01:32:27.760 I think that obviously it was a blessing to her that he restored her.

01:32:31.040 Yes.

01:32:31.380 I don't mean to diminish that.

01:32:32.500 Exactly.

01:32:32.720 It's obviously wonderful.

01:32:34.040 But it deepened my faith.

01:32:36.600 Yes.

01:32:36.940 It encouraged me.

01:32:38.420 It reminds me that I have, my faith is well-placed.

01:32:42.000 Yes.

01:32:42.360 That this is not make-believe.

01:32:43.500 It's not wishful thinking.

01:32:44.480 It's not legend.

01:32:45.120 It's not mythology.

01:32:46.160 This is based on solid evidence and facts.

01:32:50.580 The resurrection is one of the most well-attested events of the ancient world, if not the most

01:32:54.860 well-attested.

01:32:55.660 Yeah, yeah.

01:32:57.040 We've got these documented miracles and so forth.

01:33:00.020 It's just every time I come across one of these cases, it's just, I just kind of, yeah,

01:33:04.920 yeah, yeah.

01:33:05.720 And my faith is strong.

01:33:06.720 My faith is deeper.

01:33:08.080 And I'm willing then to follow Jesus even in difficult circumstances.

01:33:12.980 Right.

01:33:13.200 Because I trust that this is not based on wishful thinking, but it's based on reality.

01:33:18.760 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:33:19.420 The miracles are very helpful for when you have to get through those periods where you don't

01:33:22.640 see the miracles.

01:33:23.320 That's exactly right.

01:33:25.440 Yeah.

01:33:25.900 Lee, first of all, to everyone out there.

01:33:28.100 Get this book, Seeing the Supernatural, Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death

01:33:34.720 Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World.

01:33:37.500 Go get it.

01:33:38.420 I can, you know, I can memorize the title.

01:33:40.160 Memorize, that's a long subtitle.

01:33:41.600 I don't think I can remember it.

01:33:44.580 Marvelous.

01:33:45.180 And truly a great honor that I have looked forward to for some time now.

01:33:49.020 Thank you.

01:33:49.080 Thank you so much for coming.

01:33:50.340 Great to meet you, Michael.

01:33:51.260 God bless you.

The Michael Knowles Show - June 28, 2025

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

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