#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection

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So he died on the cross, they put him in a tomb. Yes.
Why was it three days? There's some really powerful new analysis of the shroud that indicates it may very well be the burial cloth of Jesus. Why did he have to come and go through that to save us? God says to him, Abraham, I want you to take your son, your only son, who you love, take him to a mountain I will show you, and there I want you to sacrifice him.
That was the very place on which Jesus would walk up the hill with his own wood. And by the way, Isaac had to carry the wood.
Jesus would walk up with the wood on which he would be sacrificed and the Lord would provide. Wow's all over we do know that yes how do we know that John Burke Lee Strobel welcome back thanks Sean great to be back so love having you guys on together love being here especially my buddy uh John buddy, John.
We've known each other for, we were figuring over, what, 30 years. Too long.
Too long. Not for you, but to be that old.
Yeah, when I found you guys together, it was off one of the documentaries you guys collaborated on. And I've just learned so much from you guys through the interviews.
And it's just an honor to have you back. Thank you.
Great to be back. You know I'm going to pepper you with all kinds of questions here coming up.
I'm still new to this whole thing. But, yeah, so Easter.
Yeah. And so I wanted to get you guys both back on to talk about the resurrection, what it means what's the proof and um and any other rabbit holes that we go down which i'm sure there'll be plenty so yeah yeah but um quick introduction shorten it up a little bit because you guys have both been on before lee strobel new york times best- author, over 40 books that have sold millions.
Newest book, Seeing the Supernatural, just hit that list as well. The founding director of the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University.
John Burke, founder of the Gateway Church in Austin, Texas. best-selling author with books like Imagine Heaven that dive into near-death experiences and what they reveal about the afterlife.
And now you've just started a podcast, Imagine Heaven with John Burke. Congratulations on the podcast.
Thank you. Sounds a little overwhelming.
It is. I can relate.
It is. I can relate.
I know. I was trying to get you to talk me out of it last time I was on the show, and you didn't.
Yeah, yeah. You should have.
I hope things are going really good with that. They are.
I know a lot of people have questions, and I think like we both have talked about, there just seems to be this wave of Christianity just moving quick.

And a lot of new believers out there.

Yeah, new openness.

I like it.

It's good.

Yeah.

So, but, you know, everybody gets a gift, even the second appearance.

So here you guys go.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

My gummies.

Oops.

My bad.

And still legal in all 50 states and then i also nice yeah you know we're sure we'll be talking about yeah angels and demons a little bit sure and uh i think i may have told both of you yeah the 444 right 444 stuff so so when i became a believer I had this experience in Sedona.

And then ever since then, I see the 444 everywhere. Was that related to that? It was.
It was. So quick back story.
So I told you about the Sedona trip. And then after the Stona trip, I think the guy that really, I don't think, the guy that really started my journey to faith was this guy, Eddie Penny, who's a friend of mine, former SEAL Team 6 guy.
And his story of being saved is just like it's always stuck with me. And then every person that's come on the show since him for, man, probably a year after he came on, they brought up something about God, Jesus, the Bible, like every single person that sat in this room for probably about a year.
And then I had that experience in Sedona. When I came back, I had called Eddie because Eddie's been kind of a mentor of mine and told him about what had happened and was just kind of asking him what it all meant.
And he started having this conversation with me about guardian

angels and attacks will probably start happening because i've chosen a side he's he was basically saying demons don't really care when you're just sitting there in the middle but uh he goes now that you've chosen a side and and um with the influence you have you'll probably start getting attacks. And that led into Guardian Angels.

And then I had a meeting scheduled with my IT guy at the time,

also a really good friend and mentor.

And he had scheduled a meeting at noon,

and I thought it was just going to be about IT stuff, website, emails, who knows what.

And he has the exact same conversation with me. And those two don't know each other.
And he had scheduled the meeting at noon, and he was like, hey, you know, guardian angels are watching over you. They've known you since before you were born and all this stuff.
And I was like, this is weird. I just had this conversation like 12 hours ago with Eddie.
And I had gone home for a late lunch with my wife and kid and got back in the truck to drive back to work. And I saw 444 on the dash clock.
And then I had 444 miles left to empty. And so I had texted one of the guys that works for me here.
And I said, hey, Google 444. I want to know what that means.
And we come back. I get to the office and he says, we looked it up and he said, it means your guardian angels want you to know that they're watching over you that was like the first thing that popped up in google and that was four hours and 44 minutes after I had had that discussion about guardian angels and so it was like three times just bam bam bam and um my god trying to get your attention about something yeah right yeah and uh right after i'd had that really profound experience in sedona and um and so yeah i don't i mean one of the things in the outline that i wanted to talk to you guys about is is you know all these people they pray on things they they say they want to leave it in god's hands and how do you know you're doing the right thing and and for me i think that uh i want to ask you guys you know how how do you know when he's speaking to you for me i think it's my gut instinct and so you know we dive into a lot of squirrely things on the podcast, or if I'm looking for some direction, a lot of times I feel like I know what it is, and then I get in my head and I'm like, oh, shit.
Am I doing the right thing? Am I supposed to be doing this? And it's like you'll flash a sign, like. And a lot of times, I'll just randomly look at my watch or my phone or something.
It'll say 444 or exit 444. That number will flash sometime.
And to me, that means your gut's right, Sean. This is the confirmation that you need.
Lean into the gut. That's where I'm at.
The guardian angel thing is a fascinating topic. I have a chapter in my book, Seeing the Supernatural, on angels, and I deal with the guardian angel.
Question, do we really have guardian angels? And it's interesting. There's some Christian scholars who say no.
But you go back in history. Jerome, the great Bible translator, said yes.
Thomas Aquinas said yes.

And Martin Luther certainly believed in guardian angels. Well, I would say in protective angels.
But there's two passages that jump out to me. Yeah, there's two passages that jump out to me.
One is Jesus was talking to some folks, and he said, about little children, he said, do not despise these little ones because their angels see the face of God in heaven every day. Well, who are their angels? That would be a guardian angel, right? And then Peter is in prison in the book of Acts and an angel frees him.
And he shows up at a house where some Christians are gathered and he knocks on the door. And says, hey, Peter.
And the servant says, hey, Peter's at the door. And they say, he can't be at the door.
He's in prison. It must be his angel.
And I interview a scholar for my book on that question. He says, I think that is sufficient biblical evidence to say that, yeah, we do have a guardian angel.
The Orthodox Christian church believes that at the moment of baptism, you're assigned a guardian angel. So, you know, this is a very interesting phenomenon because people don't think of that, you know.
You know, we're cautioned, I think, through the experience of John and Revelation not to worship angels. and therefore I would suggest from at least the Protestant writings that you don't pray to angels, but to pray about angels and to pray for God's intervention through his angels is certainly biblical, I believe.
In fact, Jesus, when he was being arrested, said, could not my father right now send, what was it, 12 legions of angels? Legions of angels. Yeah, to protect me if I wanted to.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

And so, and in the small catechism that Martin Luther wrote, his evening prayer says, Lord, send your angels to protect me from the evil one. So, for us to pray to God for protection by angelic beings, to believe and trust that he has perhaps even assigned a guardian angel to protect us, I think tells us something about the love of God, the power of God, his concern for every aspect of our life.
And I just find it very encouraging. Yeah.
Well, and my study into near-death experiences, having studied thousands of them, definitely confirms all that Lee just said. Really? Yeah.
And I think about Jim Woodford, this commercial airline pilot who, when he died, he had been an agnostic his whole life, very wealthy man. He was several multimillion-dollar businesses, never prayed a day in his life.
But his wife was a believer and was praying for him and for his salvation. And he told me, he said, John, you know when you're dying.
You know. And he knew.
He had an opioid overdose. He had Guillain Bore and ended up addicted and accidental in his truck looking at the sunset.
And as he was dying, he had this thought, you've never thanked God for the life you thought was your own making. Wow.
Wow. And he looks back now and says, he thinks that was the Lord going, one last time, buddy.
What are you going to do? And he cried out, God, forgive me, as his head hit the steering wheel, which he's a jokester, so I like to joke with him, Jim, I think you beat the thief on the cross for last minute, buddy. I was like, how much more are you going to push it? But he first, so he first has a hellish vision of actually a creature who knew his name calling to him.
And again, he cries out to God for help. And these three angels come and rescue him.
And interestingly, in near-death experiences, when it is last-minute kind of foxhole conversion, I find God lets them see where they were going before rescuing them and show them where their eternity is going to be. So, that happens to Jim, and he's there with these three magnificent angels.
And one was his guardian, one was a scribe angel, and one was a warrior. And people consistently describe those three categories.
Interesting. And what's fascinating too, because I'll be honest, I had no interest in angels or demons.
I didn't. It's just kind of like, yeah, we're not supposed to pray to them, just like you said.
So, I'm sure they're there, but who cares? Not who cares, but kind of. But how many near-death experiencers talked about them? Consistently the same.
Always in threes? One was 10 feet, one another 12 and 15 feet. And I was always like, what? That's bizarre.
But they kept saying, same kind of estimation of height, too. Interesting.
I know. And so the guardian told Jim that, yes, he was assigned to him since his conception.
Interesting.

And I've heard that from others as well. Wow.
I think there's sufficient biblical evidence for it. I do, too.
And this is near-death experience stuff that just confirms that. It does.
And I find that encouraging, don't you? Yeah. Because like you, it's like, yeah, I'm more interested in some of the stuff I can see and touch and evidence and so forth.
but then to know that God cares about me so much that he's watching over me in that way,

and he's assigned someone to really provide protection and guidance. Well, and another guy, a CEO that I interviewed, he's there before the throne of God, and he sees that prayers, and Jim did too, that prayers are tangible.
Like, they're real things. You know, we just think, oh, think, oh, it's just hitting the ceiling or whatever, and it's just my thoughts.
But to God, that's not true. They actually are seen in heaven, kind of like lights.
Jim is there with these angels, and he sees these six streaks of light going up.

And he thought, you know, he's a commercial airline pilot.

He's like, are those contrails?

You know, like the smoke or the, you know.

Chemtrails.

Yes.

Chemtrail, right.

And he said to the angel, what are those?

And the angel said, those are the prayers of your family for your soul going to the throne of God even as we speak. Wow.
At that point, now, he's dead. His body's dead in a truck.
The Canadian Royal Mounted Guard, what's the police? Mounted police, yeah. Mounted police.
Find him the next morning. He was dead overnight.
But his family, six family members were circled up in his home, holding hands, praying that Jesus would rescue him and send him back. You all know what speed dating is, right? Well, if you're the owner of a growing business, what if there was a feature like speed dating, but only for hiring? In other words, you could meet several interested qualified candidates all at once.
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And he sees six. Six contrails.
Contrails. And other near-death experiencers who have said the same thing.
So the CEO that I interview, Randy, sees the same thing. These lights coming into the throne of God, and he knew they were prayers and the Lord sending

angels in answers to the prayers to act, which I would have thought, I don't know.

I'm still kind of a skeptic at heart.

I hate to say it.

Couldn't you just do stuff directly rather than dispatch angels?

Well, and at first when I started hearing these, I was like, yeah, I don't know. That's kind of, you know, yeah.
But there's so many credible stories. But so many of them saying that.
Yeah, yeah. And then it doesn't go against the Bible.
And in fact, it aligns with what God's told us a lot in there. Our prayers really do make a difference.
They actually move the hand of God. Yeah.
John Payton was a Scottish missionary in the New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific, and he and his wife lived in this little cottage, and the local tribespeople didn't like the fact they were talking about Jesus all the time, so they came to burn down their house and kill him. So this mob is forming.
So what do they do? They're praying. They're praying, God, here we are.
We're alone. We're in this home.
They're coming to kill us. They're coming to burn down our house, protect us, help us.
And by dawn, the crowd dissipated. Later, he leads the head of that mob to Jesus Christ, and they become friends.
This is a year later. And he says to them, by the way, do you remember that night that you led that mob to come to our house and burn it down? Why didn't you kill us? He said, well, who were all those men that you had? I said, what do you mean? I didn't have any men.
It's just my wife and I. I said, what are you talking about? Your house was surrounded by these muscular men in white garments with drawn swords.
There's no way we could have come into your house. Wow.
Lots of stories like that. Lots of stories like that.
How did he, a couple questions, how did he know one was a guardian, one was a scribe, and one was a warrior? Yeah, that's an interesting question. Is that just intuitive in him? No, the guardian told him.
Oh, he told him. He was your guardian.
And it is fascinating because the guardian said he – I mean, this is kind of bizarre. So, let me say this.
I study these and I study the commonalities. And I usually don't say like, okay, I believe that if it's just a one-off, right? I look for three or four and it's got to align with scripture or I kind of just like put it on the shelf.
So, this is a little bit of one of those on the shelf things. Yeah.
But this guardian told him that he used to, you know, he would fly with him. I mean, Jim was a commercial airline pilot, so he's flown all over the world.
And the Guardian named himself Skysong because Jim used to sing to himself to keep himself awake. And the Guardian named himself Skysong of all those flights.
Wow. This is when Jim was not a believer at all.
Wow. But it doesn't mean God doesn't care about us.
It doesn't mean he's not trying to get our attention. Yeah.
And yeah, Jim said, my guardian had a rough go for many years. He was not succeeding.
What did he say? I mean, what do they look like? Do they look like humans or do they look, I mean, there's, talk to a lot of different people. Some people say they look like UFO-ish kind of, like they don't look human.
Well, I don't know for sure, but I think they can take different forms. I think we see that in Scripture as well.

Right.

I mean, sometimes, you know, angels come and they look like people in the Scriptures even. I mean, that was the case with Abraham.
Right. When the angel of God, which is in the Old Testament the kind of human manifestation

of God, I think it was the pre-incarnate Jesus. You think that? Yeah, it could be.
Maybe? Yeah. Not so sure? Yeah.
We'll talk about it later. We can debate that later.
I think it was because he allows worship and no other angel allows worship. So, think about Gide.
Yeah. You know? Gideon worships him on the floor of Arunah.
So anyway, that's a side. I had, I usually didn't talk, I never talked about this for years because I was embarrassed by it.
And never talked to a group of people about it until my ordination where I had all these these theologians questioning me about my doctrine. I thought, do I tell them that I had an angelic encounter with my guardian angel? You did? Yeah, I did.
Oh. And I was embarrassed by it because I thought, you'll think I'm nuts.
I'm not going to talk about this. But with all these theologians there, I thought, I better tell them.
They're going to ordain me. They better know about this.
So I told them. And when I was 12 years old or so, my guardian angel appeared to me.
And you asked what he looked like. I knew that's who it was.
Even though I can't describe him in detail, I knew that he was an angel. It was an intuition.
It was intuitive. And here's what was important about the incident.
I'm in my kitchen at home, I'm a little kid, 12 years old, and he starts extolling heaven. How beautiful and wonderful heaven is.
And so I casually said, 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? I'm a good kid.
I obey my parents pretty much. I get good grades in school.
I'm nice to my friends. You're saying this? I'm saying this to him.
I'm trying to justify that I'm good enough to get to heaven. Is it verbal communication? Verbal.
Yeah, verbal. No, verbal communication.
Interesting. And he looks at me and he says, that doesn't matter.
And a chill went down my spine. How could my efforts to be a good kid and to do good, how does that not matter? I was just at a...
And he said, someday you'll understand. Well, about 16 years...
And that was it? That was it. He disappeared.
And that was the only dream I remember from my childhood. It was more vivid than any dream ever.
It was a dream. Oh, a vivid dream.
But it was a vivid dream unlike any I ever had. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I suppressed it. Oh, I must have had a bad pizza.
That's crazy. And ultimately became an atheist.
But then my wife brought me to church on January the 20th of 1980. And I heard the gospel for the first time.
It's not based on your good works, how hard you try to be good, that the doors of heaven are flung open. No, it is a free gift of God's grace that we receive in repentance and faith.
That good deeds come later because we're seeking to please God and to live and to love others as he loves us. And so here I am, and two things happen.
Number one, I realized that angel told me something when I was 12 years old that I didn't know. So, it wasn't just something coming from my imagination.
And secondly, he made a prophecy that someday I'll understand that came true 16 years later. Wow.
Never heard that. I didn't like telling people because I thought.
I've known him for 30 years. Well.
I told my wife, you know, but I. So, this is a funny thing because you never knew about all my near-death experience research.
So, we worked together in the 90s. That's true.
But I didn't tell anybody either. Because I was still like...
It was kind of a new-age thing. No, they're going to think I'm weird, I will not...
I mean, when I went to write Imagine Heaven in 2015, right before I hit send, I said, well, Lord, this is probably the end of my ministry, but you told me to do it, so here goes. And I heard in my mind, I've opened a door in heaven no one can close.
Wow. Wow.
And I think it's true. So let me, so back to the original question.
Yeah. Because you said God told you.
Which was what? Which was, how does God speak to you? Oh, yeah. So we'll start with you.
Well, so it's interesting. Near-death experiences commonly report that the communication of heaven can be verbal, like with his angel in your vivid dream.
Telepathic. Well, so a lot of people use the word telepathic, but many say, no, it's more than that.
It's not just thoughts. It's thoughts.
It's feelings. It's every associated thought.
It's pure, perfect. There's no way to misunderstand.
Now, I believe that's how God communicates to us today. Thoughts.
It's thoughts, but it's, you could call it intuition, but it's different than that. It's more than that.
And you have to learn it. You know, Jesus… God instinct.
Well, Jesus often said, whoever has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying. Well, we all have these.
So, what do you mean? Well, I think he meant you have to develop a spiritual willingness to hear what the Holy Spirit is trying to communicate. And it is thought to thought.
One of the things I used to say to people in our church is like, we always want God to speak in an audible voice, right? Like, just tell me. But that's actually less direct communication.
You know, right now I'm trying to get all my thoughts that are in my brain into your brain or your brain, you know, whoever's listening to this. But I have to use words.
I can only get so many words out and so much time. You're thinking other thoughts a lot faster than you can hear my words.
There's all kind of other noise and distraction. So, this is a very inefficient form of communication.
What would be more direct is if I could just put all the things I'm thinking in your mind right now. And you could still go like, well, that's a stupid thought and push it aside, right? Or you could consider it.
And I can't do that, but God can. So, I think those times when, especially when it's repetitive, right? I remember when I was a brand new believer, what helped me start to understand this is I was praying one day, and I was praying for friends and other things, I was praying, and I had this thought, call Allison.
Allison's my younger sister. And I was like, I'm not going to call Allison.
And I kept praying. Again, and it wasn't just a thought.
It was like a thought and a feeling like I was supposed to call Allison. And I was like, Allison's at school.
She's not going to answer the phone. Yeah, I'm not going to call Allison.

Third time, call Allison.

And the third time, because I think I was praying, I was like, God, am I supposed to call Allison?

Like, this just feels like my stupid thought.

Like, you want me to?

And I thought, well, okay, look, it's not going to cost me anything.

I'll just do it.

I call her. She had skipped school.
She was severely depressed. She'd been bullied and she was home.
And I was able to help her. He's her big brother.
And so when I hung up the phone, I was like, oh my gosh, I think I might've heard the voice of God. Now, I'll tell you, Sean, I have journaled my journey of faith for the last 35, 40 years.
Those happen all the time. All kinds.
Those intuitions that you believe are really from God. Yeah, and it's not just...
Yeah. So, fascinatingly, I just interviewed a helicopter pilot, it's a medic, and he's going 140 miles an hour after he flies life flight.
A bird went 140 miles an hour through his windshield right, hit his heart. It's like a baseball at 140 miles an hour.
Boom, he's dead. He's out.

He suddenly finds himself outside the helicopter, just floating there. He sees his body in there slumped over, his partner flying.
It's a cold night. It's 20 degrees outside, and yet he feels warm.
Anyways, pretty consistent near-death experience. He then finds himself moving toward the light of God.
He sees the outline of what he thought was Jesus. He is a follower of Jesus.
And the Lord said to him, Welcome, faithful servant. And here's just this ordinary guy, very ordinary medic, just doing his job and all that, and he was ready to die.
And here's the fascinating thing. The Lord showed him in his life review several times, and he said, that was me testing you.

So this one time he was talking about was, it was a guy who was walking down the street in the rain, and he drove by him, and he had the thought, go pick him up. And he's like, I'm not going to pick him up.
It's raining. Then another one.
Same thing, thought, feeling, go pick him up. Third time, louder, go pick him up.
And so Jeff was like, all right, all right, I'll do it. And he goes back and he picks him up and takes him to his, where do you want to go? I don't know.
Drop me off of that. It's just like a normal, wouldn't think anything.
But Jesus said that was me, testing. Wow.
So I've had those. I've had those.
I remember one time I'm doing a leadership meeting at our church, and I'm late. And I'm driving down the street, and I see these two teenage girls in a broken down car on the side of the street and they're walking around.
I could tell they're trying to fix a tire and I drive by because I'm late, right? And I hear again, you should go back and get them. And I'm like, that's a dumb thought.
I don't have time.

I'm going to be late.

I got 100 people waiting for me.

Second, turn around.

Go back.

So now I'm like, Lord, is this you?

Because I've done this before.

And it's usually three.

It's usually three.

And I'm like, I can't.

I'm going to be late.

And the third, it was like, what do you think you're trying to teach these people to do? Go back. And I obeyed.
I went back. I turn around.
I go back. I help them.
Okay, fast forward. So I'm late to my meeting.
I just apologized and explained. Two years later, maybe it was three, I meet this African-American woman in our church who's now a leader of our sexual abuse healing ministry.
And she tells me, yeah, you know how I got here? My daughters came home one day. I'm a single mom.
She had been through all that, of course, but she was now a psychologist and was helping others heal. Her daughters came home one day and told her about the pastor guy down the street who helped them change the tire.
And she's like, okay, that church I might be willing to try. They all came to faith.
Her daughter now works for World Vision, helping kids around the world, and she was a leader in our ministry for years. Wow.
And there are these moments. I mean, I think the question, how do you hear the voice of God, for me, and you, I'm sure, agree, generally through reading Scripture.
Yes. You hear the voice of God through the Scripture that speaks to you and tells you what God wants you to know and so forth.
Well, because you can get it wrong in your intuition if you don't know the will of God. And everything has to be measured against that to make sure, because God's not going to lead you to do something that's inconsistent.
But I've had those moments, too. I had one in 1994, back when we used travel agents,

remember, to book airline flights. So I had to fly to a city in Ohio.
And so I'm on the phone, and the travel agent said, okay, you got to fly to Pittsburgh, and then you get in a smaller commuter plane, and it takes you, it lands right across the street from where you're going in Canton, Ohio. And I said, okay, sounds great.
And you hear the type, type, type, she's typing my reservation. And I had one of those impressions.
Is there another way to go? No, no, no. You have to fly, I think it was at Cleveland, and rent a car and drive for several hours.
No, no, this is perfect. Get you right where you're going.
I just don't feel comfortable with it. All right, well, I can type, type, type, type.
she unbooks me on that first flight, books me on the United flight heading somewhere else at Cleveland or wherever it was. Both flights took off at the same time, the one to Pittsburgh that I would have been on and the one to Cleveland I was on.
And I rent a car. I get dinner.
I get back in the car. I'm going to drive down to Canton or whatever it was.
And I turn on the radio, and that other plane had crashed. Wow.
That was the 1994 crash in Pittsburgh of the U.S. Air flight that killed everybody on board.
And I think about that, and I go, was that God impressing on me that, you know what, I don't want you on that flight? Or was that just me saying, you know, oh, it's USA or I don't like them as much or whatever? I think it was God. I think it was God protecting me.
And so interesting tagging onto that because people will say, and you know, like I said, I'm a skeptic, so I think that way. Like, well, what about all those other people? Doesn't he care about them? And I had an interesting thing.
I think he's speaking to us all the time, but we have to develop that quiet willingness to hear, to listen. So, my own family.
So, you know, I got all interested in this near-death

experience stuff when my dad was dying of cancer, right? As I shared with you. And that actually led me to start reading the Bible, and that's how I came to faith in Christ.
But during that time, So my dad was a smoker and a drinker, and so he did not want to get a physical because he didn't want the bad news.

So he goes finally for a physical after about five or six years. and the night after they gave my dad the results,

my mom's good friend wakes up having had a very vivid dream that, kind of like your angel dream, and vivid dreams are very different than just a normal dream. I've had two or three of them, and they're very different.
Very vivid dream that someone in our family was horribly sick. There was something terribly wrong.
And she calls my mom and tells her. And my mom is like, well, you know, the kids are fine.
And now everybody's okay. And, you know, John was my dad's name, just had a physical and everything came back great.
Well, they told my dad they found a scar on his lungs, but they thought it was just a scar from pneumonia.

But it turns out that was actually the beginning of cancer, and they missed it.

And two years later, when they found it, it was too late.

Wow.

Wow.

So I've always wondered, was the Lord trying to...

It does say in the Old Testament that God speaks in various ways, in thoughts or impressions, in dreams, through His Word, through His prophets, and through Jesus.

So, I've always wondered about that.

Like, what if we had been more...

Attuned.

Attuned.

Yeah.

Good question.

And so, anytime those kinds of things happen, I don't freak out about them and I don't... But I'm always like, Lord, is there something I need to know here? Is there something I need to pay attention to? You have to be open.
Yeah. You do.
And you have to be seeking. You have to...
Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah, be fair.
And that's why I think daily making time and space to read God's Word, meditate on what is true, what is His will, and pray. And prayer is not like some formal ritualistic thing, it's just talking.
It's just talking things over with God. And the more you get used to just doing that throughout the day, then I find the more in tune you are to those promptings.
What I typically do in my prayers in the morning is at the end, I say, Lord, I'm just going to stay still for a few minutes. And if there's something you want me to know, if you want to communicate something more directly to me, I'm open.
I'm in a posture of receptivity. And I just spend a minute or two in that posture and most of of the time, nothing.
But then every once in a while, there's this impression about something. And I remember when I was in—I was a journalist at the Chicago Tribune, very successful in what I was doing, and I felt God was starting to call me out of that into, after I became a Christian, into the staff of a church at a 60% pay cut.
And- I remember that too. To abandon this entire career.
It's been my life. Took me two years of wrestling, like, really? Exactly.
Any other way. Those are the times you go, really? You're going to have to tell me three times for this.
But those are the moments that you're receptive to that kind of thing. I think to take the initiative to say, almost like putting up an antenna and saying, God, I'm here, I'm waiting, I'm listening.
And if you don't have anything for me, that's fine. But if you do, then please.
Yeah. You know, we're talking about a direct link, basically, to God.
And we're talking about guardian angels. and John, you had mentioned as long as it aligns with Scripture.
And so the counterpart to that, could demons or Satan be inject... Could there be a direct line of communication from him? Yes.
And you could confuse the thoughts. thoughts? I always tell people, don't think every thought is your own.

It's not.

It's a seat full above all things, the Bible says.

I've had, you know, gosh, I remember.

I've got many of these, but I remember one guy who, when I was a pastor, was telling me, you know, God's been telling me I've got to follow love. And what he was basically doing was hooking up with a younger, prettier woman because his wife had had a child who was severely disabled, and it was really hard.
And he was going to abandon them and his first marriage because this was a lot prettier and easier and more fun, and God was telling him. I guarantee you God was not telling him that.
And how do I know? Well, because... It violates Scripture.
God wants us to be faithful. You know, he says, never will I leave you or forsake you.
And marriage is a mirror of that. You know, Jesus said God's the one who brings two together as one, and they're meant to mirror the oneness he wants to have with us.
But that's a good example, too, of how we evaluate whether or not it's God really speaking, is to go to a brother, to go to a sister, a fellow believer, and say, hey, what do you think? And to have you say to him, no. I mean, you— And by the way, he didn't listen.
Yeah, well— Usually don't. But the demonic world is real, and I have a chapter on my book.
I tell the story. This is really amazing about the reality of the demonic world.
There's a guy named Richard Gallagher. He's a psychiatrist.
So he's a medical doctor as well as trained in psychiatry. Ivy League trained.
He was a professor at several major, very influential elite institutions in the Northeast. I have a quote from the president, former of the American Psychiatric Association, saying this guy is a total man of integrity, total man of credibility.
I mean, this is a great, great human being. And he and his wife had two cats, and they loved each other.
They slept together. They were always together.
But one night, they went nuts on each other. They're attacking each other.
They're hissing. They're growling.
They're snarling. They're trying to claw.
They're trying to kill each other. They literally had to rip them apart.
So what the heck is going on? And they couldn't figure it out. Well, the next morning, the doorbell rings at nine in the morning, and it was a previous appointment.
A Catholic priest was bringing a woman who claimed to be a high priestess of a satanic cult to be evaluated by him to see if she was mentally ill or perhaps demon-possessed or whatever. So, at nine o'clock, the doorbell rings.
He opens the door, and here's this woman who claims to be a priestess of a satanic cult.

And she kind of sneers at him, and she says, how'd you like those cats last night? Yeah. Wow.
Talk about a chill going down someone's spine. He ended up spending 20 years investigating the demonic worlds.
He'd written books about it. Incredibly credible individual who talks about exorcisms that he has witnessed, that there are things that take place that, as he says, are not the results of a psychiatric issue because he's a great psychiatrist.
He knows what psychiatry can tell us. And this is different when people are speaking Latin in a language they don't know.
When their one petite woman picked up a 217-pound Lutheran deacon and threw him across the room. When eight witnesses observed someone levitating off a bed.
Wow. This kind of thing.
So, the demonic world is real. Satan can present himself as an angel of light.
And we have to be so careful when we think we're, you know, our heart is deceitful and we have our own motivations and so forth. So, you know, you have to consult scripture, it's consistent with scripture.
I have a good friend, Mark Middleburg, you know, Mark, very godly individual. He knows everything about me.
I know everything about him. And if I ever have something that I think is an impression from God, I call Mark.
What do you think? Do you think this is legitimate or not? We have to be really careful. But does God communicate in these? Gosh, there are 200 examples in Scripture of dreams being used to communicate to people.
So, yeah, God does that through dreams. He speaks in different ways, as you say.
So, we have to be open to it, but at the same time, I think discerning. Yeah, cautious and discerning.
So I hear this a lot with my friends that are Catholic, and you guys know I was raised Catholic. Yeah.
And I go back and forth, you know, and I go to mass sometimes, I go to regular church sometimes. But, you know, I hear a lot of the Catholics that are really into the

spiritual warfare stuff, they talk about kind of like some type of a legal system and is

basically allowing demons to use the legal system to get to you.

So if we're not, and I'm butchering this, but do you guys know anything about this stuff? I know what you're talking about. You do? Yeah, I read and studied.
But I'm not an expert on it, so I'm out of my lane talking about it. But I think what they're referring to is that God is a God of order.
He's created laws of nature, I think spiritual laws as well. And yes, what I have heard is that there is, it's like the military.
There are certain levels of authority and hierarchy. And I mean, Paul references that in Ephesians 5? 6.
Ephesians 6, there's powers, principalities, the dark forces of evil in the world, and he's talking about... A hierarchy.
There's a hierarchy. There is an organization to...
And so there is a hierarchy by the angels. And the demonic.
And so, I think what they're talking about is that, for instance, if we choose to give ourselves over, let's say you like wine, you know, I like wine or alcohol, whatever.

But you choose to keep giving yourself over to it again and again and again. A vice.
Yeah, anything. It can be a good thing, but it can then gain control over you, mastery over you.
And I think that is maybe what that legal thing is talking about. Because if you think about how evil works in the world, I don't think evil really has much power except in the power of the lie.
So, you know, I've used the example. I've counseled, you know, like anorexic women in our church before, right? But, you know But guys have their own thing.
But I remember this woman who literally was starving herself to death, thinking that she was horribly overweight and terribly ugly. None of it was true.
But she had believed a lie, and that lie was now controlling her to actually slowly kill herself. Well, same thing with suicidal ideation.
It's a lie. There's no other way out.
It's hopeless. This is going to end the pain and the despair.
Well, near-death experiencers consistently say, no, it doesn't. Yeah, it's just a doorway.
It's just a step into another life, but you take yourself with you and all the baggage, you got to work it out here. And so, yeah, so I think that's probably what they're talking about, that we, you know, there are laws of nature, but there are spiritual laws as well.
Okay. And then just one more random question that doesn't really fit into the structure of the interview is, you know, you guys are talking about, both of you are talking about, does it align with Scripture? And so, I mean, I'm relatively new to this.
I try to read the Bible. I'll open it up to a random page and see if he's talking to me or not.
Sometimes he is. I would say the majority of the time, I don't even understand what I just read.
And so the Bible, at least to me, and I know it is to a lot of other people, is just a very daunting book to try to consume properly. 800,000 words.
It can create a lot more confusion than clarity, at least for me. And so, I have a friend, Rob, he sent me this book.
I think it's called The Jesus Calling or something, and it's every day. It has a new thing you read.
I get a lot out of that. Every day I'm like, oh, man.
That's like right on. I read it at the end of the day before I go to bed.
And almost every day I'm like, that's right on the money, man. And she's basing that on scripture yeah oh yeah she puts the scripture underneath of it and i she'll summarize it and then i read the scripture and i'm like oh i don't know what that means but i know what this means and so i'm just curious you know how do you guys i mean when you started did you just crack it open and read it from cover to cover? Or how? I mean, because it's— Well, I read it when I was an atheist during my investigation and found a lot of it, like you say, very hard to understand and put together in a coherent way.
But what I discovered is God gifts certain people to be able to teach the Bible in a way that truthfully and accurately conveys to us the contents. And so, I think being part of a church that systematically goes through Scripture and is based on the Bible, there's a lot of churches that aren't, but a church where the Bible is taught in a systematic way is very, very helpful.
I found it very helpful being part of a small group of guys. We'd get together on Saturday morning, and we'd go through a book of the Bible together and talk about it.
And there's some wonderful books called commentaries that were written by scholars and experts that illuminate each book of the Bible and tell you things that you had no way of knowing because we don't know the context of a lot of this stuff independently. It was written a long time ago.
And a good commentary really explains the context, the background, some of the nuances of the language that the layperson just doesn't understand. So I think it's really important to be part of a Bible-believing church that teaches the Bible.
Some sort of, if you can, a mentoring or a small group relationship with someone. My wife had a friend named Linda that they met with all the time, and Linda would help walk her through scripture.
And I think over time, and it takes a period of time, you begin to feel like you have a better handle on not only what the Bible is saying, but how I can find in the

Bible guidance for this particular issue that I'm facing. So I'll call my friend Mark, say, Mark, I'm wrestling with something, and I feel like God's leading me in this direction, and I don't know what to do.
And he'll say, Lee, you know what? You should read the fourth chapter of Ephesians or something, and let's talk about it because I think you may or may not be on the right track. To have somebody like that in my life who cares about me and helps me and guides me along in understanding Scripture and how to apply it to my life is invaluable to me.
And I would encourage anybody who feels that, as we all do when you first open the Bible, that's very confusing, take advantage of those resources, but especially a local church where you can really dig in and over time develop that confidence that you're understanding not just the general flow of the Bible, but the specific teachings of it. Okay.
Okay. Yeah, and I would say, and even though I started a church and led the church, a small group I think is the best and that's you know

I didn't come to faith through the church. I actually came to faith through a small group where I could ask my questions and wrestle, and we were doing that.
And what I like to say is, start with the most clear and then work back from there. So, the Bible, you know, I think the reason it's so daunting is there's no other book like it.
It's not a book, it's a library of books. It's 66 books, like we talked about the first time, written over 1,500 years in three different languages by 40 different authors and yet consistent theme about God's story throughout human history, the God of

all nations, right?

So, the thing about it, though, is throughout, it consistently tells of a time that God would intersect human history in a form we could understand. God is far beyond what Jesus revealed, but all of the character, the full representation of God in human form.
And so, starting with the gospels, with Jesus' life and teachings, the four eyewitnesses that report on it, because I think Jesus even said, I have not come to do away with the law and the prophets, which is all the Old Testament. He said, I've come to fulfill them.
Which I think means that all of that, the law and the prophets and the history of the Old Testament and humanity and all that comes to fulfillment in Jesus. And then he becomes, and his teaching becomes the lens to look back and understand and interpret, the less clear.
So, for instance, he was asked, how do you sum up the whole Testament? What's most important, right? This is Matthew 22. And he says, the first and most important command is to love God with all you've got.
And so he's quoting Deuteronomy 6, 4, the Shema, the creed of Judaism. Love God.
There's only one God. The second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.
That's in Leviticus. So He's quoting the Torah, the Old Testament.
And then he says,

Do these and you fulfill all the commands of Scripture, which basically means all the rest of the commands of Scripture are commentary on what love actually looks like. Okay.
Okay. So I agree with Lee, though.
There are great tools out there now. I mean, I read the Bible on my phone.
There's an app, the YouVersion Bible, and you can get a – I use the New Living Translation because it's a consistent translation of the original Greek into English that we can understand and does a really good job, or the New International Version, those two translations. And then there are things like, right now I'm doing the Bible recap.
It's really good. It takes you through the Bible, but every day this woman, Terri Lee Cobble, comes on and gives a little seven-minute, like, here's what you just read, and here's how to make sense of it.
I have a friend named Skip Heitzig who wrote a book called The Bible from 30,000 Feet. And the idea is kind of get that orientation, you know, get the basics and get it kind of figured out in your mind how this all fits together.
That's a great resource. I like the Net Bible.
You ever use the Net Bible? It's a pretty new translation headed up by Daniel D. B.
Wallace of Dallas Seminary. But what I like about it, it has thousands of footnotes explaining why certain translation decisions were made.
And you can really get into, oh, you could have translated this way or this way, and footnotes and said, this is why we chose this way, because this and this. Things you wouldn't understand about the Greek or the Hebrew, but they kind of illuminate and help you understand the decisions that were made behind the translation.
Interesting. Thank you.
Thank you. All right, let's get into the interview now.
I know, I was going to say, we started down the rabbit hole. Had a couple of things I had to clear up.
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We'll get ready to do the real interview. But first, one of you guys want to start us off with a prayer? Yeah, I'd be glad to pray.
Yeah. Lord, thanks for this opportunity to talk, and it's just to Sean, but all these folks who are listening in, watching in, we pray that you would move in all of our hearts to draw us closer and closer to you, those that are skeptics or those that are seekers.
We pray that even today be the day that they cross that line, receive you as a forgiver and leader through your son, Jesus. And for those of us who are your children and been your followers for a long time, we pray that you would encourage us, enlighten us, and point us ever more strongly toward the reality of who you are.
In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.
Thank you. Sure.
All right. So let's start with the crucifixion.
Yeah. You know, kind of the journey to it.
What did it mean? And we'll just start wherever you want to start with that. Yeah, I mean, I would go back a little further to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus, it says, sweated blood.
And I read that when I was a skeptic and thought, that just shows this is just fantasy land. This is just a literary device to suggest that he was under stress or something.
And then I find there are like 70 cases in medical journals of this medical phenomenon called hematidrosis, hematidrosis, which is when you're're under extreme stress your capillaries in your sweat glands break down and blood seeps in and you sweat a combination of sweat and blood and so there's actually a medical support for that description of jesus sweating blood but what other the other thing that happens with that medical phenomenon is that it makes your skin ever more sensitive. And so, Jesus was set up for an incredibly painful next step, which was being flogged by the Roman soldiers.
Now, there's only like a sentence or so in the Bible that says he was flogged, but that was an incredibly brutal experience, that he was stripped, that he was tied to a post, that he was beaten with a whip that had jagged bits of sheep bone embedded in it and balls of lead. The balls of lead would break open the back, the jagged sheep bone would cut the flesh.
There's a eyewitness to a Roman flogging who described it this way. He said, the sufferer's veins were laid bare, and the very muscles and tendons and bowels of the victim were laid open to exposure.
So this was a horrific beating. Yeah, torture.
It was a horrific beating that he endured. And it put him in what's called hypovolemic shock, which is shock from a great loss of blood.
And you can see evidence of that in the fact he couldn't carry the cross beam of the cross very far. And also he had great thirst and so forth.
So here he is already in critical condition before he's even crucified. And then nails are driven through his wrists, not through the hand, because it would just tear, but driven through his wrists and through his feet.
He's hoisted on the cross. And what happens when you're in that position is that it puts incredible stresses on your chest muscles.
So you can't breathe. And so you're hanging on that cross.
You're having trouble breathing. You can take air in, but you not expel the air.
And so you're on the cross. And the only way you can continue to breathe is by lessening the stress on your chest muscles.
The only way you can do that is push up with your feet, which of course have a spike through them, and your bloodied back is now scraping against the coarse wood of the cross. And you let up, and you can exhale, and then you inhale again, and then you settle down.
And then you just keep going through that motion time and time again until you can't do it anymore. And your acidic qualities are building up in your blood, your heart rate is now getting irregular, and you actually end up dying of asphyxiation, ultimately can't breathe, that causes your heart to fail.
And what's interesting as well is that this would cause fluid to collect around your heart and around your lungs. And so when the spear was thrust into him to make sure he was dead, John interestingly describes water and blood coming out.
And people think, oh, well, that's just a metaphor for baptism or something. No, no, no.
That is what would happen. The pericardial effusion, in other words, the membrane of fluid around the heart and the lung was punctured, and what looked like water would come out as well as blood, and he was declared dead.
Now, I used to think like a skeptic, oh, wait a minute, maybe he survived the cross somehow. Maybe he fainted, and they thought he was dead.
Well, that's been disproven a thousand times in many different ways, but the Journal of the American Medical Association several years ago published an evaluation of the death of Jesus Christ, and the conclusion was, quote, clearly the weight of

the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead even before the wound to his side

was inflicted. So, and in fact, the atheist New Testament scholar, Garrett Ludeman, says it's

indisputable that Jesus was truly dead after being crucified. We have no record anywhere of anyone

ever surviving a full Roman crucifixion. And not only do we have multiple reports of his death in the documents of the New Testament, we got five ancient sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution.
So we have Josephus, a first century Jewish historian who worked for the Romans. Tacitus, another early historian.
Meribar, Serapian, Lucian, even the Jewish Talmud admits that he was executed. So this idea that somehow Jesus survived the cross and was revived by the cool, damp air of the tomb is ridiculous.
Have you guys seen the movie? I think it's called The Passion. Yes, yes.
Would you say that was pretty accurate? I would say it approached how bad it was but didn't fully capture it. I don't think it could have because people would have been vomiting in the audience watching if they had taken it to the, don't you think? Yes.
Yeah. Well, and so this is what actually convinced me when I was a skeptic.
And learning this, so as you know, my father's dying of cancer. I read this first research on near-death experiences.
I'd always said, well, Jesus is probably a legend. God, who can know? There's no evidence.
And then I read this and I'm like, oh my gosh, maybe this is evidence. And because so many were talking about in their near-death experience, this God of light who is love and even Jesus, I was like, well, maybe I should be more open to reading the Bible.
So, I start reading the Bible. I go to a small group and I'm asking my questions and wrestling.
And here's what I learned that actually, it wasn't near-death experiences that led me to faith, it was this. Everything Lee just explained is history.
Historians that are not believers, they will not deny these things. These are facts, okay? But all that God told in advance.
Jesus was a man with an address in history. I think you said that, didn't you?

Quoting my good friend.

But the who, the where, the how, the why, the what, the why, all of that God foretold so that we would know this is real. This is not myth.
So, for instance, in Isaiah, in the book of Isaiah, and remember, Isaiah, we found a complete copy of the book of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948, complete copy that you can read online if you can read the Hebrew, but you can read a translation. It reads exactly like our modern-day Bible.
And that's how many years before the death of Jesus, 600 years or so? So, 780 years before Jesus, Isaiah writes all these prophecies. Now, we have...
What prophecies? I'm going to tell you. But we have a surviving copy of the whole scroll of Isaiah that carbon dates to 150 to 300 years before Jesus.

So, this is a copy of Isaiah's original written in 780 BC, but we have it in a museum. It tours the United States.
You can go read it online, exactly what it says. Here's what it says.
that where? That Isaiah 9, that to Galilee, a light has come for a child is born, a son is given, and he will be called mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace. So this is Judaism.
So you don't call any human God.

There's only one God, and He's the eternal Yahweh, the I Am, the eternal self-existent One. And yet here in Judaism in about 780 BC, and even before that with Moses, is this foretelling of this time that God is going to enter into humanity and reveal himself in the form of a son, a child, and come to Galilee.
Okay, so now of the whole world, this is a very specific place, right? Specific identification of a human. He's going to come from the lineage of David.
If you've ever read the Bible, you always wonder, why do they put all these stupid genealogies in there? Because it's relating back. It's showing that this is, in fact, what happened, okay? So, that's the who, a little bit of the where.
Actually, in Micah 5.2, it also says that Bethlehem is going to, though it's the least of the villages, from you will come a ruler over Israel whose days are from eternity.

Okay, so who comes from days of eternity, right?

So, he's going to come from Bethlehem and Galilee.

So, that's the where.

Then you have the when.

So in the book of Daniel, in Daniel chapter 9, Daniel is praying. They're in captivity in Babylon, the Jewish people.
Okay, so this is in like the 500s, 400s BC. Daniel's praying, what's going to happen to us? And an angel, Gabriel, comes to him and says, I've come to tell you what's going to happen to the Jewish people.
And he's saying, until all human history is fulfilled, okay? And he says, from the decree of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, okay, Jerusalem had been wiped out by the Babylonians. This is real history.
From the decree of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Jerusalem had been wiped out by the Babylonians.
This is real history. From the decree of the rebuilding of Jerusalem until Meshach, which is what we translate Messiah, until the anointed one, the Messiah comes, and then he gives a timeline, and literally a timeline.
Like he says, they're going to basically, they're going to be, uh, seven,

seven plus 42. timeline, and literally a timeline.
He says basically they're going to be

seven plus 42 sevens. I think there's a good reason to believe they're sevens of years.

So 49 times seven years, 483 years from the starting point of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem.

Now, interestingly, in Ezra 7, we have that decree. It was Art Xerxes, who's a Persian king, and the decree, though the Bible's written, the Old Testament in Hebrew, this decree is written in Aramaic.
So, that's the language of the Persians. So, it's literally the decree just put into the text of Ezra, and it was in the seventh year of Artaxerxes.
Encyclopedia Britannica tells us when Artaxerxes ruled, started in 465. So, literally, we know from 457, go 483 years, and Messiah is going to come.
Well, that's 27 AD. It's the when.
And by the way, even if you don't do the church math and don't follow that, the angel goes on and says to Daniel, this is all in Daniel 9, he says, the Messiah will come and be killed, and then the ruler will come who will destroy the city and the temple. Okay, so the city of Jerusalem and the temple.
Okay, so think about this. That happened too.
70 AD, the Roman general Titus wipes out the city, destroys a temple, and the angel says the Messiah will be killed before that happens. So this is real history.
So if Jesus isn't the Messiah, there will never be a Messiah. No.
And then in Isaiah 53, now remember all this, we have a copy predating Jesus. So, it wasn't doctored up after the fact.
That's what I initially said as a skeptic, like, oh, you know, Jesus came and then they just redacted the text. No.
Proof, no. In Isaiah 53, it says, and actually in 52, it paints a picture.
It says that he was so, they're talking about the suffering servant. That's what he's called.
That's what we don't realize. Jesus is going to come and rule, but first he had to come and suffer.
And that was foretold. And it said he will be so marred and disfigured like no human before him.
He was barely recognizable, I think is the way it says. And then it says, to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Okay, so the idea is like, through Jesus, we're not seeing all of the infinite creator God who can't be contained in time and space.
It's like his arm reaching into our reality. And it said He grew up before Him.
So, He grew up before God, the Eternal Father. He was despised and rejected by mankind.
He was pierced for our transgressions. This is before crucifixion was ever implemented.
Even known. This is before the Romans invented crucifixion.
And Psalm says his bones were out of joint, which is what happens to your shoulders when you're crucified. Yeah, and it says why.
So it says what he will do. He will, and it says, by his wounds we were healed, and for our iniquities, he took on our punishment because, and this is Isaiah 53, all of us like sheep have wandered off.
We've gone astray, but God laid on Him the sins of us all. See, this might go into some of the legal stuff that I was talking about earlier with the whatever you want to call it, the legalities of the spiritual realm.

I mean, why did He have to come and go through that to save us?

Well, before we go there, I want to tie to what Lee was just saying.

Because even Jesus on the cross, these are all real things, and He cries out,

my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Well, that harkens back to Psalm...

Who cried that out?

Jesus.

And that's actually...

Yeah, you explained, why have you forsaken me? Well, that harkens back to Psalm... Who cried that out? Jesus.
And that's actually a quote. In the old days, back then, they didn't have numbers on the Psalms, so they would quote the first line to indicate, I'm applying this Psalm.
So, here Jesus is on the cross, and he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's the first line of Psalm 22. The Psalm of David in 1,000 BC, 1,000 years before.
Go ahead. Foretelling, I mean, the bones be out of joint and so forth, this idea of the crucifixion before crucifixion was even invented.
Yeah. He says, they pierced my hands and my feet.
They circle me like a pack of dogs. They divide my garments among them.
The soldiers cast lots to see who would get his cloak. You know, my mouth is dried up like a pot's herd.
He was thirsty. Which is a product of hypovolemic shock.
My heart has turned to wax within me. Okay, so that's what Lee studied with Dr.
Metherell. You want to? Yeah, Dr.
Alexander Metherell, who is like the world's leading authority on the crucifixion of Jesus. I interviewed him with my book, The Case for Christ.
And, of course, all of this is, you know, predicting it just amplifies the reality of what we're talking about. This was an event in history, but it was an event foretold hundreds and hundreds of years in advance, which gives it that much more credibility and supernatural implications.
Yeah. And so here David is foretelling from the Messiah's viewpoint what crucifixion was going to be like.
And his heart turns to wax. His bones are all out of joint.
He's pierced through his hands and his feet. His heart turns to wax.
And the hand in that day, in the Greek and Hebrew, the wrist was considered being part of the hand. Yeah.
Yeah, and that's where people say it was. It was like, you know, right.
Which you can imagine the nerve there. There's a nerve there.
And it's like taking your nerve here and taking pliers and just squeezing it when you insert a seven-inch spike through your wrist. A horrible, horrible way to die.
They exempted Roman citizens from crucifixion. You couldn't crucify a Roman citizen because it's too awful.
Yeah. They were trying to send a message, don't screw with Rome.
Yeah. And that's why they put them up publicly.
Yeah. I have a friend who is a GI from Vietnam and came back and was on a street corner, ran into an evangelist there, and he was Jewish, my friend.
And the guy showed him Isaiah 53 and 52 and 53 that John's talking about that foretold Jesus.

And he said, who do you think this is talking about?

And my friend Lewis said, well, Jesus, but obviously that's been doctored.

Obviously it's been, you know.

So he called his relative and said, send me the original, you know, our scriptures.

I want to compare.

He read it and realized this is the original.

And the odds of all of this coming true were so ridiculously astronomical that he received Jesus as his forgiver and leader, and he became a pastor. Louis Lepiz is his name.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, and so what Lee was saying that Dr.
Methrell said about the blood and the water. Yeah.
So think about this. And a thousand years before Jesus' crucifixion, it says, my heart has turned to wax within me.
So, what the eyewitnesses of Jesus' crucifixion say is that he was hung between two thieves, and it was on the Passover, which is also significant. Yes.
And they came and broke the legs of the two thieves, again, so they can't push up and get air. That's how they would accelerate the death, break their legs.
Because they wanted them dead before the Passover evening began. And so, the Romans said, okay, whatever.
And they did. They broke their legs, but they didn't break Jesus' legs, which was another thing.
Not a bone in his body was broken. Instead, the Roman guy makes sure he's dead by stabbing him in the side.
And like Lee said, John reports, before the medical knowledge of this would be, he didn't know. He didn't know the implications of what he was saying.
He said blood and water came out. Okay, so what that indicates and what Lee found interviewing Dr.
Metherell is when you have a heart attack, the pericardial fluid builds up. It's this clear fluid around the heart, and that's what happened.
Jesus died of a heart attack. Just like Psalm 22 says, my heart has turned to wax within me.
Wow. Wow.
And, I believe, and I don't know what you think about this, but I believe that when Jesus cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he's referring to that Psalm. At that moment, he experienced all of the sins and hurt and hatred and woundedness of every human for all history.
He felt it. And his heart couldn't take it.
His human heart couldn't take it. So, he didn't actually die.
He died on the cross. Yeah.
But he died from taking on all our sins and paying for them. And he, of course, was the sinless sacrifice.
So, this is another wild thing is the whole sacrificial system of Judaism- That's right. Foretells all this.
1,500 years. And they had to sacrifice these lambs every year to pay for and cover their sins for the year before

so that their faith in God, that he is going to pay ultimately. All right? So this whole sacrificial system happened in the temple.
It could only happen in the temple, according to Moses. And the last Passover, okay, so Jesus is crucified on the Passover, which is when all this would take place, the sacrificial yearly thing.
So, He dies on the Passover. And then, like we've said, 40 years later, the temple is is destroyed so no more sacrifices can happen right so it's a conundrum for jewish people and where does exactly and john where your sins paid for well it was paid for once and for all right john the baptist pointed jesus has said behold the lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world so he's he's applying this roman or this jewish sacrificial system to the ultimate sacrifice who is a sinless son of god who takes away the sin of the world.
So, he's applying this Jewish sacrificial system to the ultimate sacrifice, who is a sinless son of God, who would pay the sacrifice that we deserve for the sins that we've committed, and yet takes that on so that we can be forgiven. Now, here's what's fascinating.
So, I started opening up to God and faith by reading about near-death experiences because of the experiences they were having. But it was that that led me to faith.
And then I start studying the Bible, but I'm also curious about these near-death experiences. I'm trying to figure out, how does this fit together? And that's how I ended up writing the books I did.
But interestingly, some of the people that I've interviewed all around the world that have had near-death experiences, I think just confirmed the resurrection. Which, by the way, was also in Isaiah 53.
After he pays for their sins, he will see the light of life and be satisfied. Even resurrection is right there foretold.
So, I interviewed this one guy, Swedeek. He was a Muslim imam in Rwanda.
You can see him on my podcast. I mean, you can hear him talking about it.
Okay, so he's not a believer in Jesus. He was actually an apologist for Islam.
So he would fight in the streets against Christians, why they were wrong. Amazing story.
His mom was a Hutu. His dad was a Tootsie during the genocide, ripped their family apart.
He ended up a street kid at age eight, doing cocaine, dealing cocaine.

And then there's this whole experience where he has a mental breakdown.

And these people from the Anglican church pray for him, and he's healed.

It was like a Nebuchadnezzar kind of like.

Wow.

And he's healed, and he didn't know what to do with that.

And then like a year and a half later, he gets blood cancer.

And it's fourth stage blood cancer.

And so, they put him on palliative care.

He's going to die.

And his mom actually worshiped the African goddess Bako.

His dad was a sheik, so an imam in the Muslim faith, and he had become an imam. Nothing the Muslims do could heal him.
Nothing Beko could do could heal him. His mom, out of desperation, knowing that he had been healed after they prayed, in Jesus' name, goes to the Anglican church and says, will you ask Jesus, your God, to heal him? And they said, yes, we will, but you need to pray to him too.
Swedeek dies, and he is in this hellish place. He called it, he said to me, it was like a slaughterhouse.
That's the way he described it.

And these three human-like but very distorted people, creatures come in, one with an axe, one with a sith and a bucket. And they're about to put the axe through his chest.
It's like a torture. And he says, into this room steps this man of light in a robe with a beard, and he holds

out his hands, and in his wrists are holes and the light coming out of them, and light

coming out of him into me, Svedik said, like looking right through every part of me.

And he said, and I felt a peace and a warmth because he was terrified. And suddenly, he's at peace.
And he said, I knew who this was. And he knew because when the Passion of the Christ had come to Kirigali, Rwanda, he'd been given three free movie tickets, and that was one of them.
And even though he didn't want to see something about Jesus, he wanted his full money's worth, so he went. And Jesus says to him, he never said, I'm Jesus, but I mean, he knows.

He said, I died for mankind.

You are among those I died for.

Never deny it again and tell everyone.

And Swadeek sits up and a sheet falls off his face.

And suddenly there are all these people screaming and running.

And he's like, what's going on?

And he had died that evening. It was the next morning and it was his burial.

He looks like a girl. And suddenly, there are all these people screaming and running, and he's like, what's going on? And he had died that evening.

It was the next morning, and it was his burial.

He looks down to the right, and there's a grave dug.

Wow.

Wow.

And he goes, Jesus is here.

Jesus saved me.

Jesus brought me back from hell.

And half the Muslims are just freaked out, and half of them came to faith that day.

But here's the thing.

He is now an Anglican pastor and has had seven attempts on his life, including by his father.

Wow.

Because you can't become a Christian out of Islam.

So what motivates him to keep doing that?

Yeah.

And he's still going at it today.

He's a great young guy.

Wow.

But my point is, he's not the only one who has seen the risen Jesus and the holes.

He keeps the scars.

He keeps the holes because they are the sign of his love.

Wow. They're the reminder of the price he would pay for every one of us.
Wow. That's awesome.
So going back to my question about the legalities, and why did he have to do that to pay for our sins? Well, our sins are what separate us from God.

God is holy.

God is perfect.

God is pure.

We're not.

We sin every day.

We violate his commands.

Yeah.

Let me tell you about it.

And that has separated us from God.

And the question is, how do we become reconciled with God?

Somebody has to pay the price of the sin.

And either we do, which would be an eternity separated from God, or Jesus says, let me pay the price for you on the cross, the penalty you deserve for the sins that you've committed, so that I can offer forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of my grace. And still be just.
And still be just. That's the key.
And so, Romans 6.23 says,

for the wages of sin is death. In other words, what we earn, what we deserve because of the sin in our life is death, which is separation from God for eternity.
But the verse says,

the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. It's Jesus who paid the

penalty to bridge that gap between us and God. And when we receive his free gift of grace, then we become reconciled with God forever.
And so it required a payment of that kind of the sinless son of God in order to atone for the sins that we've committed. I'll tell you, in the new book,

In Imagine the God of Heaven,

one of my favorite stories,

I got to know him well,

is a man named Santosh Akharji.

He's a Hindu.

He grew up in India.

Manufacturing engineer, very smart guy.

He has his gallstones erupt into his pancreas. He's in the hospital for a week.
He's got a 200 beat per minute heart rate. They can't get it down in order to operate.
He hears code blue, code blue, his heart stop. And he, like most near-death experiences, he said to me this.

He said, I thought when you die, it's just nothing, or maybe I'd come back as another

life form.

But he said, that's not what happened.

He said, I saw my body down below, and this divine light comes, brighter than the sun, but not hard to look at. And he said, I fell in love with this light because I knew this light was for me and was there to protect me.
And this God of light takes him, similar through journey, to this place, And he finds himself standing up high looking out over what he described to me as a giant compound. Now, if you've ever been to India, there are gated communities everywhere.
There are gates with high walls, and they call them compounds. But what he was describing was this city, thousands of miles, he said, square-shaped.
And he's looking in and he's describing these beautiful grounds and other buildings of other worldly building material. That's the way he described it.
He was a manufacturing engineer. Which is what I love is these people are still themselves fully, even on the other side.
And he's describing this place, and he longs to go in. And he said, this is the longing of every human heart to live there in this place.
And he was looking for a way in, and he said, I counted. There were 12 gates.
He said, I counted all the way around because your eyesight there is like telescopic, which I used to think, no, that's not biblical. Then I read Revelation 21, John is taken in the spirit to a very high mountain and yet he reads the names on the foundation stones of the city.
How? Right? So Santosh says all these same things. He's describing the holy city of God just like John does in Revelation 21.
He's a Hindu. Yeah.
He's never read the Bible. He's only read the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita and the Hindu scriptures.
Then he's like, where am I? And he realizes I'm up on a very high platform looking. And he looks down to his left and he said, what I saw terrifies me even to say it to this day.
He said, because what I saw was an abyss of darkness and at the end of it, a lake of fire that I would fall into if I fell. And I knew if I go there, it's hopeless.
There's no way out. And it's like he got a vision of hell.
And he doesn't want to go there and he wants to go in the city, but he can't. He sees angels guarding the gates.
He's like, how do I get in? And then he turns and there on the platform, he sees this. He said, I knew this was the Almighty on this giant throne, but he's in the form of a man.
And he looks at him. Now, he later said, I believe that was the risen Jesus.
He didn't know that at the time. He said, because I looked up into his eyes and his eyes were like lightning.
Well, that's what John describes in Revelation 21 of the risen Jesus. He said his eyes were like lightning, his feet gold or like bronze glowing metal.
Santosh said the same thing. And he instantly, as soon as he looks in his eyes, his whole life flashes before him.
And this is a life review, which we talked about. It's common in near-death experiences because time doesn't work the same way on the other side.
And so, he re-experiences life and realizes, because of his sin, I deserve hell. I deserve that separation from God.
And he falls to his knees and says, forgive me, forgive me, God, forgive me, forgive me. And he expected that the Lord was going to send him there.
And he said, but when he spoke to me, he said, Santosh, I'm going to send you back. And when you go back, you must love, love your family and especially your daughter.
She needs you right now. And he said, I was shocked.
I was shocked because I knew what I deserved. And he said, God is just.
That's what he said to me. God is just.
And he knew what he deserved. And by the way, this is a commonality of near-death experiences.
And we can hide and pretend and deflect our wrongs and justify, but on the other side, it's all very clear. And he said, but God's voice was so tender and merciful and compassionate and full of love for me.
I was shocked. And they had this conversation because what happened is he sees a very narrow, he called it the very narrow gate or door right to the side of the throne that was open to him into the kingdom of God.
And he was confused. He was like, okay, all these 12 gates are closed, but that narrow gate is open.
And he wanted to go in, but he knew he couldn't without permission. This is the authority of all authorities.
And so after this long conversation, we're basically God... He's asking, which mosque, which synagogue, which temple, which church, what do I do? And he's thinking religious observance.
And the Lord says to him, no, Santosh, I want to see how honest, how honest, how real you are with me. Not one day a week, but 24-7, 365 days, walk with me.

And then he said, the wages of sin is death.

Exactly what Lee just quoted from Romans 6.23.

So this Hindu guy, right?

And then he says, surrender yourself.

And Santosh says, I should underline surrender.

Surrender yourself to me in your daily life. And Santosh comes back.
Oh, well, before he came back, he said, Lord, when I come back, I want to go through that narrow gate into your kingdom. How do I go through that narrow gate? He didn't tell him.
And he sends him back. And, so, and I told Lee, we were talking about this, and I told him, you know, it's so fascinating because God, for people who have not necessarily searched or don't know Jesus, He often gives them parables, even on the other side, which is fascinating because Jesus taught in parables.
What is a parable? A parable is a teaching that doesn't just tell you what to do, it makes you think, and it makes you search. And if you're just impatient and you're like, just either tell me or I'm done with you, God's like, okay, I guess you're done with me, but I want you to seek, and when you seek, you will find.
And that's why Jesus taught in parables. He wanted to see what's in the heart.
See, because that's what God is after. He's after our hearts.
He wants relationship. That's what he said to Santosh.
I want relationship. How honest will you be walking with me? Santosh didn't understand any of that, but he comes back and he is seeking God.
Every day he's praying. He's like, Lord, you weren't like the gods I learned about in the Vedas.
Who are you? Who is this God of compassion and love and mercy? I want to know you. And his daughter, two years later, so he's seeking for two years.
His daughter is invited to sing at a church with a friend because she was a choral major in college. Santosh goes to hear her sing, walks into the church and feels the same loving presence of this God of light.
And the message that day was Matthew 7 about the narrow gate that leads to heaven. There's a narrow gate through which you must go through.
And then John 10, where Jesus said, I am the gate for the sheep. Whoever enters in through me will be saved and will find rest.
And Santosh was blown away. He was like, oh my gosh, this is just for me.
So, he goes home,

he starts reading the Bible. He said, John, everything I experienced, I found in that book.
Wow. Wow.
And he became a follower of Jesus. So, the risen Jesus is now being testified to by...I've interviewed people from every religious background having a similar experience in a near-death experience of the risen Jesus.
So, not only is there biblical evidence from all history, but I think what God's doing today is He's saying, look, I created all people of all

nations to be my children.

And like Lee said, the reason He did what He did through Jesus is so that anybody, anywhere,

can simply turn their heart back to God, wanting forgiveness, because we all know we've screwed

up and we continue to, and wanting His leadership.

Like meaning, God, you get to be God instead of me playing God. What's your will instead of just what's my will be done? Yeah.
It's awesome. Going back to the crucifixion, we were having a conversation downstairs about Jesus was praying to God on the cross.
And we were talking about the Holy Trinity. And I know we talked about this in our interview, Lee, but I'd like to revisit it.
So if Jesus is also God, who was he praying to? Well, the Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Three persons, one God.
What's interesting, Jesus, at one point, shortly before he was killed, got up before a group and he said, I and the Father are one. But the Greek word for one there is not masculine, it's neuter, which means Jesus was not saying, I and the Father are the same person.

He was saying, I and the Father are the same thing.

We're one in nature.

We're one in essence.

And that's why people picked up stones and killed him,

because they said, you're just a man and you're claiming to be God.

So Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. He was saying, I'm not the same person, but we are the same God.
And that's part of the mystery of the Trinity, that he was praying to the father. And on the cross, it's interesting too, when he prays, father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Here are these people, we've talked about the horror of the cross, the flogging and went through, this torture of the cross. And yet, the imperfect tense of the Greek in the original language in which that passage is written suggests he didn't just say it once, but he kept repeating it over and over again.
Maybe even while the nails were being driven through his feet, maybe while the nails were being driven through his hands, maybe when he was hoisted on the cross, he kept repeating, he kept praying, Father, forgive them, Father, forgive them, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. I mean, that is an expression of the love of God that how can we not pray for people in our life who are spiritually confused after him praying for people who are so depraved or torturing to death? But that just is another expression of the depth and the breadth of the love of God for us.
So how would you guys articulate the whole eternity? So I have a whole chapter in Imagine the God of Heaven,

and I am trying to show that, because what I found fascinating is people I've interviewed who had no prior understanding of the triune nature of God, which, let me just say, The word Trinity is not in the Bible, okay?

So what we have instead is a progressive revelation. nature of God, which, let me just say, the word Trinity is not in the Bible, okay?

So, what we have instead is a progressive revelation of the mystery of God. So, all the way back with Moses, so before Moses, he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so the forefathers, right? But even to Abraham, he appears with two angels as a man.
Genesis, where is that? Genesis 15? Yeah. Yeah, under the oak of Mamre or whatever it is.
And Abraham worships and offers sacrifice to him. So, even then, and I think that's when it says the angel of the Lord, many times I think this is the pre-incarnate Jesus, the third person of the Trinity.
But there's not the word Trinity. But the idea is there.
So again, to Moses, goes up on Mount Sinai and sees this, he calls it this burning bush. So it's a brilliant light that doesn't burn the bush.
Well, hello, that's exactly what near-death experiencers are meeting all over the globe. This God of light, they say, brighter than the sun a thousand times and yet not hard to look at.
And God, he asks, what's your name? And he says, I am is my name, Yahweh. But then he says, I am.
Tell them, I am. I am who I am.
I am, meaning the self-existent one. Now, here's what's interesting.
Jesus then, I think in the same passage, is it John 8 that you just quoted? I think so, yeah. He says, before Abraham was born, okay? Abraham was the father of the Jewish nation, right? So 2,000 years before, before Abraham was born, ego eimi is the Greek, I am.
So he's applying that to himself. And they pick up stones to stone him because they understood exactly what he was claiming.
And then they said, how can you, being a man, claim you were before our father Abraham. And then he said, Abraham saw my day and he rejoiced in it.
So, he's very clearly associating with the God of the Old Testament. Now, in the book, so one person I interviewed, Heidi, she was Jewish, grew up in a Jewish home, but her father was an atheist, a lawyer.
So, what's the thing with lawyers? And not a nice man. He was very abusive.
And every night he said to his girls, there is no God, your life is worthless, Jesus Christ is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind. This is his mantra every night.
And he was very abusive. But Heidi, despite the fact that her mom was agnostic, her dad is atheist, always believed in God and prayed to God every night.
And she remembers as a little eight-year-old girl coming, talking to God as she was going to bed about the abuses and the things and sorting it out, and always felt like God was there comforting her, putting her to bed at night. So she always felt like God was my Father.
At 16, she's riding bareback on her horse on a mountainside. Her horse steps back off, rears up, steps back off, and lands on her and crushes her.
She said, I was 30 feet up in the air instantly. I knew I was dead.
She sees her sisters panicking. She said, but I felt fine.
I was at peace. I just felt bad that they had to watch me die like this.
And she said, and then I see a light over my shoulder. And it was a cloudy day, so I wondered, like, what is that? It's not the sun.
And she turns, and she said, there floating with me 30 feet in the air is this. She said, I knew who this was instantly.
And he was this man of light, but he was Jesus. And she said, I knew he was Jesus, no doubt in my mind.
And she said, I know you. And he gets this big grin.
And she said, it was like this reunion because I knew this was the God I had prayed to my whole life, no doubt in her mind. And interestingly, Jesus then shows her life review.
and he shows her when she was a little girl of eight praying, she sees him there, like in what was really happening spiritually. Then he takes her, he grabs her hand and takes her, and they're off, and he takes her, she said, to this light that felt infinite that they enter into that she knew was God.

And she found herself, she felt like, with God the Father.

But she said, but Jesus was also there.

You couldn't separate them. And then she said to me, I don there.
You couldn't separate them.

And then she said to me, I don't understand how God can be light and God can be a man and God can be love, but that's what I experienced. So then he puts her, he says, it's not your time.
You have to go back. And when he puts her back in her body, Jesus does, he left, but he left his presence with her, she said.
And she later realized that she thinks that was his Holy Spirit who was always with her to guide her. Now, this is a little Jewish girl raised by atheists, and yet she testifies to the triune

nature of God. And then I interview another woman, 12-year-old nurse, almost the same identical experience, Dean Braxton, who also had a near-death experience.
And he said to me, you could not separate them there.

So when I was speaking to Jesus,

I knew I was also speaking to the Father and the Holy Spirit. And when I was there at the throne of God with the Father speaking to him, though Jesus was always here with me, he was also there.
And I can't explain how that makes sense. And in our time and space, it doesn't, but it made perfect sense there.
And what He says is, they are one. So, in the book, I give an analogy.
And you can see a picture of it there. So, it's a contradiction to us, right? We say, okay, three persons, but there are only one.
Well, that doesn't work. The three of us are not one, right? Okay, but think about it by analogy.
So, imagine I create a flat, two-dimensional world, okay, that only has forward and back and side to side. There's no up or down, all right, in this flat world.
And then I decide I'm

going to enter this world and I stick my three fingers through that plane. The flat people there

would see three slices of me, okay? But what if I said to them, well, I'm actually not three

slices, I'm actually one being. But that would be a contradiction to them because in flat land, three slices can never stack up an arm into one being because that can only happen on a third dimension.
They don't even have that dimension. And so, what I say is perhaps, and every analogy breaks down, so I'm not claiming to have the ultimate analogy, but perhaps Father, Son, and Spirit, the personhood of God unites in dimensions beyond ours in ways that sound like a contradiction to us, but in fact, it's not.
And that actually is what near-death experiences tell us. I think that's fascinating, by the way.
Am I a heretic? No, no, no. That's a process of it.
But for me, when you delve into scriptures, A to Z, Genesis to Revelation. I see four things being taught.
Number one, the Father is God. Number two, the Son is God.
Number three, the Holy Spirit is God. And number four, there is one God.
That's the Trinity. How it fits together, I think your analogy is fascinating.
We may not understand. I don't see it as a contradiction.
I see it as something beyond our, perhaps, ability to comprehend, but I don't think it's necessarily a contradiction. No.
But- A mystery, yeah. A mystery.
A mystery, yeah, yeah. But there are lots of mysteries.
I mean, go try to understand quantum physics. Tried.
Tried to understand my wife. I'm kidding.
I'm going to tell Leslie who said that. She says that about me.
Yeah, I'm sure she does. Well, and so, but think about it.
Even what I told you before about Isaiah 53, to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? So, Jesus, this suffering Messiah foretold, was the arm of the Lord reaching in, like me reaching into the flatland, right? And people, you know, skeptics have said over the years to me, you know, like, okay, you know, so Jesus is God, well then, and supposedly he died on a cross, then who is ruling the universe while he's dead, right? Or while he's here? And again, that assumes that the infinite God who is spirit was somehow completely contained in the body of Jesus, and he wasn't. And that's not the claim of Scripture.
So, yes, just like I can reveal myself as a slice in Flatland, and they might even kill me in Flatland, but I'm much more than my little slice. Okay.
And that's why I think when he's saying, I and the Father are one, it's really true. But God, and this is a phenomenal thing if you think about it, that God is love.
And every bit of love we've ever experienced, it comes from him. We just borrow it.
We're just borrowing it. And if God is love, there must be an object of that love, which is the Trinity, which is existing from eternity past in a perfect love relationship.
Otherwise, if it's just God, one person, not triune, who is he loving before he created humankind? So God is a relationship, and that's why relationship is so important to God. not only God's relationship with us

but also our relationships with each other. And that is consistently, these near-death experiences around the globe, when they're in God's presence and they have a life review, they re-experience their lives.
But what they consistently say is, you know, what was interesting is the emphasis was on my relations, my interactions with people, not my accomplishments. And what consistently God wants them to see is that every little act of kindness mattered, and every little mean thing mattered, and it had a ripple effect through humanity.
And they consistently say exactly what Moses said and what Jesus taught, God is love, and how we love or treat one another is what matters most. So, again, you have these near-death experiences.
I mean, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. Yeah.
Because I think they are testimony to, again, I don't advise people to believe everything every near-death experiencer says. I don't.
But the commonality of consistency of what they say fully aligns with what God's revealed throughout history, and I think we have a reason to trust it first, the Bible. But this just confirms that...
That's another window. It's another window of witness that, yes, indeed, this is true and real, and God loves us more than we can possibly imagine.
I mean, so much so, He took the bullet. It's just like, you know, I mean, the greatest, the greatest act of heroism is someone who jumps in front of the bullet for, you know, a fellow soldier, right? Well, that is the love of God.
Yeah. Wow.
Thank you. Let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll get into the resurrection.
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one dollar per month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com srs go to shopify.com srs shopify.com srs All right, we're back from the break. Like I said, we're getting close to Easter here.
So why is the resurrection so important? What is the... Well, we said earlier Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.
He said, I and the Father are one. People recognize that was his claim.
They picked up someone to kill him. But so what? I could claim to be God.
You know, John, well, maybe not John. Anybody could claim to be God.
But if Jesus claimed to be God, died, and then came back to life on the third day, that's pretty good evidence he's telling the truth. So for me, as a skeptic, the first confirmation of his claim of divinity was whether or not he fulfilled this prophecy of the Messiah returning from the dead.
And I think the evidence is clear. I think it's compelling.
I look at it, I summarize it with four words to begin with the letter E. That way it's easy to remember.
First E is execution. We talked earlier about all the evidence that Jesus truly died when he was crucified.
Even the atheist scholar, Gerd Ludemus, says it's indisputable that he was dead. Even the Journal of the American Medical Association says that.
Yeah, there's no historian that would doubt that today. No, no.
So, first, E is for execution. Second, E stands for the word early.
We have early accounts that he rose from the dead. In other words, reports that go back virtually to the cross itself.
Why is that important? Because I used to think like a lot of skeptics that the resurrection was a legend. Got to give you the fact he was dead.
Okay, I give you that. But raising from the dead, that's a legend.
It must have taken a few generations to develop in the ancient world. Stories were invented.
Mythologies were created. That's where I thought it came from.
But we have preserved for us a creed of the earliest Christians. The first Christians right there in the first century gathered around this creedal statement based on facts that they knew to be true.
It's kind of a rallying point. And this creed says Jesus died.
Why? For our sins. He was buried.
On the third day, he rose from the dead. And then it mentions the specific names of eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses to whom he appeared, including 500 people at once, including a skeptic like James, a half-brother of Jesus, who didn't follow Jesus during Jesus' lifetime, and yet ended up dying as a leader of the church in Jerusalem.
Why? Because Jesus appeared to him. So, we've got this creedal statement statement that including named eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses that has been dated back by scholars including James D.G.
Dunn who is one of the most eminent historians of, he recently passed, but of the last 100 years in England. It has been dated back to within months of the death of Jesus.

So if I can, from memory, quote what Dr. Dunn said, he said, this tradition, this creed, we can be entirely confident was formulated as a creed within months of Jesus' death.

I mean, that is a newsflash from ancient history, far too quick, in my opinion,

to be a legend that developed over the 100, 150, 200 years later.

Well, and it's recorded in 1 Corinthians 15.

And then... That is a newsflash from ancient history, far too quick, in my opinion, to be a legend that developed over the 100, 150, 200 years later.
Well, and it's recorded in 1 Corinthians 15. That's right.
If anybody wants to check it out. Which was written sometime in the 60s, probably? No, no, no.
In the 50s. Yeah.
50s. Yeah.
Well, but we can go back. 20 years after Jesus' crucifixion.
So that's not time for legend to develop. Not only that, you're right.
But within 20 years or so, that would tell us it existed. But we know Saul of Tarsus became the Apostle Paul one to three years after the crucifixion.
So he's on the road to Damascus. He has this encounter with the risen Christ.
He becomes the Apostle Paul. Immediately, goes into Damascus, and he meets with some apostles.
Many people believe this is when he was given that creed that he later wrote to the church in Corinth. Others say it was three years later.
He went to Jerusalem, and he met for 15 days with two eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus who were named in the creed, Peter and James. And they had a meeting in Jerusalem for 15 days, and some believe that's when he was given the creed by two people named in the creed as eyewitnesses.
Either way, that means within one to six years after the death of Jesus, this creed is already in existence. Therefore, the beliefs that make up that creed go back even earlier virtually to the cross itself.
And then you have a scholar like James and E.G. John say, no, it's within months.
So this is- And even Bart Ehrman, doesn't he? I'm not sure where he's at on that. But, you know, I read stuff like.
Can we go through the timeline real quick? Yeah. So he died on the cross.
They put him in a tomb. Yes.
Why was it three days? Well, why was it three days? He predicted like Jonah was in the fish for three days that he would be coming back in three days. So that was kind of a, I don't think it's a requirement necessarily, but it was three days on the third day he returned.
The Jewish word for day was reckoned as an onah, which is O-N-A-H. and it meant a night and a day is an onah.
But any portion of an onah was considered as the whole. And so he died on Friday.
He was in the tomb on Saturday, and he rose sometime Sunday morning. That's parts of three days that he was in, one day fully, and parts of two others.
But according to Jewish reckoning of time, that's the third day. So he returns on the third day.
You don't think there's any significance to that? What would you say, John? I'm not – I don't – I think the fact that he did liken it to Jonah. The sign of Jonah.
This generation will not be given a sign except the sign.

They were demanding.

I mean, just think about this. So, he had been healing people, raising people from the dead.

That's why he had thousands following him everywhere.

That's why the Jewish authorities were, and he was also calling them hypocrites because

they were playing a religious game.

Their hearts were far from God, he said.

So, they look good on the outside and go, read Matthew 23, man.

He just rips them a new one.

Seriously, he does.

He holds no punches back.

And so, they are like, we can't put up with this because they are leading Israel astray, away from us and our power and our prestige. And so, they decide to crucify him.
But they were saying, you're really the Messiah? Give us a sign. Give us a sign.
He said, you're not going to be given any sign. I mean, given them tons of signs.
We talked about all the signs that were already in the scriptures. And they're going in that direction.
I mean, all of it's there, right? He's going to come from Bethlehem. He was born in Bethlehem.
He's going to come from Galilee. He did most of his ministry in Galilee.
It's all in Isaiah. So, they were blinded to it because of their egos and their desire for power and greed and money.
Yeahition of power, yeah. So he says, this generation will be given no sign except the sign of Jonah.
Which would be three days. Three days.
It's a fulfillment of that. So I think that's the significance.
Yeah, that would be the significance. So you've got the execution, the early, and by the way, it's not the only early report we've got.
Otherwise, we have others in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the book of Acts, all of which were circulating during the lifetimes of Jesus' contemporaries. And they would have pointed out the errors if they were making this stuff up.
So we've got an execution. He's dead.
We got early reports that he rose from the dead too quick to be a legend. Third, we have an empty tomb.
And we could talk all day about all the evidence the tomb was empty, but the best evidence to me was we know from sources inside and outside the New Testament that when the disciples began proclaiming that Jesus had risen, what the enemies of Jesus said was, oh, well, the disciples stole the body. Now they're admitting the tomb is empty.
They're admitting it's empty. The ones who crucified it.
Yeah. They're just trying to explain how it got empty.
It's like if you're a teacher and a student comes up to you and says, the dog ate my homework. That student's admitting it, look, I don't have my homework, but I can explain what happened to it the dog ate.
It's the same thing. So everybody in the first century, whether they're supporters of Jesus explicitly saying the tomb is empty or the enemies of Jesus implicitly admitting it was empty, everybody's conceding the tomb is empty.
The real question is, how did it get empty? And you go through the usual list of suspects. The Romans weren't about to steal the body.
They wanted Jesus dead. The Jewish leaders of the day weren't about to steal the body.
They wanted Jesus to stay dead. The disciples weren't about to steal the body.
They didn't have the motive. They didn't have the means, and they didn't have the opportunity.
In fact, I found seven ancient sources, six of them outside the Bible, that report that the disciples lived lives of deprivation and suffering as a result of their proclamation that Jesus had risen. Why were they willing to do that? How many died for their faith without recounting it? And their willingness to die is well established.
How a couple of them died gets a little bit misty in history, but their willingness to die, seven sources tell me that they willingly lived lives of deprivation and suffering. Think about this.
Of all human beings who've ever lived on the planet, they were in a unique position to know, is this a lie or is it true? Because they were there. They touched the resurrected Jesus.
They talked with them. They ate with them.
Of all people who ever lived, they knew the truth. They didn't just believe it.
They just had faith in it. They knew the truth.
And knowing the truth, they were willing to die for it. That's the difference between a terrorist today who crashes an airplane into the trade center.
Believe in the world. He believes if he dies that way, he's going to go to paradise.
Does he know for sure? No, he couldn't know for sure. He just believes it so much that he's willing to die that way.
It tells me nothing about the veracity of his claims, but the disciples were in a position to know for a fact, is this true? Is it false? Knowing it was true, they were willing to die for it. So we have an execution.
He dead. We have early reports, too quick to be a legend.
We've got the empty tomb. And then fourth E is eyewitnesses.
Over a period of time, Jesus appears alive in a dozen different instances to more than 515 people, a lot more than that, but to doubters and to skeptics, to men, to women, to groups, to individuals, indoors, outdoors, daytime, nighttime. What I found fascinating in studying this as a skeptic is that when you study ancient history and you're looking at some fact about the life of Alexander the Great, for instance, and you dig down, how do I know this fact is true? Most of the time, it's based on one source, maybe two sources of information.
But for the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources inside and outside the New Testament confirming and corroborating the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the risen Jesus. I can tick them off real quick so you know what they are.
The first is that creed I mentioned earlier, a creed whose historical credentials are so strong that one of the few Jewish New Testament scholars, Pinchas Lapid, said it may be taken as a statement of eyewitnesses. Second, we have Paul's testimony, because Paul said, I encountered the risen Christ, and then he got to know the disciples.
Which was just what people around the world are encountering today. Yeah.
On the Damascus, and Paul was one of the Pharisees of the Pharisees who had Jesus crucified. Right.
So, he was the enemy. Exactly.
It's like the Taliban now coming on our side kind of thing. Yeah, that's right.
And it says on the Damascus Road, he's going to arrest and kill Christians. He was there when Stephen was martyred, giving him two thumbs up because Stephen believed in Jesus as the Messiah.
And he's like, that's wrong. We're getting rid of these people.
When on the Damascus Road, this brilliant God of light appears to him, sound familiar? Yeah. All over the world today, this is near-death experiences.
Yeah. Who are you, Lord, he asked.
And he says, I am Jesus whom you're persecuting. And Jesus didn't tell him the gospel.
He didn't tell him what to do. He said, you'll be told.
And then later sends Ananias to explain to him. And Paul still had a choice because he had a lot to lose.
Is he going to leave behind his power and his prestige and then suffer? Because he did. But I mean, that's a huge...
It's huge, absolutely huge. No incentive to do that.
But what's also interesting is after he became the Apostle Paul, he became friends with many of the disciples, the other eyewitnesses. So he knew Peter, James, and John.
And he says in 1 Corinthians, in his letter he wrote, he said, whether it is I or they, this is what we preach. So, he's saying, look, I was, I encountered the risen Christ, so have they.
So, he's confirming that the disciples were eyewitnesses. He's another point of confirmation.
The third area of evidence, corroboration, is the book of Acts. Even skeptical scholars will accept that the book of Acts is the account of the spread of the early church.

And what is the thing that drove it?

It was a proclamation of the resurrection.

So here we have Peter in Acts chapter 2 who gets up before a crowd and he says, men of Israel, listen to these words.

This Jesus, a man attested to you by miracles and wonders and signs, which he did in your

midst.

You know that he did.

He's appealing to their common knowledge. And then he says, this Jesus God raised from the dead, to which we're all witnesses.
And how did they react? History tells us that 3,000 people said, Peter, we know you're telling this truth. What do we do? They repented and the church was born.
So that's the first three sources. Then we have the next four sources, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which are historical biographies based on eyewitness accounts.

There's, what, nine appearances of the risen Jesus in those four gospels. So that's seven ancient sources.
But then- Plus you got Luke who interviewed Mary- Oh, yeah. There's other sources, right.
But we have sources from people who sat under the teachings of the eyewitnesses. So for instance, if you still were teaching at your church in Austin, if, Sean, if you were to come to his church for three years, you'd have a pretty good idea what he believes, right? Yeah.
Well, we have writings by people who sat under the teachings of the apostles themselves and can report what they said about the resurrection. So, we have a letter that was written by Clement.
Clement was, we believe, ordained by Peter himself. And Clement writes a letter in the first century to the church in Corinth.
And he says that the disciples had complete confidence. Why? Why did they have so much confidence? Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because they were eyewitnesses to the risen Lord.
And then Polycarp, who was appointed by John himself to be bishop at Smyrna, he writes a letter to the Philippian church, and he mentions the resurrection five times in that letter. And he said, talking about Paul and the other apostles, he said, for they did not love the present age, but him who died for them and was raised by God on the third day.
So he's confirming the teachings of these eyewitnesses that they encountered the risen Christ. That's nine very early eyewitness-based accounts of the corroboration of the eyewitnesses, the disciples who encountered personally the risen Jesus.
That is an avalanche of historical data. Can you tell he's a lawyer? I'm not a lawyer.
I just have a law degree. Well, no, but here's the significance is what Lee's saying, and he was.
He was the legal editor for the Chicago Tribune, so not a slouch. But also, Simon Greenleaf, who was a lawyer who wrote the Treaties of Legal Evidence, right? He's the guy who made Harvard Law School what it is today, the second best law school, because I went to Yale, so.
Well, there you have it. I went to the University of Texas.
Good basketball team. Okay.
So, Simon Greenleaf was always making fun of Christians and Christianity in his legal classes until some of his students came up and challenged him to take his treaties, his works on legal evidence, how to evaluate legal evidence, and put it against all the documents and evidence that Lee just said, he came to faith just like Lee. I remember when I was— When he looked at the evidence.
That's right. Same with C.S.
Lewis. Yeah, when I was an atheist, I went and I'm doing this investigation into the resurrection.
I remember going to the library, and of course, they didn't have Simon Greenlee's book, which was written in the 1800s. And so I put an interlibrary loan, and it took about six months.
And six months later, they give me this copy from the 1800s of this book by Simon Greenleaf, this great legal scholar who reports on the resurrection and so forth. And it was held together by rubber bands.
But back then, we didn't have the internet. But that's another great example is Sir Lionel Lucku, who was the greatest defense attorney in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
And more convictions of murder trials. 245 convictions in a row that he, well, he won acquittals 245 times in a row, either before the jury or on appeal.
Knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth, became a member of the Supreme Court of his country, and he was a doubter about the resurrection. Same thing.
He was challenged to investigate it. He did, and I'll recite to you one sentence he wrote that summarized his conclusion.
He said, I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof, which leaves absolutely no room for doubt. This from the greatest defense attorney who ever lived.
And here's the funny thing. I told that story at Saddleback Church in Southern California, where Leslie and I had moved in the year 2000 to be a pastor there.
And a woman came up to me afterwards, and she said, hey, I'm your new neighbor. You're moving into my neighborhood we haven't met yet.
I said, oh, great to meet you. Said, yeah.
said, I'm Sir Lionel Lutku's sister. No way.
Who's his sister? And she not only confirmed the story, she showed me his private documents that he had done his research on. Oh, how about it.
Yeah, yeah. But here's the point, and this is what got me into this.
This is why I left my career in engineering. I was like, there's so much evidence.
Why has no one told me this? And we haven't even gone into all the near-death experience stuff that also connects to all the historical. It's overwhelming.
But people don't take the time. I remember sharing with Hugh Hefner in the Playboy Mansion.
Really? Yeah. Wait a second.

Yeah, well, I was—

We're going to hear this one.

Well, I had a TV show at the time.

We were interviewing him about his fate.

So he said, you want a tour?

I said, no, I don't want a tour.

I just want to interview you about your fate.

So I interviewed him, but he was a very bright guy, very smart guy.

And I started to show him. He got fascinated by my book, Case for Christ.
I showed him the table of contests. He said, look at this.
He said, are you telling me there's evidence that Jesus, because he said, if the resurrection is true, it changes everything. Are you telling me there's evidence for it? I said, yes.
Had he ever checked it out? No. Did he read my book? I don't know.
Maybe so. God's always at work everywhere.
So many people know it's the linchpin of the faith, but they don't investigate it. And here's why all this is the so what of all this.
So I'll never forget when all of this evidence kind of came, you know, formulated in my head, and I was like, this is true. God really did send Jesus.
He really did die for our sins. He really does love me.
And then it was like, and here was the thought that came into my head, now what are you going to do with it? And that was a scary thought to me because it's not the head knowledge.

We can believe in God.

We can believe Jesus died for our sins intellectually,

but that's not what God wants.

What God wants is our hearts.

He created us, and He loves us, and what He wants is that we would love Him back. And what do we have to give the one who gave us everything? Nothing.
But He actually gave us a free will so we would have something to give Him. And what we can give Him is our very lives.
Like, I'm going to trust you. I'm going to follow you.
And I'll never forget, you know, that was like, oh, wow. And that was scary.
And that was scary because I already knew what I wanted my life to be about. Yeah, right.
I've got a plan for my life, and you're not going to screw it up, right? For me, it was Leslie pointed out the verse John 1, 12. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name.
So that forms an equation of what it means to become a child of God. Believe, as you said, intellectual not.
I agree with that. I believe it.
Plus receive equals become. That's the heart.
That's where you receive this free gift of forgiveness and eternal life and a prayer of repentance and faith. And you become then a child of God.
Yeah, and the point of the whole thing is not just get your ticket stamped, okay, you go to heaven one day. The point of it is that we were created for relationship with our Creator, and we don't become what we were intended to be without that.
And what He wants is that we would walk through life in a relationship, like we were talking about before, learning how to listen to those promptings. It's like any other relationship.
To be in a deep, intimate relationship, you've got to know the person and you've got to let yourself be known. Yeah.
And then you have to trust. You have to entrust more vulnerable things about yourself to that person and you have to trust them more.
And then it takes time. And over time, that relationship grows.
And that's exactly the same with the Lord. And that's what it's all about, is that we would walk with God moment by moment throughout our days, and He would then naturally grow in us what He calls the fruits of His Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, goodness.
That's what it says in Galatians 5. That's what His Spirit does in us.
All we have to do is just... Jesus said, like a branch stays connected to a tree, and the nutrients flow and fruit grows naturally.
He says, that's all you have to do. Just stay connected to me.
It's what he said to Santosh. The wages of sinners' death, I don't want your religious once a week thing.
I want to see how honest you'll be with me. I want to see your relationship with me.
Who did he appear to first?

Did he appear first?

That's a great question.

It is. It's a very interesting question because in first century Jewish and Roman culture,

the testimony of women was not considered reliable.

Wouldn't even allow it in a court of law.

Right.

They wouldn't allow it to be testified.

And yet, the first people to encounter the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene.

And Joanna.

And Joanna at the tomb.

Thank you. allowed to be testified.
And yet, the first people to encounter the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene. And Joanna? And Joanna at the tomb.
And Joanna, another follower of Jesus. Yeah.
So, there were disciples or beyond the 12. There were many disciples, and some of them were women, who it says even provided for them.
So, Joanna was one of them. She was in the royal household, right? I think Luke actually interviewed her.
That's the indication. So, it is a fascinating thing because it was almost like God was like putting it on the guys.
Well, and part of it too is that's one reason we know we can trust the story. Because if you're going to make up a story and try to convince people in the first century,

you would never say women discover the tomb empty.

And the disciples, remember, are writing this.

That's right.

They would never say, yeah, we were wrong.

They were right.

Right.

Because the disciples, they were scared to death because Jesus, their leader, just got crucified, and guess what? You're next. They're hiding out.
They're literally hiding out. And the women come back from the tomb.
He's risen. He's risen.
This is what He said. He's risen.
And they're like, you're crazy. No, He isn't.
And then in closed doors locked, Jesus appears to them, except Thomas isn't there. So they went to the tomb and it was open? Yes.
And then they said he was risen, and then he appeared to them. Right.
Yep. Yep.
And so what did he say? Well, to Mary. So Mary Magdalene, who, remember, was delivered, she was a very immoral woman from what we know and demon-possessed.
And then he delivered her. He set her free.
And she became one of his followers. And she sees the tomb is empty, and then she thinks someone's stolen the body.
And then she sees someone outside and she thinks it's the gardener. And she's weeping and she runs out and she says, where have you put my Lord? What have you done with him? Correct me if I'm getting this wrong.
And then she realizes, he says, Mary, and she hears his voice and she realizes it's him and she falls at his feet and grabs... The gardener? The gardener was Jesus.
Yeah. Wasn't the gardener.
Yeah. Falls at his feet and grabs his feet and is crying, Lord, and he says, don't hold on to me for I've not yet gone to my Father in heaven, but go and tell your brothers, I have risen just as I said, and basically meet me in Galilee.
Which is kind of a funny thing because he couldn't even wait. Yeah, right.
He didn't wait for them to meet him in Galilee. That's right.
He showed up in the room. You know, the other thing, when I was an atheist...

I think he was having fun.

I really, seriously...

Because then, think about the two disciples on the Emmaus Road.

Yes, right.

He kind of played with them.

So, there are these two guys, not the 12, but there are also two disciples on the Emmaus Road.

They're going...

This is a town outside of Jerusalem called Emmaus.

They're walking and they're talking. And this guy comes up next to him and goes, what are you guys talking about? And they say, you know, haven't you heard, you know, Jesus, who we thought was going to be the Messiah, and this happened? And he's like, no.
He says, are you the only one in Jerusalem who doesn't know this? And they keep telling him all the things that Jesus taught him and did and all this. Well, so they don't recognize him until they invite him.
He's a stranger walking with him on the road, and they invite him to eat. He sits down at the table with him.
He takes the bread and breaks it.

And they probably see the wounds.

And then they realize who he is.

They know this is the risen Jesus.

And then he's gone.

And interestingly, I think, well, I won't even go there.

It's the whole risen body, the resurrected body. But it is fascinating.
Let's go there. What is it? Well, so when we die, we leave our bodies, but we still have a body.
We have a spiritual body. Our soul still has a spiritual body.
Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 15. So he says, our bodies are buried, a natural body.
They're raised a spiritual body. They're buried in weakness, but they're raised, and the Greek word is in duname, which is the word from which we get dynamite.
They're raised in power. And that's what near-death experiencers say is they leave their body, they still are themselves in this spiritual body with new powers of sight,

like we talked about, like telescopic, of communication, of movement, not five senses,

more like 50 senses. Howard Storm said, I felt like Superman.
But here's the thing is that

All right. 50 senses.
Howard Storm said, I felt like Superman. But here's the thing is that we in our spiritual bodies cannot communicate with people on earth.
We can't. And that's what they realize.
They're trying to get the attention of the people doing the resuscitation and they can't. So, this is version 1.0, this physical body.
I think version 2.0 is when we die, our soul leaves, but we're in a spiritual body. But version 3.0 is coming.
Jesus, it says, is it in 1 Corinthians 15, was the first fruits of the resurrection. So right now, heaven and earth are separated, that they are separate.
But there's a day coming, it says in Revelation 20, when God is going to make a new heaven, a new earth, and the two are going to be one. They're going to be joined again.
And our bodies, our physical bodies will be resurrected and joined to our spiritual bodies. So, now think about this.
And it says Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection. So, He went first.
So, He's what we will be. So, He could both be seen.
He's seen by these near-death experiencers, sometimes as his physical human self, but sometimes as the glorified, resurrected Jesus, this brilliant God of light. Well, guess what? On the Mount Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John, through Jesus' disciples, said he was transfigured before him.
They saw his glory and his face shown like the sun. Jesus said, I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but have the light of life. So, this is who he is, but his body, near-death experiencers are not resurrected, they're resuscitated.
Jesus' body died permanently, but his body was resurrected. It was reconstituted and rejoined to his spiritual body so that he then can both interact in heaven, but he shows up to the disciples after the resurrection in this room.
And Thomas, who was called Doubting Thomas, he wasn't there the first time. And the disciples, Mary and Joanna said, yeah, we saw him.
The other disciples, yeah, he showed up. And he's like, I don't believe it.

I'm not going to believe it. In fact, I won't believe it unless I see the holes in his hands and his side and I put my hand in it.

He's like, I'm not going to believe it.

Well, then Jesus shows up when he's there.

And Jesus says to him, look, it's me.

I'm not a ghost.

Touch me.

Give me a piece of fish.

Give him a piece of fish.

He eats it.

So he is able to interact in our world.

Unlike those who are dead, near-death experiencers experience,

Jesus has this version 3 resurrected body.

That was a rabbit hole. So how does he appear? How does he appear with his body? I mean, the gardener, he was there.
He was just there. How does he appear to the other people? You mean in the resurrection appearances? Yeah.
I think. Well, so to the guys on the Emmaus Road, they didn't recognize him until he wanted to be recognized.
So obviously, he can somewhat change appearance. And to Santosh, this Hindu guy I was telling you about, he appeared huge, but just like John described in Revelation 1.
John sees Jesus, and he knows he's Jesus. Jesus says, I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
I died, but I've come back to life forever. How did he say it? It was like basically that, Revelation 1.
And John said his eyes were like lightning. He was like full of light.
His feet were like glowing bronze metal on fire. That's exactly what Santosh, this Hindu guy said.
But that's also, interestingly, I interviewed a woman in Tehran who is giving me her story in Persian, in Farsi.

She dies of a heart attack.

She's Muslim. She dies of a heart attack, and she thought the Shiite belief is that the prophet Ali is going to come right after death and judge you.

And that's not what she said happened.

She said in instead, this giant man in this glowing regal robe with a beard, but his face, I couldn't make out his face because of the light of it, comes and says to her, I am he who is. And boom, she's back in her body.
Wow. But with a peace and a joy she had never felt before.
And she's like, who was it? She knew this is God. He's divine.
But who was that? And of course, this is exactly what God said to Moses on Mount Sinai, I am who I am. I am the self-existent one.
It's what Jesus, we said, quoted before Abraham was born, I am, quoting the exact word. So, yeah, I mean, there's triangulation all around the globe even today.
Did he ever appear out of thin air? Well, when he appeared in the resurrection with Thomas. So he could go through walls.
He could also, he floated up into the clouds before their very sight, it says in Acts 1. Somewhere in there.
Which again is what neardeath experiencers say, too. You know, that we have new abilities and new powers.
So there's a lot left to come. Yeah, we're talking about the women discovering the tomb empty, and that's become a point of contention among some skeptics, because if you look at the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke say there were multiple women going to the tomb, but John only mentions Mary Magdalene.
And they say, oh, there's a discrepancy that it can't both be true, that's false. But Dr.
Michael Lacona, who's a historian, recently published an analysis of the gospels based on how ancient biographers would write in that era. So Plutarch and others who were historians of that day, the literary techniques they would use because the gospels are considered ancient biographies and you would think they'd use the same literary techniques in writing the gospels.
Well, one literary technique is called spotlighting. And what I mean by that is if I were to text my wife right now and say, hey, I'm sitting here with Sean Ryan, that would be true.
But I didn't mention there's other people in the room. I'm spotlighting you because I want to highlight you.
You're spotlighting the importance. Yeah, exactly.
So it's not false to say I'm with Sean Ryan, but I'm just spotlighting you. And if you look at what John says with Mary Magdalene, yes, he's the only one that he mentions going to the tomb, but then she says, they have taken my Savior and we don't know where they've taken them.
Well, who's the we? It's the others who were there, but he's not highlighting them. He's highlighting her, but she refers to the we that that we don't know where they've taken them.
So, that reconciled that issue, and there's virtually every so-called contradiction in the gospels, it disappears when you begin reading them in the same way you would read Plutarch or any other ancient historian, using the same literary techniques that they used in that day day and they use today. Use that same technique today.
Yeah, plus, you know, people, the word on the street that too many people believe, because again, do we really seek to understand, right? Is that, you know, oh, well, they've been changed over the years. The Gospels, the New Testament's been changed so much and transmission, which that's not true.
And textual criticism has proven that's not true. We have more sources for the validity of the New Testament.
By far. 24,000 manuscripts.
The second best in history is Homer's Iliad with 643. So just as a comparison.
Wow. They've actually found a few more recently, but still, it's a pittance compared.
But even the fact that over the centuries, they didn't change, they didn't try to reconcile these discrepancies like Lee's talking about. The discrepancies being one eyewitness writing, like Mark is writing for Peter, or Matthew, spotlights Mary was at the tomb, but then others are saying Mary and Joanne.
Right, others. If they were just making it up, they would have tried to reconcile it.
That's right. But they didn't.
And somebody did it in the year 175 AD. It was a Tatian.
He developed what's called the Dietessaron. He went through the four gospels and blended them.
Took out all the... Took out all...
Just blended them together. You know what? Nobody reads that.
Nobody cares. The first century folks didn't see this as being an issue.
They didn't see a discrepancy because they were reading it as they would read any other ancient writing. But the significance, back to your question, but the significance of the resurrection, it says something about the character and the heart of God.
So, again, this is something that God has been doing throughout human history, is that we, yes, we are born in the knowledge of both good and evil. All of us fall.
At some point, all of us stray away. We go our own way rather than God's way.
And that's the problem of the world. That's the thing we hate about the world.
But from the very beginning, so all the way back in Genesis chapter 12, God says to Abraham and Sarah, I'm going to raise up a nation out of you. And it was the Jewish nation, also the Arab nation also came from Abraham and Sarah.
I'm going to bless you to be a blessing to all nations. Okay, so we're talking 4,000 years ago, So, God intervenes in human history to say, I'm going to bless you to be a blessing to all nations.
Okay, so we're talking 4,000 years ago, God intervenes in human history to say, I'm going to do something to bless all nations. And what was he doing? Well, he was creating this nation with all their peculiar laws and idiosyncrasies to protect what he was doing, which I believe is revealing through the prophets His will, His words, His history.
And we have that today. It's unbelievable how...
I mean, there's so many reasons to believe God actually inspired this. He was doing something throughout history.
I've given you some of them just in the prophecies. But also, Jesus said that, you know, of much...
He said, don't think I've come to abolish the law and the prophets, which is the sum of the whole Old Testament. He said, no, I've come to fulfill it.
And not a single word, not a jot or tittle, which is like a dot of the I or a cross of the T, will be done away with until all of it's fulfilled.

So God was doing something from the beginning of human history for all nations. And Jesus, when he then comes in fulfillment of all these prophecies we've talked about, after the resurrection appears to the disciples and he says, all these things that I've been teaching you, this was pointing toward this fulfillment.
He said he opened their minds to see how his, all the scriptures of old were pointing toward him. And he said, go and tell it to all the nations, there's forgiveness in my name.
So, what he was doing was so that all people of all nations can turn back to God and be forgiven. And yet, God be just.
Because we don't like injustice, by the way. So I think I was going to ask this, and I think this is what you're saying.
In the beginning, the Jewish people were the chosen people. Correct.
Then there were the Gentiles. Chosen is very misunderstood.
Chosen does not mean, I like you more than someone else. Because that's the way I always tell you.
Right. No, you can be chosen for a special mission.
That's a responsibility.

They were the ones chosen through whom the Messiah would come into humankind and bless all nations.

It was a responsibility, not a, I like you better than others. So, it was always for all nations.

And in fact, John...

And they broke the promise, correct?

Well, I mean, not all of them. Some of them were faithful and many.
But they, yes, they, yeah, I mean, we all have. We've all fallen short.
So what, because there wasn't that many people back at the time of Abraham, correct? And he was like the one that started it, correct? And so what separated the Jews from the Gentiles? What eventually, where did that separation happen? That's a good question, isn't it? Is it the time of Moses when When they set up the laws and the... Well, even before that.
Well, but... I didn't...
That's a great question. Get back to us on that.
I gotcha. You know what's...
It striked me because you and I were talking about Santa Barbara earlier and how you love Santa Barbara. And I was thinking that, you know, we've talked about these prophecies that hundreds of years before Jesus that point toward the crucifixion, the resurrection, all this stuff.
And, you know, when I was a skeptic, I used to think, oh, he just maneuvered his life to, you know, like it says, the Messiah will ride a donkey into Jerusalem, and he just got a donkey and rode in. So, people think- He knew all this.
He knew all that. But there was all these things he couldn't have fulfilled, like where he was born and the time he was born and soldiers gambling for his garment, all these things he couldn't have fulfilled.
Or how about also the nations coming together. Nations coming together.
Which happened. Rome.
The crucifix. Exactly.
Herod. You talk about Santa Barbara.
There was a professor there at Westmont College named Peter Stoner. And Peter Stoner said one day, he said, you know what? You can quantify the likelihood, what are the odds that any one of these prophecies could be fulfilled? For instance, Micah says.
He's the one who did that? Yeah. That's Westmont.
Yeah, Westmont. I used to work with Westmont.
Micah says that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Well, how many people have been born in Bethlehem? So, you could figure out the odds.
So, he got a group of mathematic students together and he said, let's run the odds. Because there are like 61 prophecies just of the Messiah.
Right. So, he took 48 of them and he said, let's run the numbers.
Here's his question. What are the odds that any human being throughout history could fulfill 48 of these prophecies? And they calculated it was one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion.
Wow. That's equal to the number of atoms.
It's like one atom in a trillion, trillion, billion universes. I mean, this is an astronomical, it's not 12 trillion, it's 12 trillions.
You know, the odds of any human being. Zero.
Fulfilling these. Yeah.
I talked to one physicist. I said, when you get the numbers that big, what are the odds it can actually happen? He said, oh, we scientists have a term for that.
I said, what is it? He said, ain't going to happen. So it ain't going to happen.
And yet it did. And it only happened in Jesus.
He's the only one. And as you pointed out earlier, quite accurately, that because of the timeframe, if Jesus isn't the Messiah, there will never be one.
Can't be. Can't be.
Because he had to come before the temple was destroyed. He had to come before the temple was destroyed in the 70s.
There is no temple. That's right.
There is a Muslim mosque on the temple site. Yeah.
To this day. Wow.
So it's him or nothing. So was it a new responsibility?

What?

When they broke the covenant, right, when he was crucified.

Well, they broke the covenant way before that.

There were several covenants.

But the real covenant that God was making

through Jesus is an unconditional one. Meaning...
And so, there's so much fascinating stuff, isn't there? It's just unbelievable. So, Abraham, okay, back 2,000 years, God says to Abraham and Sarah, I'm going to give you a son, and through him is going to be a blessing for all the nations.
So again, this is the lineage of the Messiah. So that's the second way he's going to bless all the nations, through the Messiah.
Okay? Well, then Abraham is told, go to the land I'm going to show you, and then you will have the sun.

So they go, they leave Ur, where they were living, travel to this land, which is now

Palestine or Israel.

It's nowhere, nothing town, right?

And then they don't have a kid for 10 years.

She's getting old.

She's getting old. They're old.
They're older than... Hey, come on, man! Makes me feel better.
So, they're not having a kid. And Abraham, like all of us, is like, maybe God needs a little help.
Right? And Sarah's like, yeah, good idea. Here, sleep with my maidservant Hagar and give us a child.
We'll surrogate one. And they do.
And Ishmael is born. And God's like, you didn't trust me.
He said, no, there will be a child of the promise that will come. So, what is it, 10 years after that, it was like, I mean, they're really old.
It's impossible, but it happened. Isaac is born.
And the wild thing is God then, when Isaac's like 12, 13, something like that, close to a teenager, And the love of Abraham's life, God says to him, Abraham, I want you to take your son, your only son, who you love, and I want you to take him to a mountain I will show you, and there I want you to sacrifice him. Now, God also said through the law, don't do that.
Do not sacrifice your children like the other gods demand. So this is pretty confusing, right? But Abraham follows him.
Now, here's the thing. He gets two of his servants, he gets Isaac, and he's struggling, but he goes, and it says he traveled three days' journey to Mount Moriah, to the region of Mount Moriah, and there he, God says, that's the mountain.
Go up there and sacrifice your son. So, he's got two servants.
They could have carried the wood on which he's going to make this altar and sacrifice his son, right? And Abraham says to his servants, you stay here. The boy and I will go offer a sacrifice and we will return.
So here's the thing. Abraham believed even if God makes me go through, he's going to bring him back to life somehow because He's promised to bless all nations through Isaac.
And now he trusted. Now he believed.
So, he goes up there. This is what? Genesis 22? 20, yeah, 22.
Slatter part of Genesis. He goes up, he's struggling, but he's like, like, God.
And he raises the knife to do it. And God says, stop Abraham.
Now I see how much you trust me. And he looks and he says, there was a lamb, a ram caught in the thicket.
And he says, do not sacrifice your son. I'll provide it.
And so he sacrificed the lamb or the ram in his place. And Abraham named that place on this mount, the Lord will provide.
Okay. Fast forward 2000 years, and I won't get into all the how we know, but we know that was the very place on which Jesus would walk up the hill with his own wood.
And by the way, Isaac had to carry the wood. Jesus would walk up with the wood on which he would be sacrificed and the Lord would provide.

Wow. Powerful.
Wow. It's all over.
And we do know that. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Yes.
How do we know that? Okay. Oh, boy.
You tell them. Well, so, we know that because Mount Moriah is the place on which the temple was built.
And right outside the temple walls is Golgotha on Moriah, part of Moriah, Mount Moriah. And we know all that because...
So, the angel of the Lord appears to Gideon on the threshing floor of Arunah. And that's a whole other story in Joshua? No.
Genesis. No, it's Joshua.
Judges. It's not Judges.
And then later, David, King David, so this is about 1000 BC, builds the temple on the threshing floor of Harunah. So that's right there on Mount Moriah.
So this was not Jerusalem. There was no city there when Abraham took Isaac, and yet it's the very place where the temple and Moriah, the hill on which Jesus was crucified, he literally had him prophetically act out what he didn't make Abraham do.

That's what people are like, how could God be so cruel?

He wasn't.

He showed what he would do out of love for us. He provided.
He provided. And not only that, then he comes along and delivers the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery in about 1400, 1500 BC.
And they get out of Egypt on what was called the Passover. So, the Passover was when God had basically warned Pharaoh again and again, 10 times,

let my people go.

He kept up in the ante, like, look, I'm serious.

I'm God.

You're not God.

Obey me.

Let them go.

And he wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't. And the final one was the firstborn will die unless you take the blood of a lamb and paint your doorpost with it.
And then he said, and if that's the case, the angel of death will pass over your house. So all the Israelites painted this blood of a lamb, their doorpost, Passover.
That was Passover, the first Passover. They celebrated Passover and this sacrificial system where every year they had to come to Jerusalem and bring a lamb to be killed in their stead for the sins of the previous year.
And all that happened for 1,500 years until that Friday of Passover, which was what we call Good Friday, when Jesus was crucified as the Lamb of God who would finally take away the sins of the world. So this is another 1,500-year prophetic fulfillment.
And like I said,

the Jewish people can't do that anymore because the temple's gone. And God specifically said,

you can only make sacrifices in the temple.

So, this mountain, what's the name of the mountain?

Mount Moriah.

This is the mountain in Jerusalem today where the temple was. And how did a mosque get there? Well, so, you know, when Muhammad came in the 600s AD, so 600 years after Jesus.
And interestingly, Muhammad, Mecca was Medina, it was in the caravan routes. So, he knew a lot of Jews and Christians and actually had read the Bible.
He calls the people of the book in the Quran. But in the 600s, you know, I'm sorry, I totally lost your question.
How did – so, there was a temple there. That's where Jesus was crucified.
That's where

Isaac was going to... So, Islam...
How did a mosque wind up there? Yeah. So, the caliphates after Muhammad, they came and took places by force.
So, not free will, you became a Muslim by force. And they took Jerusalem and built a mosque on the most holy site of Judaism.
It's interesting, too, that when you look at the Quran, which I read when I was doing my investigation, trying to check out all the possible options and so forth. When you get to Surah 4, verse 156, 157, most people interpret it as saying Jesus was not crucified and therefore couldn't have been resurrected.
So... I thought they thought he was crucified, but he survived it.
It wasn't him. No, it wasn't him.
Oh, yeah, yeah. yeah.
God replaced him with some thinker, it was Judas, that he replaced him with. Yeah.
But the point is, the Quran specifically highlights things and says that are not true, that you must believe if you're a Christian. So it says in Surah 4, 156 or 157 that Jesus didn't die on the cross.
Well, then he wouldn't have been resurrected. And history.
Yeah, well, yeah. Secondly, it says no one can bear the sins of another.
It also says God does not have a son. So these are specific teachings the Quran explicitly rejects that Christians must accept.
Now, I have a good friend who's a Muslim, and he came over, we were grilling steaks, and I said, let's set aside religion. Let's just look at history.
And I said, here's what I have from first century sources about the crucifixion of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus. And I went through some of that, and I said, now, what have you got on your side? Honestly, you've got a guy 600 years later in a cave that said it isn't true.

Which is the most credibility? And his response was, I choose to believe the Quran. Okay, that's his choice.
But I think the evidence of history points powerfully toward the truth of the Christian's claim in a way that it doesn't support those claims of the Quran. And it's not an us against them.
I mean, like I said, God is for everyone. He wants everyone to know what he's done.
And we see this in my book. I talk about these supernatural dreams that people are having and visions of Jesus in closed countries, Islamic countries, where God says, I love these people so much that you can't close out my gospel from them.
I'm going to intervene through supernatural dreams that are happening to these people in a remarkable way. And they're corroborated by outside events and so forth.
So, we know they're not just being generated by a subconscious mind because he loves them. And, you know, that's what I report on in Imagine the God of Heaven.
These Muslims who, when they clinically die, that's who they're meeting. Yeah.
They're not meeting Allah. They're not even claiming to meet Allah.
That's a... No, and by the way, the word Allah just means God.
Yeah. You know, so, but they come back knowing, Bibi in Tehran came back and found Jesus.
Yeah. Swedeek in Rwanda, you know, Muslim, and again and again and again.
So, I say that because I think many times, you know, and maybe people watching are like, well, see, this is the problem with you guys, right? You're right, they're wrong, this is what causes all the problems in the world. And that's kind of this, you know, the stereotype that's put up.
And I think that can be true. That can be true.
But that's not God.

God is for everyone. He's for all of us.
And I wasn't a believer and he wasn't a believer before we looked at the evidence. That's where the evidence points.
And what God is leading us to

is really not to war against one another, but to really see that, no, we were all created to be His children. He wants us to love one another.
He wants us to seek peace with one another. And one day that will happen, but it will only happen for those who do seek His ways and his will.

Wow.

That's interesting stuff.

Is there any physical evidence?

You know, sometimes I've seen reports that maybe Jesus' face is showing up on a cloth.

Oh, the Shroud of Turin. Well, the Shroud of Turin is a very fascinating topic.
I've been looking at that. You've been looking at that? Yes, John Campbell, Dr.
John Campbell. There's some really powerful new analysis of the Shroud that indicates it may very well be the burial cloth of Jesus.
In fact, many years ago, they did a study of it, and they took a piece of it, and they did radiocarbon dating. And they said, oh, it dates back to the Middle Ages.
So, it's a forgery. Well, they had taken, by mistake, threads that were part of a patch that was added in the Middle Ages.
Because it was burned. If you look at it, you can see the burn marks.
It was in a fire in Turan in the 1500s. Somewhere in there, yeah.
And what happened is it got burned. Well, nuns took it and sewed patches of cloth on to piece it back together.
So, they accidentally dated that. But now when they date it, there is, and I'm not an expert on it, but Dr.
Jeremiah Johnston and several others are writing books and doing lectures on it now. There's a lot of new stuff coming out on the Shroud that really does suggest.
By the way, one of the most powerful moments I've ever had was there was a guy, and I met him. I used to do a TV show, and I had him as a guest.
He was the official photographer of the Shroud of Turan. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, a Jewish guy, Barry Schwartz, I think is his name. And he made several life-size, actual-size copies of the photo of the Shroud.
And I met a guy who has one. He has a traveling exhibit that he has.
It was out east. And so he said, do you want to see it? And I said, yes.
I'm telling you, when you come face to face with this image and you contemplate the possibility that is an image of my Jesus, it's pretty overwhelming. It is pretty overwhelming.
Well, and so some of the evidence now, like when they studied it, they still cannot figure out what put – Yeah, the mechanism. Because the image is a – It's like an x-ray kind of thing.
Well, it is. It's just on the outside of it, but it's a – what do you call it in a film, in the old film where you – it's a negative.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a negative on the cloth. Yeah.
And so you actually have to flip it, basically, make dark light and light dark, but they do not know what the mechanism is that burned the image on there. There's nothing we have.
Are you serious? No, no. And when they've done, now they've done even AI three-dimensional reconstruction because the data in the cloth is three-dimensional.
It's three-dimensional information. In other words, it somehow came off an actual body to put three-dimensional spatial information in the cloth in some kind of way we don't know.
It's not dye, it's not just radiation, it's something else, and they don't know what it is. So, here's a little funny thing, fascinating thing.
Heidi, who I told you about, the Jewish girl who met Jesus in her near-death experience, we're friends. She texted me when she saw that three-dimensional image.
That's him. Oh, wow.
No, I don't know. Yeah, yeah.
But that's pretty good. Yeah.
Yeah. Wow.
And I think they found some- Because she said his nose was longer than I thought, and it was a little crooked. Oh, interesting.
Like it had been broken. Wow.
That's fascinating. Didn't they find some pollen in the shroud that they could trace back to first century Jerusalem? I don't know about that.
I think that's true. Anyway, it'd be great to have an expert on who could really.
Dr. John Campbell.
Okay. I saw some stuff he did.
Yeah. Jeremiah Johnston is another one.
Yeah. Yeah.
Any other physical type stuff? Like that? Yeah, like that. No, there's a lot of fraudulent stuff.
Okay. A lot of fraudulent.
There's a piece of the cross. There is.
You can buy it for $1,500. There is..
There is. Yeah.
And that stuff, that bothers me. Yeah, me too.
I mean, even near-death experiences, I was telling you, I'm doing more research. I continue to do research.
And I think some of these, I'm hearing them, I think it's AI. I think they're just saying to AI, make up a near-death experience and have Jesus say this or that or the other, and we're just going to make a lot of money off people who believe anything.
And that's why I say, if there aren't names attached and it's not videotaped and it's just, I'm very skeptical of that stuff. Yeah.
There's another species of evidence, not physical evidence, but interesting, about the darkness that fell over the earth at the time of the crucifixion. The Bible says the earth went dark for a period of time.
And I'm thinking when I'm reading this for the first time. No, specifically from the sixth to the ninth hour.
Right. So, yeah, exactly.
It says those three hours it was dark. Right.
And I'm reading this thinking, wouldn't somebody have noticed this? Wouldn't somebody else have written something about this if the earth actually went dark during that time period? Well, there was a guy named Thallus who was a historian who wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean world about 50 AD, which is shortly after this. The Roman historian.
Roman, that's right. And his works have been lost, but in the year 221, a guy named Julius Africanus had a copy of what he wrote,

and he was kind of responding to it and said, oh, yeah, Thallus says that the darkness was as a result of an eclipse.

Of the sun.

Which we knew it couldn't have been because of the timing of the Passover. Because it was the Passover when he was crucified, and Passover is always a full moon.
Full moon. That's how they know it's time for Passover.
It's not our calendar. It's a full moon.
You can't have eclipse of the sun during a full moon. Right.
So there you have a report by a Roman scholar, an historian, that is corroborating a claim in the scriptures that many people would read and say, that can't be true. And there were other extra-biblical sources that also talked about the darkness.
Actually, footnote in my book, Case for Christ. Yeah.
Wow. Yeah, it's fascinating.
It really is. There's so much.
Yeah. You know, there is.
There's so much. And I think that's where if people are willing to really stay open-minded enough to really seek with an open mind, with an open heart, they'll find.
But then again, that's not the point. At the end of the day, the point is, do you want a relationship with your Creator? And that's where I think it comes back to trust and realizing, and I'll tell you, Sean, I just did a podcast called The Ecstatic Love of God.
That's the name of the podcast? Yes. I love that.
The Ecstatic Love of God because of what they say. So, I interviewed this guy.
He was a lawyer in Australia and multiple other people, too, trying to describe. So, when he clinically dies and he's going to the presence of this light that he knew was God, the love, and he says, as I'm moving toward this, and he says, in the light, I see these arms outstretched toward me like this, like, come, welcome.
And he said, as I'm moving there, and he had just come to faith in Jesus the week before. So, he's moving toward this, and he said, and suddenly I start to be filled up.

He said, when I met the light, when I touched the light, my soul touched the light, he said,

it was like we became like one.

And Jesus prayed for this, John 17.

I pray that they may be one with us, Father, just as I am in you and you in me, may they be in us, that the world might believe you sent me. And he said, I read that later.
I hadn't read the Bible. He said it was like that.
And he said, I was being filled up, filled up, filled up with this love, but our word love doesn't even do justice. He said it was ecstasy.
He used all these metaphors I can't even describe, but he said, I felt like I was going to explode. And I thought to myself, I'm going to explode.
And he said, then it starts to subside. And he's like, wait a second, I didn't say that.
I thought that. Did he hear my thoughts? And then he says, no, don't stop.
Give me all you got. And he hears a chuckle.
He hears a chuckle and he thought it was funny. And then he starts to fill him up again more and more and more.

And he said, as he enters the slide, he said, I knew who this was.

He said, I didn't have to ask.

I knew.

Didn't have a name tag.

This was Jesus.

He was the way, the truth, and the life.

He said, I had not read that, but I knew it. It was self-evident to

me. And I knew what that meant.
And he said, there's just never been a love. He said, take

all the love you've ever experienced from a spouse, for a kid, from a grandparent, any love

you've experienced, put it all together in one, and you have to multiply it by a billion. Wow.
And that's consistently. And so, I let you hear from all these different people.
And the point is that God is the love we've always wanted. He is the relationship we were created for.
And then all of our other relationships are made complete. They don't go away.
Yeah, sure. They get better.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Wow.
Well, Lee, you just wrote a book on seeing the supernatural. Yeah.
John, lots 1,500-plus NDEs you've've written about every once in a while bring on a psychic on this podcast i'm i get blasted by the christian community every time i talk about mediums every time i bring on a psychic or a remote viewer i think it's a fascinating, I get destroyed. And so I'm curious,

what are your guys' thoughts on that? I actually have a chapter in my book on ghosts and psychics. And I talk about the biblical admonition to avoid mediums, to avoid psychics.
And I actually talk about ways in which psychics use different techniques of cold readings, warm readings, and hot readings. There are different ways in which they can make it appear that they know things that they don't really know.
They're discerning things supernaturally, which they're really just trying to figure out by a naturalistic means. And, you know, do I believe some are demonic? Yeah, I believe some are in contact with demons.
You know, for instance, there was— Not the psychics, but who their contact is. Exactly, yeah, who their contact is.
There was a case with President Carter, and there was an airplane that went down, I think in Africa somewhere, a twin-engine plane, and the CIA was trying to find it. And they couldn't find it.
They moved satellites. They were looking for it.
They couldn't find this plane. and Stansfield Turner who was the CIA director came in and said I've contacted

this medium in California and she went into a trance and she wrote down the

longitudinal Stansfield Turner, who was the CIA director, came in and said, I've contacted this medium in California.

And she went into a trance, and she wrote down the longitude and the latitude. And we moved the satellites, and sure enough, we found the plane.
So there are those cases. What do you do with that? And I think there's probably, I mean, my hypothesis would be that there was a demon who was very intent on convincing others that she is psychic and a reliable source of information for future tapping into.
And so he might have had knowledge of where the plane was and provided it that way. I'm not saying the psychic herself was

culpable. I'm just saying, given the Bible's admonition against psychics, against divination,

they call it, against mediums, I don't think God would honor that.

What does it say about that?

In Deuteronomy, there's—actually, in my book, I quote it. Because a lot of them have— And in my book i quote it because a lot of them and there's

a lot of good things that have happened through these kind of things well done on the way yeah

just this morning i mean i was thinking about this subject and i opened one of the social media

accounts and the first thing i saw was just some type of cia document that was leaked to

to find the ark of the covenant yeah i don't know if you guys know anything about that. No, no.
But I didn't have time to dive into it because we were getting ready to interview, but I've interviewed a number of these guys. Yeah.
Well, here's the thing. I think sometimes, and I don't really like when Christians just blast, just take out the machine gun and just rip it apart.
I don't like it either. Yeah.
Well, and look at you. You're the guy.
No, so because I have, you know, I've been on shows with people like this, and many times they're very sincere, and they really are seeking. And I think many times maybe they're seeking and closer to finding God than others who are maybe, you know, they're just playing a Christian game.
Okay? So, it's not like they're all bad. We're not saying that.
Yeah. But I think there's a reality to the spiritual world, and it's not all good.
There is deception. And I think that's why, like you said, in Deuteronomy, so what God was warning, so the Nations around Israel were worshiping these gods and many times, you know, and leading them to child sacrifice and things like that, like as a, this is what God wants.
And trying to gain control, power, knowledge of the future. Is this like Moloch and some of these other...
I can't remember all the names. But through mediums or through psychics, and God warned them that don't try to contact the dead because, in fact, you're probably communicating with the demonic.
So it's... And I'll tell you, I interviewed a woman in Brazil who...
And she was a pastor with her husband, but she lost her 16-year-old son in an accident. And she was just devastated and just couldn't get over it.
Went into a depression, just couldn't grieve and let it go. And she ends up having an overdose of medications that she was taking, not intentionally, but she did.
And she dies, and she has a near-death experience. And in her experience, she's there with Jesus.
And Jesus shows her, again, he sometimes gives parables and metaphors, and he shows her a garden and says, this is the garden I've created you to work in. And then she sees across like a divide, like a chasm, and there walking across there is her son.
And Jesus said to her, and she wants to go to him, and he said, it's not your time yet. I still have you on earth for a purpose, and it's your garden.
He has accomplished his, he came into my gates with joy. And basically, he was saying, you got to keep going on your life.
He's fine. Look, I'm letting you see.
But she comes back, and she still can't let it go. And she still is like, almost like idolizing her son and wanting him to be back.
And one day, she told me, and again, she's telling me in Portuguese, this is through a translator, my translator there. You don't speak Portuguese? I don't.
I'm learning Spanish. It's close.
She said, my son burst into the house and flops down on the couch just like he did every day after school. And she was blown away.
It's like, this is what she wanted. And she even walks over and she starts to rub his head just like she used to do.
And the angel that was with her in her near-death experience appears and says to her, you know that's not your son. And she said, there was this terrible tension in me because I so wanted it to be true.
I so wanted it to be my son. And she struggled.
And finally, she said, I know. Wow.
And as soon as she said that, her son

is a demonic creature, not her son. And then both are gone.
And I think unfortunately,

that's what we've got to pay attention to. I have many near-death experience examples of Steve Kahn, who was a Buddhist, who this Buddha figure appears to him as he did a death bowl.

You know what that is?

It's like smoking a bowl of marijuana but laced with PCP and meth and crack, all kinds of stuff.

and about day 8, 9, 10 of not sleeping after doing this,

this same Buddha figure who used to appear to him in the temple in Korea, appears to him and starts to convince him that it would be best if he went ahead and took his life. And if he does, he'll get 50,000 years less of hell.
And for some reason, he decides that's a great idea.

And he slits himself with a butcher knife across his stomach.

His mother sees it, calls the police.

The police come.

He also cuts his throat.

And he dies, and he is descending. He knows he's going to hell, and he realizes this nice Buddha figure is not Buddha at all.
This old man that he thought was a Buddha figure was not at all. He was demonic, and he realizes that on the other side.
And he actually ends up getting rescued by Jesus, who tells him, no more drugs, no more Buddhism, and I love you. Wow.
And he's a pastor today. Wow.
So, not everything that appears good is always good. You remember Howard Storm, who had the near-death experience, the atheist college professor? These really nice people in the hallway.
He doesn't even know he's dead. And they're dressed like the hospital staff.
And they're like, Howard, come with us. He's like, I need surgery.
Oh, we know all about you. Come, come with us.
They seem real nice. And like I like to point out, if Howard's near-death experience had ended right there, he would have had a very different interpretation.
Right. But he followed them, and they lead him into an outer darkness, just like Jesus talked about, where they just, you know, worst prison scene you can imagine, until he crawls out to Jesus to save him.
And he does. Wow.
And he leaves his tenured professorship and becomes a Christian pastor as well. In fact, do you know I know Howard, Kyle, Paul, Yen, this is another Buddhist that Jesus saved.
Who's the other one I just said? Kyle, Howard, five or six of them who had hellish

near-death experience Who's the other one I just said? Kyle, Howard.

Five or six of them who had hellish near-death experiences and cried out to God and Jesus saved them.

And they're all Christian pastors or missionaries today.

Wow.

That's awesome.

You can't make this stuff up.

How do you explain that?

I mean, it's an interesting subject.

I've interviewed a handful of them. And one of them was Angelaela ford and she had done a lot of work for the government and um found some uh missing kids and stuff and i i asked her in the interview i said have you ever remote viewed oh she's a psychic yeah and she did not want to answer that she started rubbing her teeth and and moving her head back and forth.
Why? I didn't want to dig any deeper. She was really open the whole interview, and then when I asked her that, it just...
Just shut down. Like she switched.
Well, and here's the thing. Again, I don't think necessarily people know, and I think that's part of the problem is that I don't think they're necessarily evil, wicked people.
They many times have good intentions and good motives. And again, the best deception is 80%, 90% true.
Yeah. And so I think, like Lee was saying, I think sometimes you can have things that are helpful, but are they in fact helpful for a reason, to get people to follow after them, not after God? Yeah.
It was interesting. I mean, she said, yes, I have.
And I said, do you want to talk about it?

And she just started rubbing her teeth and moving her eyes around.

Wow.

It was.

Well, look, here's the thing.

Scared the hell out of me, to be honest.

I bet.

When, you know, like Randy, the CEO I interviewed, when he, when the six embolisms traveled up his leg and pulmonary embolism, his heart stops, body shuts down, he's rising up, and he looks out over the surface of the earth, but there was something else going on. Again, you're moving into another dimensionality, I believe.
But he sees a battle going on. And he believes it was a battle for his soul because he

was really struggling with God. He'd gone through a lot of stuff and was really struggling with God.

Even though he's a believer, he was struggling. But he sees this battle going on.
And Jesus talked

about that. I mean, he said, the ruler of this world is coming.
This is before His crucifixion. The ruler of this world, I thought He was the King of Kings, the Messiah.
What about God, the Father, you know? Well, God has given the demonic, angelic host rule for a time. For a time.
Not a leash, but there's still... And again, I think it's part of God's plan.
This is a very diminutive experience. This is like a one-one-thousandth of the goodness to come or the horrors to come.
And it's a time of living, of knowing good and evil and choosing with the opportunity for a second chance. Again, when time is not linear, there's no such thing as a second chance.
There's no second. It's eternity.
And so I think that's what Easter was all about. It's grace.
It's God giving us chance after chance after chance of forgiveness to get things right, to learn and to grow, and to become more and more of what He created us to be. Yeah.
Lee, what were you going to say? Oh, I was just going to reference. I interviewed a scholar on this question of psychics and mediums and so forth for my book, and this is what he said.
The Bible condemns all forms of occultism. Leviticus 19.26 commands, do not practice divination or seek omens.
Similarly, Leviticus 19.31 warns, do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. The Old Testament asserts that those who associate with familiar spirits are cursed by God.
Furthermore, Exodus 22, 18 and Leviticus 20, 27 mandate that sorcerers and mediums living at that time be put to death. Deuteronomy 18, verses 10 through 12 is explicit.
Let no one be found among you who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord.
Revelation 9, 21 promises that all who practice sorcery will face God's judgment. Their destiny is not heaven, but rather the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.
Take a look at Revelation 21, verse 8, and 22, verse 15. So, I think you're right.
I think there, yeah, there's some pretty strong... Which I have friends who, you know, I'm just, I'm thinking through the lens of, and I, so again, if we didn't tell you all this reason to believe that God was actually inspiring the writing of the scriptures to know His will and understand, but I have friends who both had a near-death experience and now are mediums.
Really? Oh, yeah. Interesting.
And, you know, I've said the same thing. Yeah.
But just hearing that fresh, I'm like, dang. I know.
Yeah, that doesn't sound good. No, it doesn't sound good.
Seriously, I mean, I think it's a dangerous area. But again, you know, okay.
I think it's dangerous because of how Satan may intervene in ways that people are unconscious of and lead people to conclusions that are not biblical. Yeah, what I wanted to say is I would hear that and some people may be saying, oh, so you're saying they're just cursed and damned and there's no hope for them.
No. That's the way I take it.
Exactly. And that's not what he's saying.
There's repentance, there's hope. There's for everyone.
Yeah. I mean, the thief on the cross, it was last minute.
All he said was, remember me. Yeah.
I mean, he didn't. So, is, and so this doesn't mean keep practicing it, but is that the unforgivable sin? No, it's not.
No. David committed, King David committed adultery, murdered her husband, had her husband killed to cover up his sin, and somehow he still was forgiven.
So, God paid an enormous price for our justice, and that's what we don't realize. So, my point is, Lee is not saying all psychics are those who...
Because here's...

That they're all going to hell.

He's not saying that.

It's a matter, again, of being right with God by turning back to him and saying,

okay, God, you get to be God.

I will follow you.

An unrepentant sinner is in trouble.

Someone who persists.

Someone who persists despite admonition and despite biblical teaching and persists to the end and resist to the end. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes.
I mean, I lived an incredibly immoral life before I became a Christian. God has forgiven me of all of that.
Me too. And all of us who have come to faith have been forgiven of things that, you know, I look at the grace of God and say, I can't even fathom how deep and how wide and how strong it is.
So, anyone who comes to him in repentance and faith, I believe, has eternal life through Jesus Christ and him alone. Yeah, but he gives us these things so that we will learn and grow and not be deceived and not be led astray.
Yeah. And so I think that's what the point of that is.
I mean, it is interesting. I mean, a lot of similarities between near-death experiences and media.

So people who have near-death experiences often come back and find that there are spirits wanting to channel through them.

Really?

And the veil seems thinner when they come back.

And I've had some that I've interviewed who knew, like, I'm not letting that happen. I'm not going to be your channel.
And others who have thought, hell, I guess that's why I had this, and that's what I'm supposed to do, and they go down that road. That's why Scripture, I think, is so important in terms of the guide.
It can get confusing. That's our plumb line.

And we go to that and say, what can I learn from that?

That God told me through Scripture to protect me and to nurture my spirit and not to defile me. Yeah.
When we quote scripture and people who don't know it hear that, they're like, it's a 2,000-year-old book that is out of touch with today. But what we've been trying to show, and if you've gotten all of this, is that God has been putting very tangible evidence throughout history that he was, in fact, doing this very intentionally.
And that's what Jesus said. He said, you know, God, by his Spirit, was speaking through the prophets, and I am the fulfillment of it.
And so, that's why we both came to the conclusion, like, okay, that needs to be the plumb line by which we judge all the rest.

In other words, I'm not going to just go listen to whatever a near-death experiencer says and believe it. They sometimes contradict.
But the commonality of what they say, they contradict in their interpretations. But the commonality of what they're reporting is what I'm showing it aligns with what God's been revealing throughout history.
Makes sense. We covered a lot of ground today.
We did. I'm excited about Easter, doggone it.
You know, it is awesome. When you think about Jesus and the shroud kind of brings that to life, whether or not we determine ultimately it is authentic or not, it just kind of reminds us, this is a person who died for me to pay the penalty I should have died for and said, no, no, no, I love you so much.
Yes, the penalty has to be paid for because that's justice and God is just, but I'm going to offer you forgiveness. I'll take it upon myself.
It's just awesome. And then to the resurrection to say, as I have conquered death, so will you.
So will you. We'll all who follow him, we'll all conquer death.
And that's just the start. And I mean, what people like Heidi, I was telling you about, what she said is like, he's so enjoyable.
She was a 16-year-old. And she said, we had more fun than I've ever had in my life.
Now, you don't think of God or Jesus as being described that way.

But that's what...

He is both the most powerful, majestic... or Jesus as being described that way.
But that's what...

He is both the most powerful, majestic,

only worthy of our worship,

but also so personable, knows us so well,

that He would come and live among us.

And the disciples felt so close to Him.

Like I said, John, his youngest disciple, called himself the one Jesus loved. Yeah.
Because that's how he felt. Yeah.
Like I was the only one. You know what's fascinating? I've had four, in fact, they're on my podcast, so you can hear them talk about it, four different near-death experiencers who said, Jim Woodford, the agnostic to the very end,

till his head hit the steering wheel, said in Jesus' presence, he said, you know, I knew it couldn't be true, but I felt like I was his special child, like I was the only one he loved. And again and again and again, they say that.
Like, his love for me was so unique that it was like he loved only me of the billions. And he said, but then I would, Dean Braxton said, but then I would think about my wife, and I realized, oh, he loves her like that too.
And I think about someone else, like, oh, he loves. It reminds me of a story of a woman who is a hospice nurse.
She's retired now, and I have her story in my book where she came into the room of a guy who was dying,

and he was weeping, uncontrollably weeping.

He was a brilliant guy.

His name was Frederick, and he was in his 70s, but very highly educated person, weeping uncontrollably.

And she said, what's wrong?

What's wrong?

And he said, Jesus was here.

I saw him.

He came.

He stood right here.

And I felt the love and the grace, and it was so overwhelming.

I just, and she said, if I saw him, would I cry?

And he said, oh, yes, you'd cry.

She said, why would I cry? Because you would feel the depth of His love and forgiveness and it would just overwhelm you. And here's a guy, a brilliant guy, who knew a lot about life, but he didn't know the depth of God's love until he had that pre-death vision right before he died where God met him in that moment through Jesus Christ.
And it just reminds me of that moment when we recognize Easter what it is and you go, oh my goodness. We ought to be weeping in light of what he did for us.
And still to this day, when I interview, I mean, the CEO, he was a medical executive, fastest growing pharmaceutical company, then started a biotech firm, this commercial airline pilot, Captain Dale Black. And when they talk about looking into the eyes of Jesus, they say, I could get lost in His eyes forever because it was like He saw into me everything, every good, every dark thing, but loved me, accepted me.
He was my best friend and my father and everything, and they can't hold it together. Yeah.
Every time. Yeah, yeah.
It's overwhelming. I do.
I'll ask him. Well, tell me about when you were with him.
And these are brilliant guys. I mean, these are like very smart people, double PhDs and stuff.
They've been in the world. They've lived in the world.
And yet they say what it felt like was so wonderful. It overwhelms my emotions.
When I think about it, I'm there and it overwhelms me. Wow.
So that's the point of Easter. That's the point of the resurrection.
That's the Jesus we can know. It's not just for forgiveness of our sins.
Yeah. It's to realize that God entered into our very suffering.
And though we still have to go through it, He's with us. He's always with us.
And all He... Like he told Randy, the CEO, when he showed Randy when he was still an agnostic.
And Randy said in his life review, he said, you mean you were there when I went through that and that and even when I hated you? And he was at Northwestern and he tried to prove, disprove God. And he said, Jesus said, I was always there just waiting for you to turn to me.
Wow. Wow.
Well, that was awesome

thank you guys

thank you both

once again it's an honor to have you guys back

and

I don't think this could have gone any better

so

happy Easter

happy Easter

God bless

you too

God bless you, Sean. Thanks, man.
Thank you. NBA veteran Jim Jackson takes you on the court.
You get a chance to dig into my 14-year career in the NBA and also get the input from the people that will be joining. Charles Barkley.
I'm excited to be on your podcast, man. It's an honor.
Spike Lee, entrepreneur, filmmaker, Academy Award winner. Nixon! Now you see it.
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