Read the full transcript of former investigative journalist and atheist-turned-Christian Lee Strobel’s interview on The Tucker Carlson Show episode titled “Possession, Miracles, Visions, and Encounters With Angels & Demons”, premiered September 1, 2025.
The Supernatural Reality: A Conversation with Lee Strobel
TUCKER CARLSON: So we’re told there’s no state religion in the west, certainly not in the United States, but in fact there is. It’s scientism. It’s the worship of science. It’s the belief, and all of us learn this at a young age, that everything around us, everything we experience can be measured by people in white coats. That’s science. If it can’t be measured, it’s not real.
The problem with this religion is that our life, our daily experience, contradicts it constantly. All of us are seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling things that can’t be measured by science, but it doesn’t make them any less real. These are by definition supernatural. Supernatural experiences are a feature of everyone’s life. And if we’re honest, we’ll admit that. So what do they mean exactly?
Well, Lee Strobel was a reporter. He worked for the Chicago Tribune and left and became a pastor. So he has religious faith, but also a grounding in empiricism, the desire to prove things. He is the perfect person to write the book that he did about the supernatural. That would be dreams, mystical dreams, near death experiences, miracles, ghosts.
We sat down with him to hear just how common these experiences are and what they mean. Lee Strobel, so you’ve written a book? I don’t do a lot of book interviews. Couldn’t resist this one. “Seeing the Supernatural, Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World.”
LEE STROBEL: Right.
TUCKER CARLSON: I think a lot of us sense or know on some level, in fact, I think everybody knows on some level that there is a world that science can’t measure or quantify. That there is stuff that we can’t explain. But that it’s no less real for our inability to explain it. So let’s go through the list.
LEE STROBEL: You know, by the way, I was an atheist. I’m trained in journalism and law. And so I’m always looking for corroboration. I’m looking for evidence, I’m looking for facts. And so you’re right. I think there’s an intuitive sense that most people have that there’s something beyond what we can see, touch, and put in a test. Eight out of ten Americans believe that.
But how do we know what is the evidence? And that’s what I try to get into in the book. How can we be sure through corroborated evidence that indeed there are such things as miracles, as near death experiences, as deathbed encounters and mystical dreams and things like that?
TUCKER CARLSON: Atheism is the leap of imagination.
LEE STROBEL: It is. That’s true.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s hard to be an atheist.
LEE STROBEL: It’s very true.
TUCKER CARLSON: Admire them in a way, though. Feel sorry for them anyway.
LEE STROBEL: Okay.
Understanding Angels: Biblical and Universal Perspectives
TUCKER CARLSON: Angels. What’s an angel?
LEE STROBEL: Fascinating. Angels are created by God before humankind was created. They are spirit beings. So they’re not omniscient like God is. They’re not omnipresent like God is. They don’t age because there’s no physical body. They don’t marry because there’s no physical body. They’re very intelligent, very smart, and they are, according to the Bible, they are to serve not only God but also his people.
TUCKER CARLSON: The Christian Bible.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: With the Hebrew, Old Testament. Makes references. Is there any culture in the world that doesn’t believe in some form of angel?
LEE STROBEL: It’s pretty universal. Just virtually every culture.
TUCKER CARLSON: Like every culture. The Inuit all the way to the Maya. Canaanites.
LEE STROBEL: That’s right. And what’s interesting about the Christian interpretation of angels is that it says in the book of Hebrews in the Bible that we should anticipate the possibility that we would encounter an angel. In other words, it says sometimes when you’re providing hospitality to someone, unbeknownst to you, it’s an angel. And so there’s an anticipation that perhaps there could be angelic encounters.
Real-Life Angelic Encounters
And so what I try to look at in the book are cases in which we have angelic encounters. People actually encounter an angel. I’ll give you an example. There was a missionary named John G. Paton from Scotland, and he went to an island in the South Pacific to be a Christian missionary. And he and his wife were living in a cottage there, and he’s talking about Jesus. Well, the local tribes people didn’t quite like that.
And so one day a mob of them came to burn down their house and kill him. So they see this mob forming and he and his wife are in their house, and what can they do? They start to pray, say, “God protect us, help us. They’re going to kill us. They’re going to burn our house down. What do we do?” And they prayed all night long. And by dawn, the mob began to dissipate.
A year later, he led the head of that mob to faith in Jesus Christ. And they’re having a conversation and John said to him, “By the way, do you remember that day when you all came to burn down our house and kill us? Why didn’t you do it?” And the man said, “Well, who are all those men you had there?” He said, “No men. It was just my wife and I.” He said, “No, no, no. Your house was surrounded by these muscular men in white garments with drawn swords. There’s no way we could have hurt you that night.”
Well, what’s the explanation for that? I think it could very well have been an angelic encounter, that God had sent angels to protect him.
TUCKER CARLSON: Give me another.
A Personal Angelic Vision
LEE STROBEL: Well, I had an encounter myself when I was 12 years old. It was the only dream I remember as a child. It was more of a vision than a dream. An angel appeared to me and started extolling heaven, how beautiful and wonderful heaven is. And I looked at him kind of offhandedly and said, “Well, I’m going to go there someday.” And he looked at me and said, “How do you know?”
And I was shocked by that. How do I know? And I started to stumble around to justify my goodness. I said, “Well, I obey my parents pretty much, and I get good grades in school and my friends like me,” and I’m trying to justify why I would get into heaven. And he looked at me and he said, “That doesn’t matter.” And this chill went through my spine. How can this not matter? And he said, “Someday you’ll understand.” And then disappeared.
Well, I kind of wrote it off as being a bad pizza and ultimately became an atheist. But 16 years later, as an atheist, my wife brought me to a church and I heard the gospel for the first time. That salvation, that the doors of heaven are not flung open based on how nice you are to your parents or how good grades you get in school. It’s based on the grace of God. It’s not something we earn. It’s a free gift of God’s grace.
And I heard that message for the first time, and my mind flashed back to that dream, and I thought, “Wait a minute. That’s what he was trying to tell me back then.”
TUCKER CARLSON: Have you thought a lot about that dream in the subsequent?
LEE STROBEL: It would come to me. Every once in a while. I think about it. I just suppress it. That was a bad pizza. But then I thought, there’s two forms of corroboration there. Number one, that angel told me something when I was 12 years old that I did not already know that salvation is by grace. And secondly, he made a prophecy, a prediction that someday I would understand. That came true 16 years later.
I think that may have been an angelic encounter that I had. I can’t prove it, but that corroboration tells me maybe it really was. So we see cases like this around the world, and there’s more than 200 references of angels in the Bible.
TUCKER CARLSON: 200?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. So lots of evidence that indeed this is part of God’s creation.
The Church’s Silence on Angels
TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting. I’ve been to church. I don’t know that I’ve probably the wrong kind of church, but I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone refer to anything.
LEE STROBEL: It’s so funny you say that, because I was giving a talk the other day and I said, “I’ve been a Christian now since November 8th of 1981. I have never heard a sermon on the topic of angels ever. Ever. Why? I don’t know.”
And so in this book, I delve into it, and I learned some new things. For instance, do we have a guardian angel? Well, there’s actually two passages in the Bible that suggest maybe we do have a guardian angel. In one passage, Jesus is talking to a group and there’s some children there. And he said, “Do not despise these little ones because their angels see the face of God every day in heaven.” Who are their angels?
And then secondly, Peter, when he escapes from prison, goes to a home where some Christians had gathered, and he knocks on the door and the servant says, “Who’s there?” And he says, “Peter.” And she recognizes his voice, and she calls out to the other people and says, “Hey, Peter’s here.” Well, I said, “Can’t be here. He’s in prison. Peter can’t be here. It must be his angel.”
So based on those two passages, there are Christians who believe that we have an angel assigned to us. In fact, I believe in the orthodox Christian tradition, they believe an angel is assigned to you at the time you’re baptized. I don’t know there are Christians who deny that, but it could be.
Praying About Angels
But the other thing I learned in my investigation of angels, I thought, I don’t think it’s appropriate to pray to angels. I don’t believe we’re taught to do that. I think there’s a slippery slope if you pray to angels, that it might slip into worship of angels, which would be blasphemous. But there’s nothing wrong with praying to God about angels.
Martin Luther in the small catechism has a prayer, an evening prayer that says, “Lord, send your holy angels to protect me from the evil one.” And so I never used to do this But I now make part of my prayer that God would send angels to protect me and my family, my ministry, my grandchildren. And so I think that’s totally appropriate to do.
The Evil One and Cultural Embarrassment
TUCKER CARLSON: We’re going to get to demons in a second. But you use the phrase “the evil one.” So the foundational Christian prayer is what we call the Lord’s prayer handed down by Jesus himself. And at the end of it, after we seek forgiveness and forgive those who’ve sinned against us. “Lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil” is the way that most, I think Americans learn the prayer. But there’s another interpretation that says, “deliver us from the evil one.”
LEE STROBEL: That’s right.
TUCKER CARLSON: And I didn’t know that until later in life, but I suspect that that was kind of toned down because the evil one is a little bit too supernatural.
LEE STROBEL: Well, there is an embarrassment in American culture towards some of these supernatural phenomena. In other words, American Christians often want to be accepted and seen as normal by their neighbors. “Oh yes, I go to church and yes, I believe in Jesus, but you won’t catch me talking about angels or demons or miracles or any of this weird stuff.” They want to be accepted as being normal by other people. And so I think there’s a lot of people that just don’t delve into.
TUCKER CARLSON: There’s a de-emphasis.
The Universal Belief in the Supernatural
LEE STROBEL: There’s a de-emphasis in many churches and in many Christian lives. And yet Jesus clearly believed not only in angels, but he was an exorcist. You know, even skeptics will admit, according to the Gospels, that Jesus was an exorcist. So he believed in Satan, he believed in demons.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it was one of the primary activities of life on earth.
LEE STROBEL: Exactly. Look at the Gospel of Mark. I think half of his activity is related in some way to fighting demons. So this is something as a Christian that we ought to believe and then consider, what are the implications of this, that if this is true, if there is a demonic realm, if there is an angelic realm, what are the implications to me today?
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I would put it in another way. Are you aware of any society in the known history of the human race that didn’t believe that there was a supernatural realm? Good and evil?
LEE STROBEL: Yes. It’s virtually universal.
TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve never heard of any culture that didn’t believe that. Post war West.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Drop the atom bomb, get rid of the supernatural.
LEE STROBEL: Right.
TUCKER CARLSON: Because we’re God now.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, that’s right.
TUCKER CARLSON: But before then, I mean, I just think this was taken as a matter of course.
LEE STROBEL: Of course, yeah, naturally.
TUCKER CARLSON: So if every society in known history reaches the same version of the same conclusion.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: It suggests maybe there’s something there.
LEE STROBEL: It sure does. It sure does. You know, why would you come up with that? Exactly. You know, it’s funny, people will say, “Well, you need extraordinary evidence to prove an extraordinary claim,” which I don’t think is legitimate. I don’t think that stands up to scrutiny.
But let’s take it for a moment on face value and say you need extraordinary evidence to prove an extraordinary claim. Well, the claim that there are demons is not an extraordinary claim because 95% of humanity through history has believed in it. So if you’re an atheist, the onus is on you. You must present the extraordinary evidence that the demonic does not exist.
The Experience of Good and Evil Forces
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, there are also moments in the life of every person who’s awake and not on fentanyl. Maybe even people who are on fentanyl, I hope, where you know that you are being acted on by an outside force of some kind. You have no idea what it is.
But there are moments when you are much better than yourself, much more empathetic. And there are other moments where you’re seized by the desire to destroy for the sake of destruction, which also doesn’t make any sense. There’s no kind of evolutionary biological accounting for that. Why would you want to destroy something for no reason? Another person, an object, but the impulse to destroy? Clearly the hallmark of evil, right?
LEE STROBEL: It is. And it’s consistent with the Christian teaching that the demonic realm exists, that it is intent on luring us away from him and luring us down a pathway that is dark and that is dangerous.
TUCKER CARLSON: But people feel that you don’t have to be a Christian to have felt that. If you’re honest with yourself, there are moments where you’re like, “Why did I do that?”
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, yeah, right. And yet we do have cases where we have evidence that there is a demonic realm.
Angels Among Us
TUCKER CARLSON: All right, so let’s go. Let me ask you one last angel question, because I’m trying to faithfully go in order based on… Because you can judge a book by its cover, I’ve decided. So you said that angels in the New Testament, and perhaps also in the Old. But angels are described as present in our world.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: We will mistake angels for people.
LEE STROBEL: Good.
TUCKER CARLSON: Very well.
LEE STROBEL: That’s right. As predicted.
TUCKER CARLSON: So do you think that happens?
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: And if so, can you give us an example? And what would be the purpose of that?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. In the book of Hebrews, it says that we will do it unbeknownst to ourselves. So in other words, the implication is that we will have angelic encounters, but we won’t realize they’re angels. And I think that does happen.
Now, I have a couple of cases in my book. One is a pastor who is driving his car in Ohio. He loses control of the car. He hits a telephone or an electric transformer, kind of a pole type of thing. The wires fall down on his car. The doors are jammed shut. The electricity is coursing through the car, so much so that the windshield starts to melt. And he’s trapped in this car. He doesn’t know what to do. And he begins to pray. “God, I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do.”
And a man, scruffy kind of guy, comes walking up to the car. And he opens the car whose doors were jammed. He opens the door, he reaches in, he lifts out this pastor and takes him about 50 yards away from the car, which then explodes.
And he says to the pastor, he says, “You’re going to be okay. You’re okay now, but the police are on their way and I can’t be here when they get here. So you just know that you’re okay.” And he walked away and disappeared.
Now, the people, the medics who came, the emergency technicians and so forth that came as a result of the accident, and they look at the car, they can’t explain how this is possible, that somebody could have opened that car door and not been electrocuted and rescued this pastor. And yet it happened. And the pastor says, “I believe it was an angel.”
Well, maybe could have been. How do you prove something like that? But I mean, how do you explain it away naturally? How do you explain it away that he’s able to come grip the car door and open up this car that had been jammed shut. So I think, yeah, there are cases where I think the logical explanation, the most reasonable explanation, if you don’t rule out the supernatural at the outset, is that it was an angelic encounter.
TUCKER CARLSON: Amazing. Amazing. But they’re probably more subtle experiences too. Where you learn something, you encounter somebody out of nowhere who tells you something or who tests your compassion.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, yeah. Could very well be. And even the incident I had that seemed to… As an atheist, here I am in this church, nearly 30 years old, hearing this, understanding the gospel anyway for the first time. And that encounter I had with an angel is something to help open my heart to the truth of the gospel.
Amazing. Of course, I had to spend two years of my life investigating it from a, you know, to kind of conclude that it really was true. But it did propel me down that road toward God.
The Nature of Demons
TUCKER CARLSON: What are demons?
LEE STROBEL: Demons are fallen angels. The Bible… The Bible is a little bit vague on this, but apparently what happened there was a kind of funny.
TUCKER CARLSON: If I could just pause. This is my totally ignorant read of it.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: But when the supernatural host, you know, all these supernatural beings are referred to in the Bible, there’s almost a sense in which the writer is assuming the reader already knows all this.
LEE STROBEL: Yes, that’s right. It doesn’t… It doesn’t have a passage that says, “By the way…”
TUCKER CARLSON: Right. These are real.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. “Let me explain all this to you.” It doesn’t do that, which is interesting.
TUCKER CARLSON: But the, I mean, the culture at the time was familiar with this and there was kind of no debate that there was a supernatural.
LEE STROBEL: It’s sort of like the soul. I have a chapter in the book on the existence of the soul because a lot of scientists today will deny that the soul exists. The Bible doesn’t say “By the way you have a soul, and here’s… Let me define it for you.” It presumes that we have a soul.
TUCKER CARLSON: Scientists will deny the soul exists.
LEE STROBEL: So most of what the big health…
TUCKER CARLSON: By the way, anyone who denies the soul exists, probably getting ready to genocide you.
LEE STROBEL: It’s like kind of a soulless experience.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, if there’s no human soul, then how is murder wrong?
LEE STROBEL: Well, exactly. And they’ll say free will is impossible. So there is no free will. Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s crazy. But demons… It started out with Lucifer, whose name means morning star. And he was kind of first among angels.
TUCKER CARLSON: Name means morning star.
The Fall of Lucifer and the Reality of Demonic Activity
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, Lucifer, he becomes Satan. And the name Satan literally means adversary. And so the implication of scripture is that this very prominent angel named Lucifer wanted to be worshiped. He’s the one who wanted the worship. And so his pride is what resulted in him falling from the angelic realm, becoming Satan, becoming someone.
I mean, think about this. When Jesus encounters Satan, what is it Satan wanted from him? Worship. Satan wanted Jesus to worship him. And that’s what Lucifer wanted. It was pride that got in the way. He becomes Satan. And a certain percentage of the angels accompanied him in this fall. This happened before the fall of humankind in the Garden of Eden. So this predates that.
We don’t know how many angels accompany him, but there are a lot of angels. In Revelation chapter 5, there’s a scene of Jesus on the throne being worshiped. And if you do the math, because it talks about it a little cryptically. It was 100 million angels worshiping him at that time. So there’s a lot of angels, and a percentage of them fell with Lucifer. He became Satan, and angels became his minions, so to speak.
Now, Satan is limited in his power. He’s not omniscient like God is. He’s not omnipresent like God is. In other words, the guy was telling me, said there’s probably never a time when you and Satan have both been in the same zip code because he’s only in one place at a time. And so he’s got things he’s doing. He’s probably never been in the same zip code you have. But his demons probably have been. And they carry out his will, which is to pull people away from God, to discourage people in finding God and to drag as many people to hell with him as they can.
Now, his existence, he’s sort of on a leash by God at this point. His ultimate destination in the lake of fire is already predicted. So he has no future, really, but he has influence and he has certain powers. And he and the demons, very intuitive. You’ll think they know more than they know. And they go after people.
A Psychiatrist’s Encounter with the Supernatural
I tell the story in my book about a very prominent psychiatrist named Richard Gallagher. Educated Ivy League university. I have a quote from the former president of the American Psychiatric association calling him “highest integrity, totally trained and prominent in his field of psychiatry.” Of course, he’s a medical doctor because he’s a psychiatrist. Just extolling him as an individual and as a scientist, as a psychiatrist.
And about 25 years ago, he had two cats and they got along great. They slept together, they played together, everything was fine until one night the cats started to attack each other viciously. I mean, they’re trying to kill each other. They’re clawing each other, snarling each other, they’re biting each other. It was unbelievable. They pulled them apart and put them into separate rooms and thought, what in the world was that all about?
At 9am the next day, the doorbell rings. And it was a preset appointment. A Catholic priest was bringing by a woman to be examined by Dr. Gallagher. She claimed that she was a high priestess of a satanic culture and he wanted her to be examined. Was she demonically possessed? Was she just crazy? Or what is this all about?
So at 9am the doorbell rings for his appointment. And Dr. Gallagher opens the door. And here’s this woman who claims to be a high priestess of a satanic cult, who kind of looks up at him and sneers at him and says, “So how’d you like those cats last night?”
Oof. Yeah, there’s something going on. And that took him on a journey where he, as a psychiatrist who understands what mental illness is and understands, comes to understand what demon possession and demon oppression is like. He spends the next 25 years as kind of the go to guy in the medical realm for exorcists of the Catholic faith and has witnessed amazing things that he documents.
And I quote him in the book cases where we have a woman who in front of eight eyewitnesses levitates off a bed for 30 minutes. Another case where people are speaking in Latin and other languages that they don’t know, where they spontaneously are bruised and clawed. Where one petite woman picked up a 200 pound Lutheran deacon and threw him across a room. I mean, these are things, as he said, they go beyond psychiatry. He believes these are actual demonic possessions.
Christian Protection from Demonic Possession
Now, a true Christian cannot be demonically possessed. And the reason is a true Christian is indwelled by the Holy Spirit and he can’t be indwelled by evil and good like that in the same way at the same time. So Christians cannot be possessed, but they can be oppressed, they can be hectored, they can be bothered, they can be attacked by demons. And there are some amazing examples of that. And I just mentioned a couple of people who are hectored or bothered by demons.
Now for Christians, the book of James says to if you rebuke Satan, he’ll go away. So if you’re a Christian, you don’t have to be afraid that these demons are going to somehow possess you or kill you or whatever. “Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world,” the Bible says. And so you can. The Bible says if you shun Satan, he has no choice, he’s got to leave you. So for a Christian, you’re protected. But I fear for those that don’t have that kind of protection. There are cases of demon possession that, as Dr. Gallagher and others have documented, are corroborated in ways that I don’t think they can be denied.
TUCKER CARLSON: How can you corroborate a supernatural event?
LEE STROBEL: I think by the. When there’s no naturalistic explanation for what occurs. So you have a woman, for instance, in front of eight eyewitnesses levitating off a bed for 30 minutes. I don’t know what the natural explanation for that would be. That’s right, so I think it points towards something beyond that.
For me, as I investigate, another area I investigate in the book are miracles. And for me, if you have solid documentation, medical documentation, if you have multiple eyewitnesses with no motive to deceive, if you have no natural explanation that seems logical that it can account for the phenomenon, and if it takes place in the context of prayer, then I think it’s logical to conclude that a miracle has taken place.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
Documented Miracles in Medical Literature
LEE STROBEL: And there have been miracles published in peer reviewed medical journals. I talk about one in my book. Here’s a woman who was blind for 12 years with incurable condition. She went to a school for the blind. She learned to read braille, she walked with a white cane, and she married a Baptist pastor.
And one night they’re getting ready to go to bed, she’s already in bed. He comes over to her and he puts his hand on her shoulder and he begins to cry and he begins to pray. And he says, “Lord, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can heal her right now. And I pray that you do it tonight.” And with that, she opened her eyes to perfect vision. She said, “I was blind when my husband prayed for me. He prayed, I opened my eyes, I can see.”
It’s a miracle that was researched by multiple medical researchers and published in a medical journal as a case study. What do you do with that? What do you do with that?
TUCKER CARLSON: What did they do with it?
LEE STROBEL: I think it kind of leaves it up to the reader to say, what’s your conclusion?
TUCKER CARLSON: Because they were upset by it.
LEE STROBEL: Well, yeah, certainly does point toward a supernatural event. But here’s what’s interesting. There’s a woman with a PhD from Harvard who’s a professor at Indiana University, major secular university. And she said, “I’d like to test whether miracles are possible. How can we scientifically test that?”
So here’s what she did. Miracles tend to cluster in places where the gospel is just breaking in. And so we see them in China, in Mozambique, in Brazil, places where the gospel is taking root. We see miracles taking place in a disproportionate number. So she says, “I’m going to put it to the test.”
Scientific Testing of Miraculous Healings
So she sends a team of scientists to Mozambique and researchers to Mozambique. And they go into the bush and they say, “Bring us all your deaf and blind.” So they bring all the people deaf, blind, or with severe hearing or vision problems. They bring them and they test them scientifically. Right there. What is your level of vision? What is your level of hearing? They get that scientifically established, then immediately they are prayed for in the name of Jesus by people who tend to have a track record of God using them that way. And then immediately after that, they’re tested again.
Guess what? They found improvement in virtually every case. In fact, get this, the average improvement in visual acuity was tenfold. There was a woman named Martine. When they first encountered her, she could not hear the equivalent of a jackhammer next door. After 10 minutes of prayer, she could now hear normal conversations.
Well, this team is flummoxed by this. It’s like, wait, what? Something is going on here. Virtually every person improves, some of them dramatically. So, like Martine, let’s see if we can replicate it. So we’ll go to another place where miracles are breaking. In Brazil, they did the same test. They got the same results.
In fact, there was a woman in Brazil, she couldn’t see me holding up three fingers from nine feet away. And after prayer for her healing, she could read the name tag of the person praying for her. Tucker. This was published, this is a scientifically rigorous study that was published in a peer reviewed, secular scientific medical journal. Major medical journal, the Southern Medical Journal published this.
And I interview, in my book, I interview the scholar that did that study. And I said, “What do you make of this?” And she said, “Something’s going on.” She said, “This isn’t. We’re not playing on people’s emotions. This is not some televangelist trying to get people to send in their money. This is not some people at a predisposition for anything. Something is going on.” And I think she’s right. I think it’s miraculous.
TUCKER CARLSON: It sounds it. And I think every person who’s awake has experienced something that doesn’t have a natural aspect.
The Prevalence of Miraculous Experiences
LEE STROBEL: 38%. I did a study, I hired a public opinion firm to do a scientifically accurate study of American adults. And I asked the question, “Have you ever had one experience, at least in your life, that you can only explain away as being a miracle of God?” 38% of American adults said yes.
And by the way, let’s say 90, 99% of them are wrong. Let’s say they think it was a miracle, but it was just a big coincidence. So let’s just wipe out 99% and say, no, no, no, you thought it was a miracle. It really wasn’t. Let’s wipe away 99%. Guess what? That would still mean. There would be a million miracles nearly in the United States alone. So you’re right. So many people have experienced something in their life that they can only attribute to being a miracle of God.
TUCKER CARLSON: When Jesus performs miracles, healing people, making the lame walk, fixing the man with the withered hand. Even when he casts out demons from the man in the cemetery, the Sea of Galilee, the reaction he gets from particularly religious authorities, the Pharisees, they hate it. They hate it.
LEE STROBEL: Yes, they do. It’s funny you say that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why is that?
Religious Resistance to Miracles
LEE STROBEL: Well, yeah, I wrote a novel once. Fiction, book of fiction. It was like a John Grisham thriller. Nobody read it. It was a big bomb. And nobody bought my book. But in that book, I have a politically ambitious pastor and there’s a miracle.
TUCKER CARLSON: Is there anything worse?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, that’s right. And there’s a miracle that happens in his congregation and a reporter comes to question him about it. And the reporter’s thinking, oh my gosh, the evidence is overwhelming some to him and the pastor is downplaying it. “No, no, no, no, no. That’s just a coincidence that can…” the pastor. Because why? Because he wants to be. He doesn’t want to be seen as being weird by the community at large and it would poison his political chances. So I. There is something true to that in Americans that we tend to suppress it. Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Not, I mean, but I mean, this is an account from 2,000 years ago. No Americans in the New Testament. And they had the same reaction, but the religion.
LEE STROBEL: They did not like Jesus. They did not like his message. They did not like who he was. I get it. Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: I think they’d be happy that the lame man can walk after 30 years.
LEE STROBEL: At least they could say, “Hey, good for you. That’s great. By the way, we don’t like this Jesus guy.” But no, they didn’t. They just said, “We don’t like this Jesus guy.”
TUCKER CARLSON: No, actually they plotted to kill the man he healed.
LEE STROBEL: Yes. And they did. Yes, exactly.
Satan as Ruler of the Earth
TUCKER CARLSON: So there’s a couple references at least a couple references in the New Testament to Satan being the ruler of the earth.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: What does that mean?
LEE STROBEL: It means that in this realm, he in many ways, has his way. In other words, he has access to be able to influence people and point them away from the one true hope that there is, which is God. And so he prowls about, as the Bible says, as a lion, hoping to tear people apart spiritually.
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, if that’s not true, then explain the First World War.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, I mean, there is just.
TUCKER CARLSON: No, there’s no explanation, even now, over a hundred years later, for why that war started. Oh, you know, Archduke Ferdinand got shot in Sarajevo. Really? Okay. That’s not a real explanation, actually. Why did Christian Europe commit suicide? And there are many other wars and many other tragedies in all of our lives. Like, that doesn’t make any sense. That’s clearly supernatural forces are acting on people.
LEE STROBEL: I agree. And so what I tried to do is say, okay, well, what evidence is there that there’s more than what we can see and touch? Because I’m fascinated by this. And the reason I say that, Tucker, is because if this is true, if demons do exist, we ought to be heads up about it, because the two biggest mistakes we can make about the demonic realm, number one, is to deny that they exist, and number two, to see a demon behind every bush and think they’re more powerful than they are. They’re both problems. But I think the biggest problem in our culture is to deny that there is a demonic realm. Pretend like there isn’t.
Hallmarks of Demonic Influence
TUCKER CARLSON: So what are the hallmarks of it, then?
LEE STROBEL: Well, I think some things you mentioned, we see manifestations of it in ways that defy natural explanations. And I think that’s probably the best.
TUCKER CARLSON: Way of disorder, distraction, chaos, violence, hate, division.
LEE STROBEL: And you think if Satan were smart, which he is, would he go around the country and around the world trying to possess or bother average everyday people? Well, you know what? Much more efficient to go to Hollywood and to influence a bunch of people there who are very influential in, let’s say, the entertainment industry.
And let’s say he encourages them to create films and television shows that are funny and that are creative and are fun, but there’s an underlying message to them that there’s a normalization of immoral activity that makes it normal, because when we laugh, it opens us up to various possibilities. When we laugh, our defenses come down.
So I’m thinking of a wonderful, funny TV show like Friends. Remember Friends? The TV show was on TV for years, very popular show.
TUCKER CARLSON: Only America who never saw it.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, but underlying that is a very ugly sexual ethic that normalizes multiple sexual partners and that sort of thing. The kind of thing that Satan would love to inculcate into American culture. And I think it’s much more efficient for Satan to influence movie makers and TV makers in Hollywood to create products that feed us stuff that without us even realizing it, open us up to the occult, open us up to immoral activity.
Normalize it in ways that, well, if Monica can do that on Friends, I can certainly have sex on the first date with this guy I meet.
Assessing Good and Evil
TUCKER CARLSON: So the way I, as a non theological ignorant person try and figure out whether something’s good or bad, because it is an open question very often.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Is that good or bad? I’m not sure.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Are the people doing it at peace, joyful, happy? Are they tormented?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: And I know a lot of people in Hollywood, a lot of people I like, actually not too many happy people.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Really tormented people. For real? String of wrecked relationships, kids who hate them, trans kids, drug problems. Like there’s so much of that. Do you think that’s a fair way to assess?
LEE STROBEL: I think because it is logical that if Satan were to try to influence a culture in a mass way, that that is a logical way that he would do it. And oh, guess what? By the way, look at all the dysfunction we see in that community. It does seem to match up.
TUCKER CARLSON: So if evil is acting through you, you are harmed generally.
LEE STROBEL: I would say yes, you’re going to be someone who’s trying to influence others. You may not realize the footprint, but it destroys you. Yeah. It does destroy you.
TUCKER CARLSON: It certainly seems to.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, I think so. God created us so we could have a relationship with him. So he taught us how we can live in a way that maximizes who we are. And when we stray from that in egregious ways, as many people have and do, there are implications for us.
Targeting Leaders
TUCKER CARLSON: If I were trying to subvert and destroy, I would go after religious leaders.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: I’d have them like molest kids or freaky sex lives or steal money from the church.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: And I’ve always noticed that the leadership of Christian churches, like numerically.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Way more likely to be screwed up than the people in the pews. Interesting. You know what I mean? You see these scandals with pastors and you’re like, how many people who are going to church every Sunday have sex lives like that? Probably not very many, but a pretty high percentage of pastors. And I feel like that is outside influence.
LEE STROBEL: Like teachers too. Teachers who young kids look up to. You can imagine when you were kindergarten, first grade, second grade, you looked up to your teachers.
TUCKER CARLSON: Not one time. There’s not one teacher I liked.
LEE STROBEL: Oh, really? Oh, I sure did.
TUCKER CARLSON: I felt it was an authoritarian situation. I was totally opposed. From kindergarten on until I left college. There was not one day where I respected or liked any of them. Not a single one.
LEE STROBEL: That is so funny. I happened to go to public school growing up. And yet back then in the 50s and 60s, most of the teachers were Christians. Yeah. And so, no, I had some wonderful teachers that taught me great lessons about life.
TUCKER CARLSON: You grew up in a better America than I did in Southern California in the 70s. I thought they were all buffoons, freaks. I wasn’t taking orders from them. I really disliked them. Sorry, excuse me. It’s funny, but if you want to lead people astray, you subvert their leaders, I guess.
LEE STROBEL: Yes, yes, very much so. I mean, yeah. Just put yourself in Satan’s shoes. How are we going to impact the maximum number of people? You’re going to want to go after leaders, you’re going to want to go after religious leaders, you’re going to want to go after children, and influence them at a young age.
TUCKER CARLSON: We see all of that. I often think this is such a wonderful country, despite all its problems. I’m totally convinced it’s the best country, having been to a lot of countries. But our leadership is the worst. They’re the worst. They’re like the worst people I’ve ever met. And maybe that’s not accidental.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. I mean, could it be. I’ll just raise the question. Could it be that some people have received some assistance from demonic forces in terms of achieving what they’ve achieved?
TUCKER CARLSON: Certainly seems that way. How many happy political leaders do you know? I don’t know how many political leaders you know, but how many happy ones have you met?
LEE STROBEL: Gosh, not a lot, I trust, put it that way.
TUCKER CARLSON: Right. But they’re all like tormented, sweaty and nervous and afraid. Don’t you think those are signs?
LEE STROBEL: I do, I do. And you look at, if Satan’s going to go after children, what is all this stuff about libraries doing children’s readings and drag shows to little kids? Why? Why would that happen? Because if you can capture the mind of a child very young, it could influence them for the rest of their life.
TUCKER CARLSON: What happens because we put up with that.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, we do.
TUCKER CARLSON: A healthy society would not put up with that for five minutes.
LEE STROBEL: That’s true.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. They’d drive them out of the temple immediately with a whip.
LEE STROBEL: Sorry. Excuse me.
Protection from Demonic Forces
TUCKER CARLSON: So you believe that demons roam the earth?
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: How do you protect yourself?
LEE STROBEL: The Bible talks about in Ephesians, talks about the full armor of God. And I talk about this in a book. I have half a chapter that looks at ways that we can protect ourselves. I think the key number one way is to be knowledgeable about Scripture. Because if the Bible is really from God, then that is the plumb line of truth. And if it’s the plumb line of truth, we can measure everything against it.
And so if we’re tempted by something that violates that plumb line of truth, then we can be assured that’s not from God. And so I think being familiar with what are the teachings of the Bible so that we can deter any effects, any attempts by Satan to lead us down a path that’s clearly not biblical. So I think that’s probably the number one way. I think prayer is important.
I think honestly, and I say this, granted, as an evangelist who wants to drag as many people to heaven with me as I can, that’s my life goal. Now, as a former atheist, I will say the best way to protect yourself is to come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Because if you are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, you can’t be possessed by Satan and you can tell Satan to flee, and the Bible says he will flee.
Understanding the Holy Spirit
TUCKER CARLSON: What is the Holy Spirit?
LEE STROBEL: Holy Spirit, God is one what and three who’s. The Bible teaches there is one God, that’s clear. But it also teaches that the Father is God, that the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God. And so we have three. We have one what, which is God and three persons. And so the Holy Spirit, being disembodied and so forth, comes into the life of someone when they repent of their sin, receive forgiveness through Christ. John 1:12 says, “But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name.”
TUCKER CARLSON: But in practical terms, like what is the Holy Spirit? So the Holy Spirit comes into you, then what happens?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, the Holy Spirit indwells you. Now you’ve got a plumb line inside of you, so to speak. And you recognize, I’m sure you see things in your life now as a Christian that you did before you were Christian. You say why did I even do that? What was I messing with that? I certainly have those examples because now, being indwelled by the Holy Spirit, as a follower of Jesus, I have that plumb line to tell me what’s godly and what’s not.
And so it aids our conscience in understanding that. And by being indwelled by the Holy Spirit, it means we cannot be possessed by Satan. As we see these demon possessions, and those are increasing in numbers, the Catholic Church has just added a whole bunch of people who are trained in exorcisms. You see, in charismatic ministries, deliverance ministries, I think we’re seeing an increase in demonic activity and in demons hectoring and harassing and oppressing and possessing people. I think we’re seeing an increase in that.
Spiritual Sensitivity to Places
TUCKER CARLSON: Are there certain places? I mean, there are physical places I have been where the hair on my arms go up.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, me too.
TUCKER CARLSON: And without any foreknowledge. Yeah, not like this really spooky place. Watch this. It’s like some place. I can think of a few of them in my life where it’s like, ooh, I don’t know what this is about.
Spiritual Strongholds and Physical Places
LEE STROBEL: What is that? I’ll think of Haiti. Think of, hey, I’ve been to Haiti and I feel that strongly. I have a good friend who has a ministry in Haiti, and that’s a place that has opened itself up to the demonic through human sacrifice, through voodoo, through all these things. And it is a place where you palpably feel evil often.
I was in some remote parts of India and felt the same thing in many places. So I think, just as miracles tend to break out in a positive way in places where the gospel is breaking in, I think we probably see pockets around the globe where Satan has a stronghold. And I would think that physical places. Physical places, yeah. Like, I think Haiti is a good example of that.
TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve been in some places in the US where I felt that really strongly. I’ve been. I was in a house once. I lived in a house once as a child. We’re part of the house or something so wrong with it. And every person who lives in the house knew that. Does that sound.
LEE STROBEL: Could be. Could be. Could be an occultic thing. Yeah.
Mystical Dreams and Muslim Conversions
TUCKER CARLSON: What’s a mystical dream?
LEE STROBEL: Mystical dreams. I talk about these in the book is so fascinating to me. We have seen more Muslims become Christians in the last couple of decades than in the 1400 years since Muhammad. And it’s been estimated that a quarter to a third of them, before they became a Christian, had a Jesus dream.
Now, what’s interesting about that is that these are corroborated dreams. I’ll tell you what I mean by that. First of all, a devout Muslim has no incentive, let’s say in a closed country where it’s even illegal, to share the Christian gospel, they have no incentive to have a dream as a product of their subconscious mind about Jesus, the Jesus of Christianity, because it might lead him into apostasy. It might lead him to a death sentence in certain countries.
So there’s no incentive for a devout Muslim to have a dream about Jesus. And yet we are seeing this all over the Middle east, in closed countries, in oppressive countries where Christians are persecuted and so forth.
But here’s what I found most fascinating. In these cases, people are not going to sleep as a Muslim having a dream about Jesus and waking up as a Christian. That’s not how it works. There is always something that points to a phenomenon or an event or a person outside the dream that corroborates the dream.
Let me give an example to clarify it. There was a woman named Nor in Cairo, mother of eight, devout Muslim. She goes to sleep. She has a dream in which Jesus visits her. It’s like unlike any dream she’s ever had. And she feels the love and the grace and the beauty of Jesus in such a profound way. She said, “Here I am, a woman in the presence of a man, for the first time in my life. I didn’t feel shame. I felt love.” She’s just overwhelmed by this.
And they’re walking along the lakeshore, and she says, “Jesus, why do you appear to me? I’m just a poor mother of eight in Cairo.” And Jesus said, “My friend will tell you tomorrow.” And she said, “Who’s your friend?” And Jesus gestures to a man she didn’t even realize was walking with them along the lakeshore because she was so mesmerized by Jesus, she didn’t notice this guy. And he says, “My friend will tell you tomorrow.”
She wakes up the next day. She goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on a Friday afternoon, and she sees the man from her dream. She goes up to him. “So you’re the one. You’re the” He’s “Whoa. What are you talking about? You’re the man. Same glasses, same face, same clothes. You’re the one.” He said, “Did you ever dream about Jesus last night?” She said, “Yes.”
Turned out he was an underground church planter. He didn’t want to go to the crowded marketplace in Cairo on Friday afternoon. It’s chaotic. But he felt God had an assignment for him. So he went that day nor encounters him from the dream. He pulls her aside, opens the Bible and shares the gospel with her. That’s the external corroboration that I’m talking about. It’s not just something that takes place in your subconscious mind. There is an external factor to it.
TUCKER CARLSON: So one of the miracles. There are at least two in the.
LEE STROBEL: Story you just told. Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: And one of them is that the pastor felt the call to go to the marketplace on a Friday and be obeyed.
LEE STROBEL: Exactly.
Personal Experiences with Divine Guidance
TUCKER CARLSON: Have you had that experience in your life where you just feel like you’re being told to do something and you obediently do it?
LEE STROBEL: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember as a new Christian, I felt a really strong urging, I believe it was from God to empty our bank account and send a anonymous cashier’s check to a woman. A single woman in our church sent it anonymously and to do it on Friday. I don’t know why, but it was on to do it on Friday. My wife and I both prayed about it. I said, “Yeah, we. We’re both feeling this. It’s odd, but we feel it’s legit.” So empty your bank account. We emptied the bank account.
TUCKER CARLSON: That is odd. Yeah, fair.
LEE STROBEL: Hey, it was only $500. But still for us, that was a.
TUCKER CARLSON: Lot of money back then.
LEE STROBEL: So we send this check.
TUCKER CARLSON: Did you know the woman?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, we knew her. Yeah. Nice woman. She had come to faith. She had actually had a lot of negative experience with Christians growing up, but she ended up coming to faith through a debate on Christianity we did in our church between an atheist and a Christian. And so I knew who she was and so forth.
So on Monday morning, she calls me out of the blue and said. And she’s crying. She said, “Lee, I don’t know what to do.” I said, “What? What? What? What’s going on?” She said, “My car broke down over the weekend. They say it’s going to cost $500 for me to fix my car. I don’t have $500. I’m going to lose my car. I’m going to lose my job because I got to have my car for the job. Would you pray for me that I would get this $500 somehow?”
And I said, “Absolutely. I’ll pray for me. Let’s pray.” And sure enough, that afternoon, because I’d mail in Friday, Monday afternoon, she gets this anonymous $500 check. So there’s. You ever tell her no, she doesn’t. Not unless she’s listening.
TUCKER CARLSON: Maybe she Is she’s still around?
LEE STROBEL: Oh, yeah, she’s still. Yeah. She actually quit her nursing job and joined the staff of our church. She used to deliver my mail every day at the church. Wow. Yeah. So I guess if she’s listening now, she’ll know.
TUCKER CARLSON: But you’ve never told her what year was that?
LEE STROBEL: No. Oh, gosh. This was. I was a new Christian at the church. I was probably 1987 somewhere in there. Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Almost 40 years ago.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that does happen. Where God influences you, do you try to be open? I do that. I do. When I pray, I try to leave time. At the end of the prayer, say, “God, I’m just going to be quiet for a while. If there’s anything you want to tell me, anything you need to alert me to, any way you want to lead me, I’m just going to be quiet. I’m just going to listen,” and I just spend.
And normally there’s nothing. That day there was $500, but normally I don’t feel anything that specific. But it’s okay. Because what’s important is saying, “I’m open, God, to anything you want me to do or what you want me to do, I’m open to it.”
Of course, anything. The Bible says, test the spirits. So if I’m feeling something, I want to test it to make sure it’s scriptural. Because God’s not going to tell me to do. He’s not going to go tell me to poison my neighbor. All right? So it’s going to be consistent with scripture. But I want to leave myself that opportunity to open myself up and say, “God, I’m listening,” and just pause for a while and see, is there something? And on that day, there was something. It doesn’t happen that often, but every once in a while, something will take place like that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Amazing.
LEE STROBEL: So you.
TUCKER CARLSON: Sorry, for the. For the cul de sac there. You believe there has been an uptick in mystical dreams?
The Prevalence of Jesus Dreams in the Middle East
LEE STROBEL: Oh, definitely. In Middle East. In fact, get this, in Cairo, there’s often an ad in the newspaper, and the ad says, “Call this number and we’ll tell you about the man in white you met in your dream last night.”
TUCKER CARLSON: Really?
LEE STROBEL: Because there’s so many of these. I interviewed for my book Seeing the Supernatural. I interviewed Tom Doyle, who is the world’s leading expert on this. And Tom said, “Lee, I could pick up the phone right now and I could call Syria, I could call Iraq, I could call Iran. And I’ll give you five more stories.” They are so common.
I’ll give you one from My church in Houston, Texas. So I’m part of a church. I live part time in Houston, part of a church there used to be on the staff. And there was a woman who was born in the Middle east in a closed country where you can’t share the gospel legally. And she had a dream when she was about 16 years old, and she said it was unlike any dream I ever had because it was like a projector was projecting an image of Jesus. And it influenced her, it touched her, but she didn’t know what to do with it. And she said “I was having problems with my life. I called out for help. And that’s what happened.”
Well, she ended up marrying a Muslim gentleman who was transferred to Houston, Texas, because of the oil industry. So she moves into near our church, and she has another dream. And in this dream, she’s up to her waist in a body of water, and there’s a man with her with a book that’s open, and the man is weeping. And she’s thinking, “What does that mean? What is that supposed to be about?”
Well, a neighbor of hers goes to our church, and she invited her to come to Easter services at our church because her husband was out of town. So she came to Easter services. She’s sitting on the aisle in the auditorium waiting for the service to begin. And she sees the man who was with her in the pond with the book. And she said, “That’s the guy. He was one in my dream when I was in this pond for no reason whatsoever, but I saw him.”
Well, his name is Alan Splan. Allen is our pastor of baptism. Allen comes over. They introduce her. This woman ends up receiving Jesus Christ as her forgiver and leader. She becomes a Christian, and she learns about baptism. And sure enough, Alan Splon takes her to the pond on our property where we baptize new believers. And with her water up to her waist and with Allen with the Bible open and weeping at the joy, baptizes her in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So there’s a case in my own church in Texas like that.
TUCKER CARLSON: What did her husband say when he got home?
LEE STROBEL: He doesn’t know to be true. He doesn’t know because she can’t tell him. She said he would. He would. Who knows what he would do? She can’t. She can’t. So she keeps. She has a Bible that we gave her. She keeps it hidden. And she doesn’t go to church because she can’t. So she has to keep it hidden from her husband. Wow. It’s sad. But again, she didn’t do nothing about baptism. What kind of a mystical dream? You’re standing up to your waist in water with a guy with a book who’s crying. I mean, what in the world is that all about?
Distinguishing Mystical Dreams from Ordinary Dreams
TUCKER CARLSON: How do you tell a difference between a conventional dream and a mystical dream? Or are all dreams mystical? We don’t know what dreams are, just for the record, as a matter of science, and no one’s ever been able to explain what that is.
The Nature of Mystical Dreams and Visions
LEE STROBEL: You know, it’s interesting. God is in control of all. And so, in a sense, everything is spiritual, right? I mean, God rules and so forth. So in a sense, any dream is spiritual. I think to me, a mystical dream is one that has strong spiritual overtones. And there’s no natural explanation to say this could come from your subconscious mind.
You know, I think sometimes people will write off a dream as saying, “Well, that’s just something that came from your subconscious. Maybe you saw something on television, didn’t even realize it, and it was in your subconscious.” But when you have examples like the one I gave, that doesn’t make sense.
I’ll give you another example. There was a guy named Omar, and Omar grew up in a refugee camp in the Middle East. Hated Jewish people. Hated Jewish people. His life goal was to murder as many Jews as he could. And so he wanted to join Hamas. This is about a dozen years ago, he wanted to join Hamas. So he makes arrangements to meet with some leaders of Hamas.
So he’s walking down the road toward that meeting, and he’s blocked by a vision of Jesus, who stops him and says, “Omar, this is not the plan I have for your life. I want you to turn around. I want you to go home. This is not what I want for your life.” Well, it freaks him out, right? And so what does he do? He turns around. He goes home.
That afternoon, he lived in an apartment building. That afternoon, an American family was moving into the apartment across the hall. And he goes over there and he says, “I just had this vision of Jesus telling me that.” And he explained the vision, and he said, “As a Christian, can you tell me what it means?”
And this Christian man said, “Well, let me just do this.” And he opens the Bible and he shares the gospel with him, and Omar not only becomes a Christian, but today he himself is an underground church planter in the Middle East. Omar’s not his real name, by the way.
So there you have again, external corroboration. The image, the vision he had pointed him ultimately towards somebody else who then explained the gospel. That to me tells me this is more than a subconscious manifestation of something in our heads. And that’s what, as someone trained in journalism and law, I’m looking for those kind of instances of corroboration.
Distinguishing Between Natural and Supernatural Visions
TUCKER CARLSON: Visions are something we associate with hallucinogenic drugs.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: What is that? What are the visions produced by Ayahuasca and LSD?
LEE STROBEL: There are what I would call naturalistic visions. In other words, visions that are caused by things that we can determine are natural. I mean natural, medically. Natural chemicals. Chemicals.
I’ll give you an example. In 2011, I had a condition called hyponatremia. Hyponatremia is a severe drop in your blood sodium level and it causes your brain to expand in your head. Well, there’s no room for your brain to expand very much. And so you have hallucinations and almost died as a result of it.
TUCKER CARLSON: But just out of the blue you had this.
LEE STROBEL: Well, it was a combination of several things. I had… I was allergic to a drug that they’d given me because I’d lost my voice, and they gave me a steroid, and I was allergic to the steroid. I didn’t know I had pneumonia, which can be a factor. I’d lost a kidney, which I wasn’t aware of, and that regulates sodium. So I had all these weird things going on.
TUCKER CARLSON: This was the Job period.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, it was a Job period. That’s right. So here I am. I had hallucinations. I saw demons. I saw weird things. Do I believe they were from God? No. Do I believe they’re from Satan? No. Do I believe they were demons? No. I think they were a product of the medical problem I had of my sodium dropping so low.
TUCKER CARLSON: How long did this go on? And where were you when you saw these visions?
LEE STROBEL: I was at home and I finally fell unconscious. They called the paramedics. I woke up in the emergency room, and the doctor looked down at me and said, “You’re one step away from a coma, two steps away from dying.” And then I went unconscious again.
TUCKER CARLSON: That was the message the doctor gave you.
LEE STROBEL: I know. Pretty reassuring. I know. You think he could have sugar coated it a little.
TUCKER CARLSON: The last thing you heard was, “You’re dying.”
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, I know. It’s like, hey, give me the… give me it sugar coated first. But the problem is they have to raise the sodium level very carefully because 25% of people with this condition end up mentally or physically disabled. So they have to raise it. So I was in the hospital about a week, and they had to gently…
TUCKER CARLSON: Slowly raise one potato chip at a time.
LEE STROBEL: Exactly. So do I think those were mystical? Do I believe I really saw a demon? Probably not. I think that was a medically induced phenomenon. I don’t have any external corroboration other than to say it was these low sodium that it’s known to cause hallucinations, and they had hallucinations.
So I think there are medical things that can cause that. There are drugs that can cause hallucinations. Now, God is… overall, I get that. But as a skeptic, I’m always looking for those cases where we have evidence that it’s true beyond the experience itself.
Mental Illness vs. Spiritual Manifestations
TUCKER CARLSON: There are certain forms of what we refer to as mental illness, which is like a phrase invented by people pretty recently. And clearly there are forms of mental illness, I think. I guess, whatever that is. But there are certain people who have visions that are very unpleasant.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: And that bear, like, almost a precise resemblance to the demonic possession described in the New Testament.
LEE STROBEL: And they may be demonic? I don’t know. I have to evaluate each one to try to determine.
TUCKER CARLSON: Of course, these are broad brushes, but you do… is it fair to conclude that maybe not everything the shrink tells you is mental illness? They can never describe where it comes from or how to fix it. They have no idea, but whatever, they know nothing, to be clear. But is it fair to assume that maybe some of that is spiritual?
LEE STROBEL: Yes, I think it can very well be. I would look at all of the factors involved where we have the external corroboration, like people left with scratches on them or bruises that cannot be explained, where we have levitation, where we have people speaking in a language they don’t know, spontaneously speaking Latin, things like that.
Then that is the external corroboration, to me, that there’s something demonic going on. It doesn’t mean it couldn’t be demonic. I’m just saying those are the cases I’m more comfortable in concluding that they’re demonic when I’ve got that kind of external corroboration.
Speaking in Tongues: Divine vs. Demonic
TUCKER CARLSON: But speaking in languages you don’t know is also… can also be… is described, as in the Acts of the Apostles, as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit of God indwelling.
LEE STROBEL: That’s right. There are other languages people speak, but not when they’re spitting at clergy who are trying to exorcise.
TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, is that a sign?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, that could be a sign.
TUCKER CARLSON: When you’re cringing before a crucifixion, you try to bite people. But what about glossolalia? What about speaking in tongues?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, that is a spiritual gift. There are Christians who believe that those gifts have ended with the apostolic age and are no longer applicable. There are other Christians who believe they are still active in this world. I believe they are still active. I’ve met Christians who speak in other tongues and others who interpret that. So I believe it’s a gift that still takes place.
I have not experienced that personally, but I have credible people who do and have experienced that. There are other Christians, though, who say, “No, no, no, that ended with the apostles.” So that’s one of those side issues theologically, that when we get to heaven, we can raise our hands and ask God, “Hey, what about that speaking in tongues thing?”
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, no, I know that there is a debate over it. I have no idea what I think about it. But it is, I guess, just as a factual matter, it’s true that there are people who seized by some unseen force, begin speaking in languages they have never learned.
LEE STROBEL: Yes. And often this is generally, I would say this is not a language that other people speak. It is a…
TUCKER CARLSON: Were spoken.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. Ever spoken. It’s a spiritual language. But then there’s someone, and this is a good corroboration, someone who can interpret that and they understand it. This language, even though it is a spiritual language, it’s not Latin, it’s not Greek, it’s a spiritual language and that someone else is able to hear and they have a gift as well to interpret what is being said.
The Power and Significance of Names
TUCKER CARLSON: I got to take you down one other back alley here really quick. So both the Hebrews and the early Christians wrote extensively about the concept of a name. God’s name, “Holy be your name,” “in the name of God,” “in the name of Jesus.” What does that mean exactly? Why the name?
LEE STROBEL: It means a couple things. I mean to… to do things in the name of God, Yahweh, in the name of God is to do something consistent with how God is leading you and how scriptures would suggest that you act. So in other words, to act in God’s name is to do something consistent with his character.
So if I do something charitable to my personal loss and yet to someone else who’s in great need, I do that in God’s name. I do that because this is what the Bible teaches me, that I should be generous and helpful to where people are hurting.
TUCKER CARLSON: Right.
LEE STROBEL: Names… you know, names can… in scripture, you know, you look at the name of Jesus called Emmanuel. Well, he’s never called Emmanuel. Said it was his name. But what that means in the ancient language is that he is “God with us.” That’s what Emmanuel means, “God with us.” And that was the name given to Jesus. But that wasn’t the name he was called, but it was a name that was associated with Jesus. So names have all kinds of implications in ancient Judaism and early Christianity.
TUCKER CARLSON: Sure seems that way.
LEE STROBEL: Now we just name people according to what everybody’s…
TUCKER CARLSON: What we see on Friends.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.
TUCKER CARLSON: But I mean, you know, observant Jews do not spell out the name of God.
LEE STROBEL: Right.
TUCKER CARLSON: They leave the vowels out because the name is itself holy. Just the name.
LEE STROBEL: Yes, that’s right, the name. That’s right. They would and they would talk around the name. There’s a verse in Luke 15 where it says that there is rejoicing in heaven. How does it go? Yeah, I can’t think of the exact terminology, but basically it’s a way of saying there’s rejoicing in heaven whenever a person becomes a Christian without saying the name of God, rejoicing, it kind of talks around that a bit.
So there’s a hesitation. And in fact, something you didn’t want to do in ancient Jewish world is to use the name of God. That was forbidden, like at all. Yeah, you wouldn’t use it and you wouldn’t spell it out. You talk around it because it’s so powerful, so holy.
TUCKER CARLSON: It could hurt you.
Near Death Experiences and the Soul
TUCKER CARLSON: So near death experiences, “walk toward the light,” leave… What’s a near death experience?
LEE STROBEL: A near death experience is when a person is clinically dead, that is generally no brain waves, no respiration, no heartbeat. Yeah, they’re clinically dead, yet they’re going to be revived. And so they are dead for a period of time. Clinically dead, but they’re not permanently dead. So the body will be revived at some point.
TUCKER CARLSON: So by the measurements of science, they’re dead.
LEE STROBEL: That’s right.
TUCKER CARLSON: So maybe right there, if we just pause, like maybe right there, we have further evidence that science, while useful, of course, and life improving in some ways, does not have the tools to measure the totality of the experience.
LEE STROBEL: Well, you know, they’re actually like, that’s the failure.
TUCKER CARLSON: Like they’re obviously not dead.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, that’s right. They are coming back. That’s right. All the signs are that they’re dead. But you know, the Bible says that and Christianity teaches that when a person dies, their spirit separates from their body. And this is what we see in a near death experience. This is evidence for the soul, for the spirit. So the physical body is clinically dead. There’s no sign of life in the body. They’re still working on you.
TUCKER CARLSON: Once again, has there ever been a culture that we’re aware of in the entire span of human history that did not believe in the soul?
LEE STROBEL: They all did.
TUCKER CARLSON: They thought that people were just meat puppets.
LEE STROBEL: I quote experts in the book that talk about that, that every civilization believed in the spirit. A spirit, a soul that continues to live on after we die.
TUCKER CARLSON: Our leaders don’t believe that.
LEE STROBEL: Well, that’s not only tragic, it’s dangerous. Because if you believe we are only our brain, we’re only neurons that are firing, that means technically, we have no free will. And seriously, you’re saying we don’t have free will. How do you punish someone for doing something wrong if they really didn’t have free will?
TUCKER CARLSON: It also means we have no inherent rights.
LEE STROBEL: We have no right and wrong.
TUCKER CARLSON: Does a rock have a right?
LEE STROBEL: No. Exactly.
TUCKER CARLSON: So maybe that should be the acid test for leadership. If you don’t believe human beings have souls, if that’s not the basis of the way you understand other people is a separate person with a distinct and unique soul. If you don’t believe that, you can have no power in our society. Is that fair?
LEE STROBEL: I like that. I like that. I never thought of that before, but I certainly wouldn’t trust a person personally, morally, if they believed only that we are…
TUCKER CARLSON: I wouldn’t give them a driver’s license.
LEE STROBEL: That’s scary. It is scary.
TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t think other people have souls?
LEE STROBEL: Exactly. What, you’re a psychopath? Exactly. I have an interview in my book with a PhD from Cambridge University, a neuroscientist who says the evidence is so persuasive that yes, indeed, we do have a soul. We do have a spirit.
TUCKER CARLSON: Thank you.
LEE STROBEL: Yes, thank you.
TUCKER CARLSON: Neuroscientist from Cambridge.
Evidence for the Soul: Out-of-Body Experiences
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. What’s interesting is that we have cases where people are clinically dead. Their spirit separates from their body and they see or hear things that would have been impossible for them to see or hear if their spirit had not actually separated from their body. So this is confirmation that the soul exists.
TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting.
LEE STROBEL: And let me give you some examples. There’s a woman named Maria. She was dying in a hospital in London, England. But she said “I was conscious the whole time.” And so here they are working on her body, trying to bring her back. She said, “My spirit floated out of my body. I met a divine being. But mainly I’m looking down from the ceiling of the hospital room at the resuscitation efforts. I’m watching them trying to revive my body.”
And then at some point, the reviving works and the spirit returns to the body. And she says, “By the way, see the ceiling fan here in this room? The hospital room. There’s a red sticker on top of one of the blades of the ceiling fan.” Now, you couldn’t see it from the room because it’s on the top of one of the blades of the ceiling fan. But she saw it because from her perspective near the ceiling, watching resuscitation, she was looking down.
So they got a ladder, they went up there. Sure enough, on the top of this blade, here’s the sticker exactly as she has described it. That tells me that she really did have an out-of-body experience, just as the Bible describes.
And this is extremely common. We have a woman, a young girl, she was nine years old, I recall eight or nine. She drowned in a swimming pool at YMCA. Horrible, horrible. Her brain had swelled, she had no respiration, no heartbeat. She was clinically dead. So they brought her to the hospital to keep her body alive mechanically until they decided what to do, and they continued to try to revive her.
But as it turns out, three days later, she was revived and with no brain damage. And she said, “By the way, I was conscious the whole time.” And they said, “That’s not possible.” And so the doctors who were skeptical said, “Here, here’s a piece of paper and a crayon. Why don’t you draw the emergency room where we took you when you were dead?”
So she picks up the crayon, she draws the emergency room exactly as it appears. And then she said, “By the way, one night when my parents visited me in the hospital, I followed them home and I watched as my mom, she was making chicken soup with rice on the stove. And my dad was sitting in a certain chair and he was looking in a certain direction. And her brother, she said, was playing with a GI Joe jeep in his bedroom. And these are the clothes that they were wearing.”
Everything was exactly correct. How do you explain that if she didn’t have an authentic out-of-body experience while she was clinically dead? So this is affirmation that near-death experiences do point toward a spirit, a soul that separates from our body at the time of death. Now it can return to our body if we’re revived. And that’s what happens in these cases.
Interestingly, there was a study done of 21 blind people. Either blind since birth or shortly thereafter, they were able to see or had visual-like perceptions during their near-death experiences. So there’s a woman named Vicki.
TUCKER CARLSON: Wait, what?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. Vicki Umipeg, 26 years old. She’s blind virtually since birth. She is killed in a car crash. A passenger in a car she’s killed. But she said later, “I was conscious the whole time.” And her spirit floated out. She watched the, she was able to see the resuscitation efforts. She was able to see childhood friends who she’d never seen in person, but she knew intuitively who they were. “Oh, that’s Mary, that’s Jimmy.” She sees birds for the first time. She sees trees and so forth.
And then when her body is revived and her spirit returns to her body, she’s blind again. Medical researchers said this is impossible. Based on current medical knowledge. How does this happen? So there’s a phenomenon here that tells me that there’s corroboration, that there’s something to this idea that we have a soul, a spirit that is different than our physical brain and body.
And I’ll add this, this is really important. John Burke is, I interview him for my book. John Burke is a Christian pastor with an engineering degree and science background who studied 1,500 cases of near-death experiences in depth. He has video interviews with people and so forth. And here’s his conclusion. He said, “Lee, if you look at not how people interpret what happens, because we all interpret things through our worldview, of course, if you’re a Muslim, if you’re a Hindu, you’re going to interpret things differently. Forget that. Set that aside. Just look at what actually takes place during a typical near-death experience that is consistent with the Christian Bible.”
TUCKER CARLSON: And what is it that’s consistent?
LEE STROBEL: Well, things like encountering a divine being, things like encountering people who had preceded you in death. Things like a life review where your life is reviewed and you not only experience with this divine figure next to you who’s encouraging you. It’s not a judgmental kind of a way. It’s you’re judging yourself, you’re reviewing every little action you took, but you’re able for the first time to see the ripple effects of that.
So I may have done something that hurt you years ago and I never realized the impact that had on you and how that caused you to do this, that and the other thing. And yet in this life review, you see not only what you did, you did good and you did bad, but the ramifications of it. Yes, that takes place now.
You’re not permanently dead. The Bible says in Hebrews we’re appointed once to die and then the judgment. So you would think that biblically speaking, you would die and then you would encounter judgment. Well, you’re not permanently dead. You’re coming back. This is not your permanent death. So this is kind of a taste, a foretaste of what death is like. But you’re not permanently dead, you’re just clinically dead. But you still have some of the attributes of what the Bible talks about in terms of a judgment.
So I think that’s reassuring for Christians like me who used to think, “Oh, that’s new age stuff. Near-death experience. That’s weird.” There have been, Tucker, 900 scholarly articles written about near-death experiences in medical journals and scientific journals over the last 50 years. This is a very well researched area. And they have concluded that there is no natural explanation that can account for all of the aspects of a near-death experience. It’s a fascinating area. And so I interview, as I said, John Burke, who’s an expert on them, to give examples of this sort of thing.
Pre-Death Visions
TUCKER CARLSON: What about pre-death?
LEE STROBEL: Yes, this is new.
TUCKER CARLSON: Can I just add one editorial comment?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: I’m so filled with rage I have to do it. That our culture systematically excludes conversation, real conversations about death. Obviously, we’re very pro-death. You know, kill your baby, euthanize your parents, whatever. We’re all about death. But the actual experience of death is kind of cloaked for most people. And I don’t think they have any idea what it is when someone dies in the process of dying. And so this is a welcome conversation.
LEE STROBEL: Tucker, it’s fascinating, these deathbed visions. The difference between a near-death experience and deathbed vision is in a near-death experience, a person’s going to come back, right? In a deathbed vision. This is a vision someone has just before they die. They’re not coming back. I mean, they’re permanently going to die.
But we see a biblical example of this in the Book of Acts. We see Stephen, who is described as being full of the Holy Spirit, who is on the verge of being stoned to death. And he looks up and he sees the heavens open up and he sees the Father and the Son together. So this has a biblical precedent. But what is fascinating, and I think what you said is so true, people don’t want to talk about it because…
TUCKER CARLSON: At all?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, at all. Because if you have one of these experiences before you die, they’re going to think I’ve got dementia. They’re going to think I’m nuts. They’re going to think, you know, so a lot of people don’t want to talk about it.
So there’s a researcher, he went to a huge hospice facility in New York State and they went to all the dying people and they said, “Please, as a favor. If you have a vision, a dream unlike any you’ve ever had. Tell us. Would you tell us?” And so 88% of those dying people had a pre-death vision that they reported on before they died. 88%. I think the other 12% probably had one, but they died before they were able to say anything or they were…
TUCKER CARLSON: So high on morphine they couldn’t talk.
LEE STROBEL: That’s true. People get drugged up. That’s true.
TUCKER CARLSON: So there’s that. I mean, obviously you don’t want people to suffer. You want to alleviate suffering and alleviate pain. I’m totally for that. I want to be clear about it. But there’s also this custom which has grown to ubiquity now. It’s just, it’s, everybody who dies gets from the hospice nurses…
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: They kill you with morphine. I mean, yes, no one wants to say that out loud, but I’ve seen it. They kill you with morphine.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: And okay, first, we should just be honest about what’s happening.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, always.
TUCKER CARLSON: But second, we should be clear about the cost.
LEE STROBEL: So if people…
TUCKER CARLSON: If yes, everybody on the way out is getting visions of some kind.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: Maybe there’s a purpose to this.
LEE STROBEL: Exactly.
TUCKER CARLSON: Maybe we shouldn’t short circuit that.
Corroboration of Pre-Death Visions
LEE STROBEL: And Tucker, maybe there’s also corroboration for these. So in other words, they did one study of 3,000 of these and they determined this is not just something coming from the subconscious mind. There is something else here.
And I’ll give you the example of the corroboration. There was a woman named Doris. She’s dying on her deathbed and she has a pre-death vision and she sees the heavens open up, and she sees angelic beings, and she sees her father who had died several years earlier, and he’s kind of almost welcoming her to the next realm.
But then she gets this confused look on her face and she says, “Wait a minute. Why is Vita with my father? What? Why would Vita be there? Makes no sense. Why would Vita be there?” And then she died.
Vita was her sister. Her sister had died two weeks earlier, but no one had told Doris because she was so ill. They didn’t want the news to kill her, so they withheld the news that her sister Vita had died. And yet on her deathbed, she sees Vita in the world to come. That is fairly common. It actually happened with my father-in-law. So that to me is a corroboration.
Biblical Parallels to Pre-Death Visions
Another form of corroboration. Get this. In the Bible, in Luke 16, there’s a story of a rich man and a beggar who both die.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
LEE STROBEL: And the rich man goes to a place of torment and the beggar goes to a place of bliss.
TUCKER CARLSON: The rich man, by the way, has walked past the poor man every day.
LEE STROBEL: That’s right.
TUCKER CARLSON: And ignored him.
LEE STROBEL: And ignored him. So the beggar, according to Jesus in verse 22, is accompanied by angels to heaven. That angels accompany him to heaven. And what’s particularly fascinating is people who have pre-death visions often see angels coming for them, just as Jesus suggested in that parable.
Charles Templeton’s Deathbed Vision
So for instance, the most famous skeptic in Canada, Charles Templeton. Charles Templeton was the pulpit partner of Billy Graham. He was going to be the great evangelist. But then he went to a liberal seminary, he lost his faith. He wrote an ugly book called “Farewell to My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith.” And I got to know him, he became a friend. I actually wrote a book called “The Case for Faith” where I answered all his objections to Christianity. And we became friends.
Anyway, he ended up coming back to faith in Christ before he died. And then he’s on his deathbed and he calls out to his wife, “Madeline. Madeline.”
“What? What? Chuck, can you see them?”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re in the room. You can’t see them. They’re right here in this room. They’re the angels. They’re coming for me. Oh, they’re so beautiful. Look at them. They’re so… The singing is so beautiful. They’re coming for me. I’m going to heaven. I’m going to be with God.”
That is incredibly common that people will see angels coming for them in that vision they have before they die.
Children’s Visions of Angels
Now, here’s another bit of corroboration. Children who are dying will see angels, but not like you would expect them to be seen. In other words, let’s say a five-year-old who’s dying, what is their image of an angel? Well, it’s a furry thing with feathery thing with big wings. Right? It’s a cartoon. They all have big wings.
And so there’s a case from a doctoral dissertation I read of a little girl who was dying and she says, “Mommy, mommy, can you see the angels? They’re coming for me. Oh, they’re so beautiful. They’re so beautiful. Their eyes, look at their eyes.”
And the mother didn’t want to disappoint her, so she said, “Oh yeah, yeah, I see them. Look at their big wings.”
And the little girl said, “Oh, mommy, they don’t have wings.” And she was able to describe them in vivid detail before she died.
You would think if a child of that age was going to have just a vision from their imagination of angels coming for them, they would have big wings.
TUCKER CARLSON: They don’t in the Hallmark version.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, that’s right. In case after case, they don’t see the big wings. And by the way, the Bible doesn’t say that all angels have wings. So that to me is another very interesting dynamic of these pre-death visions.
Negative Near-Death Experiences
TUCKER CARLSON: Not all people on their deathbed have joyful visions were reunited with loved ones in the next world.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: There are many people who are in terror.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: And horrified. And can you describe that and what is it?
LEE STROBEL: Yes, we have this in near-death experiences and in deathbed visions where people who are about to die have a glimpse, I believe, of a hellish experience to come and they are frightened beyond belief and scared beyond words.
Howard Storm’s Near-Death Experience
I’ll give you an example of a near-death vision where this happened. There’s a man named Howard Storm. Howard was an atheist. He was a professor of art at a secular university, chairman of the art department, and he was visiting France and he died of a heart attack. So here he is, he’s in a French hospital. He’s dead. But he said later, “I was conscious the whole time.” It was a near-death experience. His spirit had separated from his body.
And there were some people in the hallway say, “Howard, we’ve been waiting for you. Come with us, come with us.” So he does, and he’s walking down the hallway. His spirit is walking down the hallway with these people. And it goes on and on and on and it gets darker and darker and then they’re becoming abusive and they’re saying, “Come on, come on, why are you so slow?” And then they start to attack him.
And he said, they, he said, “No horror movie can ever capture the horror of what they did to me.” I mean, he was absolutely mauled. He said “I was roadkill.” And he said, “I called out to…”
TUCKER CARLSON: God, like physically mauled.
LEE STROBEL: Yes. Eyes gouge out, ears ripped off. Just horrible. And he calls out to Jesus, “Jesus, rescue me.” And this white orb comes and brings him and rescues him from that. And he is restored. Well, ultimately, his body is revived. His spirit returns to his body.
This is such a profound experience that he not only renounced his atheism, he not only quit his tenured position as chairman of the art department at a secular university, he not only became a Christian, he went to seminary, he became a pastor. And today he’s a pastor of this little church. I think it’s in Kentucky or Oklahoma or somewhere in the middle of nowhere serving God. That’s how transformative this experience was.
But there are multiple cases of people having horrific… In fact, one study of near-death experiences said it was 24% had negative experiences. Not positive.
TUCKER CARLSON: Doesn’t feel like a good sign.
LEE STROBEL: No, no. I mean, what it does to me is its affirmation that, you know what, what the Bible tells us is true. There is a heaven, there is a hell, and these are real society.
TUCKER CARLSON: Ever has thought that. Every society, and I think everyone intuitively knows that.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
Tucker’s Personal Experience
TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve never had a near-death experience, but the one time I thought I was going to die many years ago was in a plane crash. I was filled with sadness. I had no peace at all.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. Yeah. None.
TUCKER CARLSON: Only regret.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: So I did take that as a… As an indication I should change the way I was living. And I did.
LEE STROBEL: Well, God used that in your life.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I felt that. I felt that way. And certainly in retrospect I think that. Yeah, but I remember thinking, wow, I’m going to die. I was certain of it. And then I thought later, I thought that when people knew they were going to die, they were filled with like peace and warmth and walk toward the light. That was not my experience at all.
LEE STROBEL: It was like, man, I can’t believe…
TUCKER CARLSON: I did a few things and I really felt sad about it. So…
LEE STROBEL: Well, that’s the reality.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, but I guess it’s… Yeah, well, it was the reality that I experienced for sure. But I also think that it’s… What a blessing.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: To have an opportunity to, you know, to turn back and change.
LEE STROBEL: That’s the thing about these near-death experiences, that you have another chance. You don’t have it in deathbed vision, but you’re going to be revived. And then you have a choice to make. That’s the road I continue to want to go down.
TUCKER CARLSON: The first thing I did was quit drinking and then had a fourth child.
LEE STROBEL: Wow. It’s awesome.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, it was. It was awesome. It was awesome. It was literally awesome. So… Yes. So I… I think that there’s something real there and it does seem like a crime of some kind to deprive people of that.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: With drugs. I know if everyone experiences it just like anything else, like, maybe there’s a reason.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s not random.
LEE STROBEL: Maybe. You know, I’d encourage people who are watching or listening to this podcast next time you have a big family, get together with the cousins and the uncles and the aunts and everything. Ask people, do we have any family stories about deathbed visions or near-death experiences? I bet you’ll find, oh, Uncle Bob had that experience, or cousin Jim had that experience. I was having dinner with seven people in Oklahoma City and four of them… We talked about this. Four of them had relatives who had pre-death visions.
TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not surprised.
LEE STROBEL: It’s incredibly common.
Ghosts and Supernatural Encounters
TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve never asked that question at a dinner party, but I have asked, has anyone seen a ghost?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: 100% of the time there’s someone at the table who has. 100%. What is that?
LEE STROBEL: Ghosts? I have a chapter on ghosts and psychics in my book. The technical definition of a ghost is someone who dies but refuses to go into the afterlife. Their spirit refuses to go into the next life. I don’t see that in the Bible. So I don’t think that ghosts per se are from God. I think most likely an apparition that we interpret as being ghosts is most like a demonic apparition. I think people feel that. I think… So they…
TUCKER CARLSON: Ghosts have a bad rep.
LEE STROBEL: Yes. Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: No one, no one is summoning ghosts.
LEE STROBEL: It’s not like Casper, who’s going to bring you some flowers.
TUCKER CARLSON: Generally, people are anti-ghost.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: Ghost stories.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: Ghosted. Yeah. It’s not, not a good connotation. So I don’t think that surprises anyone.
Views on Psychics and Mediums
LEE STROBEL: So I, I do talk about ghosts and, and, and I talk about psychics and the tricks that they use to convince people that they’re…
TUCKER CARLSON: Are you pro-psychic?
LEE STROBEL: Sorry?
TUCKER CARLSON: Are you pro-psychic?
LEE STROBEL: I’m anti-psychic.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I am too. Why are you anti-psychic?
LEE STROBEL: Because the Bible says do not consult mediums. Do not consult psychics. I mean, it’s very clear. Multiple places in scripture. Do not do it.
TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, well, among the ancient Hebrews, that was a death penalty offense.
LEE STROBEL: Exactly. It was. And so you just… That’s not something we wanted to mess with. And I think there’s got to be a reason for that. I think it because it opens the door to the demonic, that you’re trying to consult the dead. You’re trying to… You’re trying to find out something apart from what God might reveal through a psychic, through a medium who supposedly has a cultic wherewithal and is able to take you down that pathway. It’s dangerous.
And I talk in the book about the tricks that they use to things like cold readings and warm readings and hot readings where people who want to fool you into thinking they know more about you than they do will employ that. And they think, “Oh my gosh, this person knows all about me.” No, they don’t. They’re just very clever people who are able to read certain things about you.
TUCKER CARLSON: No, I mean, of course there’s a lot of BS, gypsy tricks.
LEE STROBEL: But I’ll tell you one case.
TUCKER CARLSON: But it’s also true in the Bible that at least in my read of it, that they’re taken seriously.
LEE STROBEL: Well now there are cases.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s why I said death penalty offense. Not because it’s fake, because it’s real.
The Power of Psychic Phenomena
LEE STROBEL: Because it can be real. And yeah, that’s a good way to argue it. There is a case in contemporary times when President Carter was president and a two engine aircraft went down and crashed in Africa and the United States government was trying to find it. I don’t know why, but they wanted to find that aircraft.
And they had satellites repositioned looking for it. They could not find the wreckage of this airplane. And so Stansfield Turner who was the head of the CIA consulted a medium, a psychic in California. She went into a trance and she gave the longitudinal and latitude of where to find the plane. They went, they reoriented the satellites and boom, there was a wreckage of the plane just as she had said.
What do you do with that? That tells me she was in connection with something there. Now if the Bible says don’t be connecting with psychic stuff, it was probably demonic. And why would she do that? Because now she’s got credibility. Now the next time they want to know something, let’s go to that woman in California who told us where that plane was. She seems to have these abilities to know the future, to know things that we don’t know. And now she has credibility.
I think that was a way for Satan to give her credibility so that we’d be fooled into thinking into the future to take advantage of her psychic abilities.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, best not to play with that stuff.
LEE STROBEL: No, no, it’s best to stay away from that.
TUCKER CARLSON: So contacting dead relatives through a medium, Ouija boards, all that stuff, scary bad.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: On the other hand, I mean that’s my position. Yeah, I’m sure it’s yours.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: I came to that position through experience, not just guessing it’s bad. However, I know a lot of decent God fearing people who have said, “Well, I really feel like I was contacted by a dead relative, a dead loved one.”
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, that’s an interesting. And I have a couple cases I talk about in the book of that that seemingly are corroborated. What do you do with that?
TUCKER CARLSON: Because how is that inconsistent with your theology?
Contact with the Dead: Biblical Precedent or Demonic Deception?
LEE STROBEL: On the one hand, there are a couple of cases in Scripture where the dead have come back like that. Elijah came back at the transfiguration. So there’s an example of a dead person coming back. There’s the other example of, in the Old Testament of going to a medium and a dead person coming back. Not because of the power of the medium, because she was surprised it happened, but through the power of God he allowed that dead person to come back. So there are a couple of perhaps precedents in scripture of dead people coming back.
One of the reasons I’m skeptical is because when Jesus was talking about in Luke 16 about the rich man who died and the beggar who died, he talked about a gulf between the living and the dead. That concerns me. So that raises some questions in my mind. I think the transfiguration and the incident with what’s called the medium of Endor in the Old Testament may be one offs and those are unusual circumstances.
So I’m Tucker, I don’t, I’m not quite sure what to do with it because I talk about a couple of cases in the book where a dead relative returns and a person talks to that relative and then they disappear and then their child comes in. Eight year old child says, “I just saw grandpa, I just talked to him.” So he experienced the same vision. Well, that’s pretty weird. Is that corroboration and so forth?
Well, here’s my concern. So many times the people have contact with these dead people. These are people that lived ungodly lives and yet they say everything’s fine, “I’m fine, everything’s good, just take care of the family, tell everybody I love them, I’m good, don’t worry about me.” That’s the general message people get.
Well, what does that say to someone who is thinking about what do I need to do to live a life that will bring me to heaven and to God? Well, Uncle Tom came and told me he’s fine. He didn’t. He was an adulterer and he never came to faith in Jesus. He’s a bad guy and yet he says he’s fine in the afterlife. Wouldn’t that be something that a demon might want to imitate to send a false message? I think maybe.
So I guess I’m giving you two answers. One is there is some biblical precedent for the dead coming back, but I think they may be one offs. I’m not sure. I think there’d be a good motive for Satan to counterfeit that. You know, it says Satan can appear as an angel of light. As a counterfeit he can fool us into thinking he’s something he’s not. Would that be to his advantage to do, to mislead people? I think it could be. So I’m not quite sure where I’m at.
UFOs and Spiritual Entities
TUCKER CARLSON: Are UFOs what we call UFOs spiritual entities?
LEE STROBEL: I don’t know. I didn’t get into UFOs in the book. It’s a fascinating topic. Maybe I’ll do another book on that, but so I didn’t research it thoroughly. Having said that, though, it would not be an affront to my faith if indeed we found intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The Bible doesn’t say that we are unique in that.
TUCKER CARLSON: No, it doesn’t. But I wonder, could they be spiritual?
LEE STROBEL: Is the question.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, it could be, yes. Is it? I don’t know. I’m just not as knowledgeable on that to be able to give a strong opinion.
Understanding Miracles
TUCKER CARLSON: Last question. Miracles.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: What is a miracle?
LEE STROBEL: A miracle is an event brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history. So, in other words, a lot of people. Skeptics.
TUCKER CARLSON: Nice definition.
LEE STROBEL: Thank you. That’s from Robert Purtill, who was a philosopher. I thought that was the best definition I heard. Here’s the problem. A lot of skeptics will say, “I don’t believe in miracles because you can’t violate the laws of nature. So by definition, a miracle is impossible.”
TUCKER CARLSON: We haven’t even settled on the laws of nature. They’re so dumb.
LEE STROBEL: But here’s how I answer.
TUCKER CARLSON: The laws of nature, really, science every day challenges the laws of nature.
LEE STROBEL: Especially with quantum physics and nature. Exactly. But I say, look, I have this glass of water here. If I were to drop it, the law of gravity would say it would hit the floor. Yeah, but if I drop it and you reached in and grabbed it before it hit the floor, you’re not violating the law of gravity. You’re not overturning the law of gravity. You’re just intervening. And that’s what a miracle is. Is God intervening temporarily into his creation. He brought it about so of course he could intervene.
TUCKER CARLSON: But again, our understanding of nature and its laws changes every day.
LEE STROBEL: And it’s so shallow. It’s so shallow, what we know.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, but I mean, our view of what is natural is different now from what it was five years ago.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. And what it will be five years from now.
TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: So that’s just the silliness and the shallowness of claims like that kind of shocked me.
LEE STROBEL: It does so miracles.
TUCKER CARLSON: But, you know, the extent we can know this is so unusual. This couldn’t have happened accidentally.
LEE STROBEL: Can I give an example?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, please do.
The Miracle of Barbara’s Healing
LEE STROBEL: And this one I personally investigated, and it’s been widely documented. A woman named Barbara, she was diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic. So we got all those records with multiple sclerosis as a teenager, and it was progressive. She got worse very quickly.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
LEE STROBEL: So she just got worse and worse and worse. Multiple hospitalizations to the point where the doctor said, and her parents said, “Look, next time she gets pneumonia,” which she would get on a regular basis, “we’re just going to let her die.”
TUCKER CARLSON: Let her go.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah, because we’re just postponing the inevitable. So here she is on her deathbed. She hadn’t walked in seven years, so her muscles had atrophied. Her fingers were, she was curled up like a pretzel. Her fingers were touching her wrists. Her feet were permanently extended. Her diaphragm was, one diaphragm was paralyzed, so one lung was collapsed, the other lung was at half full. She had a tube in her throat that went to oxygen canisters in the garage. She was in hospice at home, so she could breathe. So she got a tube in her throat.
She had lost her urination and bowel control. She’d lost her eyesight. So all she saw was gray shapes and she’s on her deathbed. She’s dying.
Well, some people said, “Wait a minute. Let’s call WMBI, the Christian radio station at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and ask people on the radio show to pray for poor Barbara. She’s dying.” So they did. Well, we documented that at least 450 people began praying for Barbara because they wrote letters to Barbara saying, “I’m praying for you,” to encourage her.
So here we are on Pentecost Sunday, 1981. She is in her bedroom, and her aunt and two girlfriends are reading her some of these encouraging letters from people praying for her. And from the corner of the room where nobody was, she heard the voice of God. And the voice said, “My child, get up and walk.”
Well, she hadn’t walked in seven years. She had no muscle tone in her legs. She pulled out the tube so she could talk. And she said, “I don’t know what you’re going to think of this, but God just told me to get up and walk. Go find my parents. I want them to be here.” So they ran out, but she couldn’t wait. She jumped out of bed.
She told me, she said, “Lee, the first thing I noticed, my feet were flat on the floor. And they hadn’t been flat for years. They’d been rigidly extended, but they were flat on the floor. Second thing I noticed, my hands had opened up like flowers, and they hadn’t opened up in years. And then she said, the third thing I noticed, I could see. She said, wouldn’t you think that’d be the first thing I noticed? That was actually the third thing I noticed.”
She was instantaneously completely healed of multiple sclerosis. Her mother came running in, fell to her knees and grabbed her calves and said, “Your muscle tone has come back.” It was Pentecost Sunday. There was a service at their church, Wheaton Wesleyan Church. They decided to go and thank God that she was fine. She’s dancing, literally dancing around the house with her father.
So they go to church. They’re in the back. The pastor gets up and says, “Does anybody have any announcements?” Barbara comes walking down. Yeah, that’s a good announcement. Barbara comes walking down the center aisle. People freaked out because they haven’t seen her except in a wheelchair for seven years. They began singing spontaneously “Amazing Grace.” “I once was blind and now I see.” Totally healed.
She goes the next day to her doctor, one of her doctors. He said later, he said, “I saw her walking down the hallway toward my office. My first thought was, oh, she died and that’s a ghost.” He said, “This is medically impossible.” And it is medically impossible. She was instantaneously totally healed of multiple sclerosis.
She ended up marrying a pastor at that little Wesleyan Church in Fredericksburg, Virginia. And I got to know her. Sweetest woman. Is she still alive? She just recently, this happened in 1981. Lived perfectly healthy all these years. She just died in Florida. They just retired just a few months ago. So she lived completely healed.
TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, that’s a.
LEE STROBEL: What do you do with that? What do you do with that?
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s a challenge to the most basic understanding of everything.
LEE STROBEL: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: Right.
LEE STROBEL: Yep.
TUCKER CARLSON: So if she’s on her deathbed from MS, which is a well studied disease, you would think that Harvard Medical School would just cease operations until they figured out what that was.
LEE STROBEL: I know. I mentioned to my doctor, I told him the story. He said it’d be interesting to know because there’s plaque that develops in the brain in multiple sclerosis. It’d be interesting to know did that plaque disappear? And I said, which is the greater miracle, that the plaque would disappear or that God would totally heal her with the plaque still there? I don’t know which is a greater miracle, I guess.
TUCKER CARLSON: My question is, how could we, in an advanced country allow a case like that to go unnoticed and unstudied?
LEE STROBEL: I know. It was the next day, it was in the Chicago Tribune, which most newspapers don’t cover stuff like that. I mean, it’s too speculative.
TUCKER CARLSON: Did she get. Yeah, but that’s not speculative.
LEE STROBEL: No.
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, she had a team of physicians saying it’s time for her to go, and she’s dancing and singing “Amazing Grace.”
LEE STROBEL: Engineering and pastor.
TUCKER CARLSON: So, like. But what were doctors calling in to say? I want to study this case.
LEE STROBEL: There are two doctors who wrote books about it. Wrote books about it?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
LEE STROBEL: Well, they wrote books, and in the books, they talked about her case. Yes. So two of her physicians actually wrote about it in their books.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s incredible.
Medical Miracles and Documented Cases
LEE STROBEL: I know. I know. And it’s not the only one. Give you a real quick one. There’s a kid who was born. Little baby kept vomiting, couldn’t keep down food. Kept vomiting, vomiting. And they realized this baby has what’s called gastroparesis, which is a paralysis of the stomach. It’s an incurable condition. It happens from time to time. You can’t live that way.
TUCKER CARLSON: No.
LEE STROBEL: So they operated and they put tubes in so the food would go directly into the small intestine. I don’t know if it went through the stomach that was paralyzed or whatever, but that way he was able to live. And he lived that way for 15 years, 16 years, he lived that way. There were restrictions on what he could eat. It was uncomfortable, but at least he was alive. Right.
They bring him one day to a church, and they asked the pastor, “Would you pray for him?” Pastor puts his hand on his shoulder, begins to pray. And the kid said, later, “I felt an electric shock go through me at the time he was praying,” and he was instantly healed of gastroparesis. There has never been a documented case of anyone ever healed of gastroparesis. A paralyzed stomach. He was totally normal. They went in, they took the tubes out, and today he’s totally healthy. He’s a business guy doing great. I just emailed with him the other day.
Again, this was researched by multiple medical researchers and published as a case study in a medical journal. And in the medical journal, it’s probably like, “Here’s what happened.”
Why We Ignore the Supernatural
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s an incredible story. The girl being cured of MS is an incredible story. Everything you said is amazing. But so many of the things you’ve said are also instantly recognizable to everyone listening, whatever their religious faith or lack of religious faith, as things that do happen, actually, it’s real. We all know that there are things that happen to us and people we know well and love that are outside the ability of science to explain, that are supernatural. So my final question to you, Lee Strobel. This has been amazing. Thank you.
LEE STROBEL: Oh, my pleasure.
TUCKER CARLSON: Is why do we keep ignoring it?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. I think it goes back to what I said earlier. I think we’re embarrassed sometimes by the supernatural that we’re going to think people are going to think we’re nuts.
TUCKER CARLSON: But if that’s real, and it clearly is real, then, like, it puts everything else into perspective.
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. When you take it seriously and when you look at it, like, would you not take it seriously?
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I agree. Grow up in a culture that tells you none of it’s real, and yet it’s super obvious that it is super obvious that it’s real. In some most general sense, the supernatural is real. Sorry. Then why don’t people talk about it all the time?
LEE STROBEL: Yeah. I think the fact that I’ve been a Christian since November 8th of 1981, and I’ve never heard a sermon on the topic of angels in my life tells you something. I think we shy away because we want to be accepted as normal.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why would you get out of bed on Sunday to sit in a church where they’re, like, pretending that nothing they say is true?
LEE STROBEL: It’s a good point. If we believe, if it’s not supernatural.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why are you bothering?
LEE STROBEL: Exactly. If you believe in Jesus, you got to believe in angels, you got to believe in demons, you got to believe in Satan, you got to believe in heaven, you got to believe in hell. Because if you believe in Jesus, he taught on all those things. So, my goodness, how could you not? I agree with you. How could you not? Yeah. I mean, go on.
TUCKER CARLSON: Move on to something else. Go play tennis or something.
LEE STROBEL: And if 40% of Americans have had an experience that they can only attribute to a miracle of God, that means the other 60% probably know one of those 40%. Right. And, “Oh, my brother had this experience my cousin had,” and we kind of say, “What do we do with that?” And I think what we ought to do is look. Look for that which is corroborated and which is consistent with what we trust to be true, which for me are the Christian scriptures.
The Power of Paying Attention
TUCKER CARLSON: If you just fight against distraction consistently for just a day or two, like, “I’m not going to be distracted. I’m just going to notice.” That’s it. That’s all you do is just notice. “I’m just going to notice stuff.” If you do that as an exercise, literally for 48 hours, you will experience the supernatural.
LEE STROBEL: I think you’re right.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s hard to do that. Yeah. Lee Strobel. Thank you.
LEE STROBEL: Hey, I enjoy it.
TUCKER CARLSON: Wonderful.
LEE STROBEL: Great to meet you.
TUCKER CARLSON: Thank you.
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