← Lakepointe Church with Josh Howerton
Lakepointe Church with Josh Howerton
5 Proofs That The Supernatural is REAL | Seeing The Supernatural | Lee Strobel
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Hey, guys, thanks for checking out this Bible teaching. Every week we release a podcast that corresponds to the sermon. It's like a little bit of a deeper dive where we hit some things that didn't make it into the sermon, some theological concepts. We talk about things that are going on in our culture and how to think about them from a biblical perspective. We call that podcast Live Free. An episode releases every Monday that corresponds to the sermon. If you would like to check out Live Free, just go to the Lake Pointe YouTube channel and look for the podcast tab there. We'll see you at Live Free. Now enjoy this Bible teaching. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be back at Lake Point. Thanks so much, Leslie and I love coming here. It's an honor to be with you today. And I come to you as now a full fledged Texan. Yeah, yeah. I've joined the cult. I'm in Texan. Yep. We moved down to Texas a few years ago to be near our grandchildren, and they've become total Texans. My grandchildren, oh, my goodness, they got the cowboy hats. They've taken horseback riding lessons. They're totally into it. But the reason I know they're total Texans is one night at dinner, my little granddaughter Penelope calls me Bapa. She said, bapa, can I pray for dinner tonight? I said, sure. So this is what she prayed. God is good. God is great. Thank you for the Lone Star State. So they're converts. They're total Texans. So it's a great honor to be with you. And to begin, I wanna go to the Old Testament of the Bible to second Kings chapter, where we see an account about the servant of a prophet by the name of Elisha. And he, the servant, he's freaking out. And the reason is, there's an enemy army that is tracking down Elisha. They want revenge. They want retribution because Elisha had thwarted their earlier efforts to kidnap the king of Israel. So they're mad. And this servant of Elisha figures, hey, whatever they do to Elisha, they're going to do to me. So I may get enslaved, I may get killed. He is freaking out. So we pick it up in verse 15 where it says, when the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. Oh, no, my Lord, what shall we do? The servant asked, don't be afraid. The prophet answered, those who are with us are more than those who are with them. And then Elisha prayed. He prayed, open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see. And then The Lord opened the servant's eyes and he looked and he saw that the hills were full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. In other words, for the first time he was able to see this army of angel warriors that God had sent to protect them. And sure enough, Elisha and his servant escaped unharmed. And here's my point. God gave Elisha's servant an incredible gift that day. He allowed him to see the supernatural. And when he caught a glimpse of this otherwise hidden realm, suddenly his faith was renewed, his courage was bolstered. This vision reassured him of the protection and the love of the God who created all. And that's the title of my new book, Seeing the Supernatural. The subtitle says it all. Investigating angels, demons, mystical dreams, near death encounters, and other mysteries of the unseen realm. In other words, this is a book that looks at the evidence that the Bible is telling us the truth, that there really is a realm beyond what we can see and touch and put in a test to. Now, I'm a skeptic by nature. I was a former atheist. My degrees are in journalism and law. And so I tend to want evidence, I tend to want data, I tend to want corroboration. I'm not just looking for stories about the supernatural that you see on the Internet. I'm talking about stuff that you can really sink your teeth into that has corroboration, corroboration, and proof behind it. So I spent a couple of years investigating this, and what I want to do today is give you a glimpse of the supernatural by taking a look at just a few of the categories of evidence that I found particularly compelling. I hope it will bolster your faith the way that it bolstered my faith. So what are these categories of evidence that point toward the supernatural? Well, first of all, documented miracles point toward the supernatural. Documented miracles. You know, we of course see miracles throughout the pages of the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, Jesus was a miracle worker. But the question I asked is, are miracles still happening today? Is God still in the business of supernaturally intervening into the lives of people today? And the answer is yeah, yeah. And we've got good evidence that that is true. Not just stories you hear in the hallways at church, but I'm talking about cases, many of them documented by multiple medical researchers and published in peer reviewed medical journals. I'll give you an example. One case involves a woman who was blind for a dozen years, an incurable condition called juvenile mask macular degeneration. Nobody had ever been cured of that. So she went to a school for the blind. She learned how to read Braille. She walked with a white cane. And she married a Baptist pastor. And one night they're getting ready to go to bed, she's already in bed. He comes over to her and he begins to cry. And he puts his hand on her shoulder and he starts to pray. And he says, lord, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can do it. And Lord, I pray you do it tonight. And with that, she opened her eyes and saw her husband for the first time. She said later, I was blind when my husband prayed for me. And then just like that, in a moment, after years of darkness, I could see perfectly. It was miraculous. Within seconds, my life had drastically changed. I could see. I could see. And that woman's eyesight remained intact for the rest of her life, another 50 plus years. Four medical researchers documented her case, the first of its kind in the scientific literature. And it was published in a peer reviewed medical journal. That's pretty compelling stuff. I mean, what other explanation can there be for that? So here's my conclusion. I believe we can reasonably and rationally conclude that a miracle has occurred if we have solid medical documentation, if we have multiple incredible eyewitnesses who have no motive to deceive, if there is no natural explanation that can account for it, and if it takes place in the context of prayer. And in my book, I document numerous cases like this, I don't think there's any rational, natural explanation that explains it away. In fact, we have a motion picture that we've done that's going to premiere in movie theaters across the country from December 15th through the 18th of this year. It's called the Case for Miracles. And if you're interested in what you know, what are these cases? Can I see these people? Can I see the evidence? That film is going to be a powerful presentation of the evidence that God is still in the miracle business today. So if you're Interested in film December 15th through the 18th, you can see it in any movie theater in the country. Second, the next area of evidence that points toward the supernatural are deathbed visions. Deathbed. What's a deathbed vision? A deathbed vision is when someone is on the verge of dying and just before they die, they look and they see what's to come. They get a glimpse of the realm to come. Now this is biblical. We see this in Acts, chapter 7, where Stephen, described as being full of the holy Spirit, is about to die. He's about to be stoned to death and on the verge of dying. He looks up and he sees the heavens open up and he sees the glory of God and he sees Jesus Christ on the right hand of God. So there's biblical precedent for this. But here's what amazed me when I did this research, how incredibly common deathbed visions are. Talk to any hospice nurse and they'll tell you about it. They are incredibly common. In fact, one team of researchers went to a huge hospice facility in New York state and they told all the dying patients there, if you have a vision unlike anything you've ever had in your life, would you please tell us? Because a lot of people are embarrassed. They think you're going to think I'm nuts. They don't want to talk about. No, no, no. If you have a vision unlike anything you ever had, tell us. 88% of them had a pre death vision. 88. I think the other 12% may have had one, but they died before they were able to tell anybody. One of the researchers, Dr. J. Steve Miller, said these visions were so realistic that patients reported them as the most awake, alert and present that they had ever felt. The sheer frequency of these experiences I think argue for their legitimacy, for their credibility. Because if they only happened once in a blue moon, then a skeptic would say, oh yeah, well hundreds of millions of people die over time. Every once in a while you're going to have a weird anomaly. Doesn't really mean anything. But these are incredibly common. I was having dinner with Leslie in Oklahoma City recently. There were seven of us at dinner and four people there had stories from their family line of people who had pre death visions. My wife's mother and father both had pre death visions. Now Researchers then took 3,000 of these cases of pre death visions and they studied them in depth and here was their conclusion. These experiences are, are definitely not hallucinations, fantasies or memories caused by grief. Nor are they projections of the subconscious mind or products of an overactive imagination. Well, again, I tend to be a skeptic. Where's the corroboration? How do I really know that this isn't just something being manufactured in their imagination? Well, we have cases where there is corroboration people. Cases where dying patients see a relative who's already in heaven even though they didn't know that relative had died. So I'll give you an example. It's a woman named Doris, well documented case from England. Doris is dying. She's on her deathbed and she has a vision on her deathbed. She sees the heavens open up. She sees glorious beings Angels who were in heaven. She sees her father, who had died several years earlier, almost welcoming her to this next realm. And then she gets this puzzled look on her face. Wait a minute. What's Vita doing there? Why would. That makes no sense. Why would Vita be there? What's Vita doing there? And then she died. Vita was her sister. Her sister Vida had died two weeks earlier, but no one had told Doris because Doris was ill and they didn't want the news to kill her. So she didn't know that Vida had died. And yet on her deathbed, she sees Vida welcoming her to the realm to come. That is a special kind of corroboration. Now, often dying people will see angels coming to escort them to the next world. And again, this is consistent with the Bible. We see in Luke chapter 16 How Jesus Talks about a beggar who died and went to be with God. And in verse 22, Jesus says that angels carried this beggar to his place of bliss. And boy, talk to any hospice nurse, and they'll tell you how dying people will talk about angels coming for them. They'll be reaching up just before they die to go with them. In fact, my favorite account of this involves a guy, Charles Templeton. Charles Templeton was the best friend of Billy Graham. You know Billy Graham, the great American evangelist. Chuck Templeton was his best friend. Chuck, everybody thought would become the great evangelist. He was more articulate than Billy Graham. He had a huge church up in Toronto. He was Canadian, and yet he ended up going to a liberal seminary, and he lost his faith. And he became the most famous atheist in all of Canada. He once wrote a book called Farewell to My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith. Well, I became friends with Chuck Templeton because I ended up interviewing him and writing a book called the Case for Faith, where I answered all of his objections about the faith, and we became friends. He did later come back to faith in Jesus Christ. And then he's on his deathbed, and he. On his deathbed, he calls out to his wife, madeline. Madeline. Madeline. Do you see them? What? Chuck, what are you talking about? The angels. They're in this room. They're sitting right here. You can't see them. They're coming for me. They're calling my name. I'm going home. Later, he said, look at them. Look at them. They're so beautiful. They're waiting for me. Their eyes. Oh, their eyes are so beautiful. And then with great joy, he exclaimed, I'm coming. And he died. Now, some of the most compelling visions of angels coming for people on Their deathbed are reported by dying children. Now here's a question. What do you think an angel looks like to a five or six year old child? Like a cartoon character, right? You know, big wings, maybe a halo, maybe some feathers or something. I mean, that's a caricature, but that's what a little kid would think of when they would think about what does an angel look like. That's not what dying children see on their deathbed. So I'll give you an example. There was a well documented case from a doctoral dissertation. A little girl who was dying and she's there with her mother and she sees angels coming for her, say, mommy, look at the angels. The angels are here, they're coming for me. I can't wait to go with them. Look at them, they're so beautiful. And the mother didn't want to disappoint her, so her mother said, oh yeah, I see the angels, look at their big wings. And the little girl said, oh mommy, you don't have to lie, they don't have big wings. And she went on to describe them in great detail. And the Bible doesn't say that all angels have wings. So if expectations formed by culture or upbringing aren't causing the content of children's deathbed visions, it makes sense they're coming from somewhere else. And I think a reasonable explanation in light of all the other evidence, is that these are encounters with the supernatural. A third category of evidence for the supernatural are near death experiences. Near death experiences, these are different from deathbed visions. In a deathbed vision, a person's about to permanently die and they catch this glimpse of what's to come. In a near death experience, the person is clinically dead, often no heartbeat, no brain waves, no respiration. And their spirit, their soul, just as the Bible describes, separates from their body at the time of their clinical death. And that soul continues to live on even though their physical body is clinically deceased. And often that spirit will see things or hear things that would have been impossible for them to see or hear had there not been an authentic out of body experience. But then their body is. Ultimately, doctors are able to revive their body and their spirit returns to their body and they're able to describe these things that they would have no way of knowing if they hadn't had an authentic out of body experience. So I'll give you an example. There's a woman named Mary, well documented case, she's dying in a hospital, in fact, Memorial Hospital in London, England. And she's dead. She passes, she bleeds, to death. But she said later, I was conscious the whole time. And her spirit had separated from her body and had floated to the ceiling of the hospital room. And she was looking down and she was able to describe how the doctors and nurses were coming and trying to revive her body. She's watching this stuff. She's describing what they looked like, what they did, what they were, what they looked like. And so. So she's watching from the ceiling. And then ultimately they were able to revive her body, so her spirit returned to her body. And here's the corroboration. She said, by the way, there's a ceiling fan here in this room on the top of one of the blades. Couldn't see it from the room because it was. On the top of one of the blades is a red sticker that she was able to see from her perspective floating near the top of the room. There's a red sticker on the top of one of the ceiling blades. Well, the nurses couldn't believe this, so they got a ladder and they went up and they looked. On the top of the blade, there's a sticker exactly as she had described it. How do you explain that? How do you explain it? We have hundreds of cases like this where it's impossible for them to have known or seen or heard something if they hadn't had an authentic out of body experience. In fact, one of my favorites, and this is well documented by scholars, is a case of a little girl. I think her name was Katie. She died. She drowned in a YMCA swimming pool. No heartbeat for 20 minutes. Her brain had massively swollen. She was deceased. They take her to the hospital. They're keeping her body kind of mechanically alive till they decide what to do with it. But miraculously, she ends up recovering. Several days later, she's fine. No after effects from this experience, she recovers. And she says, by the way, I was awake the whole time. In fact, she said, my parents came to visit me in the hospital one night and I followed them home. And she was able to describe what her mother made for dinner that night, chicken and rice. She was able to describe how her brother went into his room, closed the door and was playing with a GI Joe doll in a Jeep. She described how her sister went into her room and closed the door and was combing the hair of her Barbie doll and singing specific songs. She described where her father was sitting. She described what all of them were wearing that night, things she could not have known if indeed her spirit had not followed them home that night. And here's the most remarkable study. Multiple medical researchers did an incredible study in which they examined 21 blind people, most of them blind since birth. And yet during this near death experience, they were able to see or they had vision like perceptions. Many of them for the first time in their life seeing things and identifying and describing things they would have no way of seeing cause they were blind. So I'll give you an example. Vicki Umape, 26 years old, blind virtually since birth. She's a passenger in a car, horrible car accident. She's killed in the car accident. But she said later, I was conscious the whole time. And her spirit had separated from her body. And she sees for the first time, she's watching the paramedics trying to revive her body. She describes them, what they're wearing, what they're doing, what they look like. And then, and she said, I saw birds, I saw trees, I saw other people. She's describing all this stuff. And then the paramedics were able to revive her body. Her spirit returned to her body and she was blind again. And that's what happened in all of these cases. When they recovered, when their spirit returned to their body, they were blind again. One medical researcher said this is impossible according to current medical knowledge. Now here's the kicker. There's a researcher named John Burke, happens to be a friend of mine for 40 years. John was a pastor in Austin, Texas, but also a researcher. And he studied 1500 near death experiences. And his conclusion was if you look at what typically takes place in an average near death experience, not how people interpret it, because people with different worldviews are going to interpret things differently. Set that aside, just look at what actually takes place during a typical near death experience. It is 100% consistent with the teachings of the Bible. Another researcher was able to identify 47 points of correspondence between near death experiences and deathbed visions and the Bible. Now, I don't get my theology from near death experiences. I get my theology from the Bible. And yet I will say at a minimum, near death experiences establish, I believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the Bible is telling us the truth, that when we die, our spirit does separate from our body and continue to live on in a supernatural realm. Another category of evidence for the supernatural are contemporary encounters with angels. Contemporary encounters with angels. The Bible has 300 references to angels. Hebrews 1:14 says, are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? So in other words, angels were created not just to serve and glorify God, but also to minister to God's people. And Hebrews 13:2 says, do not forget to show hospitality to strangers. For by doing so, some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. So, in other words, the Bible anticipates that some people will have interactions with angels in this lifetime. And in my book, I document cases where I don't think there's any other explanation other than someone has had an encounter with an angelic being. My favorite example is a guy named John G. Paton. P A T O N. John was from Scotland, and he and his wife became missionaries. They went to a remote island in the South Pacific to minister to the tribespeople there. Well, unfortunately, the tribespeople didn't much like the message of Jesus. And so here John and his wife were in their cottage one night, and a mob begins to form. They're going to burn down their cottage and kill John and his wife. So this mob is, what do you do you pray, right? So they prayed, God protect us. God help us. God save us from this mob that's forming. And they prayed all night long. And by dawn, they look out and the mob had just dissipated. Everybody went home. A year later, John led the head of that mob to faith in Jesus Christ. And he was talking to him one day and he said, hey, do you all remember that day when you came to burn down our house and kill us? And the guy said, oh, yeah, I remember that day. And John said, why didn't you do it? And the guy said, well, who are all those men that you had there? And John said, there were no men. It was just my wife and I. The guy said, no, no, no. Your house was surrounded by all these muscular men dressed in white with drawn swords. There's no way we could have done anything to hurt you. That night we just all went home and went to bed. And they both agreed that God, just like the story with Elisha and his servant, that God has sent an angelic army to surround that home and protect that. I don't know how else you explain that. And that's just one of numerous cases I think are clear and compelling that these angels do exist, just as the Bible described. More evidence of the supernatural. And then finally, one other category of evidence that points toward the supernatural are mystical dreams and visions that are taking place among Muslims around the world. In the Bible, God frequently uses dreams and visions to advance his agenda, right? For instance, in the Old Testament, we see Abraham and Joseph and Samuel telling about these kind of visions and dreams. In the New Testament, Zacharias, John and Cornelius have stories along those lines. There are about 200 examples in the Bible of God employing dreams and visions to advance his plans. Well, guess what? More Muslims have become followers of Jesus Christ in the last couple decades than in the 1400 years since Mohammed. And up to a third of them are saying before they converted to Christianity, they had a supernatural dream or vision of Jesus Christ. This literally sweeping the Middle East. The stunning consistency of these experiences across international boundaries suggest these are more than just the product of an overactive imagination. I mean, a devout Muslim would have no incentive to have an imaginary encounter with the Jesus of Christianity who might lure them into Islamic apostasy and maybe a death sentence in certain countries. There's no incentive for them to have a dream about Jesus. But again, I want corroboration. How do I know this is not just something coming from their imagination? You know why we have corroboration? Because what is not happening is that these people are having going to sleep as a Muslim, having a dream, encountering Jesus and waking up as a Christian. That's not what happens. The dream that they have where they encounter Jesus points them towards something external that will then lead them to faith. That's the confirmation. This isn't just coming from their heads. So I'll give you an example. There's a woman we call Noor. Noor was a Muslim mother of eight children in Cairo, Egypt. She goes to sleep one night. She has a dream unlike any she'd ever had. And in her words, she said, jesus was walking with me alongside a lake, and he told me how much he loves me. His love was different from anything I'd ever experienced. I've never felt so much peace. I didn't want him to leave. I asked this Jesus, why are you visiting me? I'm just a poor Muslim mother with eight children. And all he said was, I love you, Noor. I've given everything for you. I died for you. And as Jesus turned to leave, he said, ask my friend tomorrow about me, and he will tell you all you need to know to understand why I visited you today. And Noah said, what do you mean, your friend? Who's your friend? And Jesus gestured toward a man who'd been walking with them along the lakeside. But she had been so mesmerized by Jesus, she hadn't noticed this guy. So Jesus said, my friend will tell you about me tomorrow. So she wakes up. The next day is a Friday. She goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on Friday afternoon, and she sees that man from her dream. And she goes up to her, you're the One. You're the one. I said, what are you talking about? No, no, no. You're the one. You're the one. You were in my dream last night. Same face, same glasses, same clothes. You're the one for sure. And the guy looked at her and said, was I with Jesus? She said, yes. Turned out he was an underground church planter. He didn't want to go to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on Friday afternoon. It's chaotic. But he went that day because he felt like God had an assignment for him. And he meets Noor. But here's the corroboration. What does he do? He pulls Noor aside, he opens the Bible, and he spends three hours with her explaining the story of Jesus Christ. That's the external corroboration. That's how these dreams work. It points them towards something external that then leads them to faith in Jesus Christ. That's a special kind of corroboration. We have another case of a guy they call Omar. Omar hated Jewish people. His goal in life? Kill as many Jewish people as I can. He grew up in a refugee camp in the Middle east, and he contacted Hamas, the terrorist organization. Says, I want to join you so I can kill Jewish people. And Hamas checked him out and said, okay, well, you meet us at this certain place, and we'll induct you into our organization. So Omar is walking down the street in Jerusalem toward this meeting, and all of a sudden, his path is blocked by a vision of Jesus Christ. And Jesus looks at him and says, omar, this is not the life I have for you. I want you to turn around. I want you to go home. This is not how I want you to live your life. So he's stunned by this. So what does he do? He turns around. He goes home. Later that day, he lived in an apartment building. Later that day, a Christian family began to move into the apartment across the hall from him. So he goes over to greet them, and he tells them about this vision he had just had of Jesus. And what did they do? They opened the Bible and they shared the Gospel with them. And Omar not only comes to faith in Jesus Christ, but today he's an underground church planter himself in the Middle East. Yeah, I mean, this phenomenon is so common around the world. We had a case in our church in Houston, you know, where we have a lot of ties with the Middle east because of the oil industry. And we had a virtually identical case to Noor's case right in our church in Houston a few years ago. Unbelievable. This is so common that I Have a guy I interviewed for my book who's the world's leading expert on this. He lives right here in Dallas. And he said, lee, I could call Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq right now. And I'll give you five more stories. This is so common. You can go to Cairo, Egypt, and pick up a newspaper. And often you'll see an ad in the newspaper and the ad says, call this number and we'll tell you about the man in white you met in your dream last night. And people just call telling about their encounter with Jesus. This may be the greatest spiritual awakening happening in the world today. It's absolutely amazing. And so when we hear these categories of evidence and there's so many others we haven't got time to get into. But just these categories that I'm mentioning, when we look at these categories and the way they're corroborated and the evidence for them, I believe it is reasonable, it is rational to conclude that the Bible is telling us the truth, that there really is a supernatural realm beyond what we can see and touch. And I hope that encourages you. I hope it deepens your faith. But you know what? Someday you're not going to have to look at the evidence and reach a conclusion about whether this is true. Someday you are going to have absolute and irrefutable evidence, proof that there is a supernatural realm. Because you are going to close your eyes for the last time in this world and you are going to open them in the world to come. And now it's not just something we look at evidence for. You will know for a fact there is a realm beyond what we can see and touch. But I haven't told you one thing, and that is that some people who have near death experiences, some people who have deathbed visions, these are not positive experiences. These are horrifying experiences. These are frightening experiences. I'll give an example. There's a guy named Howard Storm. Howard was an atheist. Howard was a PhD in art. He was a tenured professor of art at a major secular university. He was chairman of the art department. And he went off to Paris, France to do more study of art. And he has a heart attack in the hospital there, and he dies. But he said later, I was conscious the whole time. He said, now here I am standing next to my body, which is on a gurney, and they're pulling the sheet over it and saying, I'm dead. But I was feeling more alive than I've ever felt in my life. And then I heard a voice from the corridor saying, howard, we've been waiting for you. What do you mean, no? You're supposed to come with us. You're supposed to. Oh, okay. So Howard goes where these guys are in the corridor, and he begins to follow them. And they go down a corridor and then another quarter and another quarter, and then it starts to get a little dark, a little ominous. And pretty soon these guys who he's following start to get abusive and. Howard, you're not keeping up. Howard, come on. They start shoving him, they start hitting him, they start biting him, they start attacking him and they start ripping him apart. He said, lee, I was reduced to roadkill. He said, no horror movie can ever approach the level of cruelty that they inflicted upon me. They mauled him. They said his eyes were gouged out, his ears were scratched off. And in the middle of that, he didn't know what to do. He called out to Jesus, jesus, save me. And an orb of light comes and Jesus rescues him, restores him. And then the doctors revived his body and his spirit returned to his body. And you know what he did? He not only renounced his atheism, he not only resigned his tenured position at the art department of the university, he not only became a Christian, he went to seminary. And today he's a pastor of a little church in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky, sharing Jesus with everybody he can. So it was radical, radical change. You know, the Bible says in Hebrews 9, 27, we're appointed once to die and then we face judgment. In other words, we don't get a second chance at salvation after we die. He was not permanently dead. He was clinically dead. He was going to later someday. He will die permanently. But he had a near death experience. That's clinical death. That's not permanent death. But when we permanently die, we don't get another chance. We can't call out to Jesus at that point and ask for help. It's too late. We are appointed once to die permanently, and then the judgment occurs. So what about you? What about you? What vision are you going to have on your deathbed? What are you going to see? Are you confident that in those closing moments of your life, the vision that you will get will be a welcoming of angels coming to bring you to a place of bliss for eternity? Is that what you're gonna see? I hope so. But are you confident of that? Are you sure of that? God does not want you in a state of ambiguity, uncertainty, anxiety, fear, apprehension about what's gonna happen when you die. God says you can know. You can have confidence that you will spend eternity with him. You know, the first verse I ever memorized as a new Christian was first John 5, 13. It says these things, talking about the Bible. These things were written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God in order that you may know that you have eternal life. You don't have to wonder. You can know for a fact that you have been adopted as a son, as a daughter of the Most High, you will spend eternity with him. Because we're all sinners. We've all fouled up, we've all violated God's laws and commands, and yet Jesus, fully God and fully man, went to the cross to pay the penalty we deserved for the sins that we've committed. He died as our substitute so that he can offer forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of his grace. Have you received that gift? Can't earn it, can't merit it. We don't deserve it. It's a free gift. Have you received it? Are you sure that you have? Well, if you're not 100% confident what vision you're going to have when you die, I couldn't come all the way here from Houston without giving an opportunity to know for a fact that you've been adopted as a son or a daughter of the Most High forever. So let me give you an opportunity to receive that free gift. Let's just close our eyes and bow our heads. I'm not going to ask you to do anything weird. Just, you don't even have to say anything out loud. God knows your heart. Just in your heart, say Lord Jesus, as best I can. I do believe that you're the Son of God. And right now I confess the obvious, which is I am a sinner. I know that I've done things I knew that were wrong before I did them. I did them anyway. I've sinned and I confess that. And I turn from that. And in an attitude of repentance and faith, right now I receive your free gift of forgiveness and eternal life. Thank you, Jesus, for loving me so much that you endured the torture of the cross so that we could be reconciled forever. Help me, Jesus, to live the kind of life that you want me to live. Because from this moment on, I am yours. And now, Father, on the basis of your word, we know that anyone who prays a prayer like that sincerely, we know that you at this very moment are adopting them into your family forever. Your Holy Spirit is entering into them to indwell them that they will spend eternity with you in heaven. We thank you for that we thank you for this great church that spreads your message of hope and love and grace and joy and forgiveness and redemption and eternal life. Just spreads that message all over the place. Thank you for that. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, who is our forgiver and who is our leader and who is our very, very best friend. And all God's people said amen.