What Does the Bible Say About the Supernatural? (Part 2 of 2)

Troy is a pro-life advocate because he saw firsthand the trauma and guilt his wife experienced for many years due to a past abortion. And that's why they became monthly supporters of the ministry.

I'm Jim Daly. By working together, we can be a lifeline for preborn babies and their moms. And we can help bring godly truth and healing to families like Troy's.

Become a friend to Focus on the Family by calling 800-A-FAMILY. Or you can donate at FocusOnTheFamily.com. Nevertheless, there are modern miracles. And again, I'm a skeptic, so I want documentation. I want corroboration.

I want investigation. And so, what it does for me is it does two things. Number one, it gives me more evidence that God exists. And number two, it gives me more confidence in the Gospels and in the Bible, because if Jesus did miracles in the first century, a lot of people find that an impediment to believing in Jesus.

But if we're still seeing miracles today, then they certainly could have taken place in the first century. That's Lee Strobel sharing his enthusiasm about seeing the supernatural move of God in life. And he's here with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly to share that enthusiasm with you. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller.

Thank you for having me. And we're going to talk more with Lee Strobel today about his great book, Seeing the Supernatural. Yeah, Lee is the founding director of the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. He's written so many books, and he's done so many different things. Let's just say yes, the book title that we're covering today is Seeing the Supernatural, Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World. Get a copy of the book from us here at the ministry.

We've got the details in the show notes. Lee, welcome back. Thank you. Great to be with you again.

Good to be with you. Have you made arrangements for this to be a TV series? Because it has that title. It's funny. Supernatural was the name of a show, as you know, and the pilot of that show did so well.

It went for 10 years. Which really begs the question, yeah, why people have an interest in this. What is the appetite within us? I think there's a curiosity.

Is there something beyond what I can see and touch, and how do I know that there really is? And people, 8 out of 10, believe in something beyond this world. A sizable percentage believe in angels and in demons and in Satan. Although, interestingly, that number has gone down in the last 10 years or so. Why do you think that is? I don't know.

It's a good question. There was a big outbreak of angel interest back a number of years ago in the United States, and that kind of juiced people's interest in angels. Everybody was writing about angels and talking about angels.

That kind of waned, and I think that caused the interest to go down a bit. Yeah. It's so fascinating, though, because over the generations, that seems to be a consistent insight. People that have no connection to Judeo-Christian values, people in Asia and other parts of the world, where they're certainly, over the centuries, somewhat isolated, still have this concept of good and evil. Yes. What is good and evil, and does it exist?

Yeah. It does exist because there's a God who provides that measuring rod of what is good and evil. It flows out of who He is. Absent God, if there is no God, then there is no standard of good and evil. You can't call something good and evil because there is no absolute standard. Well, we know there is an absolute standard. We know that it is wrong in any culture at any time in any place to torture a baby for fun. So, there are certain standards that find their root in God being real.

So, if people deny the existence of God, they're also denying the existence of universal right and wrong. In that respect, when we look at Supernatural, we ended last time, we didn't quite get to angels, which we wanted to, but we're going to start there and talk about the idea of angels. What do we know about angels? They seem, in the Scripture, every time an angel appears, like people faint, people fall down to their face, they must be ominous creatures and big. Because we always have fear, typically, when we encounter an angel. But describe the angelic realm.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. In Revelation, there's a picture of Jesus, the post-resurrected Jesus on his throne, and it says it's surrounded by 10,000 times 10,000 angels. That's 100 million angels they're talking about. Now, at that time, in the Greek language, 10,000 was the highest number. So, in a sense, it's talking about… Infinite.

Yeah, you can't even count this number. So, there is a large number of angels. They are not eternal in the sense that they always existed. God created them at some point in the past. And they will always live because they're spirit beings.

They are powerful, they are smart, they are intuitive. God uses them, the Bible says, to minister to his people and to fulfill roles for him as messengers and so forth. We see instances in which angels interact with human beings in biblical times, but also in contemporary times. And, in fact, the Bible mentions sometimes we provide hospitality unknowingly to an angel. So, the Bible is kind of saying, yeah, there are times when you may interact with one, not even know that it's an angel that you're interacting with.

And last time you described, and people, again, you can go listen, get the app for your phone, you've got access to everything there, go to the website, et cetera, to hear the program yesterday. But you described a car accident where a man showed up and he left as quickly as he showed up after saving this man's life. So, they can take on that human kind of appearance. Apparently, they can become embodied at some point. They can do miraculous things if God empowers them to do that.

I'll give you an example. Billy Graham would tell the story about a missionary in the South Ebrides, I believe it was called, the South Pacific Islands. He's from Scotland, and he and his wife had a little cottage there, and they were trying to share Jesus among these tribes that lived back then. And the tribes got upset about this.

They didn't want to hear the gospel. And so, one night a mob came to kill him and his wife. So, here they are, they're cowering, they're afraid in their little cottage, and they begin to pray, God, protect us, God, what do we do?

Save us, and so forth. And they prayed all night. And after a period of time, the crowd of this mob dissipated and went away, and they were fine. Well, about a year later, the missionary led the head of that mob to faith in Jesus Christ.

And so, he became a friend. And so, one day he's talking to him, and he said, By the way, what happened that night? You all came to kill us, and we were surrounded.

And yet, everybody walked away. He said, What happened? And the guy responded, he said, Well, we couldn't attack. And the guy said, Why not? Because your house was surrounded. There were these muscular men, and they all had swords that were drawn, protecting your house. So, that's why we left.

That's why we walked away. Well, what are they talking about? Angels. Angels can be warriors. We see the story in the Old Testament of Elisha, who was being threatened by troops. And yet, his servant was all afraid. God opened the eyes of that servant to see the angels that had come to protect them. So, one of the roles that angels can perform is protective roles. And Lee, we have so many listeners. We're such practical people here in the West.

And certainly, at Focus on the Family, we want you to do your marriage well and parent well. And you're going, What are they talking about? But there are kind of three types of Christians. Those that are going to look for it everywhere.

Those that aren't going to admit that it even exists today. That was back in the apostolic state when they were healing and that no longer happens. And those in the middle, where we're going, Wow, okay, it talks about miracles.

Miracles can still happen. I just don't see them that often. Am I describing that fairly within the body of Christ and how we temperamentally look at it? I mean, there's a bit of me going, Wow, okay. We just lean more into materialism and the natural state. That's just the way it is. We live in it.

We're steeped in it. But to say, These kind of things could happen? Angels surrounding my home?

Really? There are what are called cessationists who are Christians who sincerely believe, based on their interpretation of Scripture, that some of them believe that the miraculous no longer occurs, that God has stopped doing that in our midst. Some believe that no miracles still occur, but the supernatural gifts of tongues and so forth are no longer operative. There are sincere, wonderful Christians who, that's the way they interpret Scripture.

I think there are Christians, though, like you say, that are kind of in the middle. I was sort of like this, embarrassed because I had an encounter with an angel. And I never used to talk about this because I was embarrassed.

I remember my ordination when I was being ordained as a pastor. I thought, Do I bring this up? Are they going to think I'm nuts? And I told them the story, and they all said, Yeah, okay. But I tell you, there were two forms of corroboration to this experience I had.

I was about 12 years old, 10 or 12 years old. It's the only dream I remember from my childhood. It was a vivid dream. I'm in my kitchen, and an angel appeared to me and began talking about heaven and extolling how wonderful heaven is. And I'm listening, and I'm saying, Well, I'm going to go there someday. And he said, How do you know? And I was stunned.

What do you mean, how do I know? I'm a nice kid. I obey my parents. I've actually been to Sunday school a couple of times. I try to do good things. And the angel looked at me and said, That doesn't matter. And a chill went through my body, and he could see I was chilled.

And he looked at me and he said, Someday you'll understand. Sixteen years later, I'm in a church. I'm an atheist because I discounted that.

Was this a dream? That wasn't real. 16 or 20 years later, I'm in a church my wife had brought me, and the pastor presented the gospel and said, It's not by our good works that we're saved. We can't earn our way to God.

It's not being a nice person. It is receiving this free gift of forgiveness and eternal life that Jesus purchased on the cross when he died as our substitute to pay for our sins. We receive it in repentance and faith.

It's a gift. And as soon as I heard that, I flashed back to that angel, and he was right. Someday I would understand, and it wasn't the good deeds that I thought were going to earn my way to heaven. And so I was always embarrassed by that.

I never told people about it. Until now, I'm writing this book, and I'm hearing other stories that have this kind of corroboration. The angel told me something I didn't know, number one, and made a prediction that came true 16 years later.

So that's two forms of corroboration. We need to touch, you know, we're talking about angels. Of course, demons are fallen angels that went with Lucifer, that kind of rose in rebellion against God, against heaven, and they were excommunicated, and that's been the battle.

That's the story. That's what we understand about good and evil, Lucifer and his pride and the angels that went with him. Describe for us what that is like, this idea of demons. Yeah, demons are, as you say, fallen angels.

They are not, some people think Satan is the counterpoint to God. He has the same powers as God. No, he's a fallen angel. He's not omniscient like God is. He doesn't know our minds. He can't read our minds in a way that God is omniscient. He's not omnipotent. He's not all-powerful. But he is a powerful being.

He is an angel. And so sometimes there are instances, and I document this in my book, where demons will possess a human being. And I have a story in my book that's amazing from Richard Gallagher. Richard Gallagher is an Ivy League-educated psychiatrist, medical doctor.

He's a professor at major medical schools. And he got involved with some Catholic priests who were looking into the demonic. And one day he got a phone call, this was a number of years ago, and the Catholic priest said, Do you mind if tomorrow I bring by your house at nine in the morning this woman who claims that she's a high priestess of a satanic cult? Would you examine her as a psychiatrist and give me your opinion? Is she authentically possessed by demons?

Or is she mentally ill or whatever? So he said yes, bring her by tomorrow morning. His family had two cats. And these two cats loved each other.

They were good friends and never had a problem. The night before, these two cats went crazy. They attacked each other. They're clawing at each other.

They're trying to kill each other. And finally had to separate them and keep them separate. And he said, This is weird. He'd never seen anything like this. The next morning the doorbell rings at nine o'clock, he opens the door, there's a Catholic priest, and there's this woman who claimed to be a high priestess of a satanic cult.

And this woman looked at Dr. Gallagher and said, How'd you like those cats last night? Oh my. Yeah. The demonic is real. And through his experiences as a credential professor of psychiatry, he documents cases, and in my book I describe some of those cases, of people who speak in languages that they do not know, Latin, people who are possessed by, the one case with six eyewitnesses where a person levitated. These are authentic cases of possession. Now, Christians cannot be possessed by Satan, by demons.

Sure. Because we're indwelled by the Holy Spirit. But we can be hectored, we can be bothered by demons. And that's why the Bible talks about spiritual warfare, and the fact we should put out the armor of God, and live in Scripture, and protect ourselves against these kind of influences. But I think we make a huge mistake when we relegate the demonic to motion pictures, like the exorcist. Well, that's what I was going to say, that we have to be careful as believers not to discount this underworld, this hellish world that exists. I mean, we believe it to an extent, but then when it becomes real, like a manifestation of it, we kind of go, okay, that was odd, that may be a Hollywood thing. But we of all people, again, should be the ones to decipher for people what that experience is, like this Catholic priest.

That's right. Deathbed visions, we did want to cover that. That's a spirit moment.

And explain it. We see this in Scripture in the book of Acts, where Stephen is about to be stoned to death, and he looks up and he sees heaven. He gets a glimpse of the afterlife. And we have tens of thousands of cases of people who, right before they die, they get a glimpse of what's to come. Often reaching.

Often reaching. And Jesus, when he told the story about Lazarus and the rich man who died, and the rich man goes separated from God, but the beggar, Lazarus, is escorted, Jesus said, by angels to paradise. Many people will see angels as they're about to die. I'll give you an example.

Billy Graham's pulpit partner, Charles Templeton, who lost his faith, became an agnostic, if not an atheist, wrote an ugly book against Christianity in Canada called Farewell to God, My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith. But on his deathbed, he said to his wife, Madeline, Madeline, can you see them? They're here in the room. What do you mean you can't see them? They're right here. The angels have come. They're beautiful.

I've never heard such singing. This is, I'm going to heaven. I'm going to be with God. Yeah, and you know, Lee, one of the things that has come out, and I think your friend, my friend John Burke, has debunked this to a great degree, especially in the near-death experience, which we'll talk about in a moment. But people in this phase of dying, so many medical professionals will say, well, it's an endorphin release, it's a brain chemistry thing, and it's how our bodies are eased into death. Describe what you have found to be true. Especially in the deathbed vision as well in near-death experience.

They're different phenomena, but they're similar. There was one case of 3,000 cases of deathbed visions that were investigated. And the conclusion of the researchers was this cannot be accounted for by hallucinations, by a dream state, by a medical condition, by endorphins. They ruled those out having investigated 3,000 of these cases. That just does not add up, especially when you see corroboration.

I'll give you another example of corroboration. There's a well-documented case of a very prominent scholar in the United Kingdom whose wife was a medical doctor, and she was tending to a woman who was dying. And in that case, the woman saw angelic beings, and then she saw her father in heaven, who had died a number of years previously, and her father was there as if to welcome her. And then she got perplexed, and she said, Vida is with him. Vida is with my father, and she was confused, and then she died. And they said, well, who was Vida? Well, it turned out Vida was her sister who had died a short time before that. Nobody had told her because she had been ill, and they didn't want to upset her.

Oh, wow. So she had not been told that her sister had died, and yet she's seeing her in a deathbed vision. Right, so that's not a biochemistry thing. It's a politics.

And that argues against this idea that it's something conjured up in our own mind or produced by some sort of endorphins or whatever. Wow, that's really amazing. Lee, we talked about John Burke a couple of times, being a mutual friend, and he's been on the program several times. He and you talk about Mary, a story about this woman. What can we take away from her story?

Yeah, Mary's a great story, again, of corroboration. And the corroboration is she was bleeding to death, she was taken to a hospital emergency room in London, she was clinically dead, and yet she said it was conscious the whole time. And she described how her spirit had separated from her body, she was watching the resuscitation efforts from above, and she got a glimpse of the afterlife and so forth, but then she recovered and her spirit returned into her body. And she said, by the way, the ceiling fan here in the room, on the top of a blade of the ceiling fan is a red sticker. And they said, well, you couldn't see it from the room because it was on the top of the blade, but she saw it from her position when her soul had separated from her body. She was looking down, she saw it. And so they got a ladder, and they went up, and sure enough, just as she said, there's the red sticker on the top blade of the ceiling fan. That's the kind of corroboration.

When people in a near-death experience see things or hear things, they're impossible for them to have seen or heard unless they had an authentic out-of-body experience. I think John also had that story about a child in the hospital who had an out-of-body near-death experience. That's right.

She followed her family home. And he talked about the tennis shoe on the roof of the hospital. That's right. Another one. And the nurse went up, the doctor said, go check that out. That's right.

And they found it, a tennis shoe. There are multiple cases. And the contribution that John has made that's so important, and others who have researched these areas of near-death experience and deathbed visions, is the correspondence with biblical teaching. In other words, one scholar who investigated deathbed visions found 47 points of correspondence between the Bible and deathbed visions, consistency. And as John Burke points out in his books and in his research into a thousand cases, that what we see in near-death experiences is entirely consistent with what the Bible talks about when it talks about people transitioning into the world. Yeah, and I so appreciate that. He buttresses these things with Scripture.

That's right. And even saying and suggesting that Paul, when he is stoned to death, or almost stoned to death, that he had probably an out-of-body, because he talked about not being present in his body but being in heavenly places. And John said, you know, I can't prove that, but it's like Paul is talking about experiencing this. Let me ask you, on behalf of the atheists, God loves them, therefore we should love them too. That person that might argue, why, if God is a good God, why does He send people to hell? Yeah, I think there's a misnomer there about Him sending people to hell. There's a lot of misunderstandings about hell. God doesn't send people to hell. We go there because of the life that we have lived and the rejection of God, the fact that we have turned our back on Him and He allows us to make that choice and make that decision. So, He's not sending people as much as people, it's an outcome of a person's life, of rejection of God and His ways. You know, Romans 1, verse 20 says that there's plenty of evidence from our world to see that there should be no doubt that God exists. And yet, the Bible says we suppress that, our tendency, because we want to be God.

We don't want to be ruled by some other, we want to be God. This is Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve, and the Greek imagery of the suppression is like a petal. So, when we begin to realize, wait a minute, what about this evidence for God? We suppress it like a petal.

And then later, we see something else and it suggests that God exists and we suppress it again. And so, we're sending ourselves to hell. And by the way, hell is not a torture chamber. There is torment, but torment comes from within. It comes from that regret we feel and so forth, not from God in a sadistic way inflicting torture on us, but it is a natural consequence of a life lived contrary to God's teachings, showing no interest in God and ending up in a place where your wish is granted. You are not going to be anywhere near God and no presence of God or influence of God. You know, it's interesting, I had never thought of this, but the fact that God chose to write about that in Scripture for us to give us that warning.

I mean, not to scare us, but to say, this is the outcome if you don't come to me. It's actually quite kind of Him to do. I have never thought about it in that way. And we don't relish it in that way. Yeah, it's a holy warning.

Right. You know, that's an incredible kindness of the Lord to say, here's what awaits those that don't embrace me. That's like a parent, don't touch that flame.

Don't touch that stove, it's hot. No kidding. Lee, we're right at the end of the second day. And I mean, I could just keep going forever. I think you can feel that enthusiasm. Because I love this context of the generosity of God, His heart for all of us, His desire that all should come to know Him. I mean, I think of that person watching on YouTube or listening on the radio or listening on the app, whatever it might be. And, you know, we experience a high number of salvations through focus.

I think we just did the data, something like almost, or just over 290,000 people in the last 12 months. Oh, my goodness. Family is a great conduit for thinking about these deep ideas. Oh, praise God, that's awesome. Yeah, you know, we never talked about it in that way. But I'm thinking of the person who's tipping into this conversation who doesn't know the Lord, likes the concepts, likes what we talk about, is a decent person perhaps, everything we've shared today, but really doesn't know the Lord. Can I ask you to pray for that person? Yeah. And then we can make some suggestions on follow-up that they can do. Yeah.

Let's do it. We can summarize the Gospel in one verse, 21 words. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. The consequence of a life of sin is ultimate separation from God forever. But the free gift that we have of salvation, of eternal life, of heaven, comes when we pray a prayer of repentance and faith and receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Can I offer a prayer for those who want to take it?

Yes, absolutely. If that's your inclination, God knows your heart. So just in your heart say, Lord Jesus, as best I can, I do believe that you are the Son of God.

You proved it by returning from the dead. And right now I confess the obvious. I'm a sinner. I know that. I've done things I knew they were wrong before I did them.

I did them anyway. I've sinned. And right now I confess that and I want to turn from that. And in an attitude of repentance and faith, I want to receive. I want to receive that free gift of forgiveness and eternal life that Jesus, you purchased from me on the cross when you died as my substitute to pay for all of my sin. Thank you for loving me so much that you endured the torture of the cross so that we could be reconciled forever. Help me, Jesus, to live the kind of life that you want me to live.

Because from this moment on, I am yours. And now for those who prayed that prayer, Father, we pray that you would, now that they've been adopted into your kingdom forever, that you would guide them and lead them, that they would become part of a vibrant church, that they would grow in their faith, that they would be baptized, that they would become your deep and devoted followers to change their life and the lives of those around them. And we'll give you all of the glory in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Lee, thank you so much.

Thanks for the last two days and all the great research that you did for this book, Seeing the Supernatural. Get ahold of us. If you can make a gift, be part of the ministry. Let's change the world together. Let's help a soul that's not going in the right direction in their marriage, maybe in their parenting, whatever it might be. Join us, and we'll send you a copy of Lee's book as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry.

Yeah, join the monthly support team if you're in a spot to do so. We welcome you as a member of Friends of the Focus on the Family team, and you can make that monthly pledge very easily when you call 800-AFAMILY, or we've got details for you in the show notes. And when you have us online, if you just prayed that prayer with Lee, we have a free little article for you called Coming Home, an invitation to join God's family.

It really describes what it means to walk in faith with Christ and have life everlasting in Jesus, and you'll find that at the website. Well, plan to join us next time. We'll hear from Rich Griffith. He'll help parents teach their kids to listen to the right voices. God does fire, and he does the earthquake, and he does a great wind, and it says God's not in any of those things.

He's in the whisper. And I think this is part of adopting kids and kids learning trust. We've got to mind ourselves to allow God to be heard through a whisper, not our noise. Thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again 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 today. And help you find out which program will work best. Call us today.