Long ago, Missy thought abortion was the right choice, but she was misinformed about what was really going on. God healed Missy's heart, and today she's a pro-life advocate, and Focus on the Family is equipping her to help others.
I want other women who are sitting like me, sitting in church, or dealing with that shame and secrecy to know that there's hope in healing. Can you imagine for just a moment what the perfect Father would be like? Just imagine, what would He be like?
Oh, well, He'd be gracious, He'd be kind, He'd be your biggest cheerleader, He'd be your biggest encourager, He'd pick you up in His lap and give you a hug. That is the picture of your Heavenly Father. Your Heavenly Father is not just a magnified version of your earthly Father.
He is fundamentally different. He is the perfect Father. He is the Father who you long to have for eternity. Well, that's Lee Strobel reflecting on the question of whether God is real, and Lee is here with us today on this Best of 2024 episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us, I'm John Fuller. John, I always enjoy having Lee on the program.
Just so capable. I love his testimony of being an atheist journalist and then coming to faith in Christ. It's one of the most awesome stories, and it just builds the veracity of what Scripture's about and how a life has changed.
And he's down to earth about it too, which is also great. Sometimes it's a challenge to explain our beliefs, especially when opponents are saying that God and science can't coexist, science is winning the day. We're bombarded by that message each and every day.
But when you peel it back a little bit, I've started to realize, I think it's the opposite. I think so much today science is proving God actually does exist, and you hear it in small ways and sometimes in thunderous ways. But even the big bang, what does that mean?
Before was nothing and all of a sudden something was. And we're going to talk about these great concepts today with Lee Strobel. He's written the book. The title is God Real. That's the number one question of humanity. That's what everybody asks.
We get a lot of marriage and parenting questions, but the number one question we get is still, is God real? And this will be a great two-day program. Yeah, Lee is such an engaging person to talk with, and he's a best-selling author. He's been on this broadcast a number of times.
We always get a big response from our listeners. He currently serves as founding director of the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. And today, as you said, Jim, we're talking about his book, Is God Real?
Exploring the Ultimate Question of Life. And of course, we have that book here at the ministry. Get a copy when you call us or check the program description for the link. Lee, welcome back. Thanks so much. It's always great to be with you. I love hanging out with you guys. It's so fun. It's kind of like just sitting on the couch talking, right? It is.
Which is so much fun. And you make it so easy. Well, thanks. You know, really, thank you for continuing to be a humble guy. You know, you might say, well, I'm really not if you talk to my wife. I got lots of humble about, I mean. No, seriously, you are one of those key Christian leaders that has really demonstrated, you know, I'm just a guy, and the Lord loves me like he loves you.
And you've had a lot of notoriety, and so often Christian leaders fall in that spotlight because pride gets a hold of them. And thank you for not letting that happen. That's very kind of you to say. My wife keeps me in line. You know, we've been married for four years. Well, that's a truism for all of us, right?
That's true. And she never lets me forget that we started out as, we met when we were 14 years old. We grew up together, so to speak. Came to Christ kind of together.
Came to Christ. She was first. She was first. She kind of led me into an investigation that I discovered that Christianity is real, that God is real. But she keeps me anchored. She travels with me.
She's my best friend. You know, Lee, for those that don't know your background, just a couple of sentences on that. You're a hardcore atheist. Everything was materialistic to you. You're a journalist, investigative journalist, so it had to be, what can I see?
What can I touch? What can you prove to me? Which does give your testimony so much more veracity, so much more honesty to it, because you weren't looking for something supernatural. You were the opposite guy.
Exactly. My wife came to faith through a neighbor who was a Christian nurse who became her best friend and who took her to church and answered her questions. My wife was agnostic. And I'll never forget when she gave me the bad news that she had become a Christian.
Yeah, right. You were angry. Angry. I'll tell you something I don't tell normally, but I was so mad.
First word that went through my mind was divorce. And she had just planted a flower garden in our backyard. And I was so mad, it was time for me to mow the lawn.
So after she told me I was so mad, I went outside and I mowed down her entire flower garden. You remember that humble thing I said? I'm taking that all back. I mean, that's a changed life right there.
That's the kind of guy you were. When you look at that, I mean, again, you put all the investigation aside, the rigorous scrutiny of the resurrection of Christ. Those things we're going to talk about. But who can take that away from you? You are a different person.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think 2 Corinthians 5.17 talks about when you come to Christ, you are a new person. The old is gone, the new has come. And I look at the direction my life was headed. I was a hedonist. I thought if there is no God, if there is no judgment, if there is no heaven, if there is no hell, if there is no ultimate accountability, the best way to live is to pursue pleasure. And so I lived a very immoral, drunken, profane, narcissistic life. I mean, that's who I was. All right, let's get into this book, Is God Real?
I mean, that's a heady title to be the author of. And in that context, I mean, you really do believe if a person comes with an open mind, not predetermined to battle you. But even in that case, that's okay. But with that open mind, you think a fair-minded person will put the pieces together if they're seeking the Lord.
You know, the Old Testament in Jeremiah, the New Testament in Hebrews, both say if you sincerely seek God, you're going to find Him. That's exciting. Yeah, that's exciting. And I think the key is an open-hearted, open-minded investigation. When I started my investigation, I did a couple of things. I said, number one, I'm going to do this like an umpire in a baseball game. I'm going to call a ball a ball and a strike a strike and just let things play out the way they should. Number two, when I have gathered the evidence, I'm going to reach a verdict. I'm not going to do this forever.
When the evidence is in, I'm going to reach a verdict. And the third thing I did, and this will surprise you, I think, I prayed. I was an atheist, and the prayer I prayed was, God, I don't believe you're there. In fact, I'm sure you're not.
But if you are, I want to meet you. Wow, that's great. I figured, what have I got to lose? 15 seconds, 10 seconds of a prayer. And if God is real, then it changes everything.
Yeah. Why do you think this question of God's existence is something humans have, a, pursued for so long? And I guess when I look at it, one of the most profound statements I've ever heard on that, you look at all of humanity around the world and you find religion. You find five major religions. Most of them, I'd say all but one, are typically things you do to get to God.
You pray five times a day a certain direction, and you live a very kind of rigid lifestyle, and therefore you will achieve heaven. I believe Christianity is the only religion, if we use that term, that is evidence of God reaching out to us. That always convicted me, and it seemed to be the right thing, when God's the one doing it, not us trying to do it.
Yes. Every other religion is based on the do plan. You've got to do a bunch of things to try to earn your way to God. Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E. It's done. Jesus is set on the cross.
It's finished. And it is a free gift of God's grace. That makes it distinctive among all the world religions. God offers forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of grace. And then the positive construct there is that we're all looking.
We're coming up. These are isolated areas that maybe back when these religions were started there wasn't a lot of exposure to Christianity. But people's hearts are turned toward God. That's the fundamental truth. You know, it's funny. The reason I wrote this book is my publisher actually came to me and said, We've discovered something interesting. Our tech people.
I said, What? He said, We've discovered that 200 times a second, around the clock, someone on planet Earth is typing into a computer search engine. Basically the question, Is God real? 200 times a second.
200 times a second. And I thought if there's then, it goes with what you're saying. There's this innate desire in us to find what is our purpose? Who is our creator? Am I alone? Is there a future? Is there an afterlife?
Is there more than this world that I see and touch? And so I thought, My goodness. And yet, as you say, the percentage of Americans who believe in God is now down to its lowest ever, 81 percent. And yet at the same time, we're seeing a lot of young people with curiosity about faith. I have a friend whose ministry is to travel the country and to speak to groups of high school and college students. He said, I've seen more teenagers come to faith in Jesus Christ in the last three years than in the previous 18 years of ministry combined.
And why? It's because I think the emptiness that people feel when you extract the belief in God from a culture, people feel that. And they say, Are we without an anchor? Are we without hope? Is this all that there is? If God does not exist, if God is not real, we don't have free will, we have no afterlife, no hope for anything beyond this world. There's all these implications that flow out of that. And I think people, when a culture begins to slide in that direction, as our culture has, then people begin to say, Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Is there any hope?
Is there anything I can grasp onto that can give me something beyond this world? Well, and in that context, I mean, we as Christians become very fearful when we see that slide. Yet at the same time, it may be the very ingredients that God is going to use for revival. Exactly. Right?
I mean, that's the irony. Exactly. Yep, but we're seeing these things around the country, these little revivals breaking out.
Colleges. Yeah, and we see it. I saw one ministry had 20 percent more young people come to faith last year than the previous year.
So there are these good signs that are going on, and I think it's incumbent on us as followers of Christ to help young people recognize that we have a faith that is not based on make-believe, wishful thinking, legend, or that kind of thing, but it's built on a solid foundation of historical and scientific truth. That is what this book is about. Lee, as a journalist, I mean, you set up interviews probably over your entire lifetime, even after becoming a Christian. So you're drawing from interviews that you've done over the decades. Right. One person that caught me, and you mentioned in the book, Ph.D. in philosophy, Bill Craig.
Yes. And something that he called the Kalam Argument. Yes, Kalam Cosmological Argument. Sounds like a fancy title, but it's a simple argument. Yeah, but I love this. Is it like Occam's Razor?
Take everything to the extreme, and is it positive or negative? And that usually indicates what is true. Right. So in that context, Kalam's argument, what is it? It's very powerful. And I'll tell you what, Jim. If I were still an atheist, this single argument for the existence of God would convince me that God exists. This is all I need. It's very simple.
It says this. Number one, whatever begins to exist has a cause. Number two, we now know the universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause behind it.
Now, you think about that. What kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence? Well, number one, it must be transcendent because it had to be separate and apart from creation. Number two, it had to be eternal or timeless because it existed before physical time came into being.
Right. It must be material or spirit because it existed before physical things were created. It must be powerful given the immensity of the creation event.
It must be smart given the precision of the creation event. It must be personal because he had to make the decision to create. It must be creative because, my goodness, just look at the wonders of this universe. It must be caring or loving because he fashioned a habitat for us to flourish in. And then Occam's Razor, the scientific principle that says, don't manufacture causes to explain an effect beyond what you need. You just need one God, so there'd be just one creator.
So what have we got? Transcendent, eternal, spirit, powerful, smart, personal, creative, caring, unique. That is a description of the God of the Bible. And you go, this is such an airtight argument that no skeptic has been able to shoot it down. And Bill Craig, who was popularized as two PhDs, one of the top philosophers in the world, he's done debates with major philosophers around the world on this topic. And it is a powerful argument that, again, just became particularly potent in the last few decades because it used to be that until now scientists thought the universe always existed. But Christians always opposed that and said, no, no, no, wait a minute. According to the Bible, it began to exist at some point in the past. And that's exactly what science tells us. And it is both interesting and it should not be alarming that the deeper science goes, the more that we see of God's nature and God's universe, it does lean and push us toward believing that there is a creator, if you're fair-minded about it. I saw the Time magazine when the Big Bang was finally kind of resolved. Yes, there was the Big Bang. They said all of matter may have existed in the size of a golf ball. And what was interesting is that Scripture talks about the entire universe being in the hand and were made in the image of God. So you could put that together.
Of course. A very subtle point, debatable, of course, but that in the palm of God's hand, whom we are created in the image of, everything existed. It's remarkable. And then you look at the way the universe is finely tuned in a way that defies the explanation. Oh, it's just a coincidence. Oh, it just happened by chance.
No, it didn't. List some of those things because it's pretty remarkable. Well, I'll give you a couple that are my favorite. The force of gravity. We all know what that is. You drop something, it's going to hit the floor. But the force of gravity could have been set anywhere along a continuum. If you pictured a ruler across the entire universe, 20 billion light years broken down in one-inch increments, that represents plausibly the range along which the force of gravity could have been set anywhere along that ruler. And yet it's set at the exact right place so that life can exist. What if we changed it? What if we changed the force of gravity one inch compared to the 20 billion light year width of the universe? Intelligent life would be impossible anywhere in the universe. I'll give you one other example that is probably – this one will just blow your mind.
It's the ratio of the electromagnetic force to the gravitational force. Now, that's a complicated deal, but here's what you need to know. That is finely tuned to one part in 10,000 trillion trillion trillion. Unbelievable.
Unbelievable. Now, how do we visualize that? Well, the astrophysicist Hugh Ross said – here's an illustration. Imagine a continent the size of North America piled with dimes all the way to the moon, 238,000 miles. Okay, you got that picture in your head?
I got it. Okay, now picture 1,000 North Americas with dimes piled up to the moon, okay? Now, picture a billion continents the size of North America with dimes piled 238,000 miles up to the moon. Now, take one dime and spray paint it red and mix it among the billion continents piled up to the moon and then take one person and blindfold them and say you can reach in one time and you can pick out one dime. What are the odds it would be that dime that have been spray painted red? The odds are one chance in 10,000 trillion trillion trillion. I mean, some people – and I'll get your response to this – most rational people will go, okay, that's overwhelming evidence for order and intelligent design and creator. There will be someone, a skeptic, that says, yeah, so we found the one dime. I mean, that's almost insane. I asked a scientist that.
He's a PhD from UCLA and a professor of physics at a major university in the Midwest, secular university. And I asked him, what are the odds that this could have happened just by happenstance? That one dime.
That one dime. And he looked at me and he said, well, we scientists have a term for that. I said, what?
He said, ain't gonna happen. It's just – when you reach numbers like – and remember, keep in mind, that's just one dial. There's 50 to 100 of these dials. And when you get to those numbers, you could say it is impossible. It is impossible.
And so if you just take the origin of the universe that we talked about, if you look at the fine-tuning of the universe, how does anyone who studies this come to the conclusion that there is not a supernatural creator behind it? I don't know. Yeah.
Because they would convince me as an atheist. You know, it's interesting. I remember when we did the Truth Project, we filmed Dr. Berlinski. I think he was mathematics at Stanford University at the time. But he said, you know, the dirty little secret between the biology department and the math department is we don't eat lunch together because we don't agree with their models like evolution.
Just mathematically, there was never enough time for that to occur. Yeah. And I thought that was – and he said – That's interesting. You know, people will say to me, oh, you have that bias because you're a religious person. He said, I'm not. I'm agnostic.
But there is no way, mathematically speaking, that that happened. It kind of points to your – Exactly. – truth seeker. Yes. And there's a moment, though, in this culture where herd mentality – Yes.
– seems to have consumed us now with technology. Yes. You had the quarantine. You had – you know, people just moved in a herd. Yes. And when it comes to worldview and understanding things, it seems like we've lost so many people saying, wait, wait a minute. What about – Yeah.
You know, kind of the skeptic. Yeah. Yeah. In all areas. Right. That's true.
And it is to come out as an atheist, and it is to come out as an evangelical Christian, for sure, in our culture. Because there's so much support for it. So much support. Pat's on the back. Exactly.
When I was an atheist, you never told people you were an atheist back then in the 1970s. Are you kidding? Thinking that turn.
Oh, people would think you're a pedophile or something. Right. You just didn't say that. Now it's the in thing. And so our kids go off to college, and they hear things and are challenged in their faith by a professor, and they come home at Thanksgiving and say, eh, I'm not so sure I believe this stuff anymore. Yeah. Lee, we had painted the picture. Let's go – you know, we talked about the universe and all of that. Let's go microscopic. Yeah.
Because Gene did chemistry degree, my wife. Yeah. And this morning, early when I was reading the prep and going through the book, one of the things you captured in there, which is stunning – and, of course, my wife said, yeah, I knew that – which is in every cell in the body, a hundred trillion cells we have – Right.
Generally. I'm not counting your cells, Jon, but you can do that later. Yeah. Right. But within each cell, there's six feet – Yes. – of DNA. That's right. In every cell.
I was like, that blows me away as an MBA. Yes. Yes. It's remarkable. I said that to Gene.
She goes, oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm like, that's unbelievable.
It is unbelievable. If you open any cell in your body, a cell, and unwind the DNA, it's six feet tall. And here's the thing. Embedded in that DNA is a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out the precise assembly instructions for every protein out of which you're made.
So in other words, just like English uses a 26-letter alphabet to spell out words, DNA uses a four-letter chemical alphabet to explain how to create us, how to make a heart – How to make a liver, a skeletal system. Exactly. And it's just – Yeah. There is more information. There are more words in every cell in your body than in 200 years of the Sunday New York Times in every cell in your body.
And the question is, where did that come from? Because every time, without exception, when we see information, there's always an intelligence behind it. So nature can produce patterns. We know that.
I live in Houston a lot of times, a lot of my time. And if you go down to Galveston Beach on a morning and the sand is wet, you can see ripple marks in the sand. And it is logical to say the waves made those ripple marks.
Why? Because nature can produce those kind of patterns. But if you're walking down the beach in Galveston at dawn and in the wet sand you see John loves Mary and a heart around it and an arrow through it, you wouldn't say, oh, the waves created that. Those are smart waves. Yeah, those are smart waves. They're intelligent. That's right. There has to be an intelligence behind us. So whenever there's a computer code or a book or a painting on a cave wall, there is always, always, always an intelligence behind it. Let's end here.
This is kind of whiplash. I want to prepare the viewers and the listeners. We're going to end with this question because I think it's setting up for tomorrow's discussion which I'm looking forward to already. But you say Easter, and you've mentioned this in the opening, that basically the resurrection of Christ is the defining moment, that Jesus could have claimed to be the Son of God, but if there was no resurrection, there's nothing special other than a really good human being that lived a good life and taught many good things. The resurrection is it. You once interviewed Hugh Hefner from Playboy about this content, and what did he have to say about the resurrection? I can't believe you asked him about it, but the resurrection of Christ to Hugh Hefner. I actually got the interview in the Playboy mansion about his beliefs about God.
I used to have a TV show, a national show called Faith Under Fire, and they got it. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, no kidding.
There's an example of it. Right. And he had all these little silk pajamas and smoking pipe, and I said, well, what do you think about the resurrection of Jesus? And he looked, and his eyes got wide. He said, oh, well, if the resurrection is true, my goodness, it knocks over a series of dominoes that lead to all kind of wonderful things. It means that there's an afterlife.
There's so many things. And so I said, well, have you ever looked into the resurrection? Have you ever looked at the evidence for the resurrection? He said, no, no. I just don't believe it's true. I don't believe that Jesus is more God any more than you and I are. And so I go, well, wait a minute, he was a bright guy, and he understood, even as an atheist or as a skeptic, he understood the relevance and the implications if the resurrection is true, and yet he never took the time to investigate.
And that is so true of so many of us. The greatest lawyer who ever lived, Sir Lionel Lucku, in the Guinness Book of World Records, won more murder trials in a row as a defense attorney than anybody in history, knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth, appointed the Supreme Court of his land, and he was a skeptic about the resurrection until somebody went to him and said, Sir Lionel, you're the greatest lawyer who's ever lived. Have you ever investigated the evidence? And he said, no, I haven't, but I will.
And he spent years doing it. And I'll recite to you one sentence he wrote that summarized his conclusion. He says, I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof, which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.
This from the most successful lawyer who's ever lived. Some great stories and powerful insights from Lee Strobel today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And I hope you've been moved by what he said and assured in your heart about the truth of Jesus Christ.
And there's more to come next time. Lee's done a great job presenting the evidence for the existence of God. I mean, I've given out so many of the Case for Christ books and, you know, he brought his journalism background into his pursuit of disproving God. And you're certainly familiar with that, I'm sure. But I love the way he's shown us that science and faith actually match up. They come together in many ways.
And you know, this is one of the reasons that we try to present this great material. Evangelism is one of the things we try to do here at Focus. Last year with our survey work, about 190,000 people came to Christ. That's huge. 190,000.
190,000. We don't think of Focus in that way, like doing a big rally, but the family is a great tool to talk to people about the Lord and the need for the Lord. So it's been a very successful endeavor. That's why we do programs like this. And if Focus has helped you in that way, or in marriage, or parenting, or maybe in a pro-life sense, man, I hope you can give back to the ministry. We need to hear from you right now. We're running behind at the year-end budget, and we do need people to step up and say we're with you.
And it's been a pretty difficult year with the election and just the economy not being in a healthy place. You can be part of that giving community. We want to give families hope, and you can be a part of that through Focus on the Family. When you give any amount today, as our way of saying thank you, we'll send you a copy of Lee's outstanding book, Is God Real? Exploring the Ultimate Question of Life. Now, who doesn't want that book, right?
And it will certainly change your walk and your commitment, I believe, and it'll help strengthen your faith in Christ. Donate today and get your copy of the book, Is God Real? When you call 800, the letter A in the word family, that's 800-232-6459.
Or you can go online. We've got the link in the show notes. And while you're at our site, sign up for our best of 2024 audio collection. It's free and you'll have access to our entire library of the best episodes from this past year addressing faith, parenting, and marriage. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we hear more from Lee Strobel and help you and your family thrive in Christ. Your marriage can be redeemed, even if the fights seem constant, even if there's been an affair, even if you haven't felt close in years. No matter how deep the wounds are, you can take a step toward healing them with a hope restored marriage intensive. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face challenges together. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.
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