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Jim Daly
Focus on the Family has great resources for all types of families. And what I would encourage you to do is to go on their website, poke around, see what type of resources are available. They have an 800 number that you can call.
Lee Strobel
You can talk to someone, you can even pray with someone at Focus on.
Jim Daly
The Family, and they will steer you in the right direction. Linda is a big believer in our mission to strengthen and support families, and that's why she gives monthly to Focus. You know, whether it's just, you know, getting resources online or being able to make monetary donations, it's a great ministry. I'm Jim Dailey. Working together, we can be a lifeline to families, giving them godly truth and hope. Join our monthly support team today by calling 800-the letter A in the word family or visit focusonthefamily.com families.
Lee Strobel
I think of those TV shows that I wasn't allowed to watch as a kid, ghosts and witches that I see, like in pop culture and on tv. I immediately think of the Lord, and.
John Fuller
I think, out of this world, some really bad science fiction movie.
Jim Daly
It's either God doing something or Satan doing something.
John Fuller
Well, we see the word supernatural in a lot of different contexts, and it means many different things to different folks. You might think of ghosts or science fiction, but as Christians, as followers of God, we know that his supernatural presence is evident in every aspect of our lives. Today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, we have Lee Strobel talking about what supernatural really looks like in the Bible and in our lives. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller.
Jim Daly
You know, John, I always enjoy having Lee Strobel here. I think partly because my heart, evangelism. I mean, I think at my core, I'm an evangelist.
John Fuller
You are.
Jim Daly
And not a prophet or a teacher. And I just get excited when Lee's here because we connect and it comes across. And I think a lot of people are wired that way. You know, we want to reach people for Christ and introduce people to Christ because of what he has done for us. And that's the excitement. People I encounter. They're like, oh, you Christians, all you want to do is convert us. That's not out of some kind of number thing. It's because we're enjoying a joyful life, and we want you to participate. We want you to have that. And so here at Focus, that's one of the things we try to concentrate on. Dr. Dobson always used to say, we can help a family, help a marriage, but if we don't introduce them to the author of family. We've kind of failed in that mission. So that's why we love to have guests like Lee Strobel come in and talk about discipleship, evangelism, those things that really buttress everything else. And we're going to explore those things today with a new book that Lee has, Seeing the Supernatural.
John Fuller
Yeah, it's really going to be an interesting conversation as we look for God's hands in all of life. And Lee describes himself as an atheist turned Christian. He's a best selling author, he's been on this show a number of times, and he's founding director of the Lee Strobel center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. Now today, Jim, as you noted, we're talking about Lee's book Seeing the Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near Death Encounters and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World. And you can learn more about this terrific resource and our guest when you click the link in the show notes.
Jim Daly
Lee, welcome back. Always good to see you.
Lee Strobel
Oh, great to be here. I love you guys and your ministry here and how you touch so many lives and share Jesus with so many folks.
Jim Daly
I've never said this before, but given your book title, Seeing the Supernatural, I wish I was William Shatner. That sounds like a show. That sounds like a show he would be hosting.
Lee Strobel
Right? Do, do.
Jim Daly
But it is an interesting area and so many people express that interest. I mean, that's why you do have television shows.
Lee Strobel
That's right.
Jim Daly
That talk about the supernatural and what's going on. And you know, one of the things, Lee, that is so important for us to understand is why people are drawn to that. What is it that piques our interest? What do you think it is?
Lee Strobel
Well, you're right. About 8 out of 10 people believe that there is something beyond what we can see and touch. And yet we live in a scientific age, a technological age, where a lot of the elites among us, a lot of the ones who form popular culture and so forth, try to tell us that no, no, no, we can only believe in that which we can see and touch or put in a test tube. It's called scientific materialism. There's nothing beyond what we can actually encounter personally in our world. Well, I was a skeptic for much of my life and believed that the Bible, of course, talks about a whole dimension beyond the realm in which we find ourselves. But are there really bits of evidence that point toward the truth that there really is this other realm? And I think people are curious because popular culture likes to delve into things like UFOs and ancient aliens and ghosts and things like that. The occult. Very popular.
Jim Daly
Very popular.
Lee Strobel
You know, when I was watching the super bowl this year, I'm seeing images of people in the stands with voodoo dolls and it's like New Orleans. Were you serious? Yeah, it was New Orleans.
Jim Daly
It was a little higher. There's higher with that whole thing. Let me. I can't believe somebody doesn't know Lee Strobel. But again, I think your background will bring credibility to this whole discussion. But you were an atheist. You were this reporter with the Chicago Tribune. You were the why guy.
Lee Strobel
Yeah, that's right.
Jim Daly
Why does it work that way? Why do you say that? I don't believe that. And you were an investigative reporter. It's in your makeup to doubt.
Lee Strobel
I want corroboration, you know, I want facts. Give me evidence.
Jim Daly
That's just how I want corroboration.
Lee Strobel
That's right. That's right. You say you love me. Well, how do I know? What's the corroboration, you know, before we get married, you know, but. So. Yeah, you're right. And you know, what amazes me is the level of corroboration there is for a supernatural realm. It is absolutely stunning when you look at things like deathbed visions of people before they die, how common those are.
Jim Daly
Well, we're going to talk about all that. I want to start with a couple of stories that you start with in the book on supernatural experiences. Why don't we talk about. I think it was a Secret Service agent.
Lee Strobel
Yes.
Jim Daly
This is a guy I hope you could trust.
Lee Strobel
Yeah, that's right. This is a guy. He's trying to get to sleep. It's 3am and all of a sudden he feels gripped as if his mother was hugging him. He never had this sensation before. Just in the middle of the night, 3am this gripping, and it scared him. He literally jumped out of bed and got his gun and went hunting in the house.
Jim Daly
It was that real?
Lee Strobel
It was that real. It was like, this is so unusual. It's gotta be. Is there somebody in the house or what is going on? Finally, he goes back to bed. And when he went back to bed, he felt a sense of peace. And then he gets a phone call two hours later that at 3am when this happened, his mother died.
Jim Daly
So right at the same time.
Lee Strobel
Right at the same time that he had this experience of feeling hugged at that moment. And he said, you know, if I didn't believe in God before that, I do now.
Jim Daly
Let me ask you, though, I mean, people, again, I Think within the Christian community. Many are skeptics as well. And we say, well, you know, we kind of like that idea of science and naturalism. You know, we need to see it, taste it, touch it, even within the church. How do you explain that happening with him but not with somebody else?
Lee Strobel
Yeah, exactly. And I raise a question when I tell that story in the book. I say, could there be a natural explanation for this? Was it a coincidence, maybe? Could have been. Or was it something supernatural? Was it a encounter with it?
Jim Daly
And Christians tend to want to not believe it could be something that God allowed to happen for whatever purpose.
Lee Strobel
Yeah, I find a lot of Christians really shy away from delving into the supernatural realm. You know, when you deal with things like near death experiences or deathbed visions or even God intervening directly in people's lives in a dramatic way, we should believe it. We should believe it because, my goodness, we see evidence of that kind of thing happening in the Bible.
Jim Daly
I guess that good skepticism is. You can go too far and everything becomes something that's right.
Lee Strobel
And it becomes a superstition kind of a thing and what do you really believe? And so forth. So some of these things that I talk about in the book, it could have multiple possibilities in terms of, could be a natural explanation. But often the evidence is much stronger that it's some sort of supernatural encounter.
Jim Daly
And it's good to keep our spiritual eyes wide open for those things as believers so that we can identify what we believe to be true and what possibly is false.
Lee Strobel
I was interviewing a famous theologian and kind of a staid theologian, you know how they are. And he grew up in a Pentecostal home where he said there was an expectation of the supernatural. And then he told me a story. He said, in my church when I was growing up, there was a family driving in their car, this is the day before seat belts, and their 10 year old child opened the back door and fell out of the car at 70 miles an hour. Well, they thought, my gosh, he's going to be dead. So they stopped, they turned around, they went back and they find their son standing there in the street, perfectly fine. And they said, what happened? And he said, oh, you didn't see the man that caught me.
Jim Daly
Wow.
Lee Strobel
And this theologian pulled out his handkerchief and started to dab his eyes. He says, I miss that. I miss being in that culture where there was an expectation of the supernatural. I believe an angel caught him and. Yeah, yeah, that'll shape your faith real quick. Exactly.
Jim Daly
Wonder what happened to that boy.
Lee Strobel
Yeah, good question.
Jim Daly
His life yeah, you mentioned another story, and then we'll get into some of the things you talked about. But Pastor John Boston, what a great name.
Lee Strobel
Yeah, I know.
Jim Daly
John Boston. What happened to John?
Lee Strobel
John was in a car accident. His car hit a utility pole. A electric wire fell down and electrified the car. The door of the car was jammed shut. And then this scruffy man appears from nowhere and comes up and opens the car door, has an oil effect, opens the car door, takes out this pastor, takes about 50ft away, and then the car kind of blows up. And that was it. And then he walked away and disappeared. And this guy, this pastor, said it must have been an angel. I believe it was an angel that rescued me. Of course, the Bible says there are times when we provide hospitality unknowingly to angels.
Jim Daly
Right.
Lee Strobel
And so we do have, according to the Bible, these interactions sometimes with angels. And he's convinced that that's what took place. You know, we interview some of the emergency medical people who came. They have no explanation for how this could have taken place and how somebody could easily have opened that car door in the midst of that terrible accident and so forth. Yeah.
Jim Daly
Sometimes the best explanation is the one right in front of you. And especially, again, as believers, the Word says that. Do we strike that from Scripture? Yeah, we say, well, we believe all of it. But that line. Yeah, no, the Lord told us exactly, exactly that. Let's go to the soul. I mean, we have worldviews that compete on this idea that the human soul exists. Describe for people that haven't maybe thought about this, what is the soul?
Lee Strobel
Yeah, the soul or our consciousness. Our spirit is the locus of our introspection. It's our first person perspective and so forth. It's the center of our emotions and our thoughts and so forth. Now there are scientists today, many of them, who will say, no, no, no, we're just a brain. We really don't have consciousness. That's an illusion. You are just the product of your neurons firing in your brain and your environment. You don't free will. Most of them will say, you don't even have free will. You think you do, but you don't. And yet I think the Bible presumes that there's a soul, that there's a consciousness, that there's a spirit. It never comes out and says, by the way, this is what the soul is. It just presumes it. As virtually every civilization in history has presumed, we have a soul. When I interviewed a neuroscientist from Cambridge University in this book, Seeing the Supernatural and she talks about how as a scientist, she can map things that happen in the brain, areas of the brain that light up when certain thoughts take place or whatever. She said those aren't the thoughts, those are correlated to the thoughts. She said there's been no discovery of modern neuroscience that disproves the existence of God. And she said, in contrary, if there is a God, this would explain why we have a mind, not just a brain, but a mind, because we're made in his image. We're made in his image. God is a disembodied mind. And so it makes sense that we would have a mind as well. So, yeah, I think it's important because the Bible says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Jesus told the other person being crucified on the cross next to him, he said, today you'll be with me in paradise. Well, you know, Christian teaching is that at the moment of death, our spirit, our soul, separates from our physical body and goes either to be with the Lord or away from the Lord until the consummation of history, when Jesus returns, when our body is reunited with our soul and where we have final judgment. And then we spend eternity either in the presence of God or absent his presence in hell. So it's consistent with Scripture that we would have a soul that survives the death of the physical body. And we see this in near death experiences as well.
Jim Daly
In fact, Lee, I think this scientist you're quoting also compared the soul to coffee. Now we're getting somewhere.
Lee Strobel
Now we're getting somewhere. Actually, she was saying that how do you, how do you describe the smell of coffee? And she asked me that as a writer, and I'm saying, how would I describe the aroma of coffee? And she said, you know, we could talk about the physical makeup of caffeine, the chemical makeup of caffeine. That doesn't get you very far. We could talk to what happens in your body when you consume coffee, but that doesn't get us to the smell of coffee. She said the smell of coffee is an example of what they call qualia, which are things that we can't really capture except in a first person experience. You have to experience it. And that's what the first person perspective and first person experience is. What the soul, the consciousness, the spirit provides to us. What we see and touch can only take us so far.
Jim Daly
Lee, when we read the Bible, there's many accounts of miracles in there, but literally denominations have sprung up with those that believe those miracles no longer exist, or those that believe that's really the only thing that exists and everything in between. But even the idea that so many denominations or churches have risen up based on this theological difference, what should we as healthy believers look at when we read these scriptures and the deaf can hear and the blind can see and the lame can walk and you know, the routine and we don't see it as often today, at least in Western culture. I hear more of this in Africa and parts of Asia. So what?
Lee Strobel
Well, we do see miracles in clusters around the planet, as you mentioned, where the Gospel is just breaking in. In Mozambique and Brazil and China, it's been estimated that 90% of the growth of the church in China is a result of people either themselves have had a miracle in their life or they know somebody who has.
Jim Daly
Interesting.
Lee Strobel
So, but nevertheless, there are modern miracles. And again, I'm a skeptic. So I want documentation, I want corroboration, I want investigation. And so what it does for me is it does two things. Number one, it gives me more evidence that God exists. And number two, it gives me more confidence in the Gospels and in the Bible. Because if Jesus did miracles in the first century, a lot of people find that an impediment to believing the Gospels as being true. But if we're still seeing miracles today, then they certainly could have taken place in the first century. So it's a way almost of corroborating what the Gospels are telling us. So I look at cases that are particularly either published in peer reviewed medical journals that are done as scientific studies, and there are cases, I'm telling you, that there is no explanation other than a supernatural event has taken place. I'll give you an example. It's a woman who was blind for 12 years from an incurable medical condition. She went to a school for the blind, she learned to read Braille, she walked with a white cane, and she married a Baptist pastor. So one night they're getting ready for bed, and she's in bed, and he comes up and he starts to cry. And he puts his hand on her shoulder and he begins to pray. And he says, lord, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can restore her sight. And I pray you will do it right now. And she opened her eyes with perfect eyesight. And she said, I was blind. When my husband started praying, I opened my eyes. I've got perfect eyesight. It's a miracle. I can't believe it. My life has changed. And for 47 years since then, she's had good eyesight. This is again published in a Peer reviewed medical journal as a case study. How do you account for that?
Jim Daly
Where did she live?
Lee Strobel
I'm not sure what town she was in, but in the us in the United States.
Jim Daly
Wow. You know, part of me is going, really? I need to see that.
Lee Strobel
Yes, the same as you, you know, there I did a study, I hired George Barn, his organization, do a study, and I asked a cross section of American adults, have you ever had at least one experience in your life that you can only explain as a miracle of God? 38% of American adults said yes. Now let's just throw out 99% of them. Let's say, yeah, they think it was a miracle, it was just a big coincidence. Let's throw out 90. That still leaves a million miracles just in the United States. So God is still in the miracle business. And we see scientific tests that have been done that point toward miraculous things taking place. A woman from Indiana University, a professor with a PhD from Harvard, went to Mozambique to investigate a cluster of miracles. Now, here's the thing. This is a valid scientific study that was published in a secular, scientific, peer reviewed medical journal, the Southern Medical Journal, a reputable medical journal. And I went and in my book Seeing the Supernatural, I interviewed a scholar that did this research and I said, what's your conclusion? And she said, well, being a professor at a secular university, she can only go so far. So she said, well, something is going on.
Jim Daly
Interesting.
Lee Strobel
Something is going on.
Jim Daly
You know, Lee, now that you're saying this, you know, I go to Mayo for a checkup. Every year there is more talk about the importance of prayer.
Lee Strobel
Yes.
Jim Daly
The importance of God, even in those medical discussions, because they're seeing those that do that have quicker recovery, better outcomes. And so even the medical profession is noticing something in this area of spirit.
Lee Strobel
Yeah, that's right. That's very true.
Jim Daly
And it's just really kind of come out over the last few years.
Lee Strobel
There have been a number of studies like that. One of the problems with those studies is though, they'll divide people like they're recovering from a heart attack, let's say, and these people are going to pray for and these people are not going to pray for. Yeah, that's tough. Yeah. Because, you know, the people not being prayed for, somebody's praying for them. Right. They have family members. So it's hard to kind of. But you're right. There have been a series of scientific studies published in publications through the years that have established that something is going on.
Jim Daly
So this is going to be. It's going to feel like a Left field question here. But in the book, you talk about Evel Knievel. I can remember being a teenager going, this guy's crazy, right?
Lee Strobel
But I tell the story in the book. This is an example of God supernaturally intervening in a life. Evel Knievel lived a evil life in many ways. He was a gambler, he was a womanizer, he was a drunk. Very successful financially. But he's standing on the beach in Florida toward the end of his life, and he told me, God spoke to me. He said, I didn't hear him through my ear. I heard him in my chest, in my body. And God said to me, robert. Which is his real name? Robert, I've saved you more times than you'll ever know. Now you need to come to me through my son, Jesus. And he freaked out. He didn't know what to do. I don't even know who Jesus is. So the only Christian he knew was Frank Gifford. Remember the Sports Task? Frank Gifford. And so he calls Frank, says, frank, I just had this experience. I don't know who's Jesus. And Frank said, get that book, the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. That'll explain it. Oh, my. So he gets my. Anyway, Evel Knievel had a radical born again experience, 180 degree turn in his life. Just remarkable. When he was baptized, he shared his testimony. The pastor ripped up his sermon and said, you all have heard the gospel. This is a church that never had an altar call. He said, anybody wants to come up right now, receive Christ and be baptized? 700 people came forward in two services. Christianity Today did an article about it. It was like Pentecost, I mean. And we became friends. I remember the first time he called me. I answered the phone, I said, hi, this is Lee. And he said, is this Lee Strobel? I said, yes. He said, this is evil. And I thought, satan has got my phone number. Is this even possible? He said, no. No evil can evil. Oh, okay.
Jim Daly
I was gonna say, if you went to dinner. You didn't let him drive, did you?
Lee Strobel
No. You know what? You know he died.
Jim Daly
No, I'll drive.
Lee Strobel
He actually died about a year and a half after he came to Faith. And on his tombstone it says, believe in Jesus.
Jim Daly
Wow. Tom Doyle is a mutual friend. He used to pastor here in Colorado Springs, and he. We've had him on the broadcast, and he kind of parlayed his ministry, being a pastor into reaching out to those in the Middle east and having ministry to the Muslims.
Lee Strobel
That's right.
Jim Daly
And he has got some incredible stories that again, we don't see or experience a lot of here in the us that's right. Describe some of Tom's.
Lee Strobel
I interview him in my book, Tom, who by the way, just recovered from cancer, thank God. And we've been praying for Tom. He's doing great now. But I interviewed him about this. This phenomenon in the Middle east where Muslims are going to sleep and having dreams about Jesus. These have corroboration. Here's what I mean. I'll give you an example. There's a woman named Noor, and Noor lived in Cairo. She had eight children and she's a Muslim. She goes to sleep. She has a Jesus dream and Jesus appears to her. She feels this is like no other dream she's ever had. Jesus. She felt the grace and the love. It overwhelmed her. And she's walking in her dream with Jesus along the lakeshore. And she says, jesus, tell me more about you. And Jesus said, my friend will tell you. And she said, well, who's your friend? And he points to a guy she hadn't even noticed who was walking with them. And he said, my friend will tell you. She wakes up the next day, she goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo and she's walking through the crowd and she sees the man from her dream.
Jim Daly
Oh my.
Lee Strobel
And she walks up to. You're the man. He's like, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? You're the man. I saw you in the same glass, the same face, same clothes. And he said, wait a minute, did you have a dream about Jesus? And she said, yes. And it turned out he was a missionary and he came over and he opened the Bible and shared the Gospel. And this is the phenomena that we see. People don't go to sleep as a Muslim, have a Jesus dream and wake up as a Christian. The dreams point them towards something else and something that's corroborative and that's a good example of that. This is so common in the Middle East. There's ads sometimes in the Cairo newspaper that says, call this number and we'll tell you about the man in white you encountered in your dream.
Jim Daly
You know, both of us have another mutual friend in John Burke who wrote the God of Heaven. Imagine the God of Heaven. Great. And he's a researcher of near death experiences. But Gene and I, we got ahold of the audio version of the book the God of Heaven. And so in there was a story about a Muslim who came to Christ through a near death experience. And I'm having this discussion with the Lord. You can't do that with every Muslim. Is that fair? Now this is dangerous territory. But I said, lord, is that fair that some will have a vision, have a dream, have a near death experience, others won't. And what I heard in my spirit in the middle of the night. So I didn't concoct this. It was, oh, do you set the boundaries of my grace? And then the immediate follow up was, I love everyone of my creation, Everyone. And it was such a feeling of that it was deeper than just an intellectual. It was like the immeasurable love God has for every person, believer or nonbeliever.
Lee Strobel
And you know, the Bible says in the Old Testament, Jeremiah, the New Testament, Hebrew, that those who sincerely seek God will find him. And we had an example in our own church in Texas, where I was a teaching pastor down there. We had a woman who was Muslim from the Middle East. When she was about 22 years old, she had a dream in which Jesus appeared to her because she had been in a quest. She was in a crisis in her life and she called out, God, if you're there, I want to meet, I want to know you, I want to encounter you. She has this dream about Jesus. It kind of opened her eyes to the possibilities there. They moved to Texas because her husband was in the oil industry. She has another dream. And in this dream, there's a man with her standing in a pool of water up toward her waist. And he's reading a book and he's weeping. And she has no idea what this means. And she meets a woman from our church. And the woman invites her to come to our Easter services at our church. So she comes and she's waiting in the auditorium for the service to begin. And she sees the man from her dream, the one with the book, the one who was. He was a man in my dream. He was a pastor of baptism at our church. She had dreamed about baptism. Even though she didn't even know what it was. She ended up coming to faith. And sure enough, that guy ended up in our pond at the church, up to their waist in water with the Bible, weeping as he then baptized her as a new believer in Christ.
Jim Daly
That's amazing.
Lee Strobel
So there's these incredible stories that I think are just hard to explain away.
Jim Daly
Otherwise it's so, so good. And you know what's interest right at the end here? I think it's a good place to drop this kind of bomb. You know, people can hear the enthusiasm that we're talking about this with. And you know, you look at the root word of enthusiasm it's in Theo, God in you. So the fact that we're talking about these expressions of angelic visits, expressions of the Lord reaching the Muslims through dreams, et cetera, I mean, this is the spirit in us. This is in Theo. That enthusiasm, it's rising. You can feel it in our discussion. It's a good thing to have this belief. We'll come back next time, talk about angels and some other things that you've covered in this great book, seeing the Supernatural. But Lee, it's so good to get day one done and I hope you're catching that in Theo, that enthusiasm. And we want to get this book into your hands. I think Lee's in an exceptional position where he's interviewing these people. He's following up. He's the reporter making sure that these things are true. And he's compiled this great book for us as particularly believers, but also non believers to capture what's happening supernaturally, not to run from it. We should be the ones explaining it to the world, not the world and psychics explaining it to us. That's ridiculous. So get a copy today. If you can make a gift of any amount through a monthly donation or a one time gift, we'll send the book as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry.
John Fuller
Yeah, donate generously. When you call 800, the letter A in the word family. And we're especially looking for 1,000 people to join our community of monthly sustainers. These are folks who commit to a monthly gift month in, month out, that helps kind of smooth things out.
Jim Daly
That's how we do, Jim.
John Fuller
It is a wonderful way to contribute to the ministry. And if you're not yet doing so, let me invite you to join that 1,000 people that we're looking for and become a monthly pledge partner today. Call 800, the letter A in the word family and just let us know how much you'd like to commit or we'll have details for you online in the show notes. Thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we continue the conversation with Lee Strobel and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
Jim Daly
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Podcast Summary: "What Does the Bible Say About the Supernatural?"
Podcast Information:
The episode kicks off with Jim Daly highlighting the wealth of resources available through Focus on the Family, encouraging listeners to explore their website and utilize support services. Shortly after, John Fuller introduces the main theme: understanding the supernatural from a biblical perspective. Jim Daly emphasizes the Christian worldview that supernatural events are either acts of God or Satan, setting the stage for a deep dive into biblical and modern supernatural occurrences.
Notable Quote:
John Fuller [01:24]: "We know that God's supernatural presence is evident in every aspect of our lives."
Lee Strobel, a renowned atheist-turned-Christian author and investigative reporter, joins the discussion. He is the founding director of the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University and the author of "Seeing the Supernatural".
Jim Daly expresses admiration for Strobel's evangelistic spirit, aligning with his own mission to reach and support families through faith.
Notable Quote:
Jim Daly [02:00]: "We're enjoying a joyful life, and we want you to participate. We want you to have that."
Lee Strobel delves into the prevalence of supernatural beliefs, noting that 8 out of 10 people believe in something beyond the physical realm. He contrasts this with the rise of scientific materialism, which denies any existence beyond the tangible world. Strobel underscores his commitment to evidence-based investigation, seeking corroboration for supernatural claims.
A gripping story shared involves a Secret Service agent who, at 3 AM, feels a tight embrace akin to his mother's hug. Troubled by this sensation, he arms himself and searches the house, only to regain peace moments later. Tragically, he receives a call two hours later informing him of his mother's sudden death, leading him to believe he experienced a divine intervention.
Notable Quotes:
Lee Strobel [06:33]: "He felt this is so unusual. It's gotta be..."
Jim Daly [07:20]: "Could there be a natural explanation for this?"
Strobel presents various documented miracles, including a woman blind for 12 years who regains her sight instantly during her husband's prayer—a case validated by a peer-reviewed medical journal. He emphasizes that such miracles not only reinforce the existence of God but also bolster the credibility of biblical accounts.
Notable Quotes:
Lee Strobel [16:58]: "This is a miracle. I can't believe it. My life has changed."
Jim Daly [17:05]: "I need to see that."
One of the most compelling stories involves Evel Knievel, the famed stunt performer known for his rebellious lifestyle. Near the end of his life, Knievel experiences a divine encounter, hearing God's voice and feeling an urgent call to faith. This profound experience leads to his baptism and a complete transformation, culminating in his death with a declaration of belief in Jesus.
Notable Quotes:
Lee Strobel [19:22]: "God spoke to me... I've saved you more times than you'll ever know."
Jim Daly [21:15]: "He died about a year and a half after he came to Faith. And on his tombstone it says, believe in Jesus."
Strobel shares accounts from the Middle East, where Muslims report vivid dreams about Jesus that lead them to Christianity. One such story features a woman named Noor from Cairo, whose dream of walking with Jesus leads her to encounter a missionary resembling the figure from her dream, resulting in her conversion.
Notable Quotes:
Lee Strobel [22:17]: "This is so common in the Middle East."
Jim Daly [23:20]: "Both of us have another mutual friend in John Burke who wrote the God of Heaven."
Jim Daly and Strobel engage in a profound discussion about the nature of the soul, countering scientific materialism. Strobel argues that the soul—our consciousness and spirit—cannot be fully explained by neuroscience, likening it to the indescribable aroma of coffee, known as qualia.
Notable Quotes:
Lee Strobel [11:20]: "Qualia... you have to experience it. And that's what the first person perspective and first person experience is."
Jim Daly [08:48]: "It's good to keep our spiritual eyes wide open for those things as believers so that we can identify what we believe to be true and what possibly is false."
Strobel further explores how the existence of the soul aligns with biblical teachings, asserting that consciousness persists beyond physical death, as evidenced by near-death experiences.
The conversation highlights that miracles are not relics of the past but continue to occur today, supporting the authenticity of biblical miracles. Strobel cites studies showing that 38% of American adults have experienced events they attribute to divine intervention, even in a predominantly secular society.
Notable Quotes:
Lee Strobel [17:05]: "God is still in the miracle business."
Jim Daly [18:44]: "Even the medical profession is noticing something in this area of spirit."
As the episode wraps up, Jim Daly and John Fuller encourage listeners to embrace and investigate the supernatural with an open heart and mind. They emphasize the importance of understanding and sharing these divine encounters to strengthen faith and evangelism. Strobel’s book, "Seeing the Supernatural," is recommended as a crucial resource for believers and skeptics alike to explore these phenomena.
Notable Quotes:
Jim Daly [27:29]: "Donate generously. When you call 800, the letter A in the word family..."
John Fuller [27:27]: "It's a wonderful way to contribute to the ministry."
Listeners are invited to support the ministry through donations and to engage with the resources provided by Focus on the Family, fostering a community grounded in faith and supernatural understanding.
Key Takeaways:
This episode serves as a profound exploration of the supernatural from a Christian standpoint, providing listeners with both faith-affirming stories and theological insights to deepen their understanding and relationship with God.