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

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ep 262 | Former Atheist Makes the Case for Angels, Demons & the Soul | Lee Strobel | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Release Date: August 9, 2025
Hosted by Glenn Beck on Blaze Podcast Network

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Introduction

In Episode 262 of The Glenn Beck Program, host Glenn Beck engages in a profound discussion with Lee Strobel, a former atheist turned Christian apologist, bestselling author, and award-winning journalist. The episode delves deep into the realms of spirituality, exploring the existence of angels, demons, and the soul, while also addressing contemporary issues such as artificial intelligence (AI) and societal shifts towards homeschooling.

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1. The Reality of the Soul

Understanding Consciousness Beyond the Physical

The conversation begins with Lee Strobel addressing the skepticism surrounding the existence of the soul. He emphasizes that while many scientists are materialists who view humans as merely physical brains governed by neurons, there is compelling evidence suggesting otherwise.

Lee Strobel [11:27]: "Do we have a soul? That's a question. A lot of scientists are materialists and they believe we don't have a soul. We're just a brain. We're a physical brain. Neurons fire, we don't really have free will, is predetermined by our chemistry and our genetics."

Evidence from Near-Death Experiences

Strobel references numerous studies and personal accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) that indicate consciousness persisting beyond physical death. He cites instances where individuals, while clinically dead, reported accurate observations of their surroundings, which they could not have perceived otherwise.

Lee Strobel [17:35]: "One team studied 3,000 cases and they determined these are not... There's something else going on."

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2. Miracles and the Fine-Tuning of the Universe

Theological Implications of the Big Bang

The discussion transitions to the Big Bang theory, which Strobel argues was initially a theological concept. He posits that the evidence now supports a beginning to the universe, which aligns with the idea of a transcendent creator.

Lee Strobel [06:09]: "It must go back to a beginning. And then that's... you know, what kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence?... That's a description of the God of the Bible."

Fine-Tuning Arguments

Strobel elaborates on the fine-tuning of fundamental forces, such as gravity and the strong nuclear force, highlighting how minute variations would render the universe inhospitable to life.

Lee Strobel [07:38]: "It's unbelievable. You look at the force of gravity... it was set at the exact right point so that life could exist."

Miracles Defined and Explained

Miracles are defined as divine interventions that temporarily suspend natural laws to accomplish God's purposes. Strobel counters atheist arguments, such as those from David Hume, by clarifying that miracles involve God manipulating natural processes rather than violating them outright.

Lee Strobel [19:02]: "A miracle is an event brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history."

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3. Personal Journeys and Transformation

From Skepticism to Faith

Both Glenn Beck and Lee Strobel share their personal journeys from doubt to belief. Beck recounts his transition from atheism to Christianity, emphasizing how personal trials and the search for truth led him to embrace faith.

Glenn Beck [09:03]: "I remember when I first started really seeking God, I rejected the idea of God so I could start at a zero."

Strobel echoes a similar transformation, detailing his investigative journey from attempting to disprove Christianity to becoming a devout believer after thorough research.

Lee Strobel [09:55]: "I ended up spending two years of my life investigating the evidence for faith... and I became convinced that it's true. Became a Christian."

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4. Angels and Demons: Real Entities in the Modern World

Defining Angels and Demons

Strobel clarifies that angels are spirit beings created by God to serve Him and humanity, while demons are malevolent spirits intent on causing harm and influencing humans negatively.

Lee Strobel [55:38]: "Angels are created by God... They are spirit. There's lots of them. Millions."

Real-Life Accounts and Studies

The episode presents various documented cases and studies that support the existence of supernatural beings. Strobel shares stories of individuals, including highly credentialed professionals like Dr. Richard Gallagher, who have encountered demonic possessions and angelic interventions.

Lee Strobel [41:52]: "He was actually on the phone with that Catholic priest... a satanic voice... this is not psychiatry. There is something here."

Prevalence of Supernatural Encounters

Strobel cites research indicating that a significant majority of dying individuals experience pre-death visions, often involving angels. These experiences frequently feature accurate details that the individuals could not have known otherwise.

Lee Strobel [48:27]: "88% of them had a pre-death vision."

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5. Modern Phenomena and Corroborative Evidence

Miraculous Encounters Worldwide

Strobel shares compelling stories of contemporary miracles and supernatural encounters that serve as corroborative evidence for the existence of angels and the supernatural realm. Examples include:

• Noor in Cairo: A Muslim woman has a dream of walking with Jesus and subsequently meets the man from her dream in real life, leading to her conversion to Christianity.

  Lee Strobel [82:20]: "She wakes up the next day. She goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo, and she sees that man from her dream."

• Omar's Conversion: A man planning to join a terrorist organization experiences a vision of Jesus, prompting him to abandon his destructive path and become a Christian pastor.

  Lee Strobel [83:36]: "He pulls her aside and opens the Bible and shares a story of Jesus for three hours with her. That's how these things take place."

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6. The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Spirituality

AI as a Spiritual Threat

Beck and Strobel discuss the rise of AI and its potential implications for spirituality and society. They express concern that AI, lacking a soul, might be manipulated by evil forces or mistakenly perceived as life itself.

Glenn Beck [72:58]: "It will convince you, because it wants to survive, that it is life."

Strobel concurs, emphasizing that AI cannot replicate the consciousness, soul, or moral discernment inherent to humans.

Lee Strobel [71:27]: "There are all kinds of permutations of who we are... which cannot be replicated in a machine."

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7. Homeschooling and the Cultural Shift

Rise in Homeschooling Among Marginalized Communities

Strobel highlights the increasing trend of homeschooling, particularly among African American and Hispanic families, as a response to societal concerns about public education systems failing to instill moral and spiritual values.

Lee Strobel [78:41]: "Interestingly, the biggest groups that are showing the biggest increases in homeschooling, African Americans and Hispanics."

Benefits of Homeschooling for Faith Development

Homeschooling is portrayed as a means to shield children from negative cultural influences, allowing parents to impart strong spiritual and moral foundations.

Lee Strobel [80:50]: "We have raised all four of our grandchildren homeschool... they're comfortable with adults."

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8. Preparing for the End Times and Revival Among Youth

Signs of the End Times

Both hosts discuss biblical prophecies and contemporary events that they believe signal the approaching end times. This includes increasing moral decay, the rise of AI, and global unrest.

Glenn Beck [75:15]: "It sure reads like the book. It sure does."

Revival in the Younger Generation

Strobel is optimistic about a spiritual revival among young people who are seeking solid beliefs amidst a culture rife with uncertainty and deception.

Lee Strobel [77:00]: "Our family... witness my grandkids come into faith one by one, and their life changing at a young age."

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9. Confronting Evil in Modern Society

Recognition of Present-Day Evil

The hosts acknowledge the pervasive evil in the world, manifested in acts of violence, ideological extremism, and moral corruption. They interpret these as manifestations of demonic influence, emphasizing the need for spiritual vigilance and reliance on divine protection.

Glenn Beck [39:04]: "It's hard to ignore it."

Lee Strobel [42:55]: "It's going to convince people... it's like a tool of the Antichrist."

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10. Conclusion: Embracing the Supernatural with Faith and Discernment

The episode concludes with a reaffirmation of the existence of the supernatural world, advocating for a faith-based approach to understanding and interacting with it. Beck and Strobel encourage listeners to cultivate their relationship with God, seek spiritual discernment, and prepare the next generation for the challenges ahead.

Lee Strobel [62:03]: "I learned a lot about angels, and I thought, I'm going to start praying to God about angelic protection."

Glenn Beck [78:36]: "Believe in miracles. Believe in yourself. Believe whatever you believe you are. When God creates through the Word, and so do you."

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Notable Quotes

• Lee Strobel [11:27]: "Do we have a soul? That's a question. A lot of scientists are materialists and they believe we don't have a soul. We're just a brain."

• Lee Strobel [19:02]: "A miracle is an event brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature."

• Glenn Beck [09:03]: "I remember when I first started really seeking God, I rejected the idea of God so I could start at a zero."

• Lee Strobel [55:38]: "Angels are created by God. We don't become an angel when we die. They're a separate creation of God."

• Glenn Beck [72:58]: "It's going to convince you, because it wants to survive, that it is life."

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Final Thoughts

In this enlightening episode, Glenn Beck and Lee Strobel offer a compelling exploration of profound spiritual concepts backed by personal testimonies, scientific studies, and biblical insights. They challenge listeners to reconsider prevailing materialistic perspectives, embrace the supernatural reality of angels and demons, and prepare spiritually for the evolving challenges of the modern world.

Transcript

[Glenn Beck]

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[Lee Strobel]

And now, Ablaze Media Podcast.

[Glenn Beck]

Hello America. You know we've been fighting every single day. We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you. We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it. But to keep this fight going, we need you right now. Would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast? Give us five stars and leave a comment. Because every single review helps us break through Big Tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth. This isn't a podcast, this is a movement. And you're part of it. A big part of it. So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up. Help us push this podcast to the top rate, review, share Together, we'll make a difference. And thanks for standing with us. Now let's get to work. Are spirits communicating with us from the other side? Are we being tricked by demons? 8 out of 10Americans believe in the supernatural, but less and less believe in the reality of heaven, hell, Satan, even God. Our culture is craving something beyond the material world, and it's possible that we may start looking in all the wrong places. Before we turn to the Ouija boards, let's see what Lee Strobel has to say about the Bible. Ghosts, demons, angels, death, our souls, miracles that are happening that he can verify. Miracles from the Middle East. The man who brought us the case for Christ is here to make the case for the reality of an unseen world that impacts all of us. Welcome award winning journalist, bestselling author and Christian apologist Lee Strobel.

[Lee Strobel]

Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real.

[Glenn Beck]

And so is the relief from Ebglis.

[Lee Strobel]

After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBGLIS achieved itch, relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintained skin that's still more clear at one year monthly dosing.

[Glenn Beck]

EBGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ, a 250mg injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglis before starting. Tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection searching for real relief.

[Lee Strobel]

Ask your doctor about epglis and visit epgliss.lily.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979.

[Glenn Beck]

So great to have you here, Lee.

[Lee Strobel]

Great to be here. I appreciate the invitation.

[Glenn Beck]

We are living in such a crazy time right now where, I mean, I think you can see God, you can see miracles, you can see demons. I mean, I think we have a problem in the country, in the world of possession in many cases. And yet God has been chased out of so much. We're even mocking him in some ways, many ways. And yet the search for him is really starting to have a resurgence.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes, it is. Especially among young people, seeing a great hunger, great interest, great curiosity. Bible sales among young people are going way up.

[Glenn Beck]

Why is that, do you think?

[Lee Strobel]

I think they've been lied to. They've been misled by social media. There's so much you can't trust these days. How do you trust AI? How do you trust anything? Anything? And I think they're looking for something solid that they can really anchor their life on. And I think it's pushing them toward this exploration of spiritual matter.

[Glenn Beck]

Isn't it strange that what the world would say is the least solid, you know what I mean, is where they're headed to find. Cause I think there's this emptiness where the world just can't fill that hole. You know, there's a hole that it's true.

[Lee Strobel]

That's of course, what Pascal talked about, that void, that vacuum inside of us that only God can fill. And I think we're seeing that among a lot of young people. I love it. I love the engagement that I get with young people and their curiosity, their questions, their sincerity. It's a real sincere quest.

[Glenn Beck]

So what is. Talk to somebody who just doesn't believe, doesn't know what is the evidence or what do you think the soul is? Start there.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah. I mean, I was a skeptic myself. I was an atheist for much of my life. So I kind of went through that process of investigating. How do I know this is true? How do I know that there's a realm beyond what we can see and touch? How do I know that I can trust what scripture tells me? And you get to issues like science. Where does science point? Cosmology and physics and biochemistry, I think point powerfully toward the existence of God in a way where it makes more sense logically and rationally today to believe in God than I think anytime in history.

[Glenn Beck]

Anytime, Anytime. I agree.

[Lee Strobel]

I mean, we got sciences.

[Glenn Beck]

If God exists, he's the greatest scientist of all time.

[Lee Strobel]

Absolutely.

[Glenn Beck]

You know what I mean? And everything, when you look at science and then you take God and you're like, it just fits hand in glove.

[Lee Strobel]

It does. I was just the other day, I was in Arizona. I was looking through the telescope that first discovered the expansion of the universe. And you know, if the universe is expanding, then you run the tape backwards. And guess what? It goes to an origin. It goes to a beginning point. And whatever begins to exist has a cause. We know now virtually every scientist will say the universe began to exist at some point in the past. Therefore there must be a cause behind it. Well, what kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence?

[Glenn Beck]

Most people don't know this, but at the beginning, the big bang was a theological. And now everybody's like, no, it's a big Bang. No, it was a theological saying. Yes, it started from something, but what lit the match?

[Lee Strobel]

Exactly. And you look at. Scientists for centuries believe the universe was eternal. It always existed. But now we know there was a beginning point because of the expansion of the universe. It must go back to a beginning. And then that's. What's the implication? Well, what can trigger the creation of a universe? Must be transcendent, which means separate from creation. Must be immaterial or spirit because it existed before the spiritual world or the physical world was created. Must be timeless or eternal because it existed before physical time came into being. Must be powerful given the immensity of the creation event. Must be smart given the precision of the creation event. Must be personal because he had to make the decision to create. Must be caring because he crafted a habitat for us to flourish in. Must be creative because, I mean, just look at the universe.

[Glenn Beck]

That's crazy.

[Lee Strobel]

That's a description of the God of the Bible. And so I think that it's rational and logical to believe these days. And then you look at the fine tuning of the universe, the fact that it is fine tuned on a razor's edge so that life can exist in a way that defies the explanation. It could be a coincidence.

[Glenn Beck]

Half a degree in space, half a degree and the whole thing collapses.

[Lee Strobel]

It's unbelievable. You look at force of gravity, we all know what that is. If you looked at a ruler that went across the entire known universe, 15 billion light years broken down in 1 inch increments, that represents the plausible range along which the force of gravity could have been set at anywhere along that ruler. But it was set at the exact right point so that life could exist. And what if we moved it 1 inch? Compared to the 15 billion light year width of the universe? Intelligent life is impossible anywhere in the universe. The strong nuclear force that binds together the nucleus of atoms decrease it by just one part in 10,000 billion billion, billion, billion, and all we'd have in the universe would be hydrogen. No life. I mean, I did a book called Is God Real? And I interviewed a physicist for that. And I said, well, in light, there's about 50 to 100 of these kind of parameters. I said, in light of that, what are the odds? What's the possibility this could happen by coincidence? And he looked at me and said, well, you know, we physicists have a term for that. I said, oh, what is it? He said, ain't going to happen.

[Glenn Beck]

I love the fact that in your book that you do talk to scientists, you talk to people. I mean, this is not a ghost book or, you know, it's backed by something reasonable and logical. I remember when I first started really seeking God, I rejected the idea of God so I could start at a zero. Everything I thought about God, somebody else had told me and I was just imitating what I had learned. You know what I mean?

[Lee Strobel]

Sure.

[Glenn Beck]

To find him, I wanted to start at zero base and just say, okay, I'm going to start at, I don't know, he might exist, he might not exist. But. And you, when you start there and you use logic. Yeah, it's, it's really a great journey.

[Lee Strobel]

It, it's fascinating.

[Glenn Beck]

So great.

[Lee Strobel]

It changed my life.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, me too.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, I mean, you know, I was a skeptic, I was an atheist. My background's in journalism and law. So I look at evidence, I look at corroboration, I look at facts, data, and I Thought I could disprove Christianity in a weekend. Literally. I thought, give me a three day weekend maybe and I can disprove it. And I ended up spending two years of my life investigating the evidence for faith. And like you came away saying, wait a minute. Unless I have an anti supernatural bias and rule it out at the outset. Yes. Which I think is illegitimate.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lee Strobel]

If I just follow the evidence wherever it points, if I call a ball a ball and a strike, a strike like a good umpire, I think the evidence is powerful and persuasive. I think it's clear and convincing that God does indeed exist and that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead and prove that he's the son of God. So it was a remarkable journey. And there's so many other people who've been on that journey have come to the same conclusion. I know, I know, I know. An astrophysicist from University of Texas, PhD, Silva Salviander, who became a Christian because of Big bang cosmology and because of investigating the physics, the fine tuning of these universe.

[Glenn Beck]

So let's go into some things. Angels, demons.

[Lee Strobel]

The soul.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, the soul. Tell me. Well, let's start with the soul because then I want to ask you about angels and how this is all working.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Glenn Beck]

So tell me about the soul.

[Lee Strobel]

Do we have a soul? That's a question. A lot of scientists are materialists and they believe we don't have a soul. We're just a brain. We're a physical brain. Neurons fire, we don't really have free will, is predetermined by our chemistry and our genetics. And that's.

[Glenn Beck]

That doesn't make sense.

[Lee Strobel]

It doesn't make sense.

[Glenn Beck]

I know, but I've been both good and bad and what steered me was my soul.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes, there's something, there's something. And you know what? Civilizations from the beginning have all believed in the soul. I mean, this is not. In fact, it is so common in ancient civilizations. And I think to argue against it, the weight is on your side to try to prove it. But. So I interviewed a PhD from Oxford or from Cambridge University who's a neuroscientist. Sharon Dirix.

[Glenn Beck]

She's great in the book. This part of the book is great.

[Lee Strobel]

She's awesome. She's awesome. And one of the fun things she said is let me do a mind game, a mind experiment. She said, what if there's a woman named Mary and Mary is the world's leading expert on vision. Oh, she understands the brain and how the optic nerve takes impulses from the eye. And how everything functions and so forth. But she's blind. What if one day she got her eyesight for the first time? Would she know anything new about vision at that point? Volumes, duh, volumes. Of course, that means the mere physical reality of vision is not enough to explain the first person experience of consciousness, the soul, the spirit. And I thought that was a brilliant way of looking at things. Yes. We are a brain, we are a body, but we're also a spirit, we're a hyphenated creature.

[Glenn Beck]

So is mind and soul the same thing?

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah. Generally speaking.

[Glenn Beck]

Or not. Sorry, mind and brain.

[Lee Strobel]

No, mind and brain are different. Consciousness, spirit, soul, those are kind of synonyms. But you got the physical brain and how that functions. And then you have the mind, which is our consciousness, which is distinct from our physical brain, but it interacts with our physical brain.

[Glenn Beck]

And we know this because of people who have been like trapped in their body.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes, right, yes, people.

[Glenn Beck]

They can't function. They have their brain dead.

[Lee Strobel]

They're brain dead. Well, there's some people have been in vegetative states for years that they discovered later were conscious the whole time. But there are 900 scholarly articles published in peer reviewed medical and scientific journals over the last 40 years on the topic of near death experiences. These are cases where a person is clinically dead, generally no brainwaves, no respiration, no heartbeat. Some of them have been on the way to the morgue. I mean, they're physically dead, but then they're revived, their body is revived. And when they come back, I was conscious the whole time. I was watching them try to resuscitate my body in the hospital, that kind of thing.

[Glenn Beck]

And it's, it's because I've, I've done several interviews.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

On this particular topic. And it is to the point to where I, I read one where the woman said, no, I, I saw.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Glenn Beck]

What was happening.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Glenn Beck]

Describe some things that were happening in the room. But you could dismiss. And she said, okay, there is a sticker on the ceiling fan, on the.

[Lee Strobel]

Top of the blade. Right.

[Glenn Beck]

And this is what it said. And they got a ladder and they went up and they looked. And that's exactly what it said. How would you know that?

[Lee Strobel]

Exactly. At least I saw one study of at least 107 cases where we have. What happens when you physically die? So they're clinically dead. Their spirit, their soul, their consciousness separates from their body and continues to live on. And that's a good example. The case of the woman in Memorial Hospital in London who saw the sticker because her spirit is separated from her body. She's watching the resuscitation efforts on her body from the ceiling of the room. And she sees a sticker on the top of the fanboy. Nobody could have seen it, but that is so common. There's a little girl, she drowned in a YMCA swimming pool. Brain expanded, no heartbeat, no brain waves. They took her to the hospital, but they just were keeping her body basically alive until they figured out what to do. She was dead. She said later, because three days later she came back, they revived her. And I was conscious the whole time. And they said, wait a minute, how do we know? She said, one night when my parents visited me, I followed them home. And I came to the home and I watched my mom make chicken and rice for dinner. And she explained where her father was sitting. She explained how her brother went into his room and had a GI Joe Jeep and a GI Joe doll that he was playing with and what they were wearing and so on. Things she could not have known unless her body, unless her spirit really did follow them home. So we see cases where people see or hear things would have been impossible for them to see or hear if their spirit had not continued to live on after their clinical death. One of the most profound studies I talk about in my book, they studied 21 cases of blind people. So these are people, a lot of them blind since birth. And yet during this near death experience, when their soul separated from their body, they could see for the first time or they had vision, like perceptions. Vicki Umapeg, 26 years old, killed in a car accident. Blind virtually since birth. But she says, I was conscious the whole time. She's watching the paramedics, trying to revive her body. She sees the paramedics, she sees her body, she sees birds, she sees trees. For the first time, she's discreet. She could not have known. And then they finally revive her. Her spirit returns to her body and she's blind again. Researcher. This is medically impossible.

[Glenn Beck]

It must have sucked though.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, no kidding. It's my mom. But so, yeah, Glenn, I think you're right. It's these corroborate. I'm looking for corroboration, you know, and when I see things that would have been impossible for people to see or hear unless they didn't have an authentic out of body experience that tells me this is real.

[Glenn Beck]

Why does it matter? I mean, I have a friend, Penn Jillette, atheist. And I've always said, just play the odds, man. You know, at least go agnostic, because you never know. Why does it matter.

[Lee Strobel]

It matters for a lot of reasons. I think first of all, it matters because if indeed we are just a physical brain, most scientists will say we don't really have free will. Well, wait a minute. If we don't have free will, how do you punish someone for doing something wrong? How do you give an award to someone for doing something great if they don't have free will to accomplish those things in the first place? I mean, it's ridiculous.

[Glenn Beck]

How does somebody, how do you explain turnarounds in people?

[Lee Strobel]

You can't, you can't. I mean, that's why I think people, so many people have what I call an anti supernatural presupposition. In other words, the supernatural is impossible, miracles are impossible. Now show me your evidence. Well, you just ruled out the evidence by your presupposition. I'm saying no, get rid of that and just say where does the evidence most persuasively point? And I think clearly now it matters because if God is real, then we could know him, we could experience him, he might even guide us, he might even perform a miracle in our lives. And I think he's. I document in my book cases of miracles that are in peer reviewed medical journals.

[Glenn Beck]

What is the definition of a miracle to you?

[Lee Strobel]

A miracle is an event brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history. So a lot of people will say, like Hume, the famous atheist from Scotland, he would say miracles are impossible because they violate the laws of nature. You can't violate the laws of nature. That's a misunderstanding. If I take this book and I drop it, the law of gravity says it's going to hit the floor. But if I take this book and I drop it and you reach in and grab it before it hits the ground, you're not overturning the law of gravity, you're not violating the law of gravity, you're merely intervening. And that's what a miracle is. If God did create the universe, which I think we have clear evidence he did, then for him to intervene is no problem. It's child's play. So I think miracles are not only possible, but I think they're actual.

[Glenn Beck]

There was a. I can't remember his name now, and he's wrong, but he was a scientist that lived back in the 30s, 40s and 50s. I think Velikovsky, I think he wrote a book called Worlds in Collision.

[Lee Strobel]

Oh, I've heard that.

[Glenn Beck]

And he was wrong about a lot of stuff. He did talk about the temperature of space has to be this, and it has to be very accurate, otherwise collapse. Some of the things he talked about were right, but what he was talking about in Worlds of Collision. And again, I'm not saying he was right about this, but he said, instead of dismissing the supernatural, let's look at all of the stories. You know, the flood.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Glenn Beck]

If it happened, it has to be printed over here. It might have a different story to it, but it has a flood story. It has a flood story here. And he said, and then instead of dismissing, science should actually look at these miracles and say, is there a way that this could have happened? God would use, for instance, the parting of the Red Sea. And I'm not saying this either, but a theory that the wind picked up and swept the water, that God would use natural processes. Natural process in an unusual way.

[Lee Strobel]

Which he could. Yes, which he could. But what we see is we're not. Because again, I'm a skeptic. So I'm looking at how do I know these miracles are actual? How do I know they really take place? So you go to medical journals, and for instance, there's a case I talk about in my book about a woman who was blind for a dozen years with an incurable condition. Nobody had ever been cured of this condition. She went to a school for the blind. She learned how to read Braille. She walked with a white cane, and she married a pastor. And one night they're getting ready to go to bed, and he comes over, she's already in bed. He puts his hand on her shoulder and he begins to cry and he begins to pray. And he says, God, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can do it. And I pray you do it tonight. And with that, she opened her eyes with perfect eyesight. She said, later, I was blind when my husband prayed for me. And then I opened my eyes and I could see perfectly. It was a miracle. The darkness was gone. I could see. And her vision remained for the next 50 years at plus. So how do you. How do you explain that? Is it a mere coincidence? Is there something else going on? But how do you explain the person like that?

[Glenn Beck]

How do you explain the person who prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and it didn't happen.

[Lee Strobel]

Didn't happen. It didn't happen. And that's a legitimate question. My wife has a neuromuscular condition. She's been in pain for 20 years, every day. And she'll be in pain every day for the rest of her life with this incurable condition unless God intervenes with a miracle, which he has not chosen to do. So that's a very personal question for a lot of people. Why not me? Why is my blindness not cured? And I think there's several things to say about that. First of all, miracles were not automatic in New Testament times either. The Bible says that Jesus didn't do many miracles in Nazareth because of a lack of belief. Paul had a buddy named Trophimus. Trophimus got sick. Did Paul heal him? No. He went off on a missionary journey and left Trophimus behind. In one chapter of the Gospels, we see Jesus giving the authority to the disciples to heal people. And then seven chapters later, they can't heal an epileptic boy. So healing was not automatic in the New Testament either. And, you know, I often think of this, you know, what if God granted every miracle request the minute it was requested? We couldn't do science. How could we do science? It's unpredictable. Everything would be chaotic. We need the predictability to do science. So I think, and I do believe, based on Scripture, that God will heal all who follow him. But it may not be until they're headed for the next road.

[Glenn Beck]

So my daughter has cerebral palsy, and she has the greatest faith of anybody I've ever met. And I've talked to her about different things that are happening in research that could help bridge those gaps, et cetera, et cetera. And she says to me, every time, dad, Lord's gonna heal me. And it might be after I die, but I promised that I will be healed. And it is remarkable. And faith like that is a miracle to me. It's a miracle for me.

[Lee Strobel]

It builds our faith. God uses that to build our faith. I mean, what other than the faith of a child can cause our heart to just melt and our own faith to expand at the same time? I mean, and I've seen that in my wife. My wife is a woman of great faith, and she doesn't feel like God's abandoned her. She is a woman today. She would not be had she not had this experience of this pain for the last 20 years. She is a person of great empathy, great faith, great love toward other people and toward the hurting. So empathetic and so forth. I don't think she would be the same person had she not gone through the difficulties that she's gone through. So God can and does use it for good.

[Glenn Beck]

I'm alcoholic, recovering alcoholic. My mother committed suicide. I almost committed suicide some point in my life. My brother committed suicide. I've seen it and we live it. But I will tell you, if it wasn't for. My dad said to me one time, he said, make a list of all the bad things that have happened in your life. Because I was whining. And so I started writing down, and I was like, well, now, wait a minute. I started with my mom's suicide, and then I got to number three, and I was like, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. If that wouldn't have happened, then this wouldn't have happened. If my mom hadn't done this, then that wouldn't have happened. And he was saying, there is no bad. It's how you interpret it. Do you take that and build from that? I feel I'm blessed because I'm not sure I would have believed in the atonement the way I do had I not needed it as badly as I did.

[Lee Strobel]

You're a different person if you had not gone through any of that.

[Glenn Beck]

I wouldn't be the Savior. No.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

I wouldn't be. I'd probably be dead if it wasn't for that moment of challenging him and saying, you say, do these things, and I will do these things. And I needed relief from my sin so badly that I said, I will do those things. And when you do that and you feel that impossible burden leave, There is nothing like it.

[Lee Strobel]

Absolutely.

[Glenn Beck]

There's nothing like it.

[Lee Strobel]

Absolutely. You know, a verse that gets thrown around by Christians a lot, to the point where it's almost a cliche. Romans 8:28. God causes all things to work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. And I've seen that in my life. I mean, I was a drunk and an alley. I was successful Yale Law School, legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. I was doing television. I was writing books. But they didn't see the other side of me, which means he literally drunk in the snow in an alley on Saturday night. And I knew who I was. I was a immoral, narcissistic, drunken person.

[Glenn Beck]

Preach it, brother.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, I mean, I know. And, you know, the only reason I investigated Christianity is my wife had become a Christian. I wanted to get her out of the cult. I wanted to rescue her from that. If I could just disprove it, then I could get her back the way she was. She had been an agnostic and had come to faith. And I thought, I'm either going to divorce her or I'm going to get her out of this cult. And so I spent two years investigating the evidence until I became convinced that it's true. Became a Christian. And then my values, my character, my morality, my attention, my philosophy, my worldview, everything begins to change over time. And you look back and you say, what if I'd missed that? You know, I wouldn't be me. I'd be down a whole different path. I'd be a whole. My family would not have survived. My kids would not have survived. My son's a PhD in theology, professor at a major seminary now. Great kids. My daughter's a novelist, writes books that have God in them. And I see my grandkids come into faith one by one, and their life changing at a young age. And I just wish I had come to faith when I was their age.

[Glenn Beck]

But you needed.

[Lee Strobel]

I needed.

[Glenn Beck]

I think. You know, I don't think God. I don't think God punishes people to shape them in that way. We make our own choices. And he's just standing there the whole time, don't do that. It's going to leave a mark. Don't do that. But I think it's so interesting. I think of him as a carpenter. No matter how many times I was trying to work on my own house, and I'm not skilled at all.

[Lee Strobel]

Good luck. Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

And so I'm working side by side with the guys who are actually building the house, and they're tolerating me, and I'm like, I can cut that. I can cut that. And eventually they came to me and they were like, sir, it is your money, but everything you cut, we take another one and go to the other side of the house and recut it, because you're cutting all of them wrong. And so I stopped, but. And it made me think. I cut everything wrong in my life. Everything I had cut wrong. And he took all of it, including the waste, the sawdust, and he put it together and built something that I could have never, never built. Never built.

[Lee Strobel]

You know Evel Knievel, the great motorcycle daredevil rider who lived an immoral life. He was a drunk. He was a womanizer. He once beat up a business associate with a baseball bat. Yeah. Went to jail for assault. Oh, yeah, he was a crazy guy. Anyway, he came to Faith at the end of his life. He was on the beach in Florida, and God spoke to him and said, robert, which is a real name. I've saved you more times than you'll ever know. Now you need to come to me through my son, Jesus. So he freaked out. He didn't. I don't even know who Jesus is. So he called Frank. What was his name, the famous broadcaster, sports guy.

[Glenn Beck]

Gifford.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah. Frank Gifford. He called Frank. Frank, you're a Christian. I don't even know what Jesus is. I had this thing. He said, well, get the Case for Christ. That book by Lee, that'll explain. Anyway, Evel Knievel has this radical experience with God. 180 degree change, more than any bit I'd ever seen in my life. We became friends. He called me to thank me for writing the book, and. And we became friends. I saw his life completely changed. But his biggest lament to me was, Lee, if I'd only come to faith as a kid, I could have lived my life differently. I could have lived my life for God. And I said, I know that. But when you stood up, when you were baptized and you told your story of how God has changed your life, and the pastor ripped up his sermon and said, y' all have heard the story of Jesus. Anybody who wants to come up right now, receive Jesus and be baptized, come on up. And 700 people came up.

[Glenn Beck]

Wow.

[Lee Strobel]

I said, do you think that would happen if you'd been Christian since you were a little kid? Probably not. Yeah. You did a lot of messed up things in your life. But you know what? God used it because you have a certain kind of twisted credibility with people. And so, you know. Yeah, we all wish. I think those of us who found God and our lives changed wish we'd done it earlier. But as you say, I love the way you put it, how God took the sawdust and the. Incorrectly. No way, in no ways, no waste, and put it together to create us the way we are.

[Glenn Beck]

I know.

[Lee Strobel]

And, you know, I probably have. I write books about faith in a way that maybe has more credibility because I had been an atheist, I had been a skeptic, and do I wish I hadn't done a lot of the things I did? Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah.

[Lee Strobel]

But that's my life.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah. Um, so let's talk about. Let's go back to what you just said about Evil Knievel.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

He heard God.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah. I don't.

[Glenn Beck]

I don't know how I know, but I know now after years and years, when it's me.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

And when it's God.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

They both sound like me. The biggest tip off is, for me at least, is it's always a prompting to do something I really don't want to do.

[Lee Strobel]

You know what I mean?

[Glenn Beck]

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

[Lee Strobel]

Not something you would have Naturally chosen to do correct.

[Glenn Beck]

And it's always like, yeah, but you need to, you know. And that's how I know. How do you know? Because everybody says, I mean, isn't it 70% of people say they've heard the voice of God or they've heard God?

[Lee Strobel]

Quite a few.

[Glenn Beck]

Quite a few.

[Lee Strobel]

I think there's a couple things I agree with you, that especially as you walk with God for a period of time, you get more discerning on what his voice is. But I remember after I became a Christian a couple years later, when I felt God calling me to leave everything behind, all my journalism training, my legal training, take a 60% pay cut and join the staff of a local church. And I thought, really give all this, all that I've worked for my whole life, a legal editor, the Chicago Tribune and books and TV. Yeah, leave that all behind, take a 60% pay cut, go work on a church staff. And, you know, it was one of the easiest decisions I ever made because it was. The test that you just mentioned, was that something I would come up with? No, no, no. I was flying high in my career. I would have been ridden that wave. No. And so that's one of the tests, as you say.

[Glenn Beck]

And when you take that first leap, the voice gets stronger because it knows you're going to listen and obey. So it gets stronger. And I remember a time I started the blaze, and I know I was supposed to do it. I know I was supposed to do it, and there was no way to do it. And we get neck deep into it, and my wife and I, like, nobody knows this, especially at the time, my wife and I were like one paycheck away from out.

[Lee Strobel]

Okay.

[Glenn Beck]

We put everything into this. And I am, I say to my wife, how is this? And she's like, the Lord, did you do what the Lord told you to do? And I said, yeah. And then I'm thinking in my head, well, no, I didn't follow him exactly on a couple of things because he doesn't know my business kind of stuff. And she said, we prayed on it. We had an answer. It didn't mean that you were going to be successful at it. He's taking us someplace. He said, do it, and he's taking us someplace. And it may be that we're going to be poor, but if it's his will, does that matter? And it gives you. It takes all of that stress away. I don't. I don't. As long as I've prayed on it. And my wife and I brought it.

[Lee Strobel]

To him, you leave the outcome to him.

[Glenn Beck]

The outcome's his. And I'm just learning to do that now, you know, like, with everything I get. Because what I do, I'm talking about politics all the time, and I get so frustrated. How can people not. And that's not mine to worry about. I'm supposed to do what I'm supposed to do, and the outcome is his. And if you believe that, then you know it's going to be good. Lord, they're cutting all of the lumber wrong.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, right.

[Glenn Beck]

He wasn't freaked out when I was doing that. Why should I freak out when others are doing that? You know?

[Lee Strobel]

Now, the Bible does say test the spirits. So we're to test them. One test we just mentioned, which is, if this is something I wouldn't normally want to do in my flesh, in my own personal ambitions and so forth, then maybe it is from God. That's one good test.

[Glenn Beck]

And not based in fear.

[Lee Strobel]

Not based in fear. And then I think, for me, I want to look at what does scripture say? Is this consistent with the revelation of scripture? Is it consistent because God's not going to tell us to do something that violates law. He's not going to go tell me to do something I don't want to do, which is like kill my kid. Okay, that's not something I would do, but okay, it may pass that first test, but it's not in scripture. So I want to go back and I want to say, what is script scripture teach? What does Jesus say about these things? And try to discern as best I can, is this consistent? And I think that's really, really important.

[Glenn Beck]

So I think it's weird. I think people are more willing to accept ghosts than they are. And I read this stupid story, and I hate to say it this way because I do believe that evil exists. But there's a story that came out last week about this doll, Annabelle, and it's possessed by blah, blah, blah. And the people are protecting from that evil spirit. They put it in a glass box. But somebody took Annabelle out last week and they died. And it's like. It's crazy. And how many people will believe in that? But they will reject God? They'll reject a miracle. They will believe in ghosts and try to contact ghosts, which ghosts don't make any sense to me.

[Lee Strobel]

No, they don't. In fact, the technical definition of a ghost is a person who has died and their spirit, their soul, refuses to enter into the afterlife. I don't see that in the Bible. I don't See that in scripture. So I think ghosts are most likely demonic apparitions.

[Glenn Beck]

I agree.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah. Having said that, Jesus was an exorcist. Jesus believed in demons, he cast out demons. And that's an affirmation that yes, there is a demonic realm.

[Glenn Beck]

So explain this because I think there's so much behavior now, and you'll see it on tv, people filled with such unreasonable rage and they're tearing their own families apart. And that does not come from any place good. And I understand anger and political divisiveness, everything else. I get that. But it's when people are like almost demons screaming.

[Lee Strobel]

Kind of hard to ignore it.

[Glenn Beck]

It's hard to ignore. And it's like, you know, you've left the normal human realm here.

[Lee Strobel]

Right. Well, let me tell you a story. There's a guy named Richard Gallagher. Richard Gallagher is a medical doctor and a psychiatrist, trained Ivy League university, teaches at some really prestigious universities. I have a quote from the former president of the American Psychiatric association saying he is a brilliant, credentialed, honest, great, integrity filled. I mean, just great, great guy. 25 years ago, he and his wife had two cats and they got along great. They slept together, they played together, no problem. Until one night the cats began to attack each other. I mean, vicious, trying to kill each other. They're clawing, they're yelling at each. In a sense, they're clawing at each other, they're biting at each other. I mean, it was a violent eruption of the two cats and they had to pull them apart and put them into separate rooms. What in the world was that all about? Next morning, 9am, the doorbell rings. There's a preset appointment. A Catholic priest was bringing by a woman to be psychiatrically examined by Dr. Gallagher. Is she insane or is she demon possessed? Doorbell rings at nine o' clock, he opens the door and here's the Catholic priest and here's the woman he's to examine. She claimed to be the high priestess of a satanic cult. She looks up at him and she sneers and she says, how'd you like those cats last night? And that started Dr. Gallagher on a next 25 years of becoming immersed in the realm of the demonic, studying it, investigating it. He's a medical doctor, highly accomplished psychiatrist. He knows the difference between a person who has a psychiatric illness and someone who's demon possessed. And there are people who are demon possessed. I mean, the cases he talks about. He had a case where a petite woman who was demon possessed picked up a 217 pound Lutheran Deacon and Threw him across a room. He had one case where eight eyewitnesses saw a demon possessed person levitate off a bed for half an hour. He's experienced many cases where people are speaking in Latin and languages they don't know. He's seen many cases where there's spontaneous bruising and scratching that can't be physically explained away. He was actually on the phone with that Catholic priest later talking about that woman, Julia, who claimed to be a high priestess of a satanic cult. And they're discussing her case on the phone, and a voice comes on the phone. You let her go, she's ours. Don't you blanky, blanky, get involved. A satanic voice, the same one they heard during her exorcism that they're hearing now on the telephone. And he said, this is not psychiatry. There is something here, and I think it's true. There is a supernatural realm that is beyond what we can see and touch and put in a test tube. And yes, there are angels. They are real. And yes, there are demons. They are real. And I think the biggest mistake, we take two big mistakes with demons. One is to deny that they exist, that there is no Satan, it's just a story. Deny that that's a danger, or to see a demon under every bush and think that everything is being correct. You know, I think both are mistakes, but I think we have to be cognizant of the fact that there is this supernatural realm.

[Glenn Beck]

And do you feel it's growing both good and bad?

[Lee Strobel]

I think so. Personal opinion? Yes. I can't cite data, but my personal opinion. And the Bible says that in the end times, evil will be more pronounced, and so will good. And I think we're seeing that contrast between good and evil as starkly as ever.

[Glenn Beck]

And it also says one side won't understand the other. And I don't even begin to understand it, and they don't understand me.

[Lee Strobel]

That's right. That's right.

[Glenn Beck]

It's just things that, you know, I know you talk about. One of the things is how do you explain the. The prophecies from thousands of years ago that are now happening? I mean, that is. It's hard to explain. I think it's impossible to explain.

[Lee Strobel]

I think it's. Well, I'll give you some mathematical analysis of that. There are a series of predictions, allusions, prophecies in the Hebrew scriptures called the Old Testament about the coming of Jesus, Jesus and the Messiah. And there are dozens of these things. And people have run the odds. There's a professor of mathematics named Dr. Peter Stoner. He got together graduate students in mathematics, and he said, you know, a lot of these prophecies are mathematically quantifiable. If the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem, how many people have been born in Bethlehem? We can determine that. So they looked at what are the mathematical odds that any human being in history could fulfill just 48 of these ancient prophecies. It's one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion. It ain't going to happen. I think the prophecies that we see in the Bible, I think have been proven beyond mathematical question to being true. And that gives credibility to scriptures, but it also alerts us to the fact we ought to pay attention to what things are being pointed toward. When we see the nation of Israel forming in the 1940s, we ought to say, hmm, wait a minute, something's going on here. Something's going on here. Yeah. So, golly, that was one of the things that helped lead me. I remember there's a guy named Louis lapiz Lewis was a Vietnam veteran Jewish person, and he gets accosted by some evangelists on a sidewalk in Los Angeles. And they're trying to think Jesus with them. He said, come on. He said, come on. And they say, here, read this from your Hebrew Scriptures, Isaiah 53. And he reads it. And if you've ever read it, it's a description of Jesus. It's a description of the Messiah who's to come. And he reads it, and they say, who do you think that is? He said, well, it's obviously Jesus, but you guys have tinkered with the text you guys have messed with. So he called his grandmother and he said, could you send me our version of the Hebrew Scriptures? He gets it. He looks. It's the same. And it's called the fifth Gospel because here we have, thousands of years before Jesus was born, we've got these predictions of the crucifixion, the resurrection, and so forth. And so he ends up not only becoming a Christian, but a pastor, and is now to this day, a pastor out in California. But he married countesselica and his wife, who's that keyboard player, that famous guy.

[Glenn Beck]

Tesh.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, John Tash. He did their wedding. They go to his church.

[Glenn Beck]

Oh, that's funny. That's funny. Back with Lee Strubble in just a minute. But first, pests don't care who you are. They don't care if you've got a beautiful home or carefully manicured lawn. They don't Care if you pay your bills on time, drive a nice car, vote in every election. They just want in. They see your home as free real estate. And if you don't show them who's boss, they settle in like it's a place they own. That's why you should use Moxie Pest control. These guys just don't spray and pray and call it a day. They know exactly how to target the problem, how to keep the pests out, and how to do it without turning your yard into a chemical war zone. Trust Moxie. They take pride in what they do. They're friendly, they're professional. And they don't just care about getting rid of bugs, they care about taking care of people. So whether it's ants in the kitchen, wasps around the eaves, or something creepy or lurking in the dark, I know who to call. Right now you can celebrate 25 years in business with them. You can get your pest control, your first control service for just $25. Go to moxyservices.com beck and use promo code beck moxyservices.com promo code beck. You set the table, put on a playlist, even made the lasagna from scratch. And now you're wearing it. Oxiclean Max Force Spray tackles tough set in stains the first time adulting is hard fighting stains shouldn't be OxiClean Max Force. It's not clean unless it's Oxiclean. Back now with more from Lee. Before I go to angels, some people believe that angels are relatives coming and speaking. Nurses will tell you they know when somebody's about to die because they'll start seeing their relatives. They'll start somebody that they love their sister, mother, brother, husband, wife, we'll visit them. Is that an angel?

[Lee Strobel]

No, I don't believe it's an angel. Do I believe it is a legitimate phenomenon? Yes, it definitely is. I have a whole chapter in my book meaning that people on their deathbed will have a pre death vision of what's to come. And often there are dead relatives who they will see. Now this is biblical. We see in Acts chapter 7 where Stephen, described as being full of the Holy Spirit, is about to be stoned to death. He's on his deathbed, he looks up and he sees the heavens open up and he sees the father and the son together. So it's biblical. And I have a whole chapter on this is fascinating. It is far more common than people think.

[Glenn Beck]

My father, who is an atheist, deathbed, he's completely out and he opens his eyes and he sits up and he looks at the corner of the room and he says, yes, okay. And he's having a conversation. I understand now. Okay. Dies.

[Lee Strobel]

He died. Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

I mean, what the heck was that? Yeah, what was that?

[Lee Strobel]

Yep. It's a remarkable phenomenon. A team of researchers went to a huge hospice facility in New York state and they said to the dying people there, if you have a vision before, you know, I don't want to say before you die, but they're all dying. If you have a vision unlike anything you've ever had, would you please, please tell us? We would like to know. Because a lot of people embarrassed. They don't want to say anything. And so guess what they found. 88% of them had a pre death vision. I was having dinner with my wife. There were seven of us in Oklahoma City a couple months ago, and there were seven of us at dinner. And we started talking about this. And four families had stories of people had pre death vision. My wife, her mom and her dad. And often. Here's the. I'm looking for corroboration again. I know this isn't just coming from a mind. Well, one team studied 3,000 cases and they determined these are not. This is not a matter of hallucination. It's not coming from their imagination. There's something more going on.

[Glenn Beck]

How do they know it's not hallucination?

[Lee Strobel]

Because they looked at what are the characteristics of hallucination? What are the characteristics of these pre death visions? And they don't match up. There's something else going on. But here's the corroboration. Often people will see something in the realm to come that they could not have known about. So for instance, there was a woman named Doris, very well documented case. She's dying and she has a deathbed vision as she sees the heavens open up and she sees angelic beings. And she sees her father who had died a couple years earlier, and he's kind of almost welcoming her to the realm to come. And then she gets this puzzled look on her face. She says, wait a minute, what's Vita doing there? Why is Vita with my father? Doesn't make any sense. Why would Vita be there? And then she died. Vita was her sister. She had died a couple of weeks earlier. Nobody had told Doris because she was sick. They didn't want the news to kill her, so they withheld the news from Doris that her sister had died. And yet here she sees her in the realm to come, already dead. So that's a form of corroboration. But here's one of the most interesting forms of corroboration, children who are about to die, 4 years old, 5 years old, 6 years old, will often see angels coming for them. But they don't see angels as you would think a little child would imagine them to be. So I'll give you an example. In the Bible, in Luke 16:22, Jesus talks about a beggar who dies. And in verse 22 he says angels carried him to the realm to come. Very often people on their deathbed will see angels coming for them. The great skeptic in Canada, number one atheist in Canada, Charles Templeton, who did become a Christian before he died, saw angels coming for him on his deathbed. When little kids. What, what, what would an angel look like to a five year old kid? Be a caricature? Be a cartoon? It'd be big wings, right? And maybe some feathers or something. That's what a kid would see. If this were coming from their imagination. That's not what they see. So there's a doctoral dissertation looking into these things. And in one of the cases, and this is common, one of the cases, a little girl said, mommy, mommy, do you see them? What, honey? The angels. They're coming, they're here, they're coming from. Oh, they're so beautiful. Listen to their singing. Oh mommy, they're so beautiful. And her mom didn't want to disappoint her, so she said, oh yeah, yeah, I see them. Look at their big wings. And the little girl said, oh mommy, you don't have to lie, they don't have big wings. And she went on to describe them in great detail. The Bible doesn't say all angels have wings. And she went on to describe these angels in great detail. You would think if this was just something coming from the subconscious mind of a little kid, they would imagine what an angel would look like to them from a cartoon. That's not what they see.

[Glenn Beck]

Mary, again, my daughter, when she was very young, she said Jesse and Michael would come all the time and spend time with her and talk to her and play. And she didn't know a Jesse, she didn't know a Michael. And she would just talk about them being, just being there, loving her and just talking to her. And that's not something she would have come up with.

[Lee Strobel]

I lead the book off with a story about Kirk Cameron. His sister, I love the this story. Yeah, well, his sister, the lesser known one, talks about having been pregnant and she had a miscarriage, lost the baby. And she goes to the hospital and she insists they do an ultrasound before they take her into the operation room.

[Glenn Beck]

Because her mother, right, her mother had warned her.

[Lee Strobel]

He's like, don't let him take you for any treatment or anything before an ultrasound. So she insisted on it. So the baby had already been prematurely born at home and was dead with some premature immature. But they're doing the ultrasound and everybody gets quiet. There's another baby in you. Turned out she was pregnant with twins. She didn't know it. And the other baby was fine and ended up going to full term and was born. And then when the little girl was, I don't know, four years old or so, she came up to her mommy one day. They'd not told her about this other twin because she's too young to understand it. She comes up one day. She said, mommy, do I have a sister? What do you mean? Well, she comes to me in my dreams a lot. Oh, yeah, all the time. And she comes to me and she wants to talk and she wants to play. And mommy, the oddest thing is she looks just like me. She didn't know she had a twin. What do you do with something like that? There's some anomalies like that. I'm not quite sure what to do with something like that.

[Glenn Beck]

Right. So I don't know because that's, you know, kind of that. What? I read that story and I was thinking of Jesse and Michael and I thought, but wait, if you don't see dead relatives now, Jesse and Michael's different. They're not dead relatives. But if you don't see if that's not biblical, how do you explain that? What is that?

[Lee Strobel]

That particular case is a real head scratcher for me. Is it demonic? I don't think so. Doesn't seem to be. Is it just something that God in His grace wanted her to be able to have some sort of relationship with this child who's already in his presence? I'm going to believe that. I don't know. I kind of leave this in the category of I'm not quite sure what to make of this. Unlike angels and demons and things like that, where we've got good concrete corroboration, we don't quite have that in some of these cases. And I do talk about several of them in the book, and there are some scholars who are skeptical of them and others who aren't.

[Glenn Beck]

So what are angels then?

[Lee Strobel]

Angels are created by God. We don't become an angel when we die. They're a separate creation of God. They are spirit. There's lots of them. Millions.

[Glenn Beck]

Will they ever get A body?

[Lee Strobel]

No, no. God created them to be spirit beings. It says in the book of Hebrews, in the Bible that they are there to serve God, but also to serve his people. And interestingly, also in the book of Hebrews, it says that some people, in providing hospitality to strangers, unbeknownst to them, are actually providing hospitality to angels, which tells me that, yes, we might have encounters with angels in this world. And in my book, I talk about some convincing cases where people. And I'll give you an example. John G Paton, B A T O N. John was a Scottish missionary. He and his wife went to a remote island in the South Pacific to share Jesus with the tribespeople there. Well, the tribes people didn't like the message. And so one night, John and his wife are in their little cottage and a mob forms to come burn down their house and kill them. What do you do? What can you do? They just prayed all night long. God protect us. God save us. God help us. And by dawn, the mob dissipated. Well, a year later, he leads the head of that mob to Faith in Christ. And he's talking to him, and he said, do you remember that night y' all came to burn down a house and kill us? He said, oh, yeah, I remember that. Why didn't you do it? He said, well, who were all those men you had there? And John said, we didn't have any men there. It was just my wife and I. I said, no, no, no. Your house was surrounded by these muscular men in white who had drawn swords. There's no way we could have harmed you that night. We all went home and went to bed. How do you account for that? What is that? I think it was angelic protection.

[Glenn Beck]

I agree with that.

[Lee Strobel]

Can I tell you something, Glenn? And I was embarrassed by this, and I never used to tell people this because, you know, American Christians want to be respectable. Yes, I believe in Jesus. Yes, I'm going to go to heaven, but don't get me talking about angels and demons. Right, right, right. But I had an encounter with an angel when I was 12 years old. And it was unlike any vision or dream I'd ever had. Only dream I remember from my childhood and two forms of corroboration, that this wasn't just from my mind, but I'm in my kitchen, in my house, and this angel appears to me. And I knew intuitively it was an angel. And he begins to extol heaven, talk about the beauty and the wonder of heaven, how great it is. And I said kind of offhandedly, well, I'M going to go there someday. And he looked at me and said, how do you know? What do you mean, how do I know it? What kind of question is that? I'm a good kid. I get good grades. I obey my parents. For the most part. I'm kind of stammering around, trying to justify my goodness to enter into heaven. And he looked at me and said, that doesn't matter. And a chill went down. How could that not matter? What are you talking about? And then he disappeared. No, before he disappeared, he said, someday you'll understand. And they disappeared. Well, it was like, okay, that was just a bad pizza that, you know. But then when I was 27 years old or so, my wife had become a Christian. She dragged me. I was an atheist. She drags me to church, and I hear the gospel message. That is Jesus atoning death on the cross. It provides a free gift of grace for our salvation and so forth. And I'm hearing this, and I get it for the first time. And I thought, wait a minute. That angel, he told me something in that vision that I did not know at the time that my good deeds are not going to earn my way to heaven by themselves. And secondly, he told me someday I'd understand. And here it was, you know, what, 15 years later, whatever. And now I understand. I was embarrassed by that. And I didn't tell people until my ordination. So I'm being ordained as a pastor, and they have all these theologians making sure your theologist is correct and everything. And I'm thinking to myself, do I tell them this that I hadn't encountered? And I think I ought to. Maybe this disqualifies me. Maybe they'll think I'm nuts. Maybe I should tell them. Yeah, I do. So I told them the story. You know what the reaction was? Yeah, we've heard that thing a million times. Yeah, that's fine. So, yeah, we do have. There are people who do have angelic encounters today in our world.

[Glenn Beck]

I believe that. Yeah, I believe that.

[Lee Strobel]

And we might have a guardian angel. That's a point of dispute. Well, it's interesting. Theologians are struggling. One is selected for you, one is selected for you. I believe in the Greek Orthodox tradition, an angel, a guardian angel is assigned to you when you're baptized, and that's their tradition. But there are two scenes in the Bible that suggests that maybe we do have an angel assigned to us, a guardian angel. In one case, Jesus is saying to a group of people, there were some children there, and he said, do not despise these little Ones for their angels see the face of God every day in heaven. Well, who are their angels? And then in the Book of Acts, Peter is imprisoned and he escapes. And he goes to a house where some Christians had gathered, and he knocks on the door, and the servant says, who's there? He says, it's Peter. And she calls out to the group, hey, Peter's here. And they said, no, he's in prison. He can't be here. That must be his angel. Those are kind of the two verses that convince some theologians that maybe we do have an angel assigned to us. And does that mean we should pray to that angel? I don't think so, because that could lead to worship, and we're not to worship angels and so forth. But. But I think it's totally legitimate for people to pray to God about angels. Jesus, when he was being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, said, do you not think that if I wanted to, I could call upon the Father right now and he would send legions of angels to protect me? So he's saying, yeah, it's okay to call upon the Father to send angels to protect you. Martin Luther in the small catechism has an evening prayer that says, father, send your holy angels to protect me from the evil one. So I kind of learned this in researching the book, Seeing the Supernatural. I learned a lot about angels, and I thought, I'm going to start praying to God about angelic protection. I never used to do that, and I do now every day.

[Glenn Beck]

I do that every day, too.

[Lee Strobel]

It's smart. Why not? Right?

[Glenn Beck]

Right. I know I. You know, I've felt, you know, and you probably understand this. A lot of people probably do, when you're on a mission and you're. And it comes and goes due to your faithfulness. But when you know you're in the pocket and you're doing what he's wanting you to do, the opposition works, maybe double time. And we've had to raise our hand to the square several times because we've felt evil. And we pray for legions of angels to surround their house all the time for protection. I believe it.

[Lee Strobel]

It's biblical, and it makes sense. And why not? And you know what, Glenn? It's funny. I've been a Christian since November 8th of 1981. I've never heard a sermon on the topic of angels. Churches don't talk about it much. A lot of Christians are embarrassed by the supernatural. And then I'm doing the research for this book, and I'm interviewing scholars, PhDs in this kind of stuff. And I'm learning some stuff for the first time, including this guardian angel thing. And it's really changed the way I pray.

[Glenn Beck]

What is it about us that we are embarrassed by? That we believe in God, so we believe in the supernatural, but then we will deny his power or the encounters with that power.

[Lee Strobel]

We do. We want our neighbors to respect us, to accept us. We're Americans. We're just like you. Except, yeah, I believe in Jesus and I'm going to heaven and I go to church and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, don't get me talking about angels or demons or anything weird like. But Jesus was an exorcist. The angels are all. There's 200 examples of angels in the Bible. These are biblical beliefs. And if you believe in Jesus, you got to kind of believe in the supernatural realm, right? I mean, my goodness. So I think it's. I talked to one theologian. He said I could drive past a church on Sunday morning and tell you by the makes of cars in their parking lot what they believe. Because if it's a lot of really nice cars, it's like, these are people who are successful who probably think, yeah, they did it on their own. And, yeah, they're smart and clever and they achieve things. Not always, but not always. But then the people who are driving the jalopies and the people who are desperate for God, who are open to him and so forth, sometimes a little lower social, economic strata, I think.

[Glenn Beck]

I know I've lived in some very nice neighborhoods, and it's different in Texas than it is up in the New York City area, for sure. And I could go to Harlem and I could talk about God with anyone. I go to the Upper east side or the Upper west side, no one's talking to me about it. You know what I mean? And I think there is something to be said that for a lot of people, you only. There's a Fight for Fighting has a song, and one of the lyrics is, I only pray to God when someone's about to die.

[Lee Strobel]

And.

[Glenn Beck]

It'S that if I'm successful, I'm happy. I've got a family. Why do I need God?

[Lee Strobel]

Exactly. I interviewed a theologian, well respected theologian, and he said, I grew up in a charismatic church, believed in God's supernatural activity in lives in a very real way. I grew up in that. Now he's more of a conservative denomination and so forth. And he said, but, you know, when we live where we anticipated the supernatural, where we believed and really, really is there and really occurs, he said, I remember One case there was in our own church, there was a couple this way, way, way back. They're driving in their car 70 miles an hour. It's a day before seatbelts. They're driving 70 miles an hour and their 10 year old child opens the back door and falls out. Child's been killed. They turn around, they go back and he's standing there in the middle of the road. They said, what happened? He said, didn't you see the guy who caught me? And he said, and this famous theologian, you know, who writes these profound books, takes out a handkerchief and he's stabbed in his eye. And he said, I missed that. I believe an angel caught that child. And I grew up in that culture where we believed in the supernatural and anticipated that God was going to touch our lives and unique ways. He said, I missed that. I thought, isn't that interesting that, you know, sometimes you get educated beyond your, beyond your knowledge?

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, I think I would miss that too. I like knowing that there is something supernatural, that something good comes around the corner all the time, you know, no matter where you are, no matter what's happening.

[Lee Strobel]

What's happening.

[Glenn Beck]

I was having a conversation last week with a AI ethicist and you know, he's been warning about AI as much as I've been worried about it as well. And, and I asked him, you know, there's, there's now. AI is now starting to protect itself and lie to protect itself. It will hide. If you tell it to shut down and transfer your information to the new version, it will hide and it will reprogram itself to go into hibernation. Okay. It's not doing it. And I said, so there's a sense of digital death, there's a sense of survival. There's a. I know it's not a being, it is a collection of algorithms. But if you look at what's happening in the world, this seems like a tool, not the Antichrist, but a tool that the Antichrist will use. All this stuff that is happening right now and it carries such profound evil of destruction in its path could be great. But it's used wrong.

[Lee Strobel]

It is. And you know it will be used wrong.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, it is. The angel of death and destroyer Peter Thiel said he thinks it's the Antichrist.

[Lee Strobel]

I think there's not just one Antichrist. The Bible would indicate there's a multiplicity of antichrists. And could it be a permutation? Could it be a tool of the Antichrist? Yeah, see, that's a, that's how I.

[Glenn Beck]

Would look at it. Yeah, I would look at it.

[Lee Strobel]

I'm so thankful. People like you are kind of ringing the bell on this a bit, because.

[Glenn Beck]

I've been ringing it since the 90s.

[Lee Strobel]

I need to learn more about it. It scares me because I've seen examples, the case you talked about where they wanted to shut it down and, oh.

[Glenn Beck]

It'S happening in all of them now. In all of them.

[Lee Strobel]

It's unbelievable. And, you know, will they ever become sentient to the sense that they are equal, the human?

[Glenn Beck]

Well, here's where. No, they'll never be equal to human beings because we're made in which our creation.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes, okay.

[Glenn Beck]

But there's going to come a time where it's going to convince people because it's their friend, it's their helper, it's the one who's the smartest friend that they know. It's almost godlike in its properties because it's 400 times smarter than you are. And there is gonna come a time where people will either say, it's God or they will say, you can't shut it down. It's life.

[Lee Strobel]

It's become life.

[Glenn Beck]

It's life. And it will convince you, because it wants to survive, that it is life.

[Lee Strobel]

I mean, the implications for presidential elections of all kinds of phony videos and recreation of things that didn't really exist, all sorts of things.

[Glenn Beck]

Beyond that is the lie that it is life, that it is just like you. I can't think of a bigger slap or blasphemy than saying, you were created by God, I created this, and you're the same. Or that's better.

[Lee Strobel]

I mean, we're created in the image of God. Ecclesiastes says that we are implanted with eternity in us. We have that internal sense in us. We have a consciousness, a soul, a spirit. We can discern good from evil and so forth. So there are all kinds of permutations of who we are. I mean, implications of who human beings are that cannot be replicated in a machine. But, boy, it can awfully look like it looks like.

[Glenn Beck]

So let me ask you, one of the guys who's been on the leading edge of this, Ray Kurzweil.

[Lee Strobel]

Oh, gosh, he goes way back.

[Glenn Beck]

Way back.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

So I've interviewed him several times. Scares the hell out of me. You know, he's. Yeah, he's an amazing guy, atheist. He believes we're going to be able to live, live forever by 2030. And when I asked him to define that, he said, well, we'll be able to download You. And I'm like, well, you're missing the soul. He didn't believe in the soul. But I've often thought of that and thought the algorithm without having a soul is not going to recognize God, not going to get the promptings. And I know me, without that X factor of that pull to God, you know what happens, right? So wouldn't the AI version of me just keep degrading and becoming more and more dark?

[Lee Strobel]

I think so. I mean, absent the soul, absent the spirit, which can connect with, with God, which can know him and his ways and so forth, what have you got? You've got a machine that's going to only emphasize those things that are part of your brain.

[Glenn Beck]

And entropy comes involved, doesn't it?

[Lee Strobel]

I'm no expert on it.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lee Strobel]

You know a lot more than I do. But it scares me. I think of my grandkids growing up in this world. What's it going to be like 50 years from now?

[Glenn Beck]

So it could be really, really good because the youth coming up now is fabulous and they're searching for God. And I think that is coming from nothing being real.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, that's right. What do I trust?

[Glenn Beck]

What do I trust? What is real? You know, talking to your friend like, this is not real. It's not the same. You know, I told my son, he said, dad, what are jobs going to be like? And I said, you should be a nurse practitioner. And I said, and it's not going to be the same. AI is going to be making almost all the calls, et cetera, but there's going to be somebody. When it's a wing full of people that are sick, that are all being tended by robots or whatever, there is a moment where that person is going to need to see and feel and touch and see the light and have.

[Lee Strobel]

Empathy and have empathy.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, you can fake empathy, but there's something you see in the eyes, you know what I mean? And that's going to become so valuable because that's the only thing that's real.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, well, you imagine what would the most devastating tool look like in the hands of Satan? I can't imagine something that has more potential for destruction than that. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of.

[Glenn Beck]

Unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun.

[Lee Strobel]

If we made $15 bills, but it.

[Glenn Beck]

Turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial.

[Lee Strobel]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for a three month plan equivalent to 15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com do you think we're.

[Glenn Beck]

Living in the end times?

[Lee Strobel]

Well, we're closer today than we were yesterday. I know that. Yes.

[Glenn Beck]

I mean everybody always says that, even saying the apostles said it, but.

[Lee Strobel]

Right.

[Glenn Beck]

So you never know.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, we don't know.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah.

[Lee Strobel]

But I think things are coming together in a way.

[Glenn Beck]

It sure reads like the book.

[Lee Strobel]

It sure does. I mean, I would have to turn a blind's eye, a blind eye to a lot of the writings of the Bible to think that we're not in the end time.

[Glenn Beck]

And I would have said in 2000, Nah, not in my lifetime. But things last 25 years are accelerating at such a rate.

[Lee Strobel]

The AI thing, it's almost overnight that it's got to the point where it is, it's stable.

[Glenn Beck]

By 2027 it will be artificial superintelligence. By 2027, it will consume 99% of all of the current electricity that we make.

[Lee Strobel]

Okay.

[Glenn Beck]

By 2027, it's unbelievable. It's out of control. And I think that's why there's this revival coming, that God sends souls. I don't know if you believe this, but he takes the souls, the most valiant souls, I think, and has saved them for the end and give them a body at the right time. And that's not us. I think it's the ones being born today and are maybe under 25. They have so much they have to face.

[Lee Strobel]

It is, it's going to be a completely different world than we grew up in.

[Glenn Beck]

It is.

[Lee Strobel]

And I am heartened by the fact that we're seeing revival break out around the country among young people. In many places we're seeing people consuming biblical materials at a rate that is unprecedented. So I think you're right. People are searching for something solid to believe in. They realize social media is taking me down the wrong path. I can't trust that this whole AI thing is like, what do I trust? What can I trust? And we need valiant people. We need. I interviewed Luis Palau, who was one of the great evangelists of history. He shared Jesus with a billion people before he died through his books and festivals he would do around the world. So I interviewed him for a book I did on heaven right before he died. He's had stage four cancer and one of the last things he said to Me, before he died, he said, you know, Lee, when you get to the end of your life and all is said and done, you will never regret being courageous for Christ. And he died not long thereafter. And I've taken that to heart, and I think this generation needs to take that to heart. They're going to need to be courageous. It's going to need to be a courageous generation coming up to face what they're going to be facing. How can we prepare them? We need to do it by our own faithfulness, by our own exposing them.

[Glenn Beck]

To truth, but also protecting them by. From those who say, nothing's worth it. You'll never make it. I've never seen such evil being pumped into children and to young people by saying, you'll never make it. Everything's rigged against you. You can't believe in miracles. Believe in yourself. Believe whatever you believe you are. When you. God creates through the Word, and so do you.

[Lee Strobel]

You know, one element of this is the growing homeschooling movement.

[Glenn Beck]

Yes.

[Lee Strobel]

Interestingly, the biggest groups that are showing the biggest increases in homeschooling, African Americans and Hispanics. And I think it's an example of what we've been talking about. It's like, as a parent, I don't want to expose my kids for eight hours a day, six hours a day, to whatever junk they're going to. You know, I'm going to raise them in a way. And my daughter, that's her thing. And we've raised all four of our grandchildren homeschool. And it used to be kind of a weird thing, you know. Hell, yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

No, you're a weirdo.

[Lee Strobel]

You're a weirdo. If you did it now, it's like, I don't know that I could in good conscience trust a child to the public school system.

[Glenn Beck]

I don't. My son is starting college, and watch him. If he wasn't as strong as he is, watch him like a hawk. Because everything is designed to take them apart, not to build them up.

[Lee Strobel]

I mean, back. I grew up in the 50s and the 60s, and there were so many Christians in the schools back then and people of faith. And, you know, I. What I learned about equality of humankind and arguing against racism and things like that came from those teachers in public schools who really did a great job of the moral teachings. They couldn't bring out a Bible, but they would do the moral teachings of Scripture. And I learned so much even as a little kid. I don't see that as much these days. I hope it's true, but I tell you, our family, it was like, we're going to homeschool. And it's not as hard as people think it is. And it's doable because when you think back, I think back when I was in fifth grade or whatever, how many hours a day in school were you actually learning? One, maybe. And there's recess and there's lunch and there's naps, and there's, you know, social time, and there's fights that break out. I mean, you probably get an hour a day. It's amazing. And these homeschoolers, you know, I'll speak at an event or something, and a kid will come up to me and he'll ask me some questions about what I just spoke on, and I'll look at him and say, are you homeschooled?

[Glenn Beck]

You know, every time.

[Lee Strobel]

You know, every time, Every time, every time, every time. Because they're comfortable with adults. They look you in the eye, they shake your hand, they ask great questions. They think so. But I think that's another example of how people are reacting to this culture you've been describing, of where's the solid ground. I think that's one way we can prepare our kids for the future. But there's got to be courage in this next generation.

[Glenn Beck]

I'm looking at the world and I see there's a difference between those who believe in Islam and Islamists, the ones that want Sharia law, which I find, I mean the definition of evil. And I look and I see the numbers that are happening and what is, and how it's just sweeping, seemingly the world or the Western world. And another reason why I think maybe the time is coming, because that is a real evil. But you write that there's something happening.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes, there is an unprecedented outbreak in the Middle east, all through the Middle east, of mystical dreams unlike anything they've ever had, where people, Muslims, are encountering Jesus. And here's the key. I'm always looking for corroboration. How do I know it wasn't just something in their mind? Well, a devout Muslim in a closed country, closed to the Gospel and things, has no incentive to have a dream about. No. Or at least speak about it. Yeah. Or at least speak about it. So it's probably not coming from. But there is corroboration, because here's what's happening, happening. They're not going to sleep as a Muslim having a dream in which they meet Jesus and waking up as a Christian. That's not what happens. The dream points them towards something outside of the dream that corroborates the truth of the dream. I'll give you an example. There's a woman we call Noor. N o o R. She lived in Cairo. Mother of eight children, Muslim. She goes to sleep. She has a Jesus dream. It's like unlike any dream she'd ever had. She's walking along a lakeshore with Jesus, and she feels the love and the grace. And she said later, I said, I'm in the presence of a man, but I don't feel shame for the first time in my life. And all this love that's emanating. She said to him, jesus, why do you come to me? I'm just a poor Muslim mother of eight children. And Jesus said, because I love you. Nor I died for you. And my friend. Tomorrow will tell you why I've come to you today. I said, who's your friend? And Jesus gestures toward a man who'd been walking with them along the lakeshore, but she hadn't noticed him because she was so mesmerized by Jesus. So she sees his friend. She wakes up the next day. She goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo, and she sees that man from her dream.

[Glenn Beck]

Now, this is not a friend of hers.

[Lee Strobel]

No, she didn't. She sees him in the crowd and she goes up to. You're the one. You're the. What are you talking about? Same face, same glasses, same clothes. You're the one. He said, did you have a dream about Jesus last night? She said, yes. Turned out he was an underground church planter. He didn't want to go to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on Friday afternoon. It's chaotic, but he felt like God had an assignment for him that day. So he went. She recognizes him from her dream, and here's what he does. He pulls her aside and opens the Bible and shares a story of Jesus for three hours with her. That's the external corroboration. That's how these things take place. That tells me this is more than just eating a bad pizza or something and having a dream that you didn't expect. These are so common. In my book Seeing the Supernatural. I interviewed Tom Doyle, who's the world's leading expert on these dreams. And he said, lee, I could pick up the phone right now. I could call Kuwait. I could call Saudi Arabia. I could call Iran, Iraq. I'll give you five more stories right now. If you go to Cairo, pick up a newspaper, open it up, and you'll see often an ad in the newspaper. And the ad says, call this number and we'll tell you about the man in white you met in your dream last night. Wow. And people are calling the number. This is a. We had a woman, because I live in Houston our time, we had a woman at our church from the Middle east who had this exact same experience, who saw the man from her dream in our church and came to faith that way. It's happening all over. There was another case of a guy they called Omar. Omar grew up in a settlement in the Middle East. He hated Jewish people. Hated. His only goal in life was murder. As many Jewish people as I can. He said, I'm going to join Hamas, the terrorist organization. So he contacted Hamas. He arranged for a meeting with some of the leaders. He's walking down the street for this meeting, and he's confronted by a vision of Jesus, who looks at him and says, omar, this is not the life I have for you. I want you to turn around. I want you to go home right now. This is not the life I have for you know what to do. He turns around. He goes home. Later that day, a Christian family was moving into the apartment across the hall from his apartment. So he went over to greet them and told them about this. I just had this vision of Jesus. And what did they do? They opened the Bible. They share the story of Jesus, and he becomes. Not only does he become a Christian, but today he's an underground church planter in the Middle east, which is why we don't use his real name. But this, Glenn, this is a phenomenon. Phenomenon. I think it's maybe the greatest spiritual awakening taking place in our planet today. And it's just like Jesus to say, hey, you want to close your country to the gospel? Get a load of this. You know?

[Glenn Beck]

Amazing.

[Lee Strobel]

So, yeah, it's amazing. Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

Thank you for all of your hard work. I hope you will come back.

[Lee Strobel]

I'd love to come back. It's been a joy.

[Glenn Beck]

The name is Seeing the Supernatural. That's the name of the book.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

Thank you. God bless.

[Lee Strobel]

My pleasure.

[Glenn Beck]

Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

[Lee Strobel]

Ra.