Transcript: Lee Strobel on Miracles Doctors Can’t Explain – The Dr. Josh Axe Show

JOSH AXE: I’ve tried, and I think for myself, a lot of it was through experience. And I’ll just give you an example here to start off. My mom was diagnosed with cancer twice. And the first time we went through conventional treatments. The second time we did all natural treatments, and she reversed it.

Both times we did along with that, though, and this is something I haven’t brought up. One time, my mom had a cancer scare. She went in for a scan, and this is outside of those two times. And they found tumors, they found cancerous tumors on her. And we were so worried about it, of course, and we just spent a lot of time in prayer. I mean, two weeks praying and praying and praying.

And my mom said, “I feel like I need to go back in. I feel like it’s gone.” And we went back in. This is in Columbus, Ohio, to Ohio State Medical Center. Went back in and the tumors were gone.

LEE STROBEL: Wow.

DR. JOSH AXE: Completely gone. And she hasn’t had cancer since. My mom’s in her early 70s.

LEE STROBEL: Oh, my gosh.

DR. JOSH AXE: And we experienced this, and the doctors were just like, “We can’t explain this. We don’t know where they went.” And there are so many instances and people don’t realize this, but so often where those sort of things have happened.

The Evidence for Miracles: A Journalist’s Investigation

LEE STROBEL: Well, absolutely. My book, “Seeing the Supernatural,” I deal with these kind of miracles. But for me, and I come from a skeptical background, used to be an atheist, and I’m trained in journalism and law. And so I’m looking for facts and data and evidence and corroboration and so forth.

So to me, when I look at an apparent miracle, I look at a couple of things. I look at, number one, do we have solid medical documentation? Number two, do we have testimony by eyewitnesses who have no motive to deceive? Number three, do we have something that took place in the context of prayer, which I think is an important connection. So there’s different things I try to look at. Is there no natural explanation that can explain it away? In other words, could it have been something naturalistic that took place?

But I’m telling you, there are studies published in peer reviewed medical journals about documented cases of miracles.

Case Study: Blind Woman Receives Perfect Sight

LEE STROBEL: I’ll give you a couple examples. There was a woman who was blind from an incurable condition. She was blind for a dozen years. She went to a school for the blind. She learned to read braille, she walked with a white cane, and she married a pastor.

And one night they’re getting ready to go to bed and she’s in bed and he comes over and he begins to cry and he puts his hand on her shoulder and he begins to pray and he prays, “God, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can do it. And Lord, I pray you do it tonight.”

And with that, she opened her eyes to perfect eyesight. She said, “I was blind when he prayed for me. And then I opened my eyes and I could see perfectly. It’s a miracle.” And her eyesight remained perfect for 50 years plus.

So how do you explain that? That is a case researched by multiple medical researchers and published in a peer reviewed medical journal as a case study. That to me, that’s a solid case.

Case Study: Instant Healing of Gastroparesis

LEE STROBEL: There was another baby who was born with what’s called gastroparesis, paralysis of the stomach. It’s not a, you know, it occurs occasionally. And as a result, the baby could not keep down food and they had to operate and put in tubes so that the food would go directly from the stomach right into the small intestine.

Well, the kid grew up and it was uncomfortable and it was difficult and he couldn’t eat certain things. It was restrictive. And when he was 16 years old, his parents brought him to church and they asked the pastor, “Would you pray for him?”

So the pastor put his hand on his shoulder and began to pray that God would heal him. And the kid said, later, “I felt an electric shock go from my shoulder down to my stomach.” And he was instantly healed of gastroparesis. There is no case in any medical journal that I could find of anybody ever being healed of gastroparesis. They did surgery, they took out the tubes. He’s been fine ever since.

And that’s again, multiple medical researchers looked into that, published it in a peer reviewed medical journal as a case study. So something’s going on.

The Mozambique Study: Scientific Documentation of Miracles

LEE STROBEL: If I can mention one other one that’s really compelling. There was a woman who was a professor at a major secular University, Indiana University, Ph.D. from Harvard. And she heard about miracles taking place in Mozambique. We often see miracles clustering in places where the gospel is just breaking in.

So she said, “I’m going to investigate, I’m going to check it out.” So she sent a team of researchers to Mozambique. They went into the remote villages and they said, “Bring us all your deaf and blind.” So they brought all the people deaf, blind or with severe hearing or vision problems.

The first thing they did is they tested them scientifically. What is your level of vision? What is your level of hearing? They got that established. Then they were immediately prayed for in the name of Jesus by people who tend to have a track record of God using them that way. And then immediately after that, they were tested again. Is there any difference? Is there any improvement?

Guess what they found? Virtually everybody improved, often to extraordinary degrees. There was one woman named Martine. When they first encountered her, she could not hear the equivalent of a jackhammer next door. After 10 minutes of prayer in the name of Jesus, she could now hear normal conversations.

DR. JOSH AXE: Wow.

LEE STROBEL: Get this. The average improvement in visual acuity was tenfold. So they’re astounded. So they say, “We got to see if we can replicate this.” So they went to another place where the gospel is breaking in. Brazil. They did the same test. They got the same results.

One woman in Brazil could not see someone holding up three fingers from nine feet away. After prayer in the name of Jesus, she could read the name tag of the person praying for her. But get this. This is a scientifically rigorous study that was accepted for publication in a secular, scientific, peer reviewed medical journal, highly respected journal, the Southern Medical Journal.

And in my book, “Seeing the Supernatural,” I interview the people involved with that. And I interviewed the scholar who did it, and she said, “Something’s going on. I think it’s something supernatural.”

Faith vs. Rationalization in Western Culture

DR. JOSH AXE: It’s amazing. This is something I follow too. And I have a friend of ours, Heidi Baker, and she’s in Mozambique.

LEE STROBEL: She was involved with the Mozambique study.

DR. JOSH AXE: And she’s amazing. We followed her stories and read her books and talked to her over the years. And she just has this incredible faith.

And one of the things, I remember having a conversation with a missionary once, and I said, “It seems like less of that happens over here. Less of that happens in the western world.” And they said, “You know, a lot of that has to do with sort of the faith. I mean, we’ve sort of been taught via our science, our scientific mind to rationalize everything. And if you’re living in a state of, well, this isn’t normal or this isn’t rational in a way, it might block or interfere with that healing.” Is that something that you’ve come across?

LEE STROBEL: Yeah. I mean, in many of these more primitive societies, first of all, they may not be able to read. And so to read the Bible, they can’t do that really. But they do respond to supernatural or miraculous kind development. When they see something like that, they recognize it. And I think God uses that as a way to open them up to who he is, that he’s real and he’s still active.

Faith as the Key to Healing

DR. JOSH AXE: And, you know, one of the things that I’ve shared a few times on the show is that, you know, in the Bible, Jesus never says, “In order to be healed, eat this food.”

LEE STROBEL: Right.

DR. JOSH AXE: “Take this medication, get this surgery.” He says, “Your faith or your belief has healed you.”

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, exactly. I mean, and what astonishes me about that research that’s been done and these case studies been published. And I interview for my book a guy named Dr. Craig Keener, who’s probably the world’s leading expert on miracles. He’s written two huge volumes, case study after case study after case study.

And what’s important about this is two things. First of all, it tells us God is still active. He’s still in the miracle business today. But the second thing it does, it gives us confidence that we can trust the Gospels. Because when I was a skeptic, I would read a gospel and say, “I can’t believe this. It says Jesus healed the guy of blindness. That doesn’t happen. That’s not possible.”

But when you see contemporary, documented cases of healings, that gives me confidence. Maybe if it happens today, it could have happened in the first century. Maybe this is true. So it validates the Gospels. And I think that can be, at least it was in my case, part of the process of coming to faith.

The Growing Hunger for the Supernatural

DR. JOSH AXE: You know, one of the things I’ve seen over the years is a continual growing hunger, especially in younger generations, for the supernatural and understanding things that are spiritual. I think about when I was younger in church and I think about the churches I went to, it was a little bit more, you know, buttoned up, right, proper, and there were more guardrails and things like that.

And I think with that sometimes comes, “Well, that feels like it’s outside the box and that shouldn’t be out there.” And I think the younger generation isn’t. There’s a little bit more, “We want it outside of the box. We want to experience these things.” And so I think that’s led people to be more sometimes spiritually hungry in the supernatural sense.

The Problem of Respectability in Christianity

LEE STROBEL: I think you’re absolutely right. One of the phenomenon we see in America, particularly is that many Christians, they’re embarrassed by the supernatural. Why? Because we want to be respectable. We want our neighbors to respect us. “Yes, I’m a Christian. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I go to church. But I don’t get into that weird stuff like miracles and angels and demons and that. I’m not into that. I’m not one of those weird ones.”

There’s almost a respectability that we’re after, and it closes us off to the miraculous. I mean, I’ve been a Christian since November 8th of 1981, and I’ve never heard in my life a sermon on the topic, for instance, of angels. I’ve just never heard one.

DR. JOSH AXE: Yeah.

LEE STROBEL: Why is that? I think some churches are a little, “Yeah, angels. That’s getting out there.” But you know what? Jesus was an exorcist. Jesus believed in demons, in Satan. Jesus believed in angels. And so if we are followers of his, we ought to take seriously some of these things that he believed.

The Challenge of Authenticity vs. Manufactured Miracles

DR. JOSH AXE: Sometimes people go a little bit too far in one direction because they want it to happen so badly. So I remember, just to give you an example, growing up, my grandparents would watch a number of people like Jimmy Swaggart, which wasn’t necessarily that, but Benny Hinn and others.

And I think there’s an element of maybe at some point in their life, and sometimes there’s authentically a miracle happening, but sometimes there’s an element of, “Okay, that seems manufactured or that seems like we’re trying to harvest.” And I think that maybe for some of those people, a number of people, they’re put off by that. And so maybe that’s harming some of the openness people have.

LEE STROBEL: I totally agree. I think there are cases that we think may be miracles, but honestly, some diseases, as you know, as a physician, you have spontaneous remission. It happens.

DR. JOSH AXE: Yeah.

LEE STROBEL: We have cases of fraud where people claim to heal someone just for the notoriety of it. We have cases of mistaken identity. I had one recently in my own life where a doctor examined me and said, “Oh, you’ve got…” I’ve had skin cancer before. He said, “You got new skin cancer at two places. Let’s schedule the surgery. We’ll do biopsies.”

So he did the biopsies, and then the biopsies come back and, oops, no cancer. Was I healed? I don’t think so. I think the initial diagnosis was just… He’s just looking at it and he was probably wrong. So I don’t consider that to be a miracle. I thank God for it because he superintends everything. So I’m thankful for it. But I think we have to be careful. I think you’re right. We have to be careful of what we classify as a miracle so that we don’t give any fodder to skeptics who will say that’s not a miracle. Here’s three ways it could have happened without the intervention of God.

DR. JOSH AXE: Exactly. And again, I believe in miracles. It’s just I’ve seen sometimes people try and even lie in order to thinking maybe it’s a sort of… they’re doing a good. That’s really not a good.

LEE STROBEL: You’re exactly right. And we have to be careful of that. And we have to measure it against scripture. The Bible says test the spirits and we have to measure everything in scripture to determine whether or not it’s trustworthy.

DR. JOSH AXE: Yeah. You know, one of the other things that I think about too, when it comes to the miraculous, as you mentioned, is angels and demons are referenced in the Bible.

LEE STROBEL: Yes.

Guardian Angels and Biblical Evidence

DR. JOSH AXE: I’m curious your thoughts on this. And I was actually… my wife and I are both… We love talking theology and it’s so funny. We’re… And I don’t know if any other couples can relate to this. The way we go… We both want the same thing, but the way we think about it going about getting there is completely different.

LEE STROBEL: I can relate.

DR. JOSH AXE: Okay. Yeah. Because my wife grew up going to a charismatic church. I grew up going to a Baptist and Methodist, non-denomination mostly. And so there was some differences there, but we both want the same thing. And I bring that all up to say as we were talking recently about guardian angels.

LEE STROBEL: Yes.

DR. JOSH AXE: And I’d love to hear your thoughts on this because I’ve heard some people reference that everyone has a guardian angel.

LEE STROBEL: There’s division within the Christian community on whether that’s true, whether we each have a guardian angel. The ones who believe that we do, and there are many who do believe that we do have a guardian angel, point to two references in scripture.

One is a reference in Matthew where Jesus tells some people, referencing some children. He said, “Do not disregard these children because their angels see the face of God every day in heaven.” Well, who are their angels? Could be guardian angel.

Second example is in The Book of Acts, where Peter escapes prison and he goes to a house where some Christians had gathered and he knocks on the door and the servant said, “Who’s there?” And he says, “It’s Peter.” So she calls out to the group, “Hey, Peter’s here.” And they said, “That’s not possible. He’s in prison. It must be his angel.”

So some will look at those two passages and say, that seems to suggest that we have an angel who is kind of assigned to us. Could very well be. And there’s lots, as I say, lots of theologians and Christians who believe in it. Others say that’s not strong enough evidence to convince me.

Interestingly, in the Orthodox Church, they believe that every Christian, when they’re baptized, is assigned a guardian angel at baptism. So that’s interesting.

DR. JOSH AXE: Wow.

LEE STROBEL: So there’s no shortage of angels. God could certainly have a guardian angel. In Revelation, in chapter five, Jesus is on the throne, the post resurrected Jesus and it says, if you do the math, there were 100 million angels worshiping him at that point. A hundred million. That’s a lot of angels.

So God created them. There’s definitely a number of them. They’re not infinite number of them. There’s a certain number of them, but it is a large number. So I don’t think we can say, “Oh, there’s not enough angels to go around.” I think it is definitely possible that we have a guardian angel. It’s interesting. I never studied angels, particularly as I said. And when I…

DR. JOSH AXE: Well, to your point, it’s rarely ever talked about the church outside of, “Oh, Gabriel showed up,” or “Michael showed up once or twice.” That’s it.

Modern Angelic Encounters

LEE STROBEL: But it’s so fascinating. And so I interviewed an expert on angels doctor, a guy at a seminary. And he really lays out what angels are and where they come from and so forth. And one of the interesting things is, do angels still protect? Do we still have encounters with angels today? Because in the book of Hebrews it says that sometimes Christians unwittingly provide hospitality to angels. They don’t realize it.

So that tells me there’s an anticipation in Scripture that perhaps we will have an angelic encounter. And in my book “Seeing the Supernatural,” I have a chapter on angels and I talk about some documented cases.

For instance, there was a missionary from Scotland named John G. Paton. He and his wife were sent to a remote island in the South Pacific to share Jesus. They lived in a little cottage there and they were sharing the gospel. Well, the tribes people didn’t like it, and a mob of them came one night to kill them, to burn down their house and kill them.

So they’re in their house, they see this mob forming to come after them. What could they do? They pray. They prayed, “God save us, protect us. This mob is out to kill us.” And they prayed all night. And by dawn, the mob dissipated and everybody went home.

So a year later, John led the head of that tribe to faith in Jesus. And they had a conversation. He said, “By the way, do you remember that night when you all came to burn down our house and kill us? Why didn’t you do it?” And the guy said, “Oh, well, who were all those men you had there?” And John said, “There were no men. It was just my wife and I.” He said, “No, no, no. Your house was surrounded by all these muscular men in white garments with drawn swords. There’s no way we could have hurt you that night.”

DR. JOSH AXE: This reminds me of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They’re in the fire. There’s another person, or Daniel, who’s keeping the lion’s mouth shut.

LEE STROBEL: Exactly. And so, because that happened in ancient biblical times, why couldn’t it happen today? I have another case study in my book about a pastor in Ohio who had a car accident. And his car hit a utility pole, and the electric wires fell down onto the car. In fact, the car was electrified. It was so hot, the windshield was melting. And the car was jammed shut, the door was jammed shut.

So he’s in this car, he’s injured, but he’s okay. What can he do? And he’s praying, “Help,” and a man shows up. He said it was kind of scruffy looking. And he came over and he opened the car door and he reached in and he pulled out the pastor and carried him about 50 feet away. And then the car blew up.

And the man said to the pastor, “You’re going to be okay. The police are on their way. I can’t be here when they get here, but you’re going to be okay.” And he walked away and disappeared.

And that pastor said, and I quote some of the people involved in that. The paramedics and the TV people covered the case, and they say, “We can’t explain this. How was he able to open the car door? It was electrified and it was jammed shut. And who is this guy?” And the pastor said, “I believe he was an angel.” And he might have been.

I’ll tell you a funny story. I was interviewing a very prominent theologian. And you know how they can be… they’re kind of staid and, you know, he’s a university professor and all this stuff. We got talking about angels and miracles. And he said, “When I was younger, I went to a charismatic church, and there was an anticipation of the supernatural. There was a sense that God is still in the miracle business, that miraculous things could happen at any time. And I loved it,” he said.

And he said, “One day there was a family in our church who was driving in their car, this is before seat belts, and their son, little kid in the back seat, opened the back door and fell out at highway speeds. And they thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, our kid’s been killed.’ So they turned around, they went back, and here their son is just standing there in the middle of the highway. And he said, ‘What happened?’ And he said, ‘Oh, didn’t you see the man who caught me?'”

And this theologian reached into his pocket and picked out a handkerchief and dabbed his eye. And he said, “I missed that. I miss that I’m not part of a church anymore. And I miss that sense that God at any time could do something miraculous.”

Everything is a Miracle

DR. JOSH AXE: It’s so powerful. You know, one of the… There’s a quote I love, and it’s “You can see nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle.” And I do think there’s this sense of… it’s just so important because it impacts our lives so much.

When I had a… This is about three years ago, I had a spinal infection that left me unable to walk for a full year.

LEE STROBEL: I read about that. For how long? Four years?

DR. JOSH AXE: No, a year.

LEE STROBEL: A year.

DR. JOSH AXE: A year. I was in bed 4 months or 10 months. Couldn’t walk 10 months and then 2 plus months on a walker. And I didn’t know what would happen. And I prayed constantly, by the way. I had Heidi Baker calling and praying for me, John Eldredge and Navir Daley, all kinds of amazing people praying for me.

And there’s a few times I remember when I was at my absolute lowest and this happened three times. And all three times when I just felt the most despair. And all three times I looked up wherever I was and I saw a rainbow. And I remember one time I was in the… I was in an ambulance and actually in this van. And there was a little hole at the top, or a little window you could see through, and looking up and there was a rainbow.

And for me, I really felt it was God saying, “Listen, I’m faithful. I’m faithful.” And for me, I could have said that, saw that as, “Oh, there’s a random rainbow.”

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

DR. JOSH AXE: But for me, it was no, God is speaking to me right now.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, yeah.

DR. JOSH AXE: And so I think people can go through life either everything is a miracle, nothing is a miracle. God is speaking to me. I’m looking for signs. I’m looking for wonder. I’m going to live a life of faith and belief.

And to me, here’s the thing. I’ve asked people this before, when I have… because when I take care of patients, I can tell pretty early on if somebody’s a pessimist or an optimist or their faith level. And one of the things I ask them is, “Do you think that you believing for supernatural healing or for that God is with you or that you’re going to be well, do you think that gives you a better chance of healing or a worse chance of healing?”

And the reality is, we know this from the placebo effect. All of the studies that you’re much better off believing whether it’s true or not. No, I believe it is.

LEE STROBEL: But, you know, and so, I mean…

DR. JOSH AXE: Yeah, yeah.

LEE STROBEL: You know, it’s… I did this study, I commissioned a national study. So it’s a scientifically accurate study in which I asked a cross section of American adults… Here was a question: “Have you ever had at least one experience in your life that you could only describe as being a miracle of God?” 38% said yes.

Now let’s say 99% of them are wrong. Let’s say they think it’s a miracle. It wasn’t really. It was an extraordinary coincidence or whatever. So let’s get rid of 99% of them. That would still leave a million miracles just in the United States. That’s pretty amazing. God is still in the miracle business today.

DR. JOSH AXE: It’s powerful. You know, we’ve talked about angels a little bit.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

Demons and Spiritual Warfare

DR. JOSH AXE: Let’s talk about demons.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

The Spiritual Realm Throughout History

DR. JOSH AXE: One of the things that I have wondered or thought about is when you go back even outside of the modern era, way, way more people believed in the spiritual realm.

LEE STROBEL: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it goes down through history. I’ve heard every culture.

DR. JOSH AXE: Yeah. And when you look at even there’s a Bible verse. Somebody was asking. I forget if it’s a rabbi and Jesus is part of the conversation. They’re saying, “What did he do wrong in order to have this illness?” And Jesus said he didn’t do anything wrong. This is so God’s name could be glorified.

And so it’s not always the case. But historically, if somebody was ill with a number of conditions, oftentimes there was a demonic influence over that person. And I know that I’ve actually seen where people have had something, and again, I would call it a spirit. Somebody else could say it’s a negative emotion that’s basically infiltrated that person and destroyed their life or destroyed an organ system.

There are different emotions, we know scientifically, that make organs sick. For instance, if somebody lives in a state of fear for a long time, their adrenals produce all of this cortisol, all of this stress hormones, and they get adrenal burnout. It affects reproductive organs. So they literally build up disease and sickness in their organ when they have fear. Somebody could call it a spirit of fear. That’s on them in that way.

Now, I think scientifically, people sort of say, “Well, that’s a neurochemical, cortisol, whatever.” But what’s your view on that?

The Reality of Demonic Influence

LEE STROBEL: Well, I think it could very well be that these kind of things we call a spirit of fear or spirit of anxiety or so forth could be something that is being fueled by demons. And certainly it would be Satan’s desire to damage your health, to discourage you, to cause you to question whether God cares for you and so forth. So he’s in the pain business. And so would he fuel something like that? Yeah, I think he would.

Now, I think two mistakes are made. One is to deny that the demonic realm is real. The other one is to see a demon under every bush, you know.

DR. JOSH AXE: Oh, yeah.

LEE STROBEL: But it is a real phenomenon. In my book, I talk about a psychiatrist from New York who is highly respected. Richard Gallagher is his name. I have a quote from the former president of the American Psychiatric Association saying, “Richard Gallagher, educated at an Ivy League school, professor at some major quality universities, highest integrity, highest professionalism. This guy knows what he’s doing.” So, very highly respected psychiatrist, which means he’s a medical doctor as well as someone trained in psychology.

25 years ago, he and his wife had two cats, and they got along great. They were best buddies. They slept together. They loved each other. Until one night, the cats began to try to kill each other. It was an incredible scene. They’re snarling each other, they’re clawing each other, biting each other. They’re hissing each other, they’re attacking each other, literally trying to kill each other. And Richard and his wife had to separate them and put them into different rooms. And they thought, “What in the world’s going on?”

At 9am the doorbell rings. And it’s a preset appointment from a Catholic priest he was bringing by a woman to be examined psychiatrically by Dr. Gallagher as a woman who claimed that she was a high priestess of a satanic cult. Doorbell rings, Richard opens the door. This high priestess of a satanic cult looks up at him with a sneer and says, “So how’d you like those cats last night?”

And Richard Gallagher has spent now 25 years involved with investigating the demonic, involved with exorcisms and so forth. He’s a highly credible physician and psychiatrist and he’s documented cases where petite women who are possessed by a demon have picked up a 217 pound Lutheran Deacon and thrown across, throw him across the room.

He has one case with eight eyewitnesses as someone who levitated off a bed for 30 minutes. He has cases where people speak spontaneously in Latin, a language they don’t know. He has cases of spontaneous bruising and claw marks on people. I mean, this is real. And we have to acknowledge that and that there is a satanic realm that is out to harm us.

Now the good news is the Bible says to Christians, if you tell Satan to flee, he will flee, then say might says he will. So we shouldn’t be that afraid of that realm if we’re Christians. Because demons cannot possess a true Christian, because a true Christian is indwelled by the Holy Spirit. And it can’t both be indwelled by negative and positive at the same time.

But they can hector us, they can go after us, they can try to discourage us, they can have these spirits of fear and so forth that are trying to hurt us. And we have to acknowledge that and beware of that, because if we don’t, we’re not prepared. And the Bible says in Ephesians 6, “Put on the full armor of God.” You know, protect yourself. And we have to take that seriously.

Spiritual Authority and Protection

DR. JOSH AXE: There’s a story I like that’s about Charles Spurgeon, the famous pastor. And it said one night he was awoken because somebody was sitting at the end of his bed and it was the devil. And he looked up and he just said, “It’s only you, we’re about to bed.”

LEE STROBEL: Oh, I love that.

DR. JOSH AXE: Yeah. And it’s just such a great story because, you know, if your mindset is right, it’s not something you have to fear. To your point, if you have The Holy Spirit. If you have Jesus, it’s just immediately gone. And the scripture is clear about that.

You know, I think back about when I’ve had certain people, you know, almost everybody that I take care of, part of their condition that they’re suffering from. One contributing factor is negative emotions. Childhood trauma, those sort of issues. And I’m even thinking about. I’m just going to use a family member. For example, I have a grandmother. She’s 96 years old right now. But she has had numerous times in her life where I really felt like there was sort of like this sort of, you know, demonic possession of her.

And have you ever seen the movie Lord of the Rings?

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

DR. JOSH AXE: And there’s that time where Frodo is back and meets Bilbo again in Rivendell, and he’s like, “Can I see the ring one more time?” And all of a sudden, I remember watching the movie. I was like their opening night because I was such a big Tolkien in Lord of the Rings. And then all of a sudden, he goes. I mean, remember, he, like, reaches for the Ring and there’s this sort of. And he has something come over him, like this gray snarl.

And I think a lot of us have probably experienced that in some time in our life where somebody snapped at us and had a really negative reaction. And I was bringing that up because she would do that oftentimes. And we really felt like that was a demon, that was this spirit, some sort of spiritual thing that was causing that and feeding off of some sort of fear or negative thing that happened even in childhood.

But I think most people again today, we’ve just so separated. We’ve scienced out kind of everything. But just because your cortisol is going up. Why is it going up? Something is causing it to. That’s probably your spirit or soul or something that is unseen.

Unexplained Supernatural Encounters

LEE STROBEL: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is very real stuff. I was doing a national radio show a couple weeks ago on the Moody Radio Network, and a guy, Chris Fabry, was. He was in Phoenix, and I’m in Houston and the studio’s in Chicago. And a woman calls in from Florida. Very rational woman, very nice woman.

And she said, “Yeah.” She said, “I made a mistake. When I was a young Christian. I didn’t realize you shouldn’t try to contact the dead. And so I tried to contact my great, great grandfather who had died. And I realize now Bible says, don’t do that.” And she said, “It was interesting when I tried to do it. It’s almost like there was static in the line and there was almost a demonic presence.”

And as soon as she said that, I heard a growl, like a. I can’t hardly describe it. It’s growl, growl. I got guttural growl. And I’m thinking to myself, “Okay, this is live radio. I’m going to ignore that.” So we finished the show, and I called the host, and I said, “Did you hear that? As soon as she said the word demonic, I hear this guttural growl.” He said, “Yeah, I heard it.” We called her back. Wasn’t her. Wasn’t the studio. Wasn’t you. Wasn’t me. I don’t know what it was. I actually have it on tape.

Yeah. And what was that? That. Except perhaps a demon trying to sneak in and say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are real. We are.” You know, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just saying it was a weird experience.

Spiritual Discernment in Modern Practices

DR. JOSH AXE: Yeah. You know, I want to ask you about people on their deathbed.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

DR. JOSH AXE: Before I do, I have one other question. So I grew up at home. It was very Christian. My mom, you know, every morning was watching Joyce Meyer and Charles Stanley. And, you know. Right. And so. And this used to drive me a little crazy, because I don’t know why, but my mom was the mom that was like. And now I appreciate it. But when I was, like, in high school, my mom would be like, she was the mom that prays for a parking spot all the time. I’m like, “Mom, can you pray for something more important?” She’s like, “God cares about every little thing.” Now I’m like, I appreciate it because she was such an amazing, prayerful mom.

But I do think. But my mom was also like, everything is the devil, right? To a degree. And now I’ve studied a lot of Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, Greek medicine, Biblical medicine, too. And one thing that I realized is a lot of these forms of medicine, it’s just a different language. So a lot of times people are intimidated by terms like yin and yang and qi, and that’s just. Qi is just ATP and cellular energy, and yin and yang is the feminine and the masculine. It’s what they talk about in Genesis. The night and day and the man and woman. And so. But again, it was sort of. Again, that extreme of everything is.

However, I would love to hear your thoughts on tarot cards, Ouija boards. I believe, again, I want to share mine, but I’d love to hear yours, too. I believe that certain things, like if I have a rock on the shelf or a crystal, for me, that would be. I mean, Chelsea and I, in one of our homes, we bought. We like things of nature. So if there was a beautiful rock or stone or like a rock crystal, we would have that as artwork in our home because we tried to have, again, a lot of things that are natural, because we’re into natural stuff.

But there were other things. I know that I did something called. Neil Anderson, had a book called the Bondage Breaker years ago. And I kind of went through. I just wanted to be just cleansed of any wrongdoing I’ve ever done and just ask for forgiveness from God. So anything I’d ever done. And I don’t think I’ve ever done a Ouija board or anything like that. But there’s a number of things. I prayed for forgiveness and just said, “Lord, if I ever gave any demon any foothold, I want to break that.” So I do believe it. But what are your thoughts on some of these things?

Dangerous Spiritual Doorways

LEE STROBEL: I believe these things that you mentioned, tarot cards, Ouija boards, psychics, mediums, things like this can be doorways to demons. They definitely can. That’s why the Bible tells us, stay away from mediums. Stay away from psychics. Don’t get involved with that stuff. Stuff. And because it’s dangerous, because it can lead you down a pathway that can open the door to demonic influence in your life. I steer clear of all that stuff.

DR. JOSH AXE: Candace Cameron Bray. She recently came out with a. She was interviewed about something, and they asked her, and she said this. She said, “I don’t watch horror movies because I believe it’s a gateway.” And I’ve always felt this.

LEE STROBEL: That’s interesting.

DR. JOSH AXE: I have never been comfortable. In fact, I can’t. Like, I do not watch horror movies. Yeah. Because they’re too real.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

DR. JOSH AXE: Or they’re too uncomfortable. I mean, there’s something about them. Like, if I. I remember one time, like, in college, going to see some horror movie. It was like, Friday the third or whatever. Just because, you know, all these college kids were going. And I just left there feeling, like, a sense of just darkness over me. Yes. And I’m like, I’m not. It is palpable. Yeah. And I. This is probably going to be one of the most controversial parts of this episode because so many people, they watch horror movies because they love this sort of the thrill and that feeling of adrenaline. But I believe it’s this. There’s a darkness there.

The Reality of Spiritual Warfare in Media

LEE STROBEL: Boy. You know, I’ll be honest. That’s the first time anybody’s made that observation to me. And I think you’re onto something. I really do. You know so many of these films, and the only way I know about them is you see a commercial and, you know, unfortunately, they show these commercials during sporting events where you have little kids watching.

You know, you’re watching the Super Bowl, and here’s a horror movie promo, and it’s like, I don’t want that for my grandchildren.

DR. JOSH AXE: You know what I do know? You know what? More than half of the horror movies are about demons.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah. Yeah. You know, can that be a doorway? I think it could very well be. And especially if it creates curiosity among people to say, “I want to know more about that in a positive way.” In other words, can demons really help me do something that I want to accomplish?

Yeah. You hear people selling their souls to the devil for success in whatever profession they’re in, making a deal with the devil, so to speak. It’s interesting. Nobody’s ever made that observation before. I think it’s a really astute comment and I’d like to give it more thought.

But I think if I were Satan, would I love that kind of thing out there? Oh, yeah, I think so. Yeah. One thing about Satan that’s interesting, I have a friend who wrote a book on spiritual warfare, and he said, you know, Satan is a fallen angel. Angels are not omnipresent. They’re not everywhere at once. They’re a spirit being, but they’re in one place at once.

And he said, “You know what? Chances are Satan has never been in the same zip code as you have been in your whole life.” Now, of course, demons can be. Because there’s probably millions of demons. But I thought that was an interesting observation.

DR. JOSH AXE: Yeah, that’s interesting.

LEE STROBEL: Especially when you think, you know, if Satan wanted to do maximum damage, is he going to hang out in Chattanooga, Tennessee? I think he’s going to go maybe to a place like Hollywood.

DR. JOSH AXE: Yeah.

LEE STROBEL: And say, if I can dig in here, if I can get people laughing at fun movies that are subterraneanly teaching about premarital sex in a positive way or other sinful activity and presenting it in an entertaining way, and people get sucked into it. When we laugh, we’re more open to new ideas. Don’t you think?

Satan, if he’s only in one place at one time, I think he’s going to spend a lot of time in a place like Hollywood and try to influence an entire culture.

DR. JOSH AXE: Influencers.

LEE STROBEL: Influencers.

DR. JOSH AXE: People that have power and influence.

LEE STROBEL: Exactly.

DR. JOSH AXE: Well, and it’s so interesting to think about because when you look at, I think, people that tend to do some of the most evil in the world often. There’s no doubt that when you look at an area like Hollywood, the most powerful, wealthy people, there’s more depravity there. I mean it’s just the reality.

Satan’s Strategy and Demonic Activity

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, I think that’s true. And you know, if I were Satan, I’d spend time there. I’d spend time in Washington D.C. There are certain places I’d be hanging out quite a bit.

But he’s also got his demons and you know, some interpretations say about a third of the angels fell when Satan fell. His name was Lucifer at the time. And if that’s true, we’re talking a lot of demons that are in the world and may hector or come after any given person at any given time.

The biggest protection we have, really the only protection we have is to come to faith in Jesus. Yeah, that sort of immunizes us against the ultimate that a demon can do, which is to possess you as a spirit. They crave physicality and they want to possess someone and we’re immune from that if we’re believers.

DR. JOSH AXE: So there’s a scene in The Chosen, you know where and I think it’s one of the first, first two episodes. I think it’s the first episode, the very end of first episode where Jesus helps exorcise the demon from Mary and it’s so powerful and that’s the evidence to Nicodemus and some of the other in terms of who he is and his presence. And I love that.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, it’s interesting and as a doctor, you know this that a lot of people will say, “Oh, you know, in ancient times they couldn’t distinguish between an illness or a psychiatric condition or a demon. And so can we really give credibility to this?”

But you know, it’s interesting so many times in scripture it says Jesus went about healing the sick and casting out the demons. They saw the difference. He was doing both. He was healing the sick. They knew who was sick and he was casting out the demons of those who were possessed. So they understood the difference.

Pre-Death Visions: A Supernatural Phenomenon

DR. JOSH AXE: They did, absolutely. One of the things I know that you’ve written about is people on their deathbed beginning to have more of those supernatural visions and experiences. Tell me more about this.

LEE STROBEL: This is an emerging area. Tens of thousands of these cases have been studied. It is incredibly common. One team of researchers went to a huge hospice facility in New York State and they said to the dying people there, “If you have a vision unlike anything you’ve ever had, would you please tell us?”

Because so many people are reluctant to say anything. They don’t want to think I’m nuts or I’m on too much medication. They don’t want to say anything. So they gave them permission and actually asked them, “Would you tell us?” 88% of them had a pre-death vision. 88%. And I bet the other 12% may have had one but died before they were able to tell anybody. These are incredibly common.

One team of researchers studied 3,000 of these cases and their conclusion was these are not hallucinations. They’re not the product of an overactive imagination. They’re not drug induced. This is a different kind of phenomenon.

And the commonality of them, the fact that they’re so common tells me that there’s something to this. In other words, if they only happened in a blue moon once, hardly ever a skeptic would say, “Well, hundreds of millions of people die every once in a while. You’re going to have an anomaly. So it doesn’t mean anything.”

No, we’re seeing. I was having dinner with my wife and five other people in Oklahoma City recently and we brought up this topic. And of the people, seven people today, well, four of them had family members who had pre-death visions. It’s incredibly common.

Biblical Precedent and Corroboration

Now here’s the. I’m a journalist trained in law. I’m always looking for corroboration. How do I know this? So here’s the corroboration. In many of these documented cases, people who are on their deathbed right before the. And by the way, I’ll add one thing real quick. This is biblical.

In the book of Acts, Stephen, who’s described as being full of the Holy Spirit, is just about to die. He’s about to be stoned to death. He sees the heavens open up and sees the Father and Son together. So there’s a biblical precedent for this.

But the corroboration we have is that in many cases, people on their deathbed will get a vision of the heaven to come, and they will see someone who they didn’t know had already died.

So for an example, very well researched case of a woman named Doris, Doris was dying and she sees the heavens open up. She sees angelic beings in heaven. She sees her father, who had died several years earlier, almost welcoming her.

And then she gets this puzzled look on her face, and she said, “Wait a minute. Why is Vita with my father? Why would Vita be there? It makes no sense. Why would Vita be there?” And then she died.

Vita was her sister. She had died a couple of weeks earlier. But nobody had told Doris because she was sick and they didn’t want the shock to kill her. So nobody told Doris. When she’s on her deathbed, she saw Doris, she saw Vita in the world to come. That, to me, is a form of corroboration.

Personal Testimonies of Pre-Death Visions

It’s funny because I told my wife, I do this research and I tell her about things I’m learning. She said, “Lee, don’t you remember what happened to my dad?” I forgotten. Her dad died, golly, going back maybe 2000 early, probably 15 years ago or so. And he was on his deathbed, he was in hospice.

And she went to visit at him. And she comes in and he’s all agitated. He says, “Where’s Marge? Where’s Marge?” And she said, “Dad, what do you mean, where’s Marge?” “Where’s Marge? She was just here. She was telling me about heaven. Where’s Marge? Where did she go?”

Well, Marge was his sister. She had died two days earlier. Nobody had told him yet that she had died, and yet he was having a conversation with her. So that’s one form of corroboration.

Angels Coming for the Dying

There’s one other form that’s very interesting. In Luke, chapter 16, Jesus tells a story about a rich man who ignored the poor during his life. And he died and he went to torment. And a beggar who died at the same time and went to a place of bliss.

But in verse 16, Jesus said, “Angels carried the beggar to the place of bliss, the bosom of Abraham.” And what’s very interesting is people who are about to die, often one of the most common things is they see angels coming for them.

For example, Charles Templeton, who was the most famous atheist in Canada, former pulpit partner Billy Graham lost his faith at a liberal seminary. Billy Graham’s best friend wrote an ugly book called “Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith.” We became friends. I actually wrote a book called “The Case for Faith,” responding to all his objections to Christianity by interview him and got to know him.

And he died a few years later. And before he died, we have reason to believe he came back to faith in Jesus. But then later on his deathbed, he calls out to his wife, “Madeline. Madeline.” “What?” “Chuck, can you see them? They’re here. They’re in this room.” “Chuck, what are you talking about?” “The angels, they’re coming. Can you see? Oh, they’re singing. So beautiful. Their eyes are so beautiful. They’re coming for me. I’m going to heaven. I’m going to be with the Father. Father.” And he died.

That is such a common occurrence. And one of the corroborations of that comes with children who die. A little child, 5, 6 years old, their image of an angel is kind of a feathery creature with big wings, right? I mean, and so if a child was going to, through their imagination, imagine angels coming for them, they would probably look like that. They had big wings, right? Yeah, that’s not what they see.

Children’s Visions of Angels

And so I was looking at doctoral dissertation about a case of a little girl who was dying and she said to her mother, “Mother, Mommy, Mommy, can you see them? The angels? They’re coming for me. They’re here. Oh, they’re so beautiful. Oh, listen to their singing. Oh, they’re so wonderful.”

And her mother didn’t want to disappoint her, so she said, “Oh yeah, yeah, I see them, I see them. Look at their big wings.” And a little girl said, “Oh, mommy, they don’t have big wings. And she said, you don’t have to lie.” And she went on to describe them in vivid detail.

I think if that were a product of her imagination, she would picture a cartoon character of an angel. That’s not what she saw. The Bible doesn’t say all angels have wings. And this is very common among children who are dying time. So yeah, the pre-death vision is a real kind of a newer area of study when it makes sense.

Deathbed Experiences: Light and Darkness

DR. JOSH AXE: I mean, you’re sitting on that brink, on that edge of life and death and the next, what’s next and the supernatural. I actually experienced something. So I had two grandparents. Well, I’ve had four grandparents, but I had two in particular dying and I really got to experience some of this.

And one of them when they were dying, and I don’t know if they were believer, we kind of doubt they were. And when they were their last few days before they totally passed, he kept saying, “I see fire burning. I’m so hot,” constantly.

And I had another one, and I had a grandfather who lived to be 96. He was like a World War II veteran in the Navy. An amazing Christian man. I mean, he was like, every week volunteered to go to the hospital, bring somebody their favorite meal, pray for them. So I got to go with my. It was probably one of the most meaningful things I got to do is go to these hospitals with him while he prayed for people. And he just ministered to people all day long.

And his was almost the exact opposite. “It’s beautiful. It’s all the light. It’s so bright.” I mean, just. It was like this sort of night and day, last few days on their deathbed.

LEE STROBEL: And that’s what we find. We find a certain percentage are people scared to death on their deathbed. They’re frightened. They’re terrified. That’s not that unusual. I was just talking to Michael Knowles. You know Michael?

DR. JOSH AXE: Oh, yeah, he’s great.

LEE STROBEL: And Michael said he had a grandparent, and just before she died, she was reaching up like this. And I said, that is so common that they will reach up as if they’re touching God and entering into another realm. And I think that’s a wonderful gesture that people on their deathbed often have.

Living with an Eternal Perspective

DR. JOSH AXE: I love it. You know, I think one of the things that’s so powerful about your book, “Seeing the Supernatural,” is I think it helps us better tap into being able to see better the supernatural. Because I think if you’re going through your day believing that this is it and this is it, this matter is all there is. And after that’s it, you live one type of life.

LEE STROBEL: That’s right.

DR. JOSH AXE: You know, there’s a quote by C.S. Lewis, and he basically says, “The people that do the most in this life are the people that think most about the next life.”

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

DR. JOSH AXE: And I think there’s. That’s seeing the supernatural, you know, it’s seeing, and if Jesus says, “Don’t store up for yourself treasures here on earth. Store up treasures in heaven.” I think that mindset that you are sharing with people of the supernatural mindset impacts our lives so much more than we think.

I think the thing that I think about with this is not just, hey, this is good for. I don’t know, it’s entertaining to me. It’s much more. No, this impacts your physical health. It impacts your forever, your entire future. It impacts your family. It impacts every moment of every day. If you are walking with this sort of sense of the supernatural and eternal, eternal heart and mindset. So I love so much what you’re doing. Tell us a little bit more about “Seeing the Supernatural,” your new book.

Exploring Supernatural Phenomena

LEE STROBEL: Yeah. I mean, I look at things like near death experiences, deathbed visions, documented miracles, personal experiences with God that are supernatural.

DR. JOSH AXE: Yeah.

LEE STROBEL: What else? Lots of different areas. The mystical dreams that are happening among.

DR. JOSH AXE: Muslims in Colossus I was reading up on, it’s like a lot of Muslims are seeing Jesus in their dreams.

Jesus Dreams Among Muslims

LEE STROBEL: It’s been estimated as many as a third of Muslims who become Christians have had a Jesus dream. And how this happened. And again, I’m after corroboration, so I want to know, could this just be something in their subconscious? It’s a dream after all. And no, it’s not. How do we know?

Well, first of all, a devout Muslim has no incentive to have a dream about God and Jesus Christ, especially in a way that could lead them into apostasy, maybe a death sentence in some cultures. So they don’t have an incentive to do this.

But what happens in these things is they don’t go to sleep, have a dream about Jesus and wake up as a Christian. The dreams point them towards something external that corroborates this experience.

So I’ll give you an example. There’s a woman named Noor. She had eight children. Some Muslim. Cairo. She has a Jesus dream. Jesus is walking with her along the lakeshore. She is mesmerized by Jesus. She said, “Here he is, he’s a man. And I don’t feel shame that I’m in his presence for the first time in my life. I feel love, I feel grace, I feel kindness and goodness.” And she’s enthralled by Jesus.

And she says, “Jesus, why do you appear to me? I’m just a poor mother of eight children. Why do you appear to me?” And Jesus said, “My friend will explain to you why tomorrow.” And she said, “Who’s your friend?” And Jesus points to a guy she didn’t realize was walking with them along the lakeshore. She was so mesmerized by Jesus. There was a guy walking with them. He said, “My friend will tell you.”

She wakes up the next day. She goes to a crowded marketplace in Cairo on Friday, chaotic. And she sees that man from her dreams. And she goes up to, “You’re the one.” He says, “Whoa, what are you talking about?” Same eye, same glasses, same face. Same clothes. “You’re the one.” He said, “Wait a minute. Did you have a dream about Jesus last night?” “Yes.”

Turned out he was an underground church planter. He wasn’t going to go to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on Friday afternoon because it’s so chaotic, but he felt like God had a mission for him. So he came that day. He took her aside, opened the Bible and shared the gospel.

That’s how these things work. That’s corroboration. It’s not just something happened inside somebody’s head. There’s an external event that validates it. And these things are so common that you can pick up the newspaper sometimes in Cairo and there’ll be an ad, and the ad says, “Call this number and we’ll tell you about the man in white you met in your dream last night.” That’s how common it is.

DR. JOSH AXE: It’s so powerful.

LEE STROBEL: And I interview the world’s leading expert on that in my book, “Seeing the Supernatural.” And he said, “Lee, I could pick up the phone right now. I could call Kuwait. I could call Saudi Arabia. I could call Iran. I’ll give you five more stories.” This is breaking out all over the Middle East.

Closing Thoughts

DR. JOSH AXE: That’s amazing. It’s amazing. Well, thanks so much, Lee, for coming on. And I just want to encourage everybody to check out his new book, “Seeing the Supernatural.” It’s in bookstores nationwide, Amazon.com and I just want to encourage everybody to walk with that sense of the supernatural, walk with that sense of there’s an eternity, because it will impact your life for the good in such a powerful way.

And, Lee, again, it’s just been an honor having you on today, and we’d love to hear from you on YouTube. If you’re watching on YouTube, let us know. Have you ever had a supernatural experience? Have you ever known anyone who has? We’d love to hear from you as well.

I just want to say thank you to all of you that are subscribed to the podcast. It’s one of the greatest things you can do to support the channel and allow me to bring on amazing guests here like Lee. So thanks for subscribing.

Also, there are so many people who are on the borderline of sort of doubting the supernatural. Maybe there are people that are so hungry for the spiritual today that this might be a great inspiration to them. So thanks so much for sharing this as well. And I’ll see you next time on the Dr. Josh Axe Show.

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