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- [00:00]
A
Who killed Jesus Christ?
- [00:03]
B
Give me a long weekend and I can disprove the resurrection. Dead people don't come back to life. That just doesn't happen. I was an atheist. I lived a very immoral, drunken, profane, narcissistic, self destructive in many ways kind of life. My wife comes up to me one day and gives me the worst news any atheist husband could get. She said, I've decided to become a Christian. And honestly, first word through my mind, divorce. And I used my journalism training, my legal training. Took me two years, unequivocally. That the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof, which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.
- [00:44]
A
Who is benefiting the most from seeing this divide taking place today, both theologically, politically spread, specifically on social media in America? Who benefits the most?
- [00:54]
B
He certainly sparked something on these college campuses. He had the courage to go in. He lost his life because he did. I've been working with the FBI for the last couple of weeks because someone's trying to kill me because of the stands I take. And, yeah, there was a credible threat on my life. Did you ever think you were made again,
- [01:32]
A
Adam?
- [01:32]
B
What's your point?
- [01:34]
A
The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever saw. It's right here.
- [01:40]
B
You are a 1 of 1 My son's right about. I don't think I've ever said this before.
- [01:49]
A
All right, Lee Strobel, great to have you here.
- [01:51]
B
Thank you. Wonderful to be here.
- [01:52]
A
We've been looking forward to having you for a long time. I have an interesting story with you.
- [01:55]
B
Oh, yeah?
- [01:56]
A
Yeah. Before we get into it, you know, I think it's important for the audience to know. For those who don't, you've sold nearly 20 million copies of your books. 40 plus books. The big one being Case for Christ in Case for Church. There's a bunch of them. And you have a new one that came out, seeing the Supernatural, which we'll get into as well. And it's funny because two weeks ago I had Scott Galloway on. I don't know if you know who he is. Professor Scott Galloway, you know, a very good voice on the liberal side who talks about fatherhood, very successful business guy.
- [02:28]
B
Yeah.
- [02:29]
A
And while we're talking, I said, so tell me about your relationship with God and faith. Look, I wish I had faith. I don't. I said, well, look, normally when I talk to somebody who is either a super logical thinker and maybe their philosophy or maybe their math or maybe hardcore logic.
- [02:44]
B
Yeah.
- [02:44]
A
I'll recommend two books to them. And I recommended those two books to him. I said, number one, you got to read Mere Christianity by C.S. lewis, which, by the way, Shadowlands. Phenomenal. I don't know if you've seen it or not. Great. Anthony Hopkins. I said, the second book you got to read is Case for Christ by Lee Stroh.
- [02:59]
B
Awesome.
- [03:00]
A
Yes. And my story is 2:20. Back in 19. Back in 2002, 2003, when I got out of the military, I was an atheist. For 25 years of my life. I lived in Iran. So it's kind of tough to be a Christian when you're in Iran war, parents get a divorce. And then I'm doing Bible study in Pasadena every. Every other Friday night from 6:00pm to 2:00 clock in the morning.
- [03:23]
B
Wow.
- [03:23]
A
And your stuff would come up all the time. And then that led me to, you know, studying the topics and we're doing these Bible studies and all this stuff anyways, but now we are sitting down talking, so it's a great conversation. I got a lot of questions for you.
- [03:37]
B
Yeah. And so that's encouraging.
- [03:39]
A
Yes. I got a lot of questions for you, but I want to start off with in today, a lot is going on in the world. We have the war going on. We have, you know, data that's coming out with what churches are growing, which ones are not. You know, there are challenges when you talk to somebody about, introduce them to going back to church. They'll go back to a time where there was a massive crisis at a mega church they were a part of where there was a big falling out. And, man, I'll never trust the church again. I'll never trust the pastor again. I experienced that myself as well. And I know you were part of one and the pastor you were part of was one. I used to study his stuff very close. He had very, very good content. We'll talk about that as well. But the opening question, I want to start off with you. You read write in the bookcase for Christ.
- [04:21]
B
Yeah.
- [04:22]
A
Who killed Jesus Christ?
- [04:24]
B
You did. I did. We did. Ultimately, he died because he paid for the sins of humankind. He atoned for our sins. He paid the penalty we deserve for the sins that we've committed so that we could be given a free gift of forgiveness and eternal life. So when it comes right down to it, you and I are the ones who killed Jesus.
- [04:44]
A
Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting when you say that if you're a Christian, that's the answer, right?
- [04:51]
B
Yeah.
- [04:52]
A
But if you're somebody that's not a Christian. Say you're an atheist. Say you're a. You know, if I'm Talking to the 19, you know, I don't know, I think you gave your life to Christ. Was it 1980? I don't know what year it was. 19.
- [05:06]
B
1981.
- [05:07]
A
1981, right. When you give your life to Christ. And you were 27, 28. Yeah, about 30 prior to that. You know, you're a journalist for the Chicago Tribune.
- [05:17]
B
Right.
- [05:19]
A
Your job is to investigate everybody. So you look at things in a different way. You're an investigative journalist.
- [05:23]
B
Right.
- [05:25]
A
How would you have answered that question when you were doing the investigation of wanting to know who killed Jesus Christ? The non Christian. What would that answer be for the non Christian? Not the Christian?
- [05:34]
B
Yeah. Well, certainly the Romans had the authority to crucify someone. And by the way, they didn't crucify Roman citizens because it was such a cruelty, torturous death that Roman citizens were exempt. But of course they had to implement it. It was encouraged by the Jewish leaders of the day who were opposed to Jesus. And so they both had a role, you would say, in the actual execution of Jesus.
- [06:02]
A
What was Romans concerns? What was the Roman's involvement and what was the Pharisees?
- [06:07]
B
Well, it's interesting, the Romans, you know, if you look at Pilate, he sort of washed his hands. He tried to kind of distance himself from. If you read the account, doesn't sound like he was that into it. He seemed like he was more capitulating to the crowd. He offered to give him Barabbas. Hey, you know, take, you know, let's trade out here. And. Or Jesus. And of course, they chose to free Barabbas, not Jesus. So the Romans, you know, didn't like the fact that Jesus was claiming to be the unique son of God, the Messiah. Why?
- [06:40]
A
What were they?
- [06:41]
B
Because the. At the. In those days, the emperor was considered to be divine and so Caesar would be considered divine.
- [06:48]
A
So it's kind of like we're okay if you want to worship Jesus, but not above Caesar.
- [06:53]
B
That's right. That's right, exactly. And the Pharisees didn't like that Jesus was coming in and kind of throwing a monkey wrench into all the rules and regulations that they wanted people to live by and talking more about grace and more about what it means to be a true follower of God. And so there's a lot of conflict there. He was making divine and messianic claims about himself. At one point, Jesus got up before a group and he said, I and the Father are one. And the Greek word there for one is not masculine. It's neuter, which means he wasn't saying I and the Father are the same person. He was saying, I and the Father are the same thing. We're one in nature. We're one in essence. And the audience got what he was saying. They picked up stones to kill him. They said, you, you're just a man and you're claiming to be God. So Jesus claimed to be God. And that did not sit well with
- [07:41]
A
Jews, with the Pharisees, with the Pharisees,
- [07:43]
B
the religious leaders of the day. And of course, anybody can claim to be. You could claim to be God. I could claim to be God. But of course, that's where Easter comes in. Because Jesus not only claimed to be God, but then after being crucified three days later, he returns from the dead and thus proves he is who he claimed to be.
- [07:58]
A
So it's a combination of physically, Romans, verbally Pharisees.
- [08:03]
B
Yeah. They encouraged the crucifixion of Jesus. Yes.
- [08:08]
A
Okay, so then bring that interpretation to today on how that has been not miscommunicated, but misunderstood today, because you see a lot of different arguments.
- [08:21]
B
Yeah.
- [08:22]
A
You know, where there's the animosity towards. Well, let me tell you, it's really, you know, the Jews killed them. No. The Pharisees killed. No. The Romans killed him. No, we killed them. How has that misunderstanding turned into some of the challenges that we're seeing today when that debate comes up?
- [08:38]
B
Yeah, it's inconceivable to me that any Christian could be anti Semitic. Jesus was Jewish. Jesus followers were Jewish. The Christian religion is an outflow of the Jewish religion. It is a fulfillment of the ancient prophecies that were made centuries before Jesus was born in Bethlehem that pointed toward the Messiah. And Jesus fit those prophecies just like a fingerprint. So I don't know how anybody who's a follower of Jesus could be anti Semitic. It's not the Jewish people as a group who got together and said, let's kill Jesus. That's not what happened. There was a leadership at the time, these Pharisees and Sadducees who were upset about his teachings and so forth, who instigated and pushed for his execution. The Romans went along with it and implemented the death penalty in his case. But when I see reports of anti Semitism among people who claim to be Christians, I go, what are you talking about? What faith are you putting your trust in here?
- [09:49]
A
So, yeah, now some of them may say, well, Lee, there's two Types of the old school traditional Pharisees, the ones that were more, you know, Jews that are more about the Torah. Right. Where 25% to 30% of the old Testament is the Torah. And you know, take the other 65, 70%, 75% is, you know, the legalistic, you know, the way they would structure it together because they were thinkers. So. Okay, I don't have a problem with them, Lee, but I do have a problem with the modern day Jews who created their own Talmud and you know, whatever the 600 plus commandments that they have and the way they wrote it. What is the difference? Because I'm really trying to understand. It's not like these people that are, you know, creating the argument against Jews and being, you know, some people labeling them anti Semites and all this. Yeah, it's not like they're dumb. These are not dumb people. These are very well read, educated people who are going there. So what is the context for you specifically as a investigative journalist? What is the difference between the old school, the Torah type Jews that some people look at versus the new modern day the Talmud? What's the difference?
- [11:01]
B
Yeah, well, there were 600 some odd commandments that were added to the Jewish scripture by Jews, by Pharisees, by the leadership of the day and so forth and created this very much driven, works, driven culture. And it was virtually impossible for anybody to fulfill all of these commands and to stay on the straight and narrow given all these requirements that were added to the basic law, the ten commandments that God had provided for the Jewish people.
- [11:32]
A
Got it. So, okay, so then if we go a little bit further, and I know this is like a heavy topic right off the bat to get into, is who benefits from this division that you see, whether it's those who are like, what are you talking about? Jews are our friends. You know, if I have to choose between Jews and you know, Jesus was a Jew, like that argument just made earlier, I'm going to choose the Jews over knowing what Islam wants to do and what the Islamification of the world and Muslims book tell them to do. I'm going to side with these guys.
- [12:02]
B
Yeah.
- [12:02]
A
And then the other side. No, but you guys are naive. You don't even understand. Israel owns the Jews, Bibi runs the world and you guys don't. You guys are such low level, you don't know what's going on here. What is the, you know, who is benefiting the most from seeing this divide taking place today, both theologically, politically, specifically on social media in America?
- [12:25]
B
Who benefits the most from well, certainly from social media. I mean, we have some people on social media who make all kinds of allegations against the Jewish people who are making millions of dollars in doing that.
- [12:35]
A
Such as who. Who are you?
- [12:37]
B
I don't want to name names because I'm not that.
- [12:39]
A
Are the names that I'm thinking about or some of the names?
- [12:41]
B
Probably. Probably.
- [12:42]
A
All right.
- [12:43]
B
And so I go, is there an incentive here?
- [12:46]
A
Yeah, maybe you think first one is prophet mode.
- [12:49]
B
Possibly. And then honestly, if indeed Jesus is the unique son of God who came through the Jewish line, if indeed Christianity is a fulfillment of the Jewish teachings and the Old Testament becomes fulfilled in Jesus and so forth, if you are Satan, wouldn't you love to create a dividend? Wouldn't you love to attack the root of Christianity, which is Judaism? Yeah, I think you would. So I think, honestly, I just wrote this book called Seeing the Supernatural. You know, Jesus was an exorcist. Jesus believed in demons. Jesus believed in Satan. He encountered Satan. And so do I believe that he might have a role in terms of fanning the flames of antisemitism? Yeah, I think he does. Hey, sweetie. Your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm gonna give it a try. Wish me luck. Me again. I put in the license plate. It gave me an offer. Unbelievable. Okay, I accepted the offer. They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done. The car is gone. I'm holding a check anyway. Carvana, give it a whirl.
- [14:00]
A
Love ya.
- [14:00]
B
So good you'll want to leave a voicemail about it. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up. Fees may apply.
- [14:09]
A
Yeah, so, okay, so then let's just say if I'm sitting down with somebody who once was a Christian, who supporters of, you know, Israel or Jews, and didn't have the anti Semitic positions that they have. Yeah, and I want to go out there and serve them. I want to go out there and, you know, speak to them about maybe a different position to be thinking about. What angles would I take with them?
- [14:33]
B
Oh, golly. I always look at the affirmative side, which is, what is the evidence that Christianity is true? What is the evidence that Jesus is who he claimed to be? I wanna make that case because you can get into arguments about, okay, let's contrast Islam and Christianity and things like that. But ultimately, I think as someone who started as an atheist, trained in journalism and law, I was looking for, what is the evidence? What's the corroboration? How do I know this is true. So if Jesus claimed to be the son of God, as I mentioned earlier, he did, clearly. How do I know he proved it by returning from the dead? What is the evidence historically that Jesus really returned from the dead? Because if that is true, then he is who he claimed to be. And I ought to put my chips in that pot, right? I ought to go all in in Christianity.
- [15:26]
A
And what was that moment for you? Because, you know, if you don't mind sharing your own testimony because your wife came to you and you guys have been together since you were 18, 9 years old, I think it's good for the audience to hear from you.
- [15:37]
B
Yeah, I mean, I met my wife when we were 14, got married at 19 and 20 and I was an atheist. I lived a very immoral, drunken, profane, narcissistic, self destructive in many ways kind of life. I was successful, went to Yale Law School, was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, won major awards for investigative reporting. So people would look at that and think, oh man, this guy's got it together. They didn't see the other side. I was literally drunk in the snow in an alley on Saturday night. And my wife comes up to me one day and gives me the worst news any atheist husband could get. She said, I've decided to become a Christian. And honestly, first word through my mind, divorce. I was gonna really? Oh, yeah, I was gonna walk. I didn't want to be married to a Christian.
- [16:20]
A
Were both of you guys married? You were atheists, both of you?
- [16:22]
B
No, she was agnostic. She didn't know what to believe. She's kind of spiritual, neutral. She meets a neighbor who's a Christian nurse, shares Jesus with her, brings her to church and she checks things out herself and comes and gives me the news that she's become a Christian. And I thought, she's, well, what's going to happen? She's going to turn into some holier than thou person who's going to look down on me and my drinking and she wouldn't like my friends anymore. And it's just going to be trouble. How are we going to make decisions about how we spend our money and how we spend our time? We're going to have this divide in our marriage. So I thought, I'm just gonna walk out. But then I thought, wait a minute, what if I could rescue her from this cult that she's gotten involved in? How would I do that? How would I do that? Oh, I know, all I gotta do is disprove the resurrection of Jesus. Because Jesus clearly, as I said earlier, Made messianic divine claims about himself and the resurrection proved supposedly that he is who he claimed to be. So I thought, you know what? Give me a long weekend and I can disprove the resurrection. Dead people don't come back to life. That just doesn't happen. So I thought, you know, I'm trained in this stuff. I can investigate the evidence. So I started to do that. And I used my journalism training, my legal training. Took me two years to delve into the minutiae of the historical data concerning the death and resurrection of Jesus until November 8th of 1981. And I said to myself, you know, I've been doing this two years. The evidence is in. A good jury reaches a verdict. So I got all the data I gathered back then. This is before the Internet. So it's a microfilm? No. ChatGPT?
- [17:53]
A
No. Language learning models? No.
- [17:55]
B
Google? No Google? No.
- [17:56]
A
So you're going to the library to do this?
- [17:58]
B
Oh, yeah, I'm going to. I remember once I requested an interlibrary loan at the Chicago Library because I was trying to find this obscure book written by one of the founders of Harvard Law School, who had become a Christian in the 1800s or whatever. And six months later I get a phone call. We found your book. That's what it took. I mean, that's why it took me two years.
- [18:17]
A
Oh, talk about investigative journalism.
- [18:19]
B
Delved into this stuff, into microfilm and libraries and museums and so forth, interviewing scholars and experts, until November 8th of 81, when I realized any good juror reaches a verdict and the evidence was in. I need to reach a verdict. And I looked at the data concerning the resurrection. It is fascinating how much. I'll tell you a little story. There was a guy named Sir Lionel Luck, who? Sir Lionel is the most successful defense attorney in the world. He was in the Guinness Book of World Records. Why? Because he won 245 murder trials in a row. This guy right here, that's him.
- [18:56]
A
Okay.
- [18:57]
B
245 murder trials in a row. Nobody's ever done that as a defense attorney, either before the jury or on a PI and when I was a student at Yale Law School, he was my hero. Cause I figured this guy must understand evidence.
- [19:08]
A
He's an atheist.
- [19:09]
B
Well, he was a skeptic about the resurrection, didn't believe the resurrection occurred. And I was an atheist, so I agreed with him. And he was knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth. He became a member of the Supreme Court of his country. Yeah. So brilliant, brilliant guy. But he didn't believe in the resurrection until Somebody came to him one day and said, sir Lionel, you're the greatest lawyer in the world. Have you ever taken your monumental legal skill and applied it to the historical record of the resurrection and come to an informed verdict on whether Jesus rose from the dead? He said, no, I haven't, but I will. So he spent years doing what I ended up doing, investigating the evidence. And I'll recite to you one sentence he wrote that summarizes conclusion. He says, I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof, which leaves absolutely no room for doubt. This from the greatest legal mind, I think, in practical sense, in history. By the way, I told that story in California. I moved to California in the year 2000 to be a teaching pastor at a church. And a woman came up to me afterwards. She said, hey, I'm your new neighbor. We haven't met yet, but you just bought a house down the block. I said, oh, that's great. Good to meet you. She said, yeah, one other thing. I said, what? She said, I'm Sir Lionel's sister. Stop.
- [20:18]
A
Yes, and we know your neighbor is a sister.
- [20:21]
B
Yeah.
- [20:21]
A
Was she a devout Christian at that time?
- [20:23]
B
Oh, yeah. And she actually showed me his private papers where he had done his mustache. I know. Can you believe that?
- [20:29]
A
What are the odds of it? What did you find when you're going through it?
- [20:32]
B
It was ultimately a confirmation of what I discovered in my investigation. Can I summarize the evidence for you real quick? Four words that begin with the letter E to summarize the evidence for the resurrection. This is what brought me from atheism to faith. The first E stands for execution. That Jesus was truly dead after being crucified. There is no record anywhere of anyone ever surviving a full Roman crucifixion. In fact, this is not controversial among even atheist scholars because when you study ancient history, we're lucky if we have one good source to confirm a fact, or maybe two good sources. So if you have Alexander the Great, we believe certain things about his life. Well, dig down. How do we know? Well, it turns out it's one source, maybe two sources. And yet, for the death of Jesus, we not only have multiple sources in the documents of the New Testament, we got five ancient sources outside the Bible confirming his execution. This is so well established of a historical fact, you could get laughed out of a major academic institution if you go in and claim he somehow survived the crucifixion. In fact, get this. No less of a Source in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a secular, peer reviewed medical scientific journal, carried an investigation into the death of Jesus. And this was their conclusion. Quote. Clearly the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead even before the wound to his side was inflicted. Even the atheist historian Garrett Ludemus says it's indisputable that Jesus was dead first execution, he's dead second E. Early accounts. In other words, we have early reports that come very quickly after the crucifixion that he rose from the dead. Why is that important? Because I used to think, like a lot of skeptics, that the resurrection was a legend. And I knew it took time for legend to develop in the ancient world. So I figured 100, 150, 200 years after life of Jesus, legends were invented. And that's where the idea came from. Guess what? We have preserved for us a creed of the earliest church. The first Christians had a creedal statement based on facts that they knew to be true, based on eyewitness accounts that summarized their convictions. And it said, Jesus died. Why? For our sins. He was buried. On the third day, he rose again and then has the specific names of individuals and groups of people who encountered the resurrected Jesus, including 500 people at once. Well, guess what? Historians have been able to date that creed. So, for instance, one of the great historians, James D.G. dunn of England, one of the greatest historians of our time, dated that creed. And he says, we can be entirely confident that that creed was formulated within months of the death of Jesus. Within months? That's historical gold. That's far too quick to be a legend. The great historian AN Sherwin White of Oxford and Cambridge said the passage of two generations of time is not even enough for legend to grow up and wipe out a solid core of historical truth. So we got a news flag. And it's not the only early report we got. We got others in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the Book of Acts, all that date back so early they were circulating during the lifetimes of Jesus. Contemporaries who would have disputed the claims if they had been wrong. So that's the second E is early accounts. The third E is stands for empty. We have an empty tomb. And what's interesting about that is even the enemies of Jesus admitted the tomb was empty. Everybody conceded the tombs. How do we know? Because we know from sources inside and outside the New Testament that when the disciples began proclaiming that Jesus had risen, what the enemies of Jesus said was, oh, well, the disciples stole the body. Now think about that. They're conceding the tomb is empty. They're trying to explain how it got empty. So everybody's conceding the tomb is empty. That's not the issue of history. It is. The issue of history really is. How did it get empty? Romans weren't about to steal the body. They wanted Jesus dead. Religious leaders of the day weren't about to steal the body. They wanted Jesus to stay dead. The disciples weren't about to steal the body. I found seven ancient sources, six of them outside the Bible that said that the disciples lived lives of deprivation and suffering as a result of their proclamation that Jesus had risen. They were willing to die for it. Why? Because they heard in Sunday school he'd risen from the dead and proved he's the son of God? No, because they were there. Of all human beings who've ever lived, they were in a position to know for a fact whether he returned from the dead or not. They touched him, they talked with him, they ate with him. And knowing the truth, they were even willing to die for it. Then finally, the fourth E stands for the word eyewitnesses. Remember I said earlier, we're lucky in ancient history if we have a fact we believe to be true. We dig down, we find one source, maybe two sources. There are nine ancient sources inside and outside the New Testament, confirming and corroborating the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the risen Jesus. That is an avalanche of historical data. And so it was based on that kind of evidence that I sat as an atheist and said, wait a minute. If I'm going to be honest, if I'm going to follow the evidence wherever it points, which is what I was always taught to do, then I have to conclude that Jesus didn't just claim to be God. He backed up that claim by returning from the dead.
- [25:47]
A
Now, when you're saying nine eyed witnesses, I'm assuming this is it, right? Paul, the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts of Apostles. That's what you're talking about with the nine witnesses.
- [25:56]
B
I'm talking about nine sources. Nine sources, right. So the first one is the creed that I mentioned. By the way, the historical credentials of that creed are so strong that one of the few Jewish New Testament scholars, Pinchas Lapid, said it may be taken as a statement of eyewitnesses. So you got the creed. You've got Paul. Paul, of course, said personally that he encountered the risen Christ and that's how he became he was Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor of Christians. He encounters Jesus risen, he becomes the apostle Paul. He becomes friends with Peter, James and John and some of the other disciples. And Paul says in First Corinthians, he says, whether it's I or they, this is what we preach. In other words, we're all saying we encountered the resurrected Jesus. Then third, we have Peter in the book of Acts, who gets up and says, this Jesus God raised from the dead, to which we're all witnesses. And 3,000 people said, we know you're telling the truth. What do we do? They repent, and the church is born. And then we have the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who I believe have historical credentials that give them incredible credibility. They are ancient biographies. But then we have two sources outside the Bible. This is fascinating. We have people who sat under the teachings of the eyewitnesses themselves. So, for instance, we have Clement. Clement was ordained by Peter himself, Peter the eyewitness. And he wrote a letter to the church in Corinth right there in the first century. And he said, why? I'm paraphrasing. But he said, basically, why did the apostles have such courage and such conviction that Jesus. Because of the resurrection. Cause it happened. Because they knew it happened. And then Polycarp. Polycarp was appointed by John himself to be the bishop at Smyrna. And Polycarp wrote a letter to the church in Philippi in which he mentions the resurrection no fewer than five times. And he says that the apostles did not value this present world because God had died for them. He'd opened the door to eternity. From them, Jesus returned from the dead and proved he is who he claimed to be. So. So these are. This is nine ancient sources. That's a lot.
- [27:59]
A
It's very powerful. But now, going back with you.
- [28:01]
B
Yeah.
- [28:02]
A
Your parents. What were your parents?
- [28:05]
B
Yeah, great question. My parents were Christians. They were members of a Lutheran church. But very interesting question. I had a very difficult relationship with my dad. My parents had three kids in a row. My dad was very involved with their lives. Loved it. And then they were done. And then many years passed and oops, my mom found herself pregnant with me. And I think that was the seed. In fact, my mom told me on her deathbed, because I asked her about it. He said, yeah, it was not happy news when your dad learned that I was pregnant. And so I had a very difficult. He was kind of done with it. He wanted to go off and play golf and do all this stuff. He did the parent thing. He was kind of done. And oops. Now this comes along later. And I was.
- [28:50]
A
The age difference between the young, the
- [28:52]
B
youngest Oldest of you versus I think it's six years. Six years, yeah.
- [28:56]
A
And then the oldest.
- [28:57]
B
Well, the old.
- [28:58]
A
The.
- [28:59]
B
Let's see, the oldest would be 10 years.
- [29:01]
A
10 years older than you.
- [29:02]
B
Yeah, got it. And so. But here's what's interesting. Studies have been done into the great atheists of history. So there's a guy who's a professor at New York University. He did this PhD project. He looked at the famous atheists of history. Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche, Freud, Voltaire, Wells, Feuerbach, o'. Hare. He looked at every single one of them had a father who died when they were young, who would divorce their mother when they were young, or with whom they had a very difficult relationship. And Freud pointed out, the implication is if your earthly father has hurt you or disappointed you in some way, you don't want to know anything about a heavenly father. He's only going to be worse. So you have this barrier between you and God. You have excuses not to find God.
- [29:48]
A
So it was divorced, mother died young. What was the third one?
- [29:52]
B
Or terrible relationship? Very difficult relationship.
- [29:55]
A
So you didn't have a relationship with your dad?
- [29:57]
B
I had a relationship, but it was very, very difficult. I remember he told me on the eve of my high school graduation, he looked at me, we had a big argument, as usual, and he looked at me and said, I don't have enough love for you to fill my little finger.
- [30:08]
A
Stop it. Yeah, stop it.
- [30:09]
B
So it was a very difficult.
- [30:12]
A
Now mom and dad are still together?
- [30:14]
B
Yeah, they're deceased now, but at the
- [30:16]
A
time they were married.
- [30:17]
B
That's right.
- [30:17]
A
He said this to you while they're married?
- [30:19]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [30:21]
A
What caused him to make a statement like that?
- [30:23]
B
Well, I was a rebellious kid. I pushed all his buttons, you know, I mean, I went out and did something he specifically told me not to do. Buy a motorcycle behind his back. I was into motorcycles.
- [30:34]
A
How old were you?
- [30:35]
B
I was 18.
- [30:36]
A
You bought the bike?
- [30:37]
B
Yes, yes. 650 Triumph Bonneville. And he found out that I did it behind his back. And of course he was mad I was pushing his buttons. I take a lot of responsibility for the difficulty in our relationship, but it was a problem. And so, interestingly, CS Lewis has a solution for this, because some of your listeners may say, yeah, maybe this explains, my friend, why they are so antagonistic toward the idea of God because their dad divorced their mother when they were young or whatever. CS Lewis had a solution. He said, if this is the case in someone. So I say to them, could you imagine, just imagine for a minute, what would the perfect God, the perfect father. Be like, just imagine. Oh well, the perfect father would be loving. He'd be kind. He'd be an encourager. He'd be your biggest cheerleader. He'd beat you up in his lap and hug you. That is a picture of your heavenly father. He's not just a magnified version of your earthly father who disappointed you or hurt you. He is otherworldly. He is different. He is the perfect father. And I found that to be very helpful.
- [31:43]
A
What's your fondest memory of you and your father when you were a kid? Fondest memory?
- [31:49]
B
Just a short break with something useful. Spring, summer or fall, there's always yard work to do. TikTok shows quick, easy gardening ideas you can use today. No experience needed. Download TikTok now. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone. Paying Big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway, give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com you know, we did take a car trip once. I was a teenager at the time. Took a car trip from Chicago to Phoenix, Arizona to deliver a car for my brother who was a student at Arizona State. And that was kind of nice. I learned some things from my dad on that trip that he'd never talked about before. But we just, it was just a very cold relationship. And again, I take a lot of the blame.
- [33:00]
A
Did you ever rekindle that relationship or.
- [33:02]
B
He died before I was able to reconcile. I. Yeah, and it's a, you know, it was funny because I was at his the wake for my dad. And these men began to come up to me and they would say, are you Lee? And I said, yeah. He said, oh, your dad was so proud of you. Oh, man. Every time you had a front page byline in the Chicago Tribune, he would show it to everybody. And when you got promoted to Lee, legal editor, he cut out that picture of you in the paper and showed it to everybody. He was so proud of you. And I was just in tears because it's like I wish he told me so. Yeah, that's hard. It's hard. So I believe in his own way, he did love me. But he had his Own barriers there, too.
- [33:53]
A
What did mom say? Was mom like, no, Lee, he loves you.
- [33:57]
B
Yeah. She was always the encourager and she was the one that would try to patch up the relationship.
- [34:01]
A
What was his name?
- [34:02]
B
Walter.
- [34:03]
A
Walter, yeah. Do you have an older brother?
- [34:05]
B
Yeah, two older brothers. One who died of COVID and another older brother. Yeah.
- [34:09]
A
Any one of them. Sorry to hear that with the COVID situation. And was one of them named Walter or.
- [34:14]
B
No, no, his middle name. John. Walter. Yeah. Yeah.
- [34:17]
A
It's interesting because for me, I was an atheist because of, you know, the war in Iran. I'm like, there's no way in the world, if God loves us, he's going to let innocent people die. Just keep me away. So it was a very different situation, but yes. So did you later on feel like, was there a older man who played a role of a father in your life, like a living. Did somebody play the role of that where you're like, you know what? That's an example of somebody I want to be like. Or no. Was it vertical?
- [34:50]
B
It was vertical.
- [34:51]
A
It was vertical. Yeah.
- [34:52]
B
Got it. I wish I'd encountered someone like that. I have people in my life today who are like that for me. And now that I'm a Christian and I have good friends who I see model fatherhood and I see model a strong, devoted Christian life. And it's important to have those kind of people in your life. My friend Mark Middleburg and I, we have no secrets from each other. We're best buddies since 1987 and that I learned more from him than anybody else.
- [35:19]
A
Very cool. So then later on you go and I think you join church in Chicago, right? Right outside of Chicago.
- [35:27]
B
Yeah. I took a 60% pay cut and joined the staff of a church, never intending to write any books. That wasn't my. I'd written one book as an atheist. Do you remember? Of course, you're much younger than I am, but do you remember the Ford Pinto controversy? Of course. I wrote a lot of the. Broke a lot of the news. In that case, stop. Yeah.
- [35:45]
A
And I wrote that was massive.
- [35:46]
B
Yeah.
- [35:46]
A
Oh, Milton Friedman would talk about that. You remember the.
- [35:49]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [35:49]
A
So did you see Milton Friedman's argument on it with Michael Moore on that?
- [35:53]
B
I don't think I saw that. But what I did, I got a hold of secret Ford documents that showed that they knew that the Pinto would blow up when hit from behind in a low to moderate impact collision, but they didn't want to spend the money, which would have been what, five bucks a car to. According to millions of cars, to upgrade it, to protect it, and so forth. So I actually broke a lot of those. I got a tip Ford was indicted for charges of reckless homicide because three innocent girls were burned to death in a Ford Pinto. Their car was rear ended by a Chevy van and they burned to death. And so Ford was charged with homicide for designing a car that was unreasonably dangerous. So I'm legal editor of the Tribune. I get a tip one day and the caller said, I knew who. He said, hey, go check the public file in the Ford case. Okay. So I went to Winnemac, Indiana, where the case was being held, and I looked up in the file, there's a thing in law called a motion in limine, which means we don't want this to come before the jury, so let's litigate it before the trial. So they had that motion and they attached to it a bunch of secret for documents that they didn't want the jury to see, but they're attached to this. This motion. So I'm photocopying them. I'm just copying all these secret documents. And a Ford lawyer walked in and saw me in the courthouse and said, what are you doing? Nothing. Nothing. He runs into the judge and gets an order sealing the case. Wow. So I was the only reporter that had all these secret documents. So I did a series of articles that were headlines all over the country. And I ended up writing a book called Reckless Homicide.
- [37:36]
A
I saw that right now, The Reckless Homicide, 1980.
- [37:38]
B
Yeah. I actually reproduced the documents in the book.
- [37:41]
A
Have you ever seen a movie, the Genius? What's it called? Rob, can you find the movie that. The Flash of Genius. Have you seen a movie, the Flash of Genius?
- [37:53]
B
No.
- [37:54]
A
You have to watch the movie Flash of Genius. So this movie, if you go to the Wikipedia, so I can kind of give the idea what it's about.
- [38:00]
B
Yeah.
- [38:01]
A
This is the inventor of the inter. The wiper. Windshield wiper. The Intermittent Wiper.
- [38:06]
B
Yeah.
- [38:07]
A
And he goes against Ford Motor Company. He invents it, he shows it to them. They tell him, they say, this is nothing. He didn't invent anything. Then they don't give him the patent. He loses his wife, wife takes the kids.
- [38:19]
B
Wow.
- [38:19]
A
Stubbornly he ends up winning this case. I think you would enjoy this.
- [38:22]
B
Yeah. Oh, that sounds. I gotta watch that.
- [38:24]
A
You would enjoy that movie.
- [38:25]
B
Sounds great.
- [38:26]
A
So is the first church you go, is that the Willow Creek?
- [38:28]
B
Yes.
- [38:29]
A
So you go there. So who's the senior pastor when you go there?
- [38:31]
B
Bill Hybel.
- [38:32]
A
It is Bill Hybel.
- [38:33]
B
Yes.
- [38:33]
A
So at the time. So this is 80s.
- [38:35]
B
Yeah. It was the second largest church in the country at the time.
- [38:38]
A
Yeah. I mean, Bill Hybels is a guy that I've studied very closely because he wrote that one thing, 10 different styles of leadership.
- [38:45]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [38:46]
A
And he would talk about the re engineering leader, the directional leader, the entrepreneurial leader, the visionary leader, you know, the motivational leader. He was a very good teacher.
- [38:56]
B
Excellent. Very excellent.
- [38:57]
A
How much time did you spend with him?
- [38:59]
B
Oh, a lot of time. I mean, I was on the management team of the church ultimately, and he led that management team as a senior pastor. And so I was quite involved with him. He was instrumental in me coming to Faith because my wife started taking me to that church even when I was an atheist. When I walked into that church on January 20th of 1980 as an atheist and I heard the message of Jesus for the first time, that I understood it from Bill Hybels. And that's what started me on my journey to see if I could disprove it. And so I owe a lot to Bill.
- [39:29]
A
What was special about the way he built his church into the second largest.
- [39:32]
B
Well, you know, you mentioned some leadership things. He has a leadership gift. He was a visionary leader, but a practical leader as well. He was able to take what started out as a bunch of teenagers, a student ministry at a little church in Park Ridge, Illinois, and ultimately build it into the second largest church in America.
- [39:52]
A
Who was the first at the time? Who was it?
- [39:55]
B
It was a church in South Bend in Hammond, Indiana.
- [39:58]
A
Interesting.
- [39:59]
B
Yeah, yeah. Second Baptist Church, I think, in Hammond, Indiana.
- [40:02]
A
So he built the second largest church.
- [40:03]
B
Yeah.
- [40:04]
A
And he's, you know, I think John Maxwell left the church to go into leadership, but Bill never did. Right. Bill stayed as a pastor.
- [40:13]
B
Bill stayed. He was best friends with John. Right.
- [40:15]
A
I mean, both of them are very good at what they did. So then, you know, leads to. And I know in the book Case for Church, I don't know what point it was you made, but you talked about what happens when there's a fallen out in the church. And Bill's was when there was a falling out and a mass exodus. And that seems to be, you know, it. It happened locally here as well, at a church that I go to that might, you know, down the street from here.
- [40:40]
B
Yeah.
- [40:41]
A
Where Billy Graham's grandson went through it as well. I don't know if you followed that story when it happened a couple miles away from here. It happened at Calvary Chapel here, down the street as well, where the pastor was. Stories Came out about him having a relationship with one of the members wives.
- [40:58]
B
Yeah.
- [40:58]
A
And then the other pastor at the other church was. He couldn't give up the party life. He was a good looking guy, very good speaker, Armenian guy. Both him and his brother still preaches and he's phenomenal at the way preach. I think his brother preaches at the Calvary here, but a lot of people have experienced it. Were you there when the church fell or you had already left?
- [41:18]
B
No, I left in the year 2000 to become a teaching pastor with Rick Warren at Saddleback Church.
- [41:22]
A
Oh, wow, you went to Saddleback.
- [41:24]
B
Yes, yes.
- [41:25]
A
Wow. Purpose Driven Life. That book sold 40 million. I don't know what it did, but Rick Warren, the green book, right? That was a book I read 40 days, I think it was. I didn't go through the 40. I read it all in like a couple days.
- [41:38]
B
Right, right.
- [41:38]
A
And I heard him preach once at a Billy Graham event at Pasadena. Yeah, November of 03. Rick Warren was there. Jack Hayford, which is a church my sister used to go to, was there. He was in Van Nuys, I believe.
- [41:50]
B
Yes, I knew Jack.
- [41:51]
A
And then Billy Graham preached three out of. He preached every day. I went three out of the four days. One of these, I had a business event and then eventually, I think in Pasadena they gave the day to Billy Graham when he preached. But Rick Warren does there as well. So you leave Willow Creek, you go to San Diego to be with Rick Warren. When you hear about the stories, I'm sure you still have connections and relationships there. How big was the direct impact to the church? Because I read stories about how it was huge.
- [42:18]
B
I mean, it broke my heart. He's a friend. I mean, he broke my heart. I mean, if you ask me, who are the five people in Christendom, leaders in Christendom who are least likely to fall? Bill would be one of them. I mean, he was a man of. As far as the Bill Hybels I knew was a man of integrity, a man of principle, a man of faith, a man of great leadership ability. He gave me opportunities. You know, the joke was, here I am, I was an atheist. I come to faith and I leave all that behind, take a 60% pay cut and I join his staff. As my role was to oversee 750 volunteers in a very serious. I had no aspirations to preach, to write books, any of that. In a typical church. I would have risen to become chief usher. But he gave me opportunities. He saw something in me and said, you know, I think maybe God's Given you a gift to communicate, to preach. And honestly, I thought he had, but I thought, I'm not going to say anything because there's too much of a risk of self promotion. So if God is calling me to preach, to teach, to write books, he'll make it happen. I'm not going to say anything. And one day he knocked on my door and came in and said, you know, the elders were praying and we believe God's given you a gift and I want to help you develop it. He helped develop me to preach and to write. And so I owe a lot to Bill. And when I left and I heard these stories about his inappropriate relationships and so forth, the first reaction I have, it broke my heart and it almost broke the church. I mean, it was a very difficult time for the church. A lot of people left the church, they got some new leadership in there. It's doing great now. But I mean, that's a horrible thing to have a leader of a church fall. It hurts the faith of people who say maybe inappropriately so because we're all sinners, we all mess up, we all have flaws and so forth. We put sometimes preachers on pedestals and Maybe they don't 100% deserve to be on, but when one of them falls, it can be devastating to people's faith. That's what breaks my heart, especially because I. My goal in life is to drag as many people to heaven with me as I can. And this frustrates that because of the number of people who were hurt personally by that.
- [44:58]
A
Yeah, but it's not a new thing.
- [45:02]
B
No, it's not a new thing.
- [45:03]
A
I used to go to a church in LA called Los Angeles Church of Christ, and their pastor eventually came out and there was a massive scandal with that as well. But he came out and he said, look, because their thing was, it wasn't about women with him. It was more, the only way go to heaven is through our church. No other church, because we're the right. Win all this other stuff. But you can go back and hear stories with, you know, Jimmy Swagger. That was the original one.
- [45:29]
B
Yeah.
- [45:31]
A
You hear the Jim Baker story, the Ted Haggard, which was a story with a male escort. And a lot of them, even some of them right now that you look at, the one locally was Bob McCoy and recently was, I think. Is it John Morris? He wrote a very good book. Is that his name? From Dallas?
- [45:46]
B
Can you look up from Dallas? Dallas, Not John Moore?
- [45:48]
A
No, it's not. It's a Morris, Richard Morris. Robert. Robert Morris is what it Is Robert Morris. And he came out and things that came back and he accepted it, which
- [46:00]
B
was a great church. I have friends who went to that church. They loved.
- [46:03]
A
They loved the church.
- [46:04]
B
Great church. And then to have that happen, it's like you gotta, you know, you have to tell people. Yeah, it's a tragedy and. And yet it should not destroy your faith.
- [46:14]
A
So for me, I go back and I see, okay, so I'm going to Bible study with this guy Mano, and he tells me, says, hey, your relationship is a vertical relationship, not a horizontal relationship. So in your book, the Case for Church, you talk about. One of the points you make in the book, which I love, is that scandals don't invalidate the truth. Right. Scandals don't invalidate the truth because, you know, these are human beings, they're going to fall, they're going to make mistakes. But what is your position of what these men who come in because women are attracted to what a pastor who builds a very big church. The way you do it is you're either very good at one on one, but typically you're very good in one in thousand.
- [47:04]
B
Yeah, right, right.
- [47:06]
A
Very good with one in thousand. So to be good in one in thousand, you're very good, persuaded, you're charming, you're charismatic, you're convincing.
- [47:12]
B
Yeah.
- [47:13]
A
The conviction, you're like, women want a man, that these are all attractive qualities. Right. Can be that get into play. So, you know, one, as the attendee, how should an attendee look at that? As devastating as it is.
- [47:29]
B
Yeah.
- [47:29]
A
And not cause them to lose faith in a man upstairs.
- [47:32]
B
Yeah.
- [47:32]
A
And two, what can senior pastors do to protect themselves against this common pattern that happens to many great men in history? It isn't just. It's unfortunate when we're mentioning their names, where I can go a list of history.
- [47:46]
B
Sure.
- [47:46]
A
You know, and we have thousands of names that we can give with this.
- [47:49]
B
How do you.
- [47:49]
A
How do you.
- [47:50]
B
Well, I think first of all, for those who are quote unquote, victims in the sense that they're part of a church, that pastor falls and how do they not lose their faith? I think number one is our faith is not in the pastor. Our faith is in Jesus. Our faith is in God. And I mentioned to you earlier the reasons why I became convinced that Jesus is who he claimed to be through his resurrection from the dead. Historical data. I go back to that. I go back to that. Yes, there are men of God who fall and who sin and who forfeit their pulpit because of immorality. But I go back to the evidence. I go back to the how do I know? How do I know Christianity is true? I look at the four E's and say, yeah, Jesus did return from the dead. He did prove he's the son of God. That has nothing to do with Bill Hybels. You know, so I want to set that boundary and say I want to rely on, you know, it's called in Christian world, apologetics, defense of the faith, reasons to believe. In terms of the pastors, there's gotta be accountability. There's gotta be. You know, I see a lot of churches where the elders of the church are employees of the church. They're. Well, you can't hold the senior pastor accountable if he's your boss, right?
- [49:04]
A
So you're getting paid, you got a salary. So your incentive is to protect them.
- [49:08]
B
Exactly. So you know, who are the elders of the church? How are they chosen? And what access do they have to the pastor? Is a pastor willing to open up his life? Are there people who he discloses to, like my friend Mark? You know, I mean, we each. That's our accountable relationship as followers of Jesus. We wanna hold each other accountable. And if Mark ever senses that I'm kind of going astray, he'll pull me aside. And if he doesn't hit me across the face, I know he's gonna tell me, hey, Strobel, listen, What you did, that's inappropriate. You need to do. You know, so there's gotta be that kind of accountability. Iron sharpens iron. The Bible says.
- [49:50]
A
Yeah. Are you. I'm assuming you're familiar with the Modesto Manifesto that Billy Graham came up with with his crew?
- [49:57]
B
Yeah.
- [49:58]
A
What do you think about the Modesto Manifesto?
- [50:00]
B
Is this where you are never in the presence of a woman?
- [50:03]
A
That's right. Yeah.
- [50:03]
B
Yeah. You know what?
- [50:05]
A
1948, he sat down and he says, hey, guys, it seems like he knew.
- [50:09]
B
And look what happened to Billy Graham. He lived a life of authenticity. And until the end, it's not easy. It's not easy. And I wonder, is there a question, cause and effect there.
- [50:18]
A
They had a rule of three, right. Cuz he told. He tells a story, I believe, one time where it's like he's in a room by himself, a real attractive girl comes in. I don't know if this is. It could have been a different pastor. Fact, Rob. Fact check me on this. If he told the story and he runs out immediately.
- [50:34]
B
Yeah.
- [50:34]
A
Just like I can't be in. So they. They would travel in threes.
- [50:38]
B
Yeah.
- [50:38]
A
Is what he would talk about, because he Would break down. The. The fall was based on four things that would cause a church to fall. One was women, one was finances, because you're not. One was like, it's getting to your head. And he had four things that he would talk about. But.
- [50:54]
B
Well, I personally travel with my wife wherever I go. She's here on this trip to Fort Lauderdale and she comes with me whenever I travel, mainly because we're best friends and known each other since we were 14. So we're always together. And that's a blessing to me to have someone like that. She's not like she's a bodyguard or she's screening things, but she's there and I'm glad she's there. I enjoy her being there. But she also. That becomes a guard against any inappropriate actions that I might otherwise try to make.
- [51:26]
A
Yeah, it's, it's.
- [51:28]
B
We're all susceptible, I mean, temptations of, you know, Satan is very clever and he will tempt us in ways that we don't see coming. We got to be, you know, the Bible talks about, put on the full armor of God.
- [51:42]
A
You can't do it alone, though. I mean, it's the one thing that's for sure. You can't do it alone.
- [51:46]
B
That's right.
- [51:46]
A
When you're going through it alone, it's going to be. It's going to challenge you in a big way. So your evolution of, you know, going from the atheist to a, you know, Christian.
- [51:57]
B
Yeah.
- [51:57]
A
What role did CS Lewis play, you know, with Mere Christianity or some of his other writings that he had? What role did he play?
- [52:05]
B
He played a big role. I mean, Mere Christianity is a classic and I recommend anybody read that, whether a believer or not a believer. Just someone who's checking out the faith. It's just a great, great book. C.S. lewis wrote some wonderful, wonderful stuff. So I enjoyed him, you know, on a popular level. Josh McDowell. Remember Josh? He's a friend now, and his son, Sean McDowell is a fantastic. He's a professor at Biola University and my son is a professor there. He has a PhD in faith. He's a Jonathan Edwards Scholar and he's a. Teaches spiritual formation at their seminary. But Josh wrote some popular level books. There's a book written by a guy. Gosh, what was his name? Oh, there's several books. The Agnostic who Dared to Search. That was an interesting book. Peter Stoner.
- [52:58]
A
Peter Stoner, great name.
- [53:00]
B
Yeah. Peter Stoner sounds like an atheist name, doesn't it?
- [53:03]
A
And he was Peter Stoner.
- [53:05]
B
That's right. He was an atheist. In England and became a Christian after he investigated the evidence for the resurrection. And I read that book. There was a famous guy who made Harvard Law School what it is, which is the second greatest law school after Yale, but back in the 1800s, who investigated faith and became a believer and wrote a wonderful book on the reliability of the Gospels. There's a lot of great stuff out there.
- [53:28]
A
Josh McDowell. Did he, Josh McDowell, write a book called Tolerance?
- [53:32]
B
No, he wrote a book called the Evidence and Demands a Verdict. And more than a carpenter on a real popular level, Great guy, Still alive. And Sean, as I say, his son is doing great work. He has a wonderful podcast that he does. So he's carrying on. There's some. There's some wonderful.
- [53:49]
A
There's a bunch of them. One of them, Wayne Cordero. One day, my in.
- [53:53]
B
Oh, Wayne's a great guy. I used to speak at his church. Yeah, Wayne from Hawaii. Yes, yes.
- [53:59]
A
My pastor brings me in. He says, I want to have breakfast with you. Pastor Dudley Rutherford. I don't know if you know who he is. He's in LA, big church, 20 plus thousand members. And he introduces me to one of Wayne's book called Leading on Empty. I think it's called Leading On Empty. It says what men go through when they're in their 40s. You know, it's kind of like, man, I'm carrying the weight. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. You kind of need to go and to re. Energize yourself for the next phase. Because sometimes at that age, if you go through that phase by yourself, you could do something dumb. You could do something, you know, and I was. That was also a big book.
- [54:31]
B
Hi, I'm Lee Strobel, atheist turned Christian, author of several books including the Case for Christ and Seeing the Supernatural. You might have questions about faith, about how we know that Jesus is who we claim to be and that there really is a realm beyond what we can see and touch and put in a test tube. So I'd love to chat with you about that. Just go to Manect and then we can connect and talk about these matters of faith that are so important to our lives.
- [55:00]
A
But when it comes down to CS Lewis, for him to be the. He was more from the philosopher's side, right. That he went there. Chronicles of Narnia. He's written a lot of things that you would think, but he did talk about those three things. The argument that kind of got me, what role did that play where he says Jesus is either. What is it? The liar, the lunatic, or the Lord. Right.
- [55:21]
B
I would add a fourth one. A legend. He could have been a legend.
- [55:25]
A
I like that because you said that earlier.
- [55:26]
B
Yes, yes. And that's a popular objection these days. Oh, it was legendary.
- [55:30]
A
Over time, it gets bigger and bigger. And he was 8ft tall.
- [55:34]
B
And he was. So. Yeah. Is he a liar? Well, could have been. Could have been. Is he a legend? Or is he Lord or a lunatic? But he'd been crazy. I interviewed a psychologist about Jesus. Could he have been crazy? And he set me straight on that.
- [55:52]
A
What did he say?
- [55:52]
B
He said, no. He said, first of all, the teachings of Jesus. Ever read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, chapter five, the Beatitudes, the most brilliant insights into human nature. Just, these are not the words of a crazy guy. And besides which, the way in which we document his identity of being the Son of God is through the resurrection. And that's irrelevant. You know, his mental health is not relevant at the time of that. But so, yeah, you go through those options and you see that Jesus is who he claimed to be. That was my conclusion. It was not something I was seeking. I wanted to rescue my wife from this cult. But you know what? I'm from the old school of journalism. I can't speak about contemporary journalism. Back in my day, I got a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, which was the first and, I believe the best journalism school. And we were taught to try to tell both sides and be objective as possible. When I was an atheist at the Chicago Tribune, I was very pro abortion. As an atheist, I helped arrange an abortion for a young woman I knew as a friend at the University of Missouri who got pregnant. And she came to me and said, lee, what do I do? I'm pregnant. I said, don't worry about it. Abortion's legal in New York. I'll take care of it. We'll get the money together. I'll set it up so no babies in your way. You get rid of it. Wow. Yeah. So I. But you know what? Even though at that time I was very pro abortion, I covered a lot of court cases involving the abortion issue. It goes Supreme Court back and forth through those years. If you read any of my articles, you would not know where I stood. Because I was taught you tell both sides, you quote both sides, you present both arguments. That's my role as a journalist today. You get a lot of people, you say, why are you going to journalism? I want to change the world. No, that's not your job to change the world. Your job is to tell the truth. Is to tell both sides, report what's going on. Who does that today, accurately? Who does that today?
- [57:56]
A
Who do you go to? Like, is there any source you go to?
- [57:58]
B
You know what I do, I try to go to multiple sources, figuring I'm going to kind of reach a mean. That'll. So I like the Wall Street Journal. They're pretty good.
- [58:07]
A
Me, too. You know, it's my number one.
- [58:09]
B
Yeah, that's me. My number one. I bounce back and forth between on television, between CNN and Fox News. I'll listen a little here and a little there and try to catch something. I subscribe to the Washington Post and the New York Times not because I trust them, but because I want to know what they're saying. I don't trust them. I guess I don't trust them anymore. They have become advocates. They become people who are trying to promote a cause. And that's not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in somebody telling me what is going on. Give me both sides. Tell me the truth.
- [58:44]
A
Yeah, it's tough. I mean, listen, today it's not. It's not easy to sit there and, you know, see who to trust, what they're going to be saying. It's such a great time for propaganda and confusion. You know, they say the fog of war. It's like the fog of everything today.
- [58:59]
B
That's a very good point. You're absolutely right. It's the fog of everything. And it. You know, now, having been trained in journalism and law, I have some skills that I can kind of cut through some of. How do you do that, you know? Well, you know, it's because I was there. So I know how. If you want to. If you want to. If you want to tell a story, to present one side, I can pretty much spot it. You know what I mean? There was an article in the Denver newspaper recently or on television, and it was about transgenders in women's sports. And they interview this one guy who was very. He was a coach, and he was very in favor of having men in women's sports. And I thought, huh, that's interesting. I wonder who that guy really is. And as you dig down. Which was not disclosed at the time, when you dig down, you find out, oh, he's part of an advocacy group that promotes transgenders involved in women's sports.
- [59:55]
A
That's not hard to. So you go a little bit deeper to see what the writer is about, what their background is about.
- [60:00]
B
Yeah, you look at who the writer is. You look at. Are they telling you something that Your antenna go up and say, wait a second. That's kind of unusual that a coach would say, well, I have no problem with men coming into my women's sports and playing. Really? Who is this guy? So, you know, you try to discern. You try to cut through the stuff. It's not always successful.
- [60:20]
A
Did you see the story about this NBA player, Jaden Ivey? Did you see this story in the last couple days?
- [60:26]
B
No.
- [60:26]
A
So Jaden Ivey is this. I'll let you Rob if you want to play this clip. He plays for the Chicago Bulls. He used to be with the Pistons. He was the backcourt and the Pistons. Pretty strong guy. He had a good season last year. 17 points, four assists, four rebounds. Had a bad injury, goes to the Bulls, you know, becomes a Christian, even more devout. He starts openly talking about it, and he makes this video just a couple days ago.
- [60:52]
B
Yeah.
- [60:52]
A
And shares this about lgbtq, the fact that NBA supports it. The next day, the Bulls drop and, Rob, if you want to play this clip, go for it. The world can proclaim lgbtq,
- [61:10]
B
Right?
- [61:11]
A
They have. They have. They proclaim Pride Month in the NBA. They proclaim it. They. They show it to the world. They say, come, come, come join us for Pride for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness. They proclaim it. They proclaim it on the billboards. They proclaim it in the streets. Unrighteousness. So how is it that one can't speak righteousness? How is it one that. How are they to say that, man, this man is crazy. Because of this, he gets fired. The Bulls fired.
- [62:04]
B
I had not heard that. That is unbelievable. You know, in law school, my specialty was First Amendment law. I used to teach First Amendment law at Roosevelt University. First Amendment is foundational in our nation. Absolutely foundational. And what are we seeing? We're seeing censorship, whether it's overt or covert. We're seeing people whose opinions like his. That's a legitimate opinion to have as a follower of Jesus, that this is not biblical and so forth. He should be allowed to express that without consequence in this country. Not anymore. There's these attacks on people. I've been working with the FBI for the last couple of weeks because someone's trying to kill me because of the stands I take. And, yeah, there was a credible threat on my life. And so we've been working together, and I think the time has passed. I think it's over.
- [62:58]
A
Do you know who the individual is?
- [62:59]
B
No. They never caught him. But they provided protection for me at various events because the threat was they were Going to shoot me at my next speaking event.
- [63:08]
A
Oh, they made it clear.
- [63:09]
B
Oh, yeah, made it clear.
- [63:09]
A
Was that an email? Was it an.
- [63:11]
B
It was a message through my website. Unfortunately, my website is pretty rudimentary and I don't. I can't capture. I don't capture the whole IP address because I'm cheap and I didn't want to spend the money on a nice website. And so they tracked them down a little bit, but they've not identified them. But I got extra security when I was speaking. But I mean, what am I saying? What am I saying? Am I saying something outrageous? No, I'm saying the evidence points toward Jesus being the unique son of God. Here's what I said that I think got me in trouble. The Quran. You have the Quran and you have the Bible. I read the Quran. I read the Quran when I was a spiritual seeker. I want to know, maybe Islam is the way. And I saw three things in there that contradict Christianity very clearly. Number one, it says in Surah 4, 157, Jesus didn't die on the cross. Well, if he didn't die on the cross, there's no resurrection. Secondly, the Quran says that no one can bear the sins of another. Well, that takes away the atonement, which is the foundation of Christianity. And third, it says God does not have a son. So, okay, they're allowed to believe that and proclaim that and preach that. But if those three things are true, the Bible is false. So either both books are false or one of them is true. But they cannot both be true at the same time. That's all I said. That, I think, triggered this whole thing.
- [64:31]
A
And so the individual that came to you, did they know if he was Muslim or not?
- [64:35]
B
They don't know for a fact, but it was right after I expressed this on a podcast.
- [64:38]
A
I got it.
- [64:39]
B
Yeah. Who knows? It could have been an atheist. They get mad that I left the.
- [64:42]
A
Yeah. And I want to go to that. It's a perfect transition into that. But just to get past this.
- [64:47]
B
Yeah.
- [64:47]
A
The criticism for this story about Jaden Ivey is that there's another NBA player called Kevin Porter. Now Kevin Porter gets charged with assaulting a girl. Strangulation, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. Rob, can you fact check? Yeah. Strangulation.
- [65:06]
B
Wow.
- [65:06]
A
And he pleaded guilty. Just pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault. And when he did this, this was just two years ago, the NBA just gave him a four game suspension.
- [65:16]
B
Four games.
- [65:17]
A
That's it. The NBA game of four game suspension. And this other guy he's questioning why. Yeah, just raising month and he gets five. So this is where the criticism comes and this is why I believe the NBA is the worst product.
- [65:30]
B
Oh, my goodness.
- [65:31]
A
Out of all the four sports that
- [65:32]
B
we have, you know, what have we got in England these days? I mean, you talk about the law now. They don't have a first Amendment. They don't have a first amendment in England. It's important to understand.
- [65:40]
A
They claim they do. They definitely do. You and I both know they don't.
- [65:43]
B
That's right. And it is dangerous now to have an opinion that violates the standard viewpoint of the culture. It's just unbelievable to me where that nation has gone and there's places in Europe that are similar.
- [65:59]
A
So I want to read this to you. I want to read some stats to you now. I wonder how you're going to answer this. 10 countries where Christianity is declining. Australia has the largest drop of any country studied. It went from 67.1% in 2010 to 10 years later, 46.8%. This is a 20 point decline, Lee, in only 10 years and it's even lower today. UK went from 62.4% during that same period to 49.4, losing its Christian majority. Church of England closing 20 churches per year. France Catholic share fell from 81% in 1986 to 47%. Almost a 40% decline from 86 to 2020. Lost Christian majority among the eight countries projected to lose Christian majority by 2050. Uruguay shifted to a majority unaffiliated. 52 nones versus 44 Christian used to be 61% Christian in 2010. Netherlands transitioned to a religiously unaffiliated majority by 2020. Roman Catholics went from 39% in 1971 to 23%. Average of eight churches closing every year. US 78.3 to 64%. 14% decline during the same period. Canada 67 to 53. Chile 86 to 68, almost 20%. Germany, 48% Christian in 2024. Fewer than half belong to two large churches. New Zealand 51% unaffiliated. South Korea, no clear religious majority in 41 countries. The Christian share changed by 5 plus percentage points from 2010 to 2020. And 40 of those 41, the change was a decline. Only one was a positive. The sole exception was Mozambique. That's increased. That was the only one out of all of them. Why is this happening? Why is the decline happening across the world?
- [67:52]
B
I think there's a lot of explanations for that, a lot of factors that go into that number one I don't trust the stats because back when, in 1966, when I met my wife, we were 14 years old, 91% of Americans would say they're Christians. Do you think we were a nation that reflected that back then? I don't think so.
- [68:15]
A
What do you mean by reflected that?
- [68:17]
B
Like, yeah, did we live as if we're 91% followers of Jesus Christ?
- [68:22]
A
No.
- [68:24]
B
So people will claim in the past it was a. If you're a business guy and you wanted a bunch of clients, you know, you want to go to a big church in your community and become a member of that church and so forth, so you have an incentive to present yourself as being a Christian. Are you truly born again? Are you truly have a relationship with God?
- [68:44]
A
I think those are two different things though, right? To me to say, you know, at that time, you know, there wasn't social media, there wasn't the accessibility of.
- [68:51]
B
And those are. Those are other factors.
- [68:53]
A
There was a Billy Graham. Have a massive. Billy Graham would be on Johnny Carson. He was on the Woody Allen Show. He would go. So at least they would still invite. Nowadays, you know, when's the last time you saw, you know, Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel, bring a Charlie Kirk or bring a. Any of these guys. The late, great Charlie Kirk, they don't do that. So we were living in a different era. So we were kind of like, we're a Christian nation. So maybe TV social media changed.
- [69:17]
B
We're a Christian nation, but are we Christians? Are we truly born again? Have we received Jesus as our forgiver and leader?
- [69:26]
A
That's really born again, though. It's a very small percentage. Right.
- [69:29]
B
But those are the true Christians.
- [69:30]
A
I agree.
- [69:31]
B
And so I think you're right. All these factors, social media, the mass media and so forth, those are all factors. I mean, I remember when Billy Graham was on the Johnny Carson show.
- [69:42]
A
That's right.
- [69:43]
B
I mean, are you kidding me?
- [69:43]
A
Great show.
- [69:44]
B
Could you imagine Franklin Graham being on Jimmy Kimmel? I don't think so. Yeah, so, yeah, so we did have those positive influences. We have a rise in Islam in some places that has created a culture where it's uncomfortable for people to publicly defend their faith.
- [70:01]
A
Just to give you that number during that same period, 2010 to 2020, fastest growing major religion, plus 347 million is Muslim. Now 25.6% of the world versus Christians, 28.8 projected to be the majority by 2050 is what they're looking at.
- [70:17]
B
And you look at the birth rate among Muslims versus the birth rate among evangelical Christians. It's night and day. So there are various factors that are involved. However, I see pockets of good news. I see outbreaks where God is doing amazing things among young people in our country. The recent statistics show that young people are reading the Bible more than previous generations.
- [70:43]
A
You're right. Rob, can you pull up that Gen Z stat? You're absolutely right.
- [70:46]
B
It's just amazing. Yeah. And so I.
- [70:48]
A
And you saw what happened that Connor
- [70:50]
B
sent Rob in Asbury, at Asbury College and Seminary, where you had an outbreak of the Holy Spirit. You had people coming to faith right and left. I see some positive things going on,
- [71:01]
A
but, you know, I want to stay on this thing. I want to, I want to push you, challenge you a little bit, go a little bit deeper. Because I think what people want to know is I get all the positive and we're going to go to it because the next thing I'm going to show is where my enthusiasm comes for Gen Z, specifically their level of interest in wanting to become Christians, wanting to learn about the Bible, you know, and we see that. But the question I want to go to is these countries. Australia was a Christian majority. UK was a Christian majority. France was, Uruguay was. Netherlands was Canada. A lot of these countries were. What did the leaders, what did that country do? What did they look away? What did they do? For them to all of a sudden be like, oh, let's just be tolerant, it's okay.
- [71:44]
B
I'll give you an example, please. The Church of England, which is totally woke and has become soft on the gospel, has become just. In many people's view, it's kind of a theological joke. And that's a state, State run church. I think state run churches are a mistake. That's not how the church ought to be flourishing. But that's one example that I think is influencing England. But again, I like to, you know, the factors that would encourage someone today to be an outspoken Christian are not what they were back in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Back then it was socially acceptable to be a Christian. Nowadays, you may run into some professional headwinds. If you're an outspoken Christian, depending on where you work and what you do, it may not be the smartest thing to.
- [72:42]
A
They may kill you. Charlie Kirk was the modern day Billy Graham meets who was the big Rush Limbaugh. I've always said, Charlie's the combination of Rush and Billy and they killed him. They killed him for it.
- [72:54]
B
That's right. So there's all these negative headwinds that are. And I think it's a pruning. Process where the people today who are proclaiming that they're followers of Jesus probably really are followers of Jesus. You know, George Barna, who does a lot of surveys and so forth, did a study. One he came up with five questions to try to determine, is someone a legitimate Christian? Five theological questions. Do you agree? This, this, this, this. And we can't tell them God knows a heart. But five questions to try to discern. Then he went to various denominations to try to figure out how many people in that church meet those five criteria and are true Christians.
- [73:32]
A
What's his outcome? What's he trying to solve for?
- [73:34]
B
He's trying to figure out, you may have a thousand people at church, how many are really Christians. And so he went to Baptist churches. You know what he found out?
- [73:41]
A
What's that?
- [73:42]
B
About 29%. That's my recollection. It was like 29%.
- [73:46]
A
Can you pull this up, Rob? Baptist, 29% from tracking.
- [73:49]
B
Yep. Catholic, about the same. Not much different. I can't remember the other. This came out a number of years ago, so I can't remember all the other ones. But my point is he was trying to get beyond what people say versus who they are. The incentive to be a Christian today is not what it used to be. You know, I'm getting death threats. You know, who am I?
- [74:13]
A
I'm just the risk of being a Christian today.
- [74:15]
B
Yeah.
- [74:16]
A
Versus what it was back then. You were safer back then.
- [74:18]
B
That's right. It was more popular.
- [74:21]
A
Again, the question becomes, Lee, why? What changed?
- [74:24]
B
I think it's a social media. I think it's mass media. As you said, a guy like Billy Graham's not going to get the exposure today that he got back in the 60s. I think it's in many ways the rise of Islam and a squelching of Christian beliefs, people expressing them. Well, look at this, this reporter that, or this NBA player you mentioned who lost his opportunity because he was outspoken saying something that an average Christian would probably agree with, that there's an unrighteousness to certain behaviors that culture says are fine and we ought to celebrate and be prideful of. So there's a squelching of Christian belief in that way that I think makes it uncomfortable for some people to say, oh yeah, I'm a Christian, because now all of a sudden you go, oh, well, you don't believe in choice, you don't believe in abortion as being opportunity. It's women's health issue. You want to come out against that, really, you know, and you're likely to get challenged Today, where you wouldn't be challenged back in the 60s, you'd be celebrated. I mean, that was. Everybody claimed to be a Christian, regardless of how many truly were.
- [75:41]
A
Yeah, it's interesting when you see that now while we're talking over here collectively with a couple of my teammates, conversation came about a barrier to entry. Because, you know, sometimes, you know, different denominations or sects will say, well, let me tell you, it's very hard to be a Catholic. You know, try out, you know, the whole nine months, starts in September and then you have to do this and you have to be committed to do this to be a Catholic. You can't just come and become a Catholic overnight. Yeah, right. Or if you want to be a Jew, it's not like Jews are going around saying, just accept, you know, and you're going to be fine. Based on the Talmud, the. No, it's going to take a year to two years to be a Jew, you know, to become a Muslim second. To become a non denominational Christian second. What do you say to people that, you know, make the argument of the barrier to entry? You've made it so easy to become a non denominational Christian that people are actually not valuing it versus the reason why 2025 Catholic Church grew so much and had a very big growth year and they're expecting to have even a bigger year this year is they don't just allow you to join it, you have to do certain things to be part of that church. What do you say to that?
- [76:51]
B
Well, certainly in the earliest days of Christianity, before a person was baptized, they would catechism, go through a catechism with them. In a sense, they would educate them, what is the faith, discipleship, things like that. And you know, I think where the American church has fallen down is in the area of discipleship, in the area of people understanding what it really entails to be a follower of Jesus. But having said that, I certainly don't want to add to what the Bible says in terms of what it takes to become a true follower of Jesus. You know, The Bible is 700,000 words plus. It's a big book, it's 66 books. It can be very complicated to go through and to try to figure out, you know, exactly what's the central message. I like to, I say, you know what, give me 21 words. One verse to me sums up everything. Romans 6, 23 says, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. So the wage of sin is death. What we deserve what we earn. The consequences of living a life opposing God, failing to follow his teachings and so forth. The consequence of that is death, which means eternal separation from God. Nobody wants that. That's what hell is. But the free gift of God, not something we have to earn. We don't have to go through a process of education and so forth. The free gift of God is eternal life. How? Through Christ Jesus our Lord. In other words, he went to the cross, he paid the penalty we deserve for the sins that we've committed. And he offers forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of his grace. So I don't want to lose the fact that so often in history we've added things to that and we've made it. Oh yeah, but you got to do this and you got to do that and you got to do this. No, you want to receive Jesus as your forgiver and leader. You want to receive this free gift of forgiveness and eternal life. It is a prayer like I prayed on November 8th of 1981 of repentance and faith that took me from an atheist to a believer. Took me from someone who's rebellion in rebellion against God to now a son of God forever. Took me from someone who was headed for hell to someone who someday will spend eternity with God forever in heaven. So I don't want to lose the beauty of the gospel, the beauty of God's grace, the life. I was talking to one of your staff members who kind of had a tough background, you know, and knows a lot of people who, you know, tough folks. And he said, the beauty to me of Christianity is to see these hell's angels become devoted followers of Jesus. And that is done through this gospel, through this. You know what happens after you do that is our values begin to change, our character begins to change, our morality begins to change, our worldview, even our politics begin to change after that. I mean, when I was an atheist, the ugly truth about me was when I came home from work, if my little daughter was just a little toddler playing with some toys in the living room and she heard me come home from work, she would just gather her toys and go in the room and shut the door.
- [80:13]
A
Why?
- [80:14]
B
Because I was going to be drunk again. So I was going to be yelling and screaming and literally kicking holes in the walls out of anger and frustration. That's who I was. And then after I had investigation of years, came to faith, prayed that prayer of receiving this free gift of God's grace. He began to change my values and my character and my morality and My parenting and so forth, to the point where my little girl, she was five years old when I came to faith. She was watching. God has changed. Something's different with my dad. Something's changing with my dad. Something's new with my dad. She's five. She can't articulate it, but she. And it took about four or five months. And then one Sunday morning, she came up to my wife and she said, mommy, I want God to do for me what he's done for Daddy. And she prayed a simple prayer. Like that, she became a follower of Jesus. Today she's 50 years old. She's the mother of two of my oldest, my two oldest grandchildren. We're the best of friends. We write books together. And same thing with my son. My son saw the difference in his sister and his mom and his dad. And he came to faith at a young age, too. But he took an academic route and ended up getting a PhD in theology. And now he's a seminary professor, teaching young people about Jesus Christ and future pastors about Jesus Christ at Talbot Seminary at Biola University. And then 13 years ago, his wife gave birth to our first grandson, and he named him after me. Wow. So God healed our family. God changed our family. God changed my children. So I say, you know, it sounds too simple, it sounds too easy, but that's the gospel. It's free. Now, on the other side of that, you know, John 1:12 says, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name. And notice that forms an equation of what it means to become a true Christian. Believe plus receive equals become. So I have to believe certain things, like Jesus is who he claimed to be. He proved it by returning from the dead. So you believe, but then you have to receive. And that's what you do through a simple prayer of repentance and faith. And you become a child of God. And then your life begins to change. And if there's no evidence of that, if your life doesn't begin to change, you have to question whether your initial prayer was really heartfelt. Hey, business owners, the NFL season is a big revenue driver. Now there's a smarter way to get ready. Everpass is the only authorized commercial platform for NFL Sunday ticket, delivering every live out of market, regular season, Sunday afternoon game. Lock in the best offer now with up to 40% off, saving up to $2,500 for the first time. You can pay over nine months. Get up to six free devices and a free bar kit. Sign up by April 27th. Visit everpass.com Limited time offer. Terms apply.
- [83:14]
A
So you know, what a great testimony you're sharing with the family and especially for your son to name 13 years ago grandson after you, it is granted a middle name.
- [83:25]
B
But to me, that's enough.
- [83:26]
A
That's okay.
- [83:26]
B
That's enough.
- [83:27]
A
That's plenty. You know, even, you know, your father followed the same thing, right? Walter, middle name one of the boys. But, you know, you'll sit there and you'll talk to those who maybe not mock Christianity, but maybe take some shots at it, and they'll say, give me a break. Like maybe some. We have a guy on our podcast who's Jewish.
- [83:46]
B
Yeah.
- [83:47]
A
And say, Tom will say, why don't you go to a church? Jews for Jesus, right? He'll say, I think that's what it's called, you know, so why don't you go see their testimony, what happened with them, right? And they'll say, stop it. You mean to tell me, Lee, that a, you know, a girl, Lily Phillips, who slept with, you know, a thousand men in 24 hours, if she accepts Jesus Christ as her savior, she saved. You mean to tell me the other day had Joey Merlino on the, you know, the current FBI says the current boss of the Philadelphia crime family, this guy's been documented, but, you know, they weren't able to get him on it, that maybe he's taken out seven guys.
- [84:28]
B
Yeah.
- [84:29]
A
And we had a great conversation. I've had a lot of different mobsters on. And he said, you know, you. You want me to believe that Sammy Dubo Gravano, who was tied to 19 different murders, accepted Jesus Christ and now he's going to heaven? You want me to believe that? You want me to believe that a Hitler that killed all these different people, if he accepts Jesus Christ is going to go to heaven? You know, that's the problem with Christianity,
- [84:48]
B
the fact that you guys, you know what I want to say to them? Yes, that's exactly right. My father in law was an atheist. And after I became a Christian, he said, don't ever bring up the name Jesus to me, okay? He was a nice guy, but he was a strong atheist. And I finally led him in a prayer to receive Jesus in the final conversation before he died. And I believe he'll be in heaven and we'll spend eternity together. And I think that is the power and the beauty of the Christian message. I wrote a book called the Case for Grace. And every chapter is a story about someone who is the most unlikely candidate for conversion and yet God intersected with their life. They gave their life to Christ. They received this free gift of forgiveness and eternal life. They followed Jesus as their leader. And they've been radically, radically revolutionized, including the guy who ran the torture center for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who's now life in prison and telling everybody he meets about Jesus because God's changed his life. That is the radical truth of Christianity. And when we add things to it and say, well, you got to do X, Y and Z to kind of earn your way or show that you're good enough. No, none of us is good enough. We've all fallen short, the Bible says. And the consequence of that, unless we receive this gift of forgiveness and eternal life, is not anything we want to find out for ourselves. Yeah.
- [86:25]
A
So that becomes the argument, right? To say, you want me to tell you want me to believe that these guys.
- [86:29]
B
I want you to believe.
- [86:30]
A
And you want them.
- [86:31]
B
I want them to believe because I've seen it. I've seen the. I'll tell you a story. Got a minute? Yeah, of course. Okay. So there was a guy named Robert. Robert was the biggest narcissist you probably ever meet. Very successful business guy, multimillionaire, Had a woman in every city, Drunk gambler, gambled away millions of dollars. He had two corporate jets that he bought, and he had his name painted on the tails of both of them.
- [86:58]
A
Very humble.
- [86:59]
B
Yes. Well, sometimes he'd take both of them up and he'd be sitting in one just so he could watch his name fly through the clouds of the other jet. That's a narcissist right there. That is a narcissist.
- [87:09]
A
He's qualified.
- [87:10]
B
That's right. So one day, toward the end of his life, he's on the beach here in Florida, and God speaks to him. Talk about the supernatural. God spoke to him on the inside, not through his ears. And God said, robert, I've saved you more times than you'll ever know. Now you need to come to me through my son, Jesus. He was rocked by. What was that? So he called the only guy he knew who was a Christian, Gifford, the sportscaster. Frank Gifford. Remembers Frank Gifford. Of course. He calls Frank Gifford Frank. You're a Christian? I just had this experience. Who's Jesus? And Frank said, read that book, Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. That'll explain it. So anyway, this guy Robert becomes a radical born again person.
- [87:55]
A
Wow.
- [87:55]
B
His life is transformed. When he gave his. He was going to be baptized.
- [87:59]
A
Would we know this individual or.
- [88:01]
B
I'll tell you the punchline in a minute, who he is. Robert gets up at his baptism and he tells his story. And he says, I was running away from God. I hated the idea of God. And then he spoke to me. And then. And then he looked at people in the congregation. Have you met him? Has he changed your life? Do you know him? And the pastor ripped up his sermon, said, you've heard. You've heard the gospel, anyone? And this church had never had an altar call in their whole. Anyone who wants to come forward right now, receive Jesus and be baptized, come forward. And this guy got up from the second row and came forward. And another two people, 700 people came forward in two services. 700 people. And so Robert and I became friends. He called me to thank me for writing the book. We became friends. And then he died about a couple years later. And at his request, on his tombstone, thousands of people came to his funeral. Matthew McConaughey gave the eulogy. And on his tombstone it just says, believe in Jesus Christ. Now, as you said, who is this guy? Why did thousands of people come? Why did Matthew McConaughey give his eulogy and so forth. Who is this guy? Evel Knievel.
- [89:16]
A
Wow.
- [89:17]
B
The motorcycle daredevil rider who had the most broken bones of anybody. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Evel Knievel became a born again follower of Jesus. We became good friends, and he was absolutely sold out to Jesus. And I go through. And that was right at the end of his life. And yet God, through that one prayer that he prayed, at one point he just said, God, he said, satan, get out of my life. Get out of my life. I want to receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior. And God grew something in his heart and changed his values and character. He could not stop talking about Jesus. There was a men's magazine, they wanted to do a profile of him, and they didn't know about his conversion. So they went to interview him. He didn't want to talk about all his girlfriends. He didn't want to talk about all the things he had been involved. He wanted to talk about Jesus. And so the writer said, what do I do here? So he writes this article based on all this old stuff. And at the end he just said, and so I talked to him, and all he wanted to talk about is Jesus. And that was it. So that is the power of the gospel to transform a life. To say, I don't have to fulfill 18 requirements. I don't have to try to be something I can't be on my own. I Need the power of God to live a godly life. I couldn't have. I mean, I was heading down a dark alley. I mean, before I was a Christian, and if I had not come to faith, I. I don't know what would happen. And God rescued me because of a prayer and just said, God, I'm throwing yourself on your mercy because you are a merciful God. I am a sinner. I know I'm a sinner. That's no mystery about that. And I just want to receive this free gift. You tell me it's free. Okay, I'm going to take you at your word. It's a free gift. Forgiveness, eternal life.
- [91:19]
A
That's amazing. It's a great story. Evil Knievel. I didn't know where you were going with Robert, and it got threw up.
- [91:24]
B
That was just a given name.
- [91:26]
A
That was his given name. Yeah.
- [91:27]
B
You know, when he died, just before he died, he was shopping for a new motorcycle and he said, lee, I'm going to take you for a ride. And I thought, I don't want to be on the back of Evel Knievel's motorcycle. And so when he died, I thought, well, now at least in heaven it'll be safe. We'll have a motorcycle.
- [91:43]
A
It's not going to crash on clouds.
- [91:44]
B
That's right.
- [91:45]
A
Be fine. It's going to be small crash.
- [91:46]
B
That's right.
- [91:47]
A
But you read the Quran, you obviously read the Bible many times and you've gone through the studies, the researches that you've done. What is your impression of, you know, the religion of Islam and Prophet Muhammad, when you read about him and you read the stories?
- [92:05]
B
Yeah.
- [92:06]
A
You know, one asks what caused this religion to get as popular as it is, that in the world today, one out of four person living today is a Muslim. How did that happen? What was so special about Prophet Muhammad?
- [92:19]
B
Yeah, well, you know, Islam was spread by the sword in the early days. It was a conquest religion to conquest, to conquer other peoples. And, you know, I look at, I look at the life of Jesus and how he lived and what he taught. The Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, his beautiful, wonderful life changing sermons and teachings that he gave his parables. And then I can contrast that with Muhammad and say, golly, he consummated his marriage with a nine year old. I mean, seriously. And, you know, I have friends. Nabeel Qureshi was my good friend who was a doctor, medical doctor, who wrote a book called Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. And it's a powerful book about how he did the search and investigated Christianity as a Muslim and became a devout Christian. We became very good friends. He died of cancer. I was at his bedside shortly before he passed. And he did what few people do, which is to say, I'm going to investigate it, I'm going to check it out, I'm going to look at what is the evidence for the truth of Islam versus what is the evidence for the truth of Christianity. I just encourage anybody to do that. Be as objective as possible. I'll tell you, I have a good friend who's a Muslim and he came over to my house for dinner and we're grilling in the backyard. And I said, you know, let's set aside religion, let's just set aside religion. I said, let's just look at history. Let's look at facts. I've got all of this evidence that Jesus did die on the cross. These things we talked about earlier. I've got these four E's that point to not only the death of Jesus, but his resurrection from the dead. I said, I got, these are first century sources. This goes right back to the beginning. And then I said, what have you got? You've got a book 600 years later by a guy who said an angel in a cave told them it isn't true. Surah 4, verse 157, Jesus didn't really die on the cross. I said, let's just look at, let's just weigh the historical data. Where does that come out? And he looked at me and said, I choose to believe the Quran. Okay, you have that freedom to do it. But I'm asking, where's the evidence? Where are the facts? Where's the data? And I believe it points toward the truth of Christianity. So, you know, we're facing a very interesting time with the rise of Islam around the world and some of the values that seem to be clashing with American values and so forth. So I'm 70 going on 75 years old and I'm kind of happy that I'm going to be checking out before too long. I'm not sure I want to be around for the next 20 years because
- [95:06]
A
of what could happen by 2050. Yeah, I mean, what's the worst thing that could happen?
- [95:11]
B
Because like, well, in the end, Christianity wins. In the end, Jesus wins. In the end, God wins. That's not to say there's not going to be some great tribulation and difficulty in the interim. And I think there will be. I think we're seeing that around the world. My goodness, what happened to the ability of people in free countries like Australia, like England, so forth and Scotland, to freely express their faith. And it's being squelched. And what's the consequence, its consequences? People are reluctant to share Jesus, reluctant to proclaim themselves as being Christians.
- [95:46]
A
Yeah. I mean, again, going through the numbers. I have the numbers here, which countries went from majority Christian to majority Muslim.
- [95:54]
B
Right.
- [95:54]
A
Turkey, one of them. You know that where they were at before now, 99% Muslim. You got Egypt, Christian, you know, one of the earliest Christian centers, Coptic Christianity, Muslim conquest in the seventh century. 90% Muslim. Syria, early Christian hub, majority Muslim. Iraq, same thing. Strong early Christian presence. Assyrians. My father's an Assyrian. Now we know where they're at. Northern Africa. You hear the stories with Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, almost entirely Muslim. Lebanon. Yeah.
- [96:25]
B
Look at the slaughters going on in Nigeria right now.
- [96:29]
A
But the part with this is, if one were to look and say, you know, this is growing and a lot of different. It's coming to Europe and it's not coming to us, it's grown aggressively in us as well.
- [96:41]
B
That's right.
- [96:41]
A
Now we got people politically that are involved who, you know, are Muslim. Our biggest city, the financial capital of the world, is being ran by a socialist. Some even categorically call him a communist Muslim, who was sitting there praying and,
- [96:57]
B
you know, and his wife had tweets from which he was endorsing the massacre that took place, which is, to me, unconscionable.
- [97:05]
A
But how do we get here in the greatest country in the world and a country that was a Christian?
- [97:09]
B
I mean, my hope is there's a turning point coming. My hope is that when people see this, like the mayor of New York and others, that this will be a kind of a turning point in our country to say, wait a minute, we need to get back to the values that our country was founded on. And it's not values of violence and so forth, it's values of free speech, but it's also values, moral values that. That sync up with Christianity.
- [97:38]
A
Yeah, hopefully.
- [97:38]
B
But, you know, I got. My best friend in college was a Muslim from Turkey, and I led him to the Lord Jesus Christ because he was willing to listen to the evidence. So I'm a little bit naive in the sense that I think Christianity has a truth on its side, and I think ultimately truth ought to prevail. There's a lot of barriers, there's a lot of issues, but. And it's tough, and I think it's going to be a lot of conflict in the coming years. I mean, my brothers and sisters in Nigeria being slaughtered and nobody cares.
- [98:14]
A
53k in the last. I don't know what the number is, but.
- [98:17]
B
And nobody's talking about it. What politician is speaking out on this issue? So we've gone down this path far enough and I'm hoping that there'll be a turning point, but I'm just not sure. I just. I just have my faith that Jesus is going to come back.
- [98:33]
A
It's good to be there. Because the one data. Rob, if you want to go to the Gen Z data that we had, this Gen Z data that just came out this year, this is a US Protestant senior pastors from January 29 to 2026, they were showing that over the
- [98:49]
B
past year,
- [98:51]
A
if you look at Gen Z, a rise in next gen engagement, higher engagement in Gen Z ages 13 to 26 years old, 45% millennials 27 to 41, 42%. Gen X gets lower to 31. Boomers, lower engagement at 25 men 36% versus 31 with women ages 18 to 35, men 40. That's a massive yes. So when you see this, this gives you hope.
- [99:19]
B
It does, right?
- [99:20]
A
This gives you hope. And how much of this you think could have also been a direct impact of what Charlie was doing, the late great Charlie was doing? How much you think this impact could be him as well?
- [99:29]
B
He certainly sparked something on these college campuses. He had the courage to go in. He lost his life because he did it. He had the courage to go in and defend the Christian worldview in front of often hostile audiences. And I think it made an impact. I think people said, wait a minute, what did he say? Maybe I should think about that. Could there be truth to that? And so I think he sparked a lot of this stuff. And it's encouraging to me now, you know, you can cite all kinds of numbers as you have legitimately showing the people who claim to be Christians has gone down significantly. But I'm seeing people engaging with the Bible more and more among young people. That, to me, is a very positive sign. But there's a lot of work to be done. Stitch Fix Shopping is hard. Let's talk about it.
- [100:20]
A
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- [100:23]
B
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- [100:40]
A
That looked good.
- [100:41]
B
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- [100:48]
A
there's no question there's a lot of work to be done. By the way, how do you view President Trump's relationship with God? How do you process that? Because you've heard some of the things he said. I'm curious how you view it.
- [101:00]
B
I do not know. I just honestly do not know. There's a man that got up and said, I never say I'm sorry. Whereas Christianity involves confessing our sins, turning from those receiving grace through Jesus Christ and so forth. I don't know him personally, and so I hate to venture any kind of conclusion, but, you know, and I see certain things he does that kind of make me go, that doesn't sound like Jesus to me. And I see other things and I go, yeah, that's. So it's a mixed bag to me. And I don't know what you think
- [101:35]
A
uses people like that at times like this. Do you think God sometimes uses the most interesting characters that you may look at and say, you're going to use him, you're going to use her?
- [101:44]
B
Yes. Look through the Bible, look through the people God has used in the past. Look at David, I mean, an adulterer who killed this guy and so forth. God uses all kinds of people to accomplish his will. So. Yeah.
- [102:00]
A
Okay, last thing before we wrap up your recent book.
- [102:03]
B
Yeah.
- [102:03]
A
Seeing the Supernatural. Yes. What can you tell us about it?
- [102:06]
B
Well, I was, as I say, a skeptic about a lot of things, and I wanted to look at what is the evidence and what is the corroboration that there really is a reality beyond what we can see and touch and put in a test tube. So I looked at things like near death experiences, deathbed visions, well documented miracles, personal interventions of God like Evil Knievel and so forth, to try to look at what is the evidence that there is a realm beyond what we can see and touch. And I think the evidence is strong. I think it's powerful. I mean, you've probably heard about the dreams taking place among Muslims around the world.
- [102:41]
A
Can you talk on that?
- [102:42]
B
Yes, I have a whole chapter on that. And it's corroborated. This is what's important. More Muslims have become Christians in the last few decades than in the 1400 years since Muhammad. And 25 to 35% of them have had a Jesus dream, a supernatural dream, before they converted. Now, what is not happening is they're not going to sleep. Having a dream about Jesus waking up as a Christian, that's generally not Happening. What's happening is they're going to sleep. They're having a dream unlike any dream they've ever had. And it's pointing them towards something external that leads them to faith in Jesus. So I'll give you an example. There's a woman named Noor, mother of eight, Muslim, in Cairo. She has a Jesus dream. Jesus is walking with her along a lakeshore. She feels the love and the grace. And for the first time in my life, I didn't feel shame. And she said, jesus did. Why do you come to me? I'm just a poor Muslim mother of eight children. Jesus said, because I love you, Noor. I died for you. And he said, my friend will tell you more about me tomorrow. Who's your friend? And he gestures toward a man she didn't even realize was walking with them along the lakeshore because she was so mesmerized by Jesus. Jesus said, my friend will tell you. The next day she goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo Friday afternoon, and she sees that man from her dream. And she goes up to, you're the one. What are you talking about? You're the guy. Same face, same glasses, same clothes. You're the one. He said, did you ever dream about Jesus last night? Said, yes. He was an underground church planter. He didn't want to go to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on Friday afternoon. It's chaotic. He went that day because he felt like God had an assignment for him. So he said, let me do this. He pulls her aside and he opens the Bible and spends three hours explaining the Gospel of Jesus to her. That's what's happening. So this is not just something being conjured in people's imaginations because it points towards something external that corroborates it. Her encounter with this missionary. And those are the kind of stories I document in the book. You know, it's so common in the Middle East. Sometimes in Cairo, you can pick up the newspaper and you'll see an ad. 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 up. They met Jesus. The guy I interview about this is the world's leading expert on this topic. And he said, lee, I could pick up the phone right now. I'll call Kuwait. I'll call Saudi Arabia, I'll call Iran, I'll call Afghanistan. I'll give you five more stories right now. This is a worldwide phenomenon that God, because he loves people. He said, some of these countries are closed to the Gospel, as you know. And you know, it's a crime for someone to convert from Islam into Christianity in some places. And it's as if God says, you think that's going to stop me? Watch this. And he rolls up his sleeves and begins to bring these mystical dreams.
- [105:42]
A
It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing that's happened. And by the way, I know you like stats a lot. I'm going to give you one that you're going to like.
- [105:48]
B
Okay?
- [105:49]
A
House. Church movements in Iran estimated at 300,000 to a million converts, up from two to 5,000 20 years ago. Figures from advocacy organizations not independently verified. So Iran is having a massive movement right now with converts. And you're talking about Iran, which right now has a ton of challenges they're dealing with. You're seeing the same thing happening right now with Philippines, 143 million Christians. Projected by 2050, 40% growth, approximately 80% Christians. Ethiopia, 45 million. 85 million Christians. You're seeing the growth happen in many places as well, specifically in Iran.
- [106:39]
B
Yes.
- [106:39]
A
And that's somewhere I lived for 11 years, so I know what that life is like to see Christians growing there. I remember going to a Christian church. We'd go every Sunday with my Friday, because in Iran, the Sunday is Friday. We don't have Sundays off. We have Fridays off. And it was, hey, you know, when you go everywhere, just be careful because if you. You're too proud, it could take you. They could do this. It could do this.
- [106:57]
B
Right?
- [106:58]
A
It's amazing the courage you're seeing around a lot of. As unsafe as we are here speaking on our faith. Yeah, it is a thousand times more unsafe in Nigeria, in Iran, and a lot of these other places.
- [107:10]
B
Yeah.
- [107:11]
A
For these folks that have the courage to do that. And, Lee, I got a lot of respect for you for what you've done. You've changed a lot of people's lives through the books that you've written, including mine. Because Case for Christ was a very big book for me at a time where I was logical. A friend of mine whose name is Armand, no one in school would have ever thought that we would have became Christian, the two of us specifically.
- [107:34]
B
Unlikely candidates.
- [107:35]
A
Unlikely candidates. And for the audience that's watching this, if you enjoyed the message, you probably have three or four books to order, especially the new one that we have, Seeing the Supernatural. Case for Christ, maybe Case for Grace, maybe Case for Church, maybe all four of them. You got to go order. And if you got a question for Lee, you can also get a hold of them in on Manect as well. We're going to put the link below with the QR code. But Lee, with that being said, it's been a pleasure having you all. Thank you so much for coming out.
- [108:00]
B
I enjoyed it.
- [108:01]
A
Great conversation. Really enjoyed it. We're going to put the links to all of his books below as well. Take care everybody. God bless. Bye bye. Bye bye.
- [108:07]
B
Hi, I'm Lee Strobel, atheist turned Christian, author of several books including the Case for Christ and Seeing the Supernatural. You might have questions about faith, about how we know that Jesus is who we claim to be and that there really is a realm beyond what we can see and touch and put in a test tube. So I'd love to chat with you about that. Just go to Minect and then we can connect and talk about these matters of faith that are so important to our lives.