Shawn Ryan Show: SRS #265 with Lee Strobel (Transcript)

He’s probably like, oh s* now.

But I think it’s just important. And also all these people are coming back to Christ or coming to Christ and there’s a lot of questions. And so I just, I think we don’t all know where to look. But you’re a great resource.

The Importance of Asking Questions

LEE STROBEL: You know, yes, there are a lot of questions and that’s a good thing. I think a lot of people, especially people who are Christians, who church and they’ve got a question, they’ve got a doubt, they don’t want to say anything because they’re afraid, oh, you’re going to think I don’t have faith. Or you’re going to look down your nose at me and unfortunately hold it in.

And it’s like a little kid. When a little kid has a nightmare, he jumps out of bed and he runs into his parents room and he jumps into bed and he’s sweating and his heart’s pounding and they say what’s wrong? What’s wrong? Oh, I had this dream, this horrible dream. Said, well tell us about the dream. Oh well, there was this monster under my bed and he had three eyes and he was. And then you start to laugh, because you let it out, you talk about it.

And if you hold it in, it’s going to erode your soul, questions and doubts. So I say let it out, talk about it, investigate it, do what I did as an atheist and check out these things. You’ll come to a better resolution of it that’ll give you a solid faith. So I hope people don’t shrink back when they have doubts or questions.

It doesn’t surprise God. God’s not going, what, what do you mean? You don’t think such and such. When John the Baptist, who if anybody should know the identity of Jesus was John the Baptist. He’s the one that pointed Jesus as “I behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

But then he gets arrested, he gets thrown in prison. Now he’s got doubts, now he’s got questions. But what does he do? Does he allow that to just erode his soul? No, he gets some friends together say, look, go track down Jesus and ask him point blank, are you the one we’ve been waiting for? We’d wait for somebody else.

So they track down Jesus and they say, Jesus, John’s, he got busted and now he’s freaking out. So would you just tell us once and for all, are you the one we’ve been waiting for? And how does Jesus, does he get mad? How dare John of all people have the temerity to express a hesitation?

No. He says, look, go back to John, tell him what you have seen and heard. The blind receive sight, the lame walk. Those who have leprosy are cured. The deaf hear, the dead are raised. And the good news is preached to the poor. Go back, tell him the evidence that you’ve seen with your own eyes that convinces you that I am the one I claim to be.

So they go back and they tell John. But this doesn’t destroy John as having any role in the kingdom of God because he dared to ask a question or express a doubt. It’s after this that Jesus gets up before a group and he says, “Among those born of women, there’s no one greater than John.” John, the guy who dared to ask a question.

So we should feel liberated as Christians or as spiritual seekers. Say, it’s okay to have questions. It’s natural, it’s expected. Just kind of do the due diligence. Go to good sources and check it out from reputable people who’ve got a track record of accessing Scripture in a way that makes sense and is consistent with the intent of the writers.

SHAWN RYAN: I love that. Thank you. Thank you.

This Year’s Focus: The Birth of Jesus

SHAWN RYAN: So last year we did all about the life of Jesus Christ, and this year I want to talk all about Christmas. The Virgin Mary. Bethlehem. The journey, why she had to be a virgin. And a lot of Jesus stuff, too.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah. Awesome. I love that.

SHAWN RYAN: I thought that would be a really good for our next Christmas interview.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah. Excellent.

SHAWN RYAN: So a couple of things to knock out here real quickly. You know, you always get a gift when you come on. Nothing’s changed.

LEE STROBEL: Come on. Thank God.

SHAWN RYAN: Vigilance Elite. Gummy Bears.

LEE STROBEL: Man. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re welcome. You’re welcome. And we got a Patreon account. And you know that it’s quite the community, and they’re the reason that we get to sit here with each other today. We had a lot of good questions, but I’m going to hijack the question.

LEE STROBEL: Sure.

SHAWN RYAN: And so I’m always picking your brain and John’s brain and Todd’s brain and Ruslan’s brain or whoever I bring in to chat about the good word. Right. But I’m curious, what have you learned this year? What did you learn? I’m always learning from you guys.

LEE STROBEL: Great question.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m curious what you’ve learned this year.

What Lee Learned While Updating The Case for Christmas

LEE STROBEL: I learned a lot this year. And I say that because about 20 years ago, I did a book called The Case for Christmas. And it came out, I don’t know, back in 2002, something like that. And now the new book is a complete rewrite and complete revision and updating of that book.

So I had to update it, I had to do the research, and I learned so much in the research of that book that changed my perspective on Christmas, change my perspective on the Gospels, change my perspective on Jesus. Just a lot of things about some of the translations that may not be giving us the best picture of what really took place.

There’s one Greek word. If you get that Greek word wrong, it kind of changes everything. And I think a lot of people have gotten it wrong. And then the questions, things like, things that everybody wonders about, like, why do we celebrate it on December 25? I had my theories about that, but now there’s been some more recent scholarly research done into that, so now we got good evidence why we do celebrate on December 25th.

So I just kind of, by updating the book, I kind of updated my own knowledge about Christmas, and it just made this Christmas so much more fun because I get to tell. Hey, you know what? I get to tell people all this fascinating stuff.

SHAWN RYAN: Good. Well, I can’t wait to hear everything you’ve learned. So last thing I’d like to just, you know, we always kick it off with a prayer. So if you don’t mind, I’d love for you to lead us. And then I may insert a couple of things here at the end.

Opening Prayer

LEE STROBEL: Lord, thanks for this opportunity to talk to Shawn. See him again, and hang out with his folks, his people here at his place. It’s just such an encouragement to me and such a joy to do.

And we pray that as we talk about Christmas, the incarnation of the Son of God, this monumental miracle that took place 2,000 years ago, that it would, first of all, encourage people who are your followers and embolden them and give them confidence in what we believe.

But I pray for those that are kind of spiritually curious. They’re not sure what they believe. They’re on a journey. They’re questioning things. They’re doubting things. Lord, I pray you use our conversation to point them toward you. In Jesus name.

In Jesus’ name. And I would just like to add, you know, that there are a lot of folks out there looking for answers, as Lee kind of just mentioned. But there’s also a lot of people out there that are lonely on Christmas and other holidays, and we just ask that you be with them. And we hope that we can bring them at least a little bit of joy through our interview today, which we’ll be releasing on Christmas. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

LEE STROBEL: Amen. Thank you. That’s great.

SHAWN RYAN: All right, Lee. Thank you. Yeah. All right. So, bam, with all this stuff that you’ve learned, I don’t need. You just rewrote my whole outline. So we’re going to go down a lot of rabbit holes. So I have an outline and I would just, anything that you’ve learned, if you think it’s appropriate to share in that portion of the interview, please do, because I am fascinated to hear, you know, with what you’ve learned. But I’d like to start off with the Virgin Mary.

LEE STROBEL: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: So when did we know that? I have. When did we know that Jesus was going to come from the Virgin Mary?

The Prophecy of the Virgin Birth

LEE STROBEL: We knew it 700 years before it happened. The prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah 7, verse 14, foretold that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. Now, that gets a little controversial because skeptics will say sometimes, well, wait a minute. The word “alma” in the Greek that’s used there doesn’t always necessarily mean virgin. If they meant to use virgin, they would use the word “bethulah,” which is another Hebrew word. And so was he really talking about a virgin birth of the Messiah?

Well, the answer is there was no single word in ancient Hebrew that always meant virgin. They didn’t have a word in their vocabulary. The word that’s used, “alma,” means young maiden. And a young maiden was presumed to be a virgin in those days. The other word that people want them to use, “bethulah,” actually, is used sometimes of widows who were not virgins. So they did use the correct word, a young maiden, a virgin, is to give birth.

In fact, before Jesus was even born, when the scholars translated the Hebrew scriptures into the Greek, the word that they chose for that translation, this even before Jesus was born, was virgin. So they got it. So this prediction 700 years in advance was that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.

Other people say, no, no, no. That actual passage, that was a prophecy for King Ahaz, who lived back in those days. And yes, there is stuff in there about King Ahaz. It’s a double fulfillment of that passage, but it’s in a nest of Messianic prophecies. Isaiah, chapter 7, the Messiah is going to be born of a virgin. In Isaiah chapter 9, he is already born and he is declared mighty God. In Isaiah chapter 11, he is reigning with the power of the Spirit. So this is in a cluster of Messianic prophecies.

Besides which, this King Ahaz, he was in trouble back then. There were a couple of armies who were trying to kill King Ahaz. And so God was trying to reassure him, hey, look, I’m going to take care of you, don’t worry about it. You’re going to come out fine. But King Ahaz was of the house of David. If he had been killed as these enemies were trying to kill him back then, that would have ended the line of David. The Messiah was to come through the line of David. So the fact that Ahaz needed to survive this challenge to his life was very relevant to the birth ultimately of the Messiah. So we knew 700 years before Jesus was born that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.

SHAWN RYAN: I want to ask you. This is the phone call that I took when you were. So I bring up Todd a lot. Todd is who I do my Bible study with. Every time I mention his name, he’s like, oh, boy, where are we going? But I remember the very first Bible study I ever did, ever did with Todd. And just ever. And we were talking about Genesis.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

The Seed of a Woman

SHAWN RYAN: And it was Genesis 3:15. And he says, and I have this recording. Maybe I’ll play it for you if I don’t describe it right. He says that God is basically telling Satan that his nemesis that’s going to crush him is going to be from the seed of a woman.

LEE STROBEL: That’s right.

SHAWN RYAN: But Todd then also says the woman does not have a seed.

LEE STROBEL: That’s right.

SHAWN RYAN: Man is the one that has a seed. And so we knew all the way back in Genesis when God told Eve that the Messiah is going to come from a virgin. So through this, you know, kind of in a cryptic type way. Is that a prophecy right there?

LEE STROBEL: It is a prophecy. You’re exactly right. You know, a female child has two X chromosomes. A male child has an X and a Y chromosome. The Y comes from the male. And so in order for Mary to give birth to a male child, she would have to have a Y chromosome in her ovum. How did that happen? She wouldn’t have. She just have two X’s. She would not have the male, the Y chromosome. So how can it come from the seed of a woman? How does she get a Y chromosome?

Well, this was a big problem for one of the main, biggest defenders of Christianity in the world to earn PhDs. His name is Dr. William Lane Craig. Dr. Craig doubted the virgin birth because he said, Mary can’t give birth to a male child without a literal husband, you know, having sex with her because she doesn’t have the Y chromosome. So it bothered him.

And then he said, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Scientists all around the world now agree the universe began to exist at some point in the past. Therefore, whatever begins to exist has a cause behind it. We now know the universe began to exist. So there must be a cause behind the universe. What kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence?

It must be transcendent or separate from creation. It must be immaterial or spirit because it existed before the physical world. It must be eternal or timeless because it existed before time came into being, physical time at the creation. Must be powerful, given the immensity of the creation event. Must be smart, given the precision of the creation event. Must be personal because he had to make the decision to create. Must be creative, because look at the beauty of the cosmos. Must be loving because he crafted such a perfect habitat for us to flourish in. And the Occam’s razor, which is a scientific principle, tells us it would be just one creator.

That is a description, transcendent, immaterial power. That is a description of the God of the Bible. And so he said, wait a minute. If God created all that there is, for him to create a Y chromosome in Mary supernaturally would be child’s play. And he overcame that objection he had to the how could Mary have given birth to a male child without the Y chromosome?

So it was from the seed of Mary, as opposed from a male contribution to the genetics of the child. So God could create genetic code. He can create the Y chromosome. That’s nothing compared to the creation of the cosmos, which is unbelievable. So that kind of satisfied for him the sort of the possibility that God could have pulled this off.

The Importance of the Virgin Birth

SHAWN RYAN: Why was it so important that Jesus was born of a virgin?

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, very important.

SHAWN RYAN: Because that’s a miracle in itself. So I do understand the symbolism.

LEE STROBEL: Yes, it was a miracle in itself. But also it meant that he would not be tainted by original sin or a corrupt moral nature that has come down ever since Adam messed up. And it’s kind of corrupted human being. The line of human beings had to be an interruption in that somehow. Otherwise she would have inherited this corrupt moral nature that we all inherit.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you saying that because she wasn’t married?

LEE STROBEL: No, I’m saying that because, you know, all humankind has got this corrupt moral nature. But here’s what happened in Luke 1, verse 35, as he describes the virgin birth. Luke says, through an angel, Mary is told, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and overshadow you.” So that, in other words, as a consequence of that, the child will be born holy and will be declared the Son of God. He will become holy means sinless. He will be sinless.

So in other words, there is something about the conception of the child through the Holy Spirit that has created sinlessness in the baby who is born. Because he uses that word “so that” the Holy Spirit is going to conceive the child so that he will be holy. He will be without sin. Okay, we don’t understand that process necessarily, but it is the intervention of the Holy Spirit that interrupts that lineage of corrupt moral nature and stops it so that this child is born without original sin.

SHAWN RYAN: So it’s not the, it’s not that, how do I say that? It’s not that there was no sex. There was no, there was no sex to conceive. That’s not it. It is, it is wiping out a lineage that would have had…

LEE STROBEL: Well, there is. Yeah. There was no intercourse that they had before for Jesus to be born. So there was no male contribution of a Y chromosome through normal sexual intercourse. And know that. But that isn’t what eliminates sin from Jesus. Because Mary was a sinner. The Bible says she was a sinner. Now, Catholics would disagree with that, but I look at the Bible, it says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Doesn’t say, except for Mary.

So, yes, I believe Mary was a sinner. I believe we’re all sinners. Mary needed forgiveness, just as we all need forgiveness. So what the conception by the Holy Spirit did is it interrupted that process and allow the baby to be born without sin.

So, you know, Catholics believe in the Immaculate Conception. That doesn’t refer to the virgin birth of Jesus. That refers to the conception of Mary. They believe that Mary’s mother was sinless and gave birth to Mary, who was sinless. I just don’t see that evidence in Scripture. Personally, I just don’t see it. I don’t see the evidence of that.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, if Mary was a sinner, then why was she the one that was chosen to give birth to Jesus?

Mary: A Woman of Great Faith

LEE STROBEL: Because even as a sinner, she was apparently a—well, I love Mary. I mean, she must have been a remarkable young woman and young woman, teenager. She must have been a remarkable woman because the angel says that God has found favor in you.

She must have been a woman of great devotion, great faith, great love for God and for people of all humankind. Why did he choose this teenager to be the vessel through whom the God of the universe, Jesus would be incarnated into our world? What was it about her?

And that’s what I love about her, that she was—must have been. In fact, he talked about, who would you like to hang out with in heaven? I want to meet Mary. Yeah. I want to meet Paul. I want to meet Luke. I want to meet all these people. I want to hang out with Mary and say, you got to tell me what it was like to be the mother of Jesus, and I want to hear the stories, and I just admire her so. But was she a sinner?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

LEE STROBEL: The Bible says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But the Holy Spirit is what interrupted the transmission of that sin to Jesus. And he always existed. He is now incarnated into this world as a sinless, fully God and fully man at the same time.

The Annunciation

SHAWN RYAN: Now, when did Mary find out that she was going to carry the Son of God?

LEE STROBEL: Shortly before she was born. I mean, this angel appears to her and begins to tell her that she is most favored of God and she’s going to give birth to the one who will ultimately rule the entire cosmos. And she said, “How’s that possible? I’m a virgin.”

And he says, basically, “Don’t worry about it. The Holy Spirit will overshadow you. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the one you give birth to will be holy. He will be the Son of God.”

SHAWN RYAN: And how did that angel appear?

LEE STROBEL: Well, we don’t have a lot of detail. We just know that he appeared to her. There are a lot of angelic encounters in the pages of scripture, about 200 of them. And they tend to differ about how the angels can—angel can manifest himself and in different ways.

And it’s always as a male. In the Bible, when an angel manifests himself, it’s always as a male. But in ancient—I found cases in ancient Jewish literature where angels manifested themselves as females. There’s no reason he couldn’t. It just happens to be—I think that in the cases in the Bible, they’re manifested as an angel, as a male.

And so I don’t—it doesn’t describe him. It doesn’t give us a description of what he looked like. But she knew he was an angel. I mean, I don’t know if I told you about this last time, but I had an angelic encounter myself when I was 12 years old. And I knew intuitively this was an angel intuitively. And he was talking about heaven at the time. It all kind of fit together.

But he didn’t have big wings. He didn’t have a halo. He didn’t have feathers or anything like that. But I knew intuitively that this was—this was a messenger of God. So we don’t have Mary describing it.

Lee Strobel’s Angelic Encounter

SHAWN RYAN: Did it scare you?

LEE STROBEL: It startled me. It’s the only vision or dream I remember from my childhood. I was 12 years old. I’m making a sandwich in my kitchen, and this angel appears. He kind of descends. And I knew intuitively, but I wasn’t scared. I—because he was talking about heaven. He was extolling heaven, how wonderful heaven is.

And I listened for a minute, and I’m making my sandwich. And I said, “Well, I’m going to go there someday.” So I thought, everybody goes to heaven, right? I said, “I’m going to go there someday.”

And he looked at me, said, “How do you know?”

“What do you mean, how do I know? I’m a good kid. I get good grades in school. I pretty much obey my parents.” I’m trying to justify my goodness, enter into heaven.

And he looked at me and he said, “That doesn’t matter.”

And a chill went down. My—how can that not matter? All my efforts to be dutiful and compliant as a kid, you say it doesn’t matter. And then he said, “Someday you’ll understand.” And he disappeared.

And I—I was embarrassed by that. I didn’t tell many people about it. But 16 years, I became an atheist because I thought it was a bad pizza. I had a bad pizza. You know, that was just weird. But I couldn’t get out of my mind.

And so 16 years later, as an atheist, my wife drags me to a church. And I’m sitting in the church and I hear the gospel for the first time. It’s not how good we try to behave that opens the door of heaven. It is a free gift of God’s grace that we need to receive in repentance and faith.

And my mind flashed back. That’s what the angel was telling me 16 years ago. Number one, he told me something I did not know. Salvation is a free gift. You can’t earn it. And secondly, he made a prophecy. “Someday you’ll understand.” And 16 years later, I understood. Wow.

So I was always embarrassed by—and then I’m being ordained as a pastor. And when you’re ordained to have all these theologians there questioning you about your theology to make sure you’re okay, you know? And I’m thinking to myself, do I tell them about this angelic vision I had? They’re going to think I’m nuts. They’re going to disqualify me from being a pastor. But I can’t hide it. I got to tell him.

So I said, “Guys, I just have to tell you something that happened to me. And it’s as real as anything that’s ever happened in my life. It’s the only vision or dream I remember from my childhood. Let me tell you.” I told them the whole story.

And they looked at me. You know what they said? “Yeah, we hear that kind of thing all the time.” He said, “That’s—that’s fine.” And it’s a sigh of relief. But I was, you know, like a lot of Americans, I was embarrassed by the supernatural. You know, we think it’s a little weird. We, you know, so I feel like—

SHAWN RYAN: That’s starting to go away.

LEE STROBEL: I, I think it is. I hope it is. You know, I wrote that book, Seeing the Supernatural to try to document that there is a realm beyond what we can see and touch and put in a test tube. And it’s been amazing how the response to that. And I think you’re right. I think people are recognizing that what we see and touch, that that is reality. But there is a reality that goes beyond that.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

Mary’s Pregnancy

SHAWN RYAN: So let’s go back to Mary.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Was this, was this a, was this like a traditional nine month pregnancy was sped up? She cared.

LEE STROBEL: I believe it was. It was and I’ll tell you why. It ties into an interesting thing I learned as I did this investigation. In earliest Christianity, they did not observe birthdays. That thought it was a waste of time. When you, why do you celebrate a birthday?

In fact, they would make fun of the Romans. We’ve found some letters from some Christian leaders making fun of the Romans. “Why do you celebrate birthdays? That’s silly.” You know, they would only celebrate the days of martyrdom. People who died for their faith, they’d remember and celebrate those days, but not birthdays.

So nobody knows when Jesus was born? The Bible doesn’t say. And nobody cared back then. Well, over 150 years later, people began to wonder, “Hey, when was Jesus born? What was the day that he was born?”

Well, there was a very strong belief back then among Christians, a connection between creation and redemption. A very strong connection. And they believed—sounds a little weird to us, but they believed the connection between creation and redemption was so strong that the Messiah would have been conceived on the same day of the calendar that he died.

So in the year 200, Tertullian, who was a Christian leader, said, “Well, I can figure out when Jesus died.” So based on the Roman calendar of the day, he determined that Jesus died on March 25. Therefore, they concluded he must have been conceived by the Holy Spirit on March 25. Fast forward nine months, December 25. He would have been born then on December 25.

And many scholars believe that is where they came up with December 25th as a date to celebrate for the birth of Jesus.

The Origin of December 25th

SHAWN RYAN: Interesting. Yeah.

LEE STROBEL: In fact, very early. There’s a, there’s a guy named Sextus Julius Africanus.

SHAWN RYAN: He was conceived on March 25th.

LEE STROBEL: That’s right.

SHAWN RYAN: Nine months later is December 25th.

LEE STROBEL: Exactly. Yep.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s the first time I’ve heard that.

LEE STROBEL: Isn’t it fascinating? It’s fascinating.

SHAWN RYAN: All kinds of wazoo.

LEE STROBEL: Crazy, crazy things.

SHAWN RYAN: Maybe, maybe not crazy, but we don’t know.

LEE STROBEL: But you know that. I think that makes a lot of sense based on their beliefs. Now, there was a guy named Julius Sextus Africanus. He was a very early church historian. And in the very early 2000 A.D. he was writing a chronology about Christian events.

And he said in there that Jesus was conceived on March 25. How would he know? How could he have possibly known that the Holy Spirit conceived him? Because Tertullian had determined that he had died on March 25. And that’s why it goes down in the history of Christianity as being the day of conception. And therefore, nine months later is December 25th.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Okay.

LEE STROBEL: So that, I think, is a fast. And that’s one of the things I learned as I did the research for the updated book.

SHAWN RYAN: That is fascinating, isn’t it? Yeah. I’ve heard a lot of different—

LEE STROBEL: Me too.

SHAWN RYAN: Theories.

LEE STROBEL: Me too. That one, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Lines up the best.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, I think so. For my opinion, there were some early Christian thinkers who said, “Well, based on the fact that the shepherds were in the fields with their sheep at night,” they, they said, “We think Jesus was born on May 20.” So there you go.

SHAWN RYAN: All right.

LEE STROBEL: I mean, so on my calendar, I always mark May 20th. I make it kind of a special day because I figure I don’t want to miss it just in case. Yeah. So I’ve got December 25th. I got May 20th. Kind of a backup Christmas.

Joseph’s Role

SHAWN RYAN: So who, who was, who was Joseph?

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, Joseph was probably a carpenter. Some think he was a stone cutter or both. And a great man of faith. He was of the line of David. This is important because of the conception of Jesus through the line of David. Even though he wasn’t the biological father, it was still through this, through this relationship that he was born.

Joseph died fairly young. We don’t know exactly when, but all of a sudden he’s not there in the Gospels anymore. And here’s an interesting—how old is Jesus?

SHAWN RYAN: When—that’s that when—when he stops appearing in the Gospels?

LEE STROBEL: We don’t really know.

SHAWN RYAN: We don’t know.

LEE STROBEL: We don’t know the exact timing of when he died. Was it before Jesus ministry or shortly thereafter? We don’t know. But he disappears.

And what’s interesting is in Mark, chapter six, verse three, Mark, who’s writing the perspective of Peter, who is one of the inner circle with Jesus, he refers to Jesus as Mary’s son. Well, in first century Hebrew culture, you would never refer to someone as their mother’s son. Even if the father were deceased, you’d always refer to him as the father, Joseph’s son. It should have been Joseph’s son, Jesus.

But he didn’t say that. He says, Mary’s son, Jesus. And I think it was Mark’s way, kind of a wink to say, “Yeah, I know he wasn’t the biological father. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit.” Interesting. Yeah.

So it’s kind of an interesting little—but anybody who’s familiar with Hebrew culture would tell you right off the bat, “Oh, wait a minute. He’s saying something there. He would never call her Mary’s son.”

SHAWN RYAN: So what was he then? Was he chosen? Was he in some type of a relationship with Mary? What was his role in Jesus life? Was he a father figure? Was he a protector? What?

LEE STROBEL: No, he’s—he seemed to have come into the scene because of his relationship with Mary. He was going to marry Mary. They were engaged, and they had kind of a ritualistic thing back then where you have a period of kind of engagement. Your betrothed, they would say.

SHAWN RYAN: So they weren’t probably arranged marriages.

The Lineage and Role of Joseph

LEE STROBEL: Probably so. Probably so. And Joseph comes from the line of David, which is important because the prophecy was that the Messiah would come from the line of David. And Mary, of course, was a wonderful young woman.

And, you know, traditionally, your betrothed gets pregnant. Not from you. You divorce her. Yeah, a divorce. I mean, you’d walk away. He doesn’t do that. He’s reassured by an angel that, no, this is okay. This is the Holy Spirit’s doing, and he stays with her.

And, you know, so he apparently was like her, a great person of God that God trusted to be the conduit through whom the Son of God would enter into humankind.

SHAWN RYAN: Interesting, interesting. And then I want to go through the whole thing. I mean, why Bethlehem?

Why Bethlehem?

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, Bethlehem’s important because it is the town of David. And there was a census that was taking place. And here’s another thing that just came out in recent years. You asked me what I learned new.

Many scholars criticize Luke, who wrote the Gospel and the book of Acts, who says, by the way, “I carefully investigated everything so I could write an orderly account about the certainty of what took place.” So Luke is saying, hey, I checked all this out. I think he interviewed Mary. If not, he interviewed Joanna and Susanna, who were friends of Mary, who he mentions in his Gospel.

So Luke is writing about this experience. What was it that you want to know specifically?

SHAWN RYAN: Again, why Bethlehem?

LEE STROBEL: Oh, that’s right. Okay, so people thought that Luke was wrong in his telling of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem. And the reason was Luke said there was a census, and he said it was the first census when Quirinius was governor. And the census said you have to go to your hometown.

Well, Joseph was of the lineage of David. Bethlehem was his hometown. That was the town of David. And so he had to go with Mary to Bethlehem to register for the census.

But critics have said, no, no, no, Luke’s got this all wrong because the census took place when Quirinius became governor in 6 A.D. and yet King Herod was still alive. According to Luke, at the time of this, Herod died in 4 BC so that’s a 10 year gap. Herod died and then 10 years later, Quirinius becomes governor and the census brings Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up. Something’s wrong.

And people would criticize Luke and said, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Well, turns out, as usual, Luke was right in the first place, because the verse can be translated, “The census took place before Quirinius was governor.” So that would account for an earlier census.

There were two censuses. The one when he became governor became famous. It was written by a lot of historians because the Jewish people rebelled against it and there were a lot of conflicts and so forth. And so that census became famous. But there was apparently an earlier census that didn’t get that much. Nobody cared about it because nobody rebelled. And that was the one that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.

But there was a recent discovery by a Swiss scholar where she found that a guy named Justin Martyr, who was a very early Christian defender of the faith, who said that Quirinius was the procurator at the time of the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. A procurator is someone under the governor who would actually run a census.

What’s interesting is in the Gospel of Luke where it says that the census took place when Quirinius was governor. The word “governor” there is not the typical word you would use for governor. It’s pretty elastic in the Greek, and it could very well mean procurator.

And so what apparently happened is that this guy Quirinius, when he was procurator, was assigned to run a census to have all people return to their hometown to be counted. And so Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem, and then later he was elevated to governor. And then he did another census in 6 A.D. and that’s the one that got all the publicity.

So they went to Bethlehem because Quirinius the procurator issued a decree saying that everyone had to go to their hometown. Now, you may think that’s weird. Everybody’s got to go to their hometown to be counted. And yet we have documents from other censuses that say the same thing.

SHAWN RYAN: I guess this is pre Internet.

LEE STROBEL: It was pre Internet. That’s right. That’s right. So we have a document from the year 108 all the way over in Egypt, and it talks about, hey, you got to go to your hometown to be counted because, and this would make sense that this would be, have a census at that time, because Herod was having some conflict with his higher ups.

And it would have been a time, a good time. And Herod was sick, he was having health problems. Would have been a good time to get a good census before he passed away. So that does make sense. So that’s why they’re in Bethlehem.

By the way, the birth of Jesus, of the Messiah in Bethlehem was predicted and prophesied 500 years in advance by the Prophet Micah. In Micah 5, verse 2, talks about the Messiah will be born in this little town, 500 people called Bethlehem. And sure enough, that’s what happened. Wow.

SHAWN RYAN: But it was just, it was just for a census.

LEE STROBEL: It was just for, and we don’t know how long they lingered, how long they stayed. They may have stayed for a couple of months or whatever, and he may have owned property there, I don’t know. But yeah, that’s what brought them down to Bethlehem at that time.

SHAWN RYAN: That is not what I was expecting.

LEE STROBEL: Really.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but it wasn’t. Yeah, it wasn’t to comply with government counting.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, government, yeah. But there you go, government getting their nose in.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow, that’s interesting. That is interesting. So what was the, let’s talk about the star.

The Star of Bethlehem

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, that’s a very interesting question. The Bible refers, first of all to the Magi who were guided by a star to come worship the child who was born. Who are the Magi? We don’t know a lot about them. The Bible doesn’t go into a lot of detail. But Magi were not looked well upon by Jewish people of the day. Daniel, in his book in the Old Testament, trashes them.

SHAWN RYAN: What were they?

LEE STROBEL: They were astrologers. They were divinators, they were magicians. They studied the stars. They were astrologers, that kind of thing. And Daniel called them enchanters. He trashed them.

Which tells us that Matthew, in talking about the magi, he wasn’t making this up because you’d never make up the magi coming to worship because they didn’t like the magi. So the magi were from the far east, we don’t know exactly where. Persia maybe. Probably.

And so they come seeking the Christ child. Why? Because they saw a star. Now, what was the star? The word in Greek there for star is flexible. It could mean any celestial body, could mean a comet, could mean a planetary conjunction, could mean a star. It was a kind of a flexible word, but it was a star that told them that the Hebrew Messiah, so to speak, is coming. The king of the Jews has been born.

They see the star. Why didn’t everybody else see it? Why don’t other historians say, oh, yeah, there was that great star? Well, there are some theories about that we can get into.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean, if they’re astrologers, they’re always looking up there and they probably map the sky.

LEE STROBEL: Exactly. They see things that you and I wouldn’t notice. What could the star have been?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, so, like, I got a question. So back then, did they know the difference? But I don’t think they did. Did they know the difference between stars and planets?

LEE STROBEL: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, pretty much. And they knew the difference between celestial bodies and how they wrote. Oh, they were very careful to document things that way. And so they see this star.

My theory is it was a nova. A nova is a star that burns brighter for a while and then grows dimmer and then brighter for a while. And you and I wouldn’t have noticed it. But to them, especially where it was positioned in the sky would tell them, oh, something big is going on.

I think it was a nova. There was a nova that was seen by Chinese astronomers for 70 days in about the year 5 BC which would have been before Herod died in 4 BC so it could have been that nova.

Others say there was a planetary conjunction, in other words, an unusual conjunction between the planets of Jupiter and Saturn that took place about 7 BC in the constellation of Pisces. I wouldn’t care about that. But they would have to them, according to Raymond Brown, great scholar, he said to them that would have sent the signal that a Hebrew king has come into the world who will ultimately rule everything. So from its, from that conjunction, they read into it astrologically and so forth and came to that conclusion.

I think we don’t know for sure it wasn’t Halley’s comet. Some people used to say it was Halley’s Comet that was in 12 BC that was too early. It could have been the things I mentioned.

And so this star causes them to go to Jerusalem because they’re looking for the King of the Jews. Where do you go? You go to Jerusalem. And they said to Herod, hey, where is this guy born? And Herod freaks out. What? What do you mean a king? What do you mean a king of the Jews is born? He’s freaking out.

He brings in his Hebrew scholars, says, hey, where’s the Messiah going to be born? And they say, well, it’s easy. That’s easy. Micah 5, verse 2. He’s going to be born in Bethlehem. Okay, thanks. He gets the Magi. He says, hey, guys, go to Bethlehem.

So the Magi’s head out for Bethlehem, and as they do, they see that star again. My theory is it’s the same supernova that God had supernaturally moved. I wouldn’t have noticed another star in the sky. You wouldn’t have noticed it. They noticed it and it guided them to the place where it says not the baby was. Says where the child was. Because we don’t know how long after the birth this was. Now, Jesus being referred to as a child, not just a baby.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, okay, so maybe this wasn’t the night of the birth.

LEE STROBEL: No, it wasn’t the night of the birth. For sure.

SHAWN RYAN: It was not the night of the birth.

The Significance of the Magi

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, it was later. So that is apparently, now, here’s the significance of the magi, theologically. The magi brought gifts that were, in the Old Testament, it mentions certain gifts that were fit for a king. Three of those gifts.

One was gold, referring to royal nature. One was frankincense, a spice that referred to a priestly function. And interestingly, the third one was myrrh. Myrrh was used in embalming dead people in those days.

To me, that’s foreshadowing. Why was Jesus born into this world to die? He was to ultimately give up his life to pay for the sins of humankind. And I think the gift of the myrrh is a way of almost saying, yeah, this is for his ultimate death.

Now, it’s interesting. On the cross, when Jesus being crucified, they offered him a mixture of water and myrrh to ease the pain, and he refused it. So they give these gifts. They may have been emissaries of a king. That’s maybe why they came. Maybe a king sent them.

But here’s the theological significance, and I think this is, when I think about it, this is what blows my mind. For Jewish people of the first century, they thought the Messiah would be a political savior. He was going to overthrow the Romans. He was going to elevate the Jewish nation above every other nation. He was going to create this Jewish culture that dominates and that rules the world and so forth. He was going to be the Messiah, their answer to all.

But here come the Magi, pagans, gentiles. They come to do what? To worship the baby Jesus, the child Jesus. That theological significance is Jesus was not, he is for the Jewish people. But it goes beyond that, that Jesus is the savior, not just of the Jewish people, but for all humankind.

Even these Magi who were gentiles, who were pagans, even they came, sinners who came to worship. They were included in God’s plan of redemption. That to me was a real eye opening thing of these magi showing up to pay homage to Jesus.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Thank you. Thank you, Lee. Let’s take a quick break.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

The Historical Evidence Behind Jesus’s Birth

SHAWN RYAN: All right, Lee, we’re back from the break. And while we were on the break, you had mentioned that Mary and Joseph took the gold and sold it.

LEE STROBEL: They probably did. A lot of scholars believe, well, they had to finance their trip to Egypt. Because they’re avoiding Herod, who wanted to kill all the children who may be the threatening Messiah. And so how do they finance their trip to Egypt? Some scholars believe they took the gold that they got and fortuitously sold that so they could go off and protect themselves from the evil intentions of King Herod.

SHAWN RYAN: So do we know, I mean, earlier you had mentioned that, you know, the three wise men, you know, that they made—it didn’t look like that they were there the day of the birth.

LEE STROBEL: Right.

SHAWN RYAN: And so how old—is there any, do you have any thoughts on how old Jesus was when they arrived?

LEE STROBEL: Well, based on when that star first appeared, Herod said, “I’m going to kill all the male children in Bethlehem up to the age of two,” I think it was. So that gives some idea of the time frame.

Now, one of the criticisms you hear from skeptics is to say, “Well, wait a minute, you’re telling me that King Herod goes in and kills all these kids under the age of two in Bethlehem and nobody else in history reports it? I mean, shouldn’t Josephus, the historian from the first century, have said something about this?” And the answer is probably not.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, if a town of 500—

LEE STROBEL: It’s a town of 500. So how many kids under two would there be? Maybe a dozen or so. And it was in the middle of nowhere. I mean, it was not on a major highway, it wasn’t a major city. And Herod was a bloodthirsty king. He killed members of his own family. He was killing everybody.

And so it wouldn’t be news that he decided to kill a bunch of babies. And it took time for news to get out. Back then, there was no CNN, there was no Fox News. You know, there’s no satellite coverage. And so this took place in an obscure little town. And yeah, a couple of dozen kids were killed, which was, by the way, prophesied in the Old Testament as well. So this is another fulfillment of prophecy.

The Mathematical Impossibility of Coincidence

SHAWN RYAN: How?

LEE STROBEL: There was a prophecy about the weeping that would take place. And the context suggests that this is referring to the murder of the children in Bethlehem. So there’s so many ancient prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, so many that Jesus could not have intentionally fulfilled them.

In other words, one of the prophecies is that Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem before he was put to death. Well, so what? He could choose to do that. “Okay, I know there’s a prophecy about that. Go find me a donkey and I’ll ride it in. They’ll think I’m the Messiah.” You know, he could have arranged certain things.

But there are things he could not have arranged. His lineage he couldn’t arrange. He couldn’t have arranged that the soldiers gambled for his clothes when he was on the cross. He couldn’t have arranged for a lot of things, like where he was born. Daniel even prophesied the time frame in which he was born. There were all these things that he couldn’t have arranged.

So there was a scholar by the name of Dr. Peter Stoner, a mathematician at a college in California, and he said, “Wait a minute. Some of these prophecies could be mathematically quantifiable.” For instance, Micah 5, verse 2, says the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. How many people have been born in Bethlehem? We can calculate that.

So let’s get the ones that can be calculated and run the numbers. You know what they found? The odds of any human being coincidentally fulfilling just 48 of these ancient prophecies would be one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

LEE STROBEL: It ain’t going to happen. You get the numbers like that and you can confidently say that ain’t going to happen by chance. And yet Jesus did it in fulfillment to prove he is who he claimed to be—the Messiah, the unique son of God.

So there’s these prophecies that point to him, where he was born. That’s how they knew it was going to be in Bethlehem.

SHAWN RYAN: How many prophecies are there?

LEE STROBEL: Gosh, it depends on how you look at them. Some are more foreshadowings, a little less explicit. Some are very explicit. You know, for instance, Isaiah 53 in the Old Testament, this Hebrew writing written hundreds of years before Jesus was born. If I were to read that to you right now and say, “Who does this describe?” you would say, “Jesus.” It was written hundreds of years before he was born.

It is a picture of the suffering Messiah. And it’s so powerful that many Jewish people become Christians just reading this prophecy in Isaiah. I have a friend named Louis Lapides. He was a Vietnam veteran, came back from Nam, walking down the sidewalk in Hollywood, and he runs into a street preacher. “Yeah, Jesus. Jesus.” And “I don’t believe. I’m Jewish. I don’t believe in Jesus.”

And he said, “Well, why don’t you read this?” And he reads it, and he realizes this is from Isaiah, the Jewish prophet Isaiah, hundreds of years in advance. “This is Jesus.” But you know what he said? “That can’t be true. The Christians must have changed it.”

So he called up a relative. He says, “Send me the original Hebrew scripture so I can compare.” So he gets them. He looks at it—it’s the same, and he becomes not only a Christian, he becomes a pastor in Thousand Oaks, California.

Isaiah 53: The Prophecy of the Suffering Messiah

SHAWN RYAN: And what was that?

LEE STROBEL: It’s Isaiah 53. It’s a description of the suffering Messiah, the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s absolutely flabbergasting. I don’t know how anybody can read it and not conclude, “Oh, that’s referring to Jesus.” I don’t want to read it. Good. If you got a Bible handy—

SHAWN RYAN: I got a couple hundred.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, yeah. You know what? I wonder if I have it in here.

SHAWN RYAN: All right, here we go. Here’s a King James.

LEE STROBEL: Oh, King James. Okay, that’s good. Hold on.

SHAWN RYAN: Hold on a second. Is that going to work?

LEE STROBEL: That would work, yeah. Hold on. Let me check. I may just have it in here. Yeah. Here, I got it right here. Got it in the book. Yep. I have a chapter on the fulfillment of prophecies in the book. So now I don’t have my reading glasses, so I’m going to look like a dork reading this, but here’s Isaiah 53. So you want me to read it?

SHAWN RYAN: No, I’ll read it. Who—

LEE STROBEL: Ask yourself who does this sound like: “He was despised and rejected by mankind. A man of suffering and familiar with pain, like one from whom people hid their faces. He was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him. And by his wounds we are healed. We, like all sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep before his shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgression of my people, he was punished.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich. In his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth, yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer. And though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days.”

In other words, he’ll continue to live on. “And the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life.” He will come back and be satisfied. “By his knowledge. My righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.” He will die for our sins. “For he bore the sins of many and made intercession for the transgressors.”

Wow. So there’s the prediction. The Messiah would suffer and die for our sins. He would be afflicted by God. He would pay the penalty we deserve for the sins we’ve committed. And yet he would be resurrected. He would continue to live on. He was assigned a grave, but he would continue to live on. He was resurrected from the dead. He conquered death.

That passage from Isaiah has led many Jewish people to faith in Jesus, like my friend Louis Lapides. So, you know, that’s just one of many predictions, prophecies made hundreds of years in advance of the birth of Jesus on Christmas.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow, that’s really—

LEE STROBEL: Isn’t it cool?

SHAWN RYAN: Yes, it is. Yeah.

Christmas Makes No Sense Without Easter

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, it’s a picture. Who would have thought that the Messiah would suffer? Really? I mean, that didn’t make sense back then. Why? He was paying our transgressions. He was paying for our sin. Oh, really? That’s what the entire Jewish sacrificial system had foretold—the sacrificing of animals for sin.

It was a foreshadowing that ultimately the Son of God, who lived the perfect life, who was fully God and fully man, would pay the penalty of death so that our sins would be paid for. And he could offer forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of his grace.

The thing about Christmas is it makes no sense without Easter. You know, Jesus did not just come into the world to show us how to live a good life. He did that. If you read the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, his teachings of how to live are brilliant and wonderful. And so we can’t live up to that. We can emulate as best we can. We all fall short.

His mission was not to be born only and live. It was to die to pay the penalty that we deserve. And that’s what makes Christmas—you know, the best stories are the ones that turn out to be true. And so because it’s true, that gives it just an awe-inspiring nature. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: How many who had knowledge of Jesus’s coming, other than Mary and Joseph?

LEE STROBEL: Oh, that it would be the Messiah. Well, Elizabeth, the cousin probably understood because she gave birth to John the Baptist. And John knew from the outset that this was going to be who Jesus was. When he heard the news about the coming Messiah, the pregnancy of Mary, he jumped in his mother’s womb.

So that was the first person to recognize Jesus as being the Messiah—was John still in the womb of his mother.

SHAWN RYAN: Wait, what?

The First to Recognize the Messiah

LEE STROBEL: Yeah. How do you find Elizabeth finds out about the pregnancy of Mary, that she’s carrying the Messiah and she’s carrying John the Baptist and he leaps in her womb for joy at this news that the Messiah is coming. So the first person ever to recognize Jesus being the Messiah was an unborn child by the name of John.

Wow.

SHAWN RYAN: And so, and, but that’s it. So it wasn’t—

LEE STROBEL: Or any of these other—Joseph knew because an angel appeared to Joseph and told him what was going on. So Joseph knew. Now who they told and who they led into this, I don’t know. But it was, there was a small group that understood what was going on.

SHAWN RYAN: Now how fast do you think the word spread?

LEE STROBEL: Oh, it spread fast when the shepherds came in. It says they ran into Bethlehem when the angel told them that the Messiah is now born in the city of David. And it says they ran into town to check it out themselves. And they checked it out themselves. They found him and so forth.

And it says they were telling everybody, “Hey, guess what?” So there was the news started. Now we didn’t have the Internet, of course, back then, so now news, news spread a little slower than it does today. But news was getting out.

SHAWN RYAN: So they, so it was, it was, it was them. It was the, it was the, the shepherds. It was the shepherds that spread the word.

LEE STROBEL: They were. They were starting to tell people, but there was no—

SHAWN RYAN: There was no. Nobody knew anything other than what the shepherds were spreading.

LEE STROBEL: Probably not thinking back. I mean, certainly when King Herod was told by his advisors that the child would be born in Bethlehem, that that news began to spread around Jerusalem because it upset Herod, who told him that his advisors, his Jewish advisors.

When the magi came and said, “Hey, we’re looking for the king of the Jews, where is he?” They figured maybe Jerusalem. Right. And Herod says, “Hold on a minute.” Gets his Jewish advisor says, “Where’s the king of Jews going to be born?” Bethlehem. Okay. And then he’s the one that told the magi, “Go to Bethlehem.” And they saw the star that confirmed it.

SHAWN RYAN: But how do the advisors know? Is this from—

LEE STROBEL: Because of Micah, chapter two, five, two. Yeah. The ancient prophecy. They studied these prophecies, they knew them, they lived by them. And they were living in anticipation that the Messiah would come. Daniel, the prophet Daniel.

SHAWN RYAN: Now, so did the advisors think this was a bad thing?

LEE STROBEL: No, they probably would have been excited, I’m guessing that these magi are coming and looking for—Yeah, because it’s like they were Jewish.

SHAWN RYAN: So the only hatred for Jesus that Herod had is for a power struggle.

LEE STROBEL: It was a power struggle. Herod was afraid that he would grow up and usurp his throne.

SHAWN RYAN: Humans addicted to power.

Herod’s Ruthless Response

LEE STROBEL: That’s right. And Herod was a—he was crazy and ill at the time. He was not doing well, didn’t have a long time to live. He had killed relatives. He killed all kinds of people. He was a ruthless, bloodthirsty person.

And he had—I mean, just to order the destruction of these children, no problem. Let’s get rid of them that way. But an angel had warned Mary and Joseph, “Hey, don’t go back to Nazareth yet. Go to Egypt and hang out for a while until things settle down with Herod.” And that’s what they did.

SHAWN RYAN: Where was Jesus throughout his childhood? I mean, there’s—we don’t know anything.

LEE STROBEL: We don’t know a lot. We don’t know a lot. There’s some apocryphal literature that suggests that he went off to India. Some stories about him being in India, they’re not well supported. We don’t know.

And I think the reason we don’t know is it’s not really ultimately important. It says he continued to grow in wisdom. So we know that that took place. We know his father died at some point before he got too old and he was probably very busy being a carpenter himself, no doubt.

But I think because the scriptures don’t really go into that detail, it’s probably because it’s really not that important what he was doing. But people have tried to fill it in through the years, so you see some of these stories that we will pop up in what’s called non-canonical. In other words, it’s non—far fetched. Yeah, kind of far fetched stuff.

There’s one far fetched story. You know, one of the stories about Christmas is that Mary was on the verge of giving birth as she’s arriving in Bethlehem. We don’t know that. Luke says while they were in Bethlehem, the baby was born. Doesn’t say five minutes, doesn’t say five days, doesn’t say five weeks or five months. We don’t know how long she was there.

SHAWN RYAN: So it wasn’t a big rush to get to Bethlehem.

The Mistranslation That Changed Christmas

LEE STROBEL: Further, we don’t—we don’t know. There was a book of fiction that was written in 200 AD, so that’s a couple hundred years later. That has no connection to the eyewitnesses. And in that book of fiction, it was called the Proto Evangelism of James, had no connection to James or anybody. It was just fictional.

And in that account it says that Mary and Joseph got within three miles of Bethlehem and the baby was coming. So they went into a cave and gave birth in a cave among the animals in the cave. That’s where this idea that some think about giving birth in a cave, that’s where that came from. It’s a book of fiction. It has no historical validity. Okay, so that didn’t really happen.

But the biggest mistake in terms of historical understanding of Christmas boils down to one word. One word in the Greek and how it gets translated or mistranslated.

Here’s the typical story we hear at Christmas. Mary and Joseph, because of the census, had to go to Bethlehem to be counted in the census because he was of the house of David. So they go to Bethlehem and Mary’s pregnant and she’s getting close to giving birth. They knock on the door of an inn or a lodge and the innkeeper opens the door and says, “Hey, no room. Sorry,” she closed the door.

What are they going to do? They go off into a stable and they give birth among the animals in the stable. And then she lays the baby in the clean hay of a manger or a feeding trough. That’s the typical story you hear.

It all depends on one word. And the Greek word is katalima. And how is that? Because here’s what Luke says, and this is how all this comes about. Luke says when the baby was born, he was put into a manger because there was no room for them in the katalima.

King James version translated that word as “inn.” Other, some other early writings translate as “inn.” But that’s probably not the correct translation. Luke only uses the word katalima one other time in his Gospel. When he does, it’s referring to a room in a residence. When he was referring to an inn or a lodge, he used another word, pandoheon. He doesn’t use that here, he uses katalima.

Well, what was a katalima? Well, you have to understand what a house looked like in the first century Jewish culture in Bethlehem. A house was one big room divided into two parts. There was the bigger part, and that was the living area where the family would live and sleep and cook and so forth.

And there were a couple of steps down into a smaller area, and that’s where the animals were brought at night, because the animals were like pets. I mean, you ever see a baby sheep, little lamb, they’re cute, and the kids love to pet them. Even baby goats are cute.

So they would come in and they would stay inside during the night. There was a manger there with hay in it. But sometimes they would walk up the few steps into the living area and they were like pets, so they pet them. And so they had a manger in the living area too, so that if the animals came up, they could eat. That’s what a typical house looked like.

The wealthier people had a katalima that was a guest room, that was an add on another room. They had a separate entrance. And so they had in effect two rooms. The katalima, the guest room, as well as the living area and the animal area.

What apparently happened is that Mary and Joseph were coming into Bethlehem and they went to a home of a relative and knocked on the door, say, “Hey, we’re here for the census.” And the first said, “Oh yeah, we got a lot of people coming for the census. Everything’s crowded. We don’t have room in the guest room. The katalima, I’m sorry, there’s no room. So she could come and you could stay in the family area, the living area.”

And so Mary and Joseph probably lived and stayed in that living area of the home until the baby was born. And you know what, some of the animals may have heard the commotion and come up the stairs to see what was going on. They were proud. They may have witnessed it.

And then after Joseph or Jesus was born, she placed him in the clean hay of the feeding trough, the manger, there in the living area. That’s probably what took place.

Interestingly, in the year 1395—so this predates the King James version—in the year 1395, John Wycliffe did his translation into English of the Bible, the New Testament, and the word he chose for katalima was “guest room.” His room.

Today, the most popular translation of the Bible into English in America is the NIV, the New International version. If you look it up in there, it doesn’t say there was an inn. There’s no inn, there’s no innkeeper. It’s the guest room. I think that’s what really happened.

So it kind of messes a little bit with our image of Christmas, but that’s probably a more accurate translation of what’s going on. So it does kind of change things a bit. But I think linguistically it makes more sense. And the scholars who I talk to think, “No, that’s probably the better translation of that word.”

And it’s really just one word. There was no room for them at the katalima. How do you—oh, guest room. Oh. Now it just changes everything. And I think with an understanding of what a house looked like back then, it makes even more sense than that.

By the way, we don’t know that there were any inns in Bethlehem. As we said, it was a small town, 500 people. It was not on major highways. There may or may not have been an inn there.

But here’s the other thing. In first century Jewish culture, it would have been unthinkable for an innkeeper to turn away a pregnant Jewish woman. You could not do that. You would be ostracized by the community because hospitality was a huge value in those days.

If an innkeeper turned away a pregnant Jewish woman, he’d be run out of town on a rail. He’d be out of business. You just could not do that. So that’s another reason why I think that’s not the right translation. I think the right one is the one the NIV uses, which is guest room.

SHAWN RYAN: Interesting.

LEE STROBEL: Wow, that’s fascinating.

SHAWN RYAN: That is.

LEE STROBEL: I mean, how—

SHAWN RYAN: How. What does it feel like to—

LEE STROBEL: Kind of come on this stuff? I know, it’s so—

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, it’s—

The Joy of Discovery in Investigative Journalism

LEE STROBEL: This is what, you know, I’m a journalist. I’m trained in law, but I’m trained in journalism. I investigate things. And you investigate things and you know what the feeling is like when you probe something and you find out something that makes you go, oh, my goodness. This changes everything. This changes the narrative of how Christmas took place. That one word, oh, my goodness. I just love that.

I love how God took my sinful, immoral, profane, narcissistic life and brought me to faith in him and transformed my soul and changed my character and changed my values and changed my philosophy. But he also said, I’m going to keep your journalistic curiosity. You use it for evil sometimes when you were a journalist. I mean, I hurt some people intentionally with my articles. I’m going to redeem that, and I’m going to use it for good.

And now I get to travel and interview some of the greatest scholars in the world. And these scholars are so brilliant that nobody understands them. And so I sit there and I interview them sometimes for two days, and I force them to explain things so I can understand it. Because I figure if I can understand it, anybody can understand it. And then I’m able to put it into a narrative that everybody can get.

So God said, I’m going to take what you use for evil in many cases, and I’m going to keep that skill in you. That’s who you are. You’re a journalist, you’re an investigator. I’m going to use that for my purposes. And so virtually all my books, that’s the format. It isn’t me, the world’s leading scholar. I just go find the world’s leading scholar. I do like you do. You find people and you bring them in. I go to them and I question.

I remember some of my transcripts of my interviews with these experts are 50,000 words. That’s a book that’s more than twice the size of this book. Because I want to spend time to really get what they’re talking about. Because they write on this incredible elevated level. And so few of them can put the cookies on the bottom shelf so we all can enjoy them. So anyway, it’s that sense of discovery that you go through as well when you’re interviewing someone. You go, I never thought of that. Or I never knew that before. I get to do that all the time.

SHAWN RYAN: I love that what you’re kicking over is a lot bigger than the timely bullshit news that I’m kicking over. But man, that has got to feel just incredible.

LEE STROBEL: It’s awesome. It’s awesome. And things I always wondered about like, here’s one I always wondered about. I hear people criticize Christians. I hear Christians criticize people because they would spell Christmas, X-mas, say, oh, you’re taking Christ out of Christmas.

SHAWN RYAN: What do you think of that?

The True Meaning of X-mas

LEE STROBEL: Well, there may be people, that’s their intention, but that’s not what they’re doing. And here’s the reason. Again, this is something I learned. I go, oh, my goodness. This explains it. In the earliest days of Christianity, they were being oppressed. And they would often abbreviate Christos, which was the Greek word for Christ, the Messiah, the Savior.

So the Greek word Christos began with an X. It was called chi in the Greek. So the first letter of Christ was an X, meaning as pronounced chi. The second word was a P, and it was pronounced rho. So the first two letters of Christ, or the Messiah, the Savior, Christ in the Greek was called Chi Rho. That became a standard abbreviation in the early days of Christianity.

So in other words, the Christians were going to get together at a certain location. They didn’t want the Romans to know that they were going to get together because they’re going to be persecuted. So they would leave in the sand or something, they’d leave an X and a P.

SHAWN RYAN: No kidding. Those code?

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, that’s right, a code. And the Romans wouldn’t know what that was, but they knew the Chi Rho meant it meant Christ. So in the year 1025, a scribe was writing some Christian materials on parchment. Well, parchment is very expensive. So he was trying to save some parchment. So as he’s writing it, he gets the word Christmas, and he’s thinking, that’s going to take up a lot of space.

So he abbreviates it. Chi Rho, X, P, M, A, S to save space, to save parchment. And it caught on and it got abbreviated later even further to just X-mas. So the X in X-mas refers to Christ. You’re not taking him out of Christmas if you just put X-mas. You’re just abbreviating in a way that even the earliest Christians did.

SHAWN RYAN: In fact, that’s actually kind of cool.

LEE STROBEL: It is kind of cool. And get this, get this. Remember when, I don’t know the year, but remember when all the immigrants were coming over to, was it Ellis Island in New York? They were immigrating into New York in the early days, and many Jewish people were immigrating into the United States, and they were illiterate. They couldn’t read.

And so the immigration officials would say, okay, sign your name here. They couldn’t sign their names, they couldn’t spell, they couldn’t read. So the immigration official said, we’ll just put an X because we sometimes put an X. They wouldn’t do it because these Jewish people knew. No, no, no, no. That X means Christ. They put an O to contrast with the X.

SHAWN RYAN: No way.

LEE STROBEL: Yes. So they said, I’m not putting, so they even knew back then, this was when, the 1920s, whenever that was that big influx of immigrants. They even knew, don’t put an X because that’s saying Christ. I’m going to put an O instead. It was a Yiddish referring to a Yiddish word. So they were aware of this. So I think a lot of people now, there may be atheists who are trying to take Christ out of Christmas, who do that with ill intent.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ve always heard, don’t write it like that.

LEE STROBEL: I have too.

SHAWN RYAN: I was raised.

LEE STROBEL: I have too. And I think that’s because people said, you’re taking credit. No, you’re not really. You’re just abbreviating. In fact, the word Christmas is an abbreviation itself from Christ’s Mass. So Christmas itself is an abbreviation. So it’s okay to abbreviate X-mas.

SHAWN RYAN: I like that. I feel like that’s a little insert you should put on your Christmas card.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, yeah. There you go. There you go, man.

The Narrow Gate to Heaven

SHAWN RYAN: I’m curious. You know, I’ve talked to, I told you, I don’t know if you remember, I grew up Catholic. I still go back and forth like both. But you know, one thing that I find interesting, I’m just curious to hear your thoughts is when I’m talking to Christians, non-denominational Christians, Christians like yourself.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: At least I think you think this. Yeah. The gates of heaven are wide open. When I talk to people that I respect in the Catholic Church, yeah, the gates are about this narrow. What are your thoughts on that?

LEE STROBEL: Well, Jesus said the way is narrow.

SHAWN RYAN: He did say that.

LEE STROBEL: He did say that, yeah. He said, “Wide is the road that leads to destruction, but narrow is the gate that leads to life.” It is narrow because the way I see that understanding that is it’s narrow because it’s only through him. It’s narrow because he is the only passage to heaven, that redemption only comes through Jesus Christ. I think that’s what he meant by saying the road is narrow. You have to follow him. So how many people will actually end up in heaven? I don’t know.

SHAWN RYAN: I think it’s all the believers.

LEE STROBEL: Yes. I think it’s anyone who puts their trust in Christ, anybody who, we’re all sinners. The Bible says. The way I look at it is, you know, the Bible’s 80,000 words. And you can summarize the whole Bible in 21 words, one verse, Romans 6:23. “For the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The wages of sin is death. In other words, what we deserve, what we’ve earned. The consequences of living a life apart from God, denying him, violating his laws and his morality. The consequence of that is death, which means eternal separation from God. That’s what hell is.

But the verse says the free gift. And it’s interesting, most translations don’t say free gift. They should say gift because all gifts are free. But the translation I like includes the word free to emphasize the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. In other words, Jesus, fully God and fully man, lived the perfect life. He dies on a cross to pay the penalty we deserve for the sins that we’ve committed. And he offers forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of his grace.

And anyone who receives that gift becomes a child of God. And the doors of heaven will be flung open for them. So I think the narrowness mainly refers to narrow in the sense it only comes through one person, only comes through Jesus. Nobody else can atone for our sins. We’re either going to pay for our sins, somebody’s going to pay for our sins. It’s either going to be us.

And we’re going to spend eternity separated from God because only perfect people end up in heaven. We’re not perfect. So we got a problem. If we’re going to pay for our sins ourselves, we’re going to be eternally separated from God. That’s what hell is. Or we can receive this free gift of redemption, this free gift of God paying for our sins through Jesus Christ and offering it as a free gift of his grace.

So those are the kind of the two choices. How many people through history will have received that gift and will spend eternity in heaven? We’ll find out someday. But I think that narrowness refers to the way is narrow because it goes through one person.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s interesting because if you believe, it doesn’t really seem that narrow.

Christianity vs. Islam: Examining the Core Differences

LEE STROBEL: Well, to me, except it’s believe in what? Believe in Jesus. That’s that one person. That’s what I think makes it narrow. It’s not like you can have a belief. I can believe in Krishna, I can believe in Allah. I can believe in all these different things. No, no, no. It is only through Jesus Christ.

And it’s very interesting. You know, when I was an atheist and I did my investigation into Christianity, I also investigated other religions too. And I investigated Islam and I read the Quran. And what struck me about the Quran is how it specifically denies the exact things you need to believe according to Christianity to be saved.

Number one, it says in the Quran in Surah 4, verse 157 that Jesus didn’t die on the cross. Well if he didn’t die on the cross, there’s no atonement for sin and there’s no resurrection and conquering of death. Number two, the Quran says that God doesn’t have a son, specifically says that. Number three, the Quran says no one can bear the sins of another. Well, that’s what Jesus did on the cross.

The three very things I need to believe to be a Christian is that Jesus is the unique son of God, that he went to the cross, he paid the penalty we deserve for the sins we committed. He carried our sins, he paid for our sins. And he was resurrected from the dead, conquering death and proving he is who we claim to be, the unique son of God.

So here I am reading the Quran and I’m reading the Bible. I’m saying, okay, either they’re both false or one of them is true. They cannot both be true at the same time. They can’t be. If the Quran is true, the Bible’s false. If the Bible is true, the Quran is false, they can’t both be true. So I had to look which one?

And that’s what led me to conclude that I can trust the Bible because of largely the resurrection of Jesus. The historical data that established that he was born on Christmas, he lived the perfect life, he died. And then the incredible evidence he was resurrected from the dead to prove that he is, we claim to be the unique son of God.

So I mean I’ve got a good friend who, whose name you would know who is a Muslim. And he came over to my house for dinner and because his girlfriend had become a Christian, she read my book The Case for Christ and she became a Christian. So he wanted some answers. So he comes over to my house for dinner and we’re cooking steaks.

SHAWN RYAN: Did this guy write a book?

The Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Story

LEE STROBEL: He’s written six books. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if he would mind if I said his name or not. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the number one scorer in the NBA until what’s his name from the Lakers succeeded him as the number one scorer. But Kareem became a friend of mine. His girlfriend became a Christian through my book “Case for Christmas” and invited me over to their place. I spent many hours with Kareem. Great, great guy. Loved him. Brilliant guy, very smart. He’s written several books.

And he came over to my house for dinner, and at one point I said to him, “Let’s set aside religion and let’s just look at the evidence from history for the resurrection of Jesus.” And I said, and I went through the evidence I’ve got, and it’s substantial right there from the first century. And I said, “Now what do Muslims have? They’ve got someone who says that an angel told him in a cave 600 years later that that isn’t true, that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross, and yet I’ve got all this data saying he did.”

I said, “Set aside religion. Where does the evidence point?” And he was very thoughtful about it. And he said, “You know, I choose to believe the Quran.” Okay? I mean, that’s—you’re free to do that, but I couldn’t do it. I was following where I think the evidence of history most persuasively points. And, you know, I pray for Kareem. He’s a great, great guy.

I introduced him to Mel Gibson back when “The Passion of Christ” was going to come out. And I have a picture in a hallway of Kareem, who’s like seven-two. I mean, you can’t believe how tall they are because you see him playing basketball and they all are tall, right? No, no, no. You get him in a room. Oh, my goodness. So he’s like seven-two, and Mel Gibson’s about, I don’t know, five-eight, maybe five-seven. He’s not tall at all. And I have this picture, and Kareem is bent down trying to hear, and Mel is looking up, trying to talk to Kareem. It’s a hilarious picture.

SHAWN RYAN: But did he convert?

LEE STROBEL: No, Kareem is still on a journey. I think he’s still asking questions. I think he’s doing what a smart person does, ask questions. He was willing to come to my home and listen to me, and I came to his place and we talked for all afternoon about why I believe Christianity is true. And he told me why he believes Islam is true. And we didn’t debate, but we had a friendly conversation. And that’s good. That’s healthy. Yeah. And I believe he’s still on a journey.

Contrasting Islam and Christianity

SHAWN RYAN: What are some of the major questions that somebody that’s on the fence of Islam or Christianity? Yeah, the guy that I was not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I don’t know, I can’t remember his name. He’s basically a book where he’s talking about the Quran or the Bible. Sold a ton of copies. I can’t remember that. It just popped up.

LEE STROBEL: Okay.

SHAWN RYAN: And I was like, this looks like an interesting interview.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah. I had a good friend named Nabeel Qureshi, who was a Muslim who did what I did—research Christianity, became a Christian, wrote a wonderful book. If anybody wants to really delve into what is the contrast between Islam and Christianity, he wrote a book called “Seeking Allah and Finding Jesus.” And he died a few years ago. I was with him at his bedside just before he passed. A great, great man, young guy, medical doctor by profession, but he did the research and converted from Christianity.

One of the things he told me, he said was interesting. He said, “You know, Lee, there are 99 names for God in Islam, for Allah. 99 names. Not one of them is Father.” And yet in the Bible, how is Jesus taught to pray? “Our Father.” This, this, this Father, the Godhood. The is our Father who art in heaven. That summarizes things more than any single fact I know that the God of Allah is not the same as the God of the Bible. He’s never called Father in the Quran. God is referred to as Father and is pictured and presented as Father in the Bible. There’s a big contrast there.

SHAWN RYAN: Interesting.

LEE STROBEL: So, but yeah, so I’m no scholar on Islam, but I have read the Quran. I have had many conversations with Muslims. I love them. I know God loves them, too. And, but I, you know, these two things cannot be true at the same time. They can’t be. They are logically incompatible. So you either have to believe that one of them is true or neither of them are true. And that’s a quest that I think we’re all on.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

Jesus’s Communication with the Father

SHAWN RYAN: What was Jesus’s communication with the Father? How was he communicating differently than everybody else?

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, he prayed and, you know, he taught the disciples how to pray the Lord’s Prayer, this beautiful prayer that he taught. You know, when you pray, pray “Our Father.” And he used a very intimate word there in the Aramaic, “Abba,” which is a very—it’s not just father, distant father. It’s a more intimate term for a dad. It’s what I would call my dad, Abba.

And Jesus taught his followers, “Say Abba, Father.” I mean, this rocked their world. This is the Yahweh. This is the God whose name you didn’t even write because you’re so fearful that you’re going to spell it wrong or something. And really, what do you call him? Abba. But I mean, it just transformed everybody’s thinking about God, and yet you don’t see that in other religions. You don’t see that in other faiths. That’s a uniqueness of Christianity.

Jesus: Fully God and Fully Man

SHAWN RYAN: So the one thing that gets me that I find myself thinking about quite a bit is, you know, Jesus is—forgive my uses of words, I’ll probably butcher this—Jesus is an extension of God. It’s one and the same thing. But Jesus also lived on earth as human.

LEE STROBEL: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, supposedly had all the same temptations, the same suffering, if more suffering. You know, basically he ate the same sandwich that we all eat. You know, going through life worse than—

LEE STROBEL: You and me, for sure.

SHAWN RYAN: But, but, but, you know, but his, his—he had to, he had to have had that direct connection.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, that.

SHAWN RYAN: That we either don’t have or can’t figure out how to access a lot of times.

LEE STROBEL: Well, it’s some good points. He is—Jesus is fully God and fully man. So we have the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, who existed from eternity past in its perfect love relationship. And so God the Son comes into our world, becomes fully God and fully man. And as you say, he lives among us. He’s—I mean, he lived a harder life than you and I. We, you know, and the Bible says, interestingly, there’s a verse, I believe it’s in Hebrews that says that Jesus learned obedience through suffering.

So he had to even learn how to be obedient to the Father through the suffering that he went through. I thought that was interesting because we go through suffering and yet we can learn from that, how to be obedient to God. So he’s fully God. He’s fully man. He was tempted and yet the Bible says, “And yet without sin.” So he felt emotions as we feel them, but not to the extent that he was ever sinful with those. How that works out, I don’t know. I’m going to ask him someday.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think about that, though? I mean, if—

LEE STROBEL: I do sometimes. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, if he has the—this is probably really dumb of me to try to compare, you know, what he was going through to what we were going—yeah, I know, I know it doesn’t make sense. I’ll probably get—probably all kinds of comments, but, you know, but I’m trying to—

LEE STROBEL: Yeah, sure.

SHAWN RYAN: And so, you know, when he had, I mean, when he was born.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: How does he know who his dad is? Yeah, I mean, how—I mean, he, his faith was so much stronger than any of ours. Than mine, at least. Well, that, that, that—do you know what I’m saying? So was it—yes—undeniable. Much more suffering than I’ll hopefully ever have to endure or any of us. But you know, the faith. His faith was so much stronger than, than, than mine, probably than yours. You know, than anybody else. That it’s, it’s—

LEE STROBEL: I mean, he—

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, he knew it as fact. Yes, he knew it as fact. That’s a good way to put a direct connect.

LEE STROBEL: You know, there’s a passage in Philippians in the New Testament, chapter two that may be the earliest Christmas carol. I think it was—it may be a hymn of the earliest church, but it talks about how Jesus was in heaven, but he didn’t cling to the perks of being in heaven. And he gave that up to come into our world. And it says, “Even to the point of dying on a cross.”

So Jesus pre-existed from eternity past. He has the—he is God. How much did he know as a baby? How much did he have to learn? When did he really realize who he was? Those are good—

SHAWN RYAN: Somebody had to tell him.

LEE STROBEL: There’s a good question.

SHAWN RYAN: Or he had to direct connect.

LEE STROBEL: It is a good question.

SHAWN RYAN: So kind of what I’m getting at.

LEE STROBEL: At least is how do we connect that way? Yeah. How do we—

SHAWN RYAN: How do—

LEE STROBEL: How—

SHAWN RYAN: Okay.

LEE STROBEL: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: Let me just—

LEE STROBEL: Yes.

Faith Under Persecution

SHAWN RYAN: If you—we see all these Christians being slaughtered in Syria. Yeah. Right. They’re going off. Let’s say you—let’s I’m just going to put you in a really messed up situation. You know, do you believe in Jesus Christ or do you not? And if you do not, if you do not denounce him right now, you are going to suffer. I mean, I think about this all the time because, yes, it’s happening. It’s not happening in this country yet. You know, and so when you’re looking down the barrel of a rifle.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Or a cross that you’re going to be crucified on, or a blade that they’re going to chop your head off with if you don’t, I mean, that’s a very, you know, you can sit here and go, “Well, yeah, of course I’m not going to do it.” It’s a lot different than being on your knees in front of somebody that’s going to chop your head off.

LEE STROBEL: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, but so kind of what I’m getting at is if that were to happen to me and you—to me or you—we are only going off of faith. We do not know that as fact. Yeah. Jesus knew that as fact because he had some type of a direct connection. So did he—was he going through the same thing as us? Because he knows what’s on the other side of that. He knew.

The Nature of Jesus’s Divine Knowledge

LEE STROBEL:

We don’t really know. There’s a lot of theories about this to what degree he knew, what he knew, when he knew it. You know, when he’s five years old, did he understand he was the savior of the world? Did he understand? Did he know all the things he knew as God at 5 years old? Could he speak every language on the planet at 5 years old? I don’t know. We’re not told a lot of this stuff.

We do know he had a special, as you say, a connection with God in the sense that he was willing to go to the cross, not because he had a pretty good idea that it was all going to work out. He knew the truth. He knew because he is the truth. And he’s described in scripture as being the truth, the way and the life, and no one comes to Father except through him.

So he had that intimate understanding that he is God, that the Father is God, the Holy Spirit is God. He knew that. And knowing that he was willing to die for it, we can’t know it as certainly as he did, but we can know it with confidence. We can.

Faith Supported by Evidence

You know, and here’s why. Is there faith involved? Yes, of course. But it is a faith that is a step in the same direction the evidence is pointing. In other words, there are about 20 lines of evidence through archaeology, through ancient history, through fulfillment of prophecies, through all the reliability of the Gospels, through all these things, there are about 20 different lines of evidence that point in the direction of Christianity being true. They’re arrows. They point that way.

But it’s not enough just to know that because the Bible says in John 1:12, “As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believed in his name.” So the formula is believe plus receive equals become.

So you can believe that all this evidence points in the direction of Jesus being the unique son of God who offers to forgive our sins and spend eternity with us in heaven. You can believe that, but even the demons believe that, and they shudder at the implications.

You have to take a step of faith, but it’s in the same direction the evidence is pointing. That’s logical, that’s rational. We do that every day of our life. When we take that step of faith and we receive that free gift of forgiveness and eternal life through Jesus Christ, we become adopted as his son or daughter forever.

Building a Relationship with God

The Holy Spirit takes up residence inside of us and will give us, over time, increasing confidence and awareness of our relationship with God, which we then build through reading the word of God, reading the Bible, which is what he wants us to know. So, you know, we say, “I wish God would talk to me.” Here’s 800,000 words. Yeah, he’s talked to us. Read that.

So the Bible helps us understand who God is. And then to pray to. I mean, you start out very haltingly, very “God, I hope you’re there. I hope you hear me.” You know, but as you grow and mature in your faith, you begin to realize, no, God is there. God is real. I’ve seen evidence of it in my life. I’ve seen him do things in my life that I cannot explain naturalistically.

And it gives me confidence. And when I pray, he’s listening. And it builds your faith and encourages you. And it gets to the point where even the disciples, they were willing to die for their conviction that Jesus is the unique son of God, who proved it by returning from the dead.

We don’t know how all the disciples ended up dying. That gets a little lost in history. But their willingness to die for that conviction is well established by seven ancient sources inside and outside the Bible. So they became convinced it was true because they talked to the resurrected Jesus. They ate with them. They experienced him, and knowing it was true, they were willing to die for that conviction.

Well, we meet Jesus in a, well, not a physical way, as they did, but we meet him when we receive him as our forgiver and as our leader. And the Holy Spirit takes up residence in us, we begin a relationship with him. We listen to him through his word. We speak to him through our prayer. We watch his interactions with us, things he does in our life that we can’t explain away.

And it makes us stronger in our faith so that we grow to that point where maybe someday, maybe in this country someday, we will be persecuted for our faith. And then that’s a test. Will we stand up for what we believe and know is true? I hope so.

A Personal Story of Divine Guidance

But I’ve seen things in my life. I can’t explain them other than God was interacting with me. And that gives me confidence. I’ll give you an example. I’m pretty new Christian. I left behind my whole career that I spent my life building. Legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, you know, degree in law, degree in journalism. It’s all I had done, all I ever wanted to do.

And then I felt God saying, “You know what? Give it up. Go join a staff of this church, take a 60% pay cut, and live for me full time.” Okay, so we did. So Leslie and I are living a very frugal life on the staff of this church.

And one day I’m praying, and this happens. As you mature in your prayer life, sometimes you sense God leading you, sometimes you sense him pointing you in a direction. And you always have to test it against the Bible. Is it consistent? Is it true? Maybe he’s pointing me toward a verse in the Bible, but I’m praying.

And I never felt this. But I felt like, and I know this sounds crazy, we only had $500 to our name. We had one bank account, 500 bucks. And I felt like God was saying to me, “Lee, I want you to empty your bank account and write an anonymous cashier’s check and send it to this woman who’s part of the church on Friday afternoon. Make sure post office Friday afternoon, send it to her.”

Time out here. That’s all I got. I said to Leslie, “Leslie, would you pray with me about this? Because I’m sensing this, and I’m not kind of happy about where it’s taking me, but if this is from God, we need to do it.” So Leslie and I pray together. She said, “Honey, I’m feeling the same thing.”

Okay, so we go to the bank, we get all of our money, we get an anonymous cashier’s check, and Friday afternoon, we go to the post office, and we mail it to that woman.

The Answer to Prayer

Monday morning, before mail delivery that day, the phone rings. This woman calls me. She said, “Lee,” she’s crying. I said, “What? What’s wrong, Maggie?” “Oh, something terrible’s happened.” “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. What happened?”

She said, “My car broke down over the weekend. If I don’t have my car, I’m going to lose my job. I’m going to lose my apartment. I don’t have any money.” She said, “It’s going to cost $500 to fix my car. I don’t have $500. I don’t know what to do. Would you please pray for me?”

I said, “Oh, Maggie, I’d be glad to pray for you.” So I prayed that God would provide her that $500. We hung up because I had mailed it that Friday afternoon. Monday afternoon, the mail comes. She opens the mail, and there’s this anonymous check to cover the cost of her car.

Now, God could have intervened so her car didn’t break down, but then we wouldn’t know the joy of being the answer to someone’s prayers. That built my faith. Was it a miracle? I don’t know if it was or not. I’m just saying it built my faith that God could have done that. But no, then you wouldn’t know the joy and how wonderful it felt.

To this day, she doesn’t know. Well, now if she listens to your podcast, she’s going to know. But she doesn’t know it was us. Doesn’t matter that it was us. What matters is God loves her.

And she was a new believer. She had a terrible childhood. She had given up on Christianity, but we did a debate at our church between a Christian and an atheist. She came to the debate. She came to Faith in Christ because of that debate and later teachings that she received.

And she later quit her job as a nurse, took a big pay cut, joined the staff of our church, and she was the one who would deliver my mail every day in the church at the staff office. And to this day, she doesn’t know that God led us to help her out.

But that’s how God works. Did that deepen my faith? Yeah. Did that increase my confidence that God really is listening and orchestrating things and knows things that I don’t know and wants me to do things that I may not get? But he’s got a plan.

SHAWN RYAN:

Yeah.

LEE STROBEL:

So will we get to the absolute knowledge that Jesus had? No. But I think we can get to a strong, vibrant, robust faith that causes us, even in the midst of persecution and even in the midst of pain to continue to live for him. And you’re seeing that throughout places where people are, as you say, are being beheaded for their faith today, and they refuse to renounce it because God is real and Jesus is real.

The Struggle of Faith

SHAWN RYAN:

I love what you’re saying. I’ve had a lot of these encounters, too. I mean, that’s how I came to, you know what I mean? When we very first spoke and I was wrong. Christmas last year isn’t the first time we met. I think this is the fourth time you’ve been on.

LEE STROBEL:

Third time.

SHAWN RYAN:

This is the third time.

LEE STROBEL:

Yeah. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN:

Okay. The one was the first time.

LEE STROBEL:

First time. And then John Burke and I did that one.

SHAWN RYAN:

Okay.

LEE STROBEL:

Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN:

At some point in one of those interviews, I believe I’d talk to you about, you know, do you really believe? Do you ever have those thoughts? Do you really believe? Are you just telling yourself this stuff? And I’m just being 100% honest with me. You know, it’s highs and lows, man. It is. It looks like this.

LEE STROBEL:

Yes.

SHAWN RYAN:

I’m not really in the word. Oh, I’m really.

LEE STROBEL:

You’re not alone.

SHAWN RYAN:

I’m not really in it.

LEE STROBEL:

That’s right.

SHAWN RYAN:

You know, faith’s going down. Do I really believe in this stuff? Is this real? I don’t know. And then something will happen and, but you know what I really, I mean, when you talk about, I just haven’t figured out how to talk to him.

LEE STROBEL:

Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN:

And I don’t trust what I’m hearing. I trust in affirmations. Yeah. Maybe is what I’m, but, you know, I mean, I could, I could, I have a thought in my head right now.

LEE STROBEL:

Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN:

I should sell the studio, everything that I’ve built here, and donate it all to cancer.

LEE STROBEL:

Is that. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN:

Is that from him? Or am I just coming up with…

The Journey of Faith and Testing the Spirits

LEE STROBEL: Yeah. And this is so important to. And, you know, you haven’t been a Christian that long, so, you know, you’re on a pathway. You know, we come to faith and then we grow. And so justification is the theological word. When we receive Jesus, we’re “born again.” He adopts us into his family. We’re indwelled by the Holy Spirit.

And then there’s a period of sanctification where we grow in our faith and it’s two steps forward and one step back a lot of times. But I’ve been a Christian now since 3 o’clock in the afternoon on November 8th of 1981. So I got a few years on you, you know, so you know, it’s not unusual to have those ups and downs by any means, but we have to. You know, the Bible says test the spirits. Test the spirits.

How do we do that? We test things when we feel like God. Like when I felt like God was telling me to leave my entire career, everything I studied for and dreamt about and I was succeeding to leave that behind and join a church at 60% pay cut. And people are telling me, “You’re nuts. You can’t put your kids through college. You cannot make enough money to live on. What are you nuts?”

What did I look for? I looked for a. I prayed and say, “God, if I’m misunderstanding, then let tell me. Put signs of my. Communicate to me because I’m about to take a big step here, you know.” And so I asked God to head me off if I’m reading things wrong.

Importantly, I had strong Christians in my life. My best friend, Mark Middleburg, and others who know me better than anybody. He knows every sin in my life. He knows every good thing in my life. Mark and I were joined at the brain. And I love him like a brother. And the Bible says that. So they’re believers. We’re going to love like a brother.

And I love Mark like a brother and I know everything about him and he knows everything about me. And we’re totally honest with each other and we pray for each other, we encourage each other. I say, “I believe in you, Mark, more than you believe in yourself.” And he said, “Lee, same thing with you. I believe in you even though you doubt yourself half the time.”

So we’ve got this great relationship. And when I sense God taking me down a path and I wonder if it’s right, if it’s true, first thing I want to see is read. Let’s check the Bible. Is this contrary to the word of God? Is he telling me to do something that’s clearly not biblical?

Secondly, what are my committed Christian friends saying? I asked them to pray. Pray and see what God says to you. Do you get a consistent message that I’m getting? And so I take a lot of. That’s why I think it’s really important for Christians to have a small group relationship with a couple of other guys, people of the same gender, people you can go deep with, people you can hang out and be honest with.

And when things like this come up, whatever it is I’m doubting, I have a question about this, or whatever, say, “Hey, guys, I don’t know what to do with this. I’m sensing God is telling me to do this. What do you think?” Well, sounds a little crazy to us. Here’s why I don’t think it stacks up the scripture. Or here’s why I don’t. I’m not sensing the same thing. I mean, there’s these yellow flags that go up.

I’ve had that happen many times when I’m thinking God wants me to do X, Y, and Z. I remember once I had, as a fairly young Christian, I was offered a national radio show. I would have had to have left my ministry at that church. And I thought, this is a great opportunity. National show, my goodness. And I did the audition. Yes. Want to hire you.

And I went to my friends and they prayed and said, “I don’t think that’s what God wants you to do. Honestly, don’t. It’s a great opportunity for somebody. I don’t think it’s for you.” And they were right. Looking back would have been the worst thing I could have done. But I didn’t know. But I thought it. I was tempted by it.

So those are the kind of checks and balances I think we need to have. And it takes time. I had a small group of guys, and we get together on Saturday morning, and we just scratched the surface. “Hey, how about the Bears?” We were in Chicago. “How about the Bears?” “Yeah, Bears. Great. How about the Cubbies?” “Oh, man, they traded. Oh, it was bad.”

And we talk, you know, and we go around the room and say, “What’s new in our life?” And we were. We were just scratching the surface until one day we’re going around the room talking about prayer requests. “Yeah, pray for this, pray for that.” And the guy next to me breaks into tears, and he says, “My marriage is breaking up. I think my wife and I are going to split. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. Guys, I’m desperate.” And he began to cry.

That was the breakthrough that our group needed. We never scratched the surface again, because what did we do? We got around our brother and put our arms around him, and we prayed for him and we counseled him and we encouraged him, and we walked him through that difficult time in his marriage, and it came out strong. And he’s fine today.

But because he was willing, among brothers or sisters, among brothers in Christ, to be honest about suffering that he was going through and doubts that he was having about faith and so forth, to go deep and get around it. So we need that in our life.

My wife’s got it. She’s got a friend who led her to the Lord, you know, all those years ago, 1980s, and is still a good friend and still a good guide and counsel. And when I was an atheist and my wife was a Christian and our marriage was on the rocks as a result, her friend counseled her and encouraged her and prayed with her and kept her positive. And that’s what kept our marriage together.

So I think we go to the word of God. We deal with people in our life who are strong believers. We pray with them, we test the spirits as best we can to determine, is this where God’s leading us? And that’s how I think we get direction.

And as you say, it’s like this a lot of times. I mean, I can think of times in my life where my faith was, oh, my gosh, it’s on the rocks. And I have to keep coming back for me because I tend to be a rational guy. I need to come back to the evidence.

Oh, yeah, I remember now. We got nine historical sources right there. From the earliest days that the disciples encountered the resurrected Jesus and proved he’s the son of God. Oh, yeah, okay. That’s right. I forgot. Yep, I got the evidence. This is true. Sometimes I need that just as a rational guy. But, you know, we all go through those periods.

So I would say to anybody watching, you know, if you’re a believer, delve into scripture, continue to soak that in. And is the word of God. Why doesn’t God talk to me? He is. He is. There it is. And then develop that one or two friends who you can really trust, who love you as much as you love them, and who are deep in the word and who can be a sounding board. That’s so important.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you, Lee.

LEE STROBEL: Sure.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s good. Last question.

LEE STROBEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You ready?

LEE STROBEL: Oh, I don’t know. Can I take a drink of water? Do I need to hydrate?

The Real Santa Claus

SHAWN RYAN: Who is the real Santa Claus?

LEE STROBEL: Oh, that’s a great question. Oh, I’m so glad you asked that. And the reason is, I get so many emails from parents of young children saying, “What do I tell my kids about Santa Claus?” I mean, and my answer is, you can encourage her. Let’s play with it. It’s okay to have fun with the idea of Santa Claus, to present him as a story, as a legend, as an idea, you know, not real, but fun to think about and so forth.

But then tell them about the real Santa Claus. The real Santa Claus was a guy named Nicholas St. Nick. He was born in 270 A.D. and he was born in Myra, Turkey, and he became a Christian. He came from a wealthy family. And he became a bishop of an area on the coast of Turkey.

And he was the most generous guy. Not only generous, but he was sensitive to, if I’m going to give you some money because you need it, I don’t want to do it in a way to embarrass you. So he would often leave gifts on people’s doorstep so they’d find it in the morning or in a bush near their house or something, because he didn’t want to embarrass them.

He was a man of love and truth. His love was shown by his great generosity. But he was a man of truth. He was imprisoned by the Romans and tortured for his faith. In the year 325 A.D., he was a member of the Council of Nicaea, where he fought the heretic Arius, who had heretical ideas. We’re trying to convince people of heretical ideas.

There’s a legend that Nicholas actually slapped Arius across the face. That’s probably not true, but he stood up for truth. He was a man of truth. And when he died and was martyred for his faith, I think it was on December 19, a tradition began of gift giving. Because he was such a gift giver. That’s what he loved. He gave away all his wealth. He was such a gift giver.

And people in remembrance of this, St Nicholas would give people gifts. Martin Luther was the one who said, “Let’s not emphasize a saint. Let’s move that gift giving impulse to Christmas. It’s only just a few days later, December 25th.” And that’s why we give gifts on Christmas Day is because of St. Nicholas and his gift giving. And how Martin Luther kind of moved that to Christmas Day just six days later.

But here’s a story about St Nicholas, the real Santa Claus. Now granted, this comes from a biography of St Nicholas. It was written 500 years after his life. So how accurate it really is, we don’t really know. But the story goes that back in those days, if you were a father and you had three daughters, as this one guy did, you would have to have a dowry to pay the family of someone to marry your daughter.

If you didn’t have the money, the dowry, they couldn’t get married. And if they couldn’t get married, they’d probably end up in prostitution. So in Nicholas’s community was a man. He lost his job, he didn’t have any money, and he had three daughters. He didn’t have the dowry. One of them wanted to get married. He didn’t have the dowry.

One day, St Nicholas comes down the street. They lived on a second floor. He took a little bag of gold coins and threw it up into their window. They find it. That’s the dowry. She gets married. She has his grandchildren. For him, everything’s great.

The second one comes, time for her to get married. Don’t have a dowry either. St Nicholas comes by again with a bag of coins, and he tosses them up. She gets the money for the dowry. She gets married.

The third one gets old enough to get married. St. Nicholas comes by. Well, now the father is wondering, “What in the world’s going on,” right? So he stakes things out. He’s watching. He’s outside saying, “What is going on?” So he’s. And he catches Nicholas. So “What are you doing?” And Nicholas throws the coins up. And he says, “This is just between us. Don’t tell anybody.”

Well, that story made its way into Nicholas’s biography. And what’s interesting is in medieval times, medieval painters painted pictures of stockings hanging on the chimney. And the idea was that maybe those three girls had stockings drying on the chimney, on the chimney in their room, and the coins came up into the stockings. And that’s today why we put gifts in stockings for our children.

Now, Santa Claus himself later developed, mainly in the Netherlands, fanciful story based on St. Nicholas. But it got all jazzed up and so forth, and it was carried over into the American colonies in the 1700s. They call them Sinterklaas in Dutch.

And but the most interesting thing about that is the picture we see today of Santa Claus with the white beard, with the red suit, with the hat, with the glasses and everything. You know where that comes from? In the 1930s, Coca Cola Company did a big print campaign in magazines with color drawings of Santa Claus that looked that way. And so it’s because of Coca Cola Company that today, this is how we picture Santa Claus.

SHAWN RYAN: No kidding.

LEE STROBEL: Yes, that’s right. So you can take a swig of Coke and thank them that that’s where we got the picture of Santa Claus today.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. That’s a good story. Wow. Thank you. Well, Lee, another great interview, man.

A Prayer for Impact and Influence

LEE STROBEL: Well, Merry Christmas to you and your family, and I really mean that. I pray that God is doing amazing things through you and through this amazing opportunity he’s given you to influence people all around the planet.

And my prayer for you and for the folks who work with you here is that God is going to use you in 2026 and beyond in ways that you’ll only understand in heaven.

I told you about having dinner last night in Paducah, Kentucky, and I was signing some books and a woman came up to me in tears with her husband and she said, “I just have to tell you, I listened to an interview that Shawn Ryan did on his podcast with you and John Burke.”

And in tears, she said, “That was when I came to Faith in Jesus Christ.” And I said, “I’m going to see Shawn tomorrow.” And she said, “Oh, would you please tell him? Would you please tell him? He changed my life. That podcast changed my life.”

My prayer is that will be multiplied countless times in 2026 and beyond.

SHAWN RYAN: I hope that too. I’ll pray for that, too. Awesome. Thank you, Lee.

LEE STROBEL: My pleasure. You too. God bless.

SHAWN RYAN: God bless.

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