Lee Strobel
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I showed him the evidence. I went through it with him and gave it to him, and he sent me Christmas cards, and I tried to follow up with him a few times, but I don't think I had much.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Let's put it this way. I think I got the G-rated version.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I'm sure there were other ones that went out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, yeah, well, that's true. So anyway, that was a bizarre experience.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But it shows that so many people don't take the time to really ask the kind of questions you've been asking, which is, how do you know this stuff? What evidence is there? And, you know, so many people just kind of go through life and never scratch below the surface to try to determine— Could this be true?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Interestingly, John the Baptist, when he got thrown in prison, started to ask questions about God. He wanted to know, is Jesus really the one we've been waiting for? Are we to wait for some other Messiah? And this was a guy that should have known for sure that Jesus was who he claimed to be, but he had questions. But what did he do? He investigated.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He got a couple of friends together, said, go track down Jesus and ask him point blank, are you the one we've been waiting for? Are we to wait for somebody else? So they tracked down Jesus. They asked him, here's the deal. Did Jesus get mad? No. He didn't say, how dare John, of all people, have the temerity to express a hesitation about my identity?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
No, he said, look, go back to John and tell him what you have seen and heard. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. In other words, go tell him about the evidence that you've seen that convinces you that I am who I claim to be. So like you said, there's nothing wrong with questions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Jesus didn't get mad when you asked questions. It's not like you surprised God and he says, I can't believe he asked that question. You know, God knows. But isn't it true, though, is a lot of people hesitate to engage, ask questions. They don't want to look dumb, maybe, or they don't want to, I don't know what it is, but they think they're going to offend God in some way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That's disputed? It's disputed. There are people who disagree with that. I think there's two passages in Scripture that suggest that it's real. Certain denominations certainly believe in it. The Orthodox Christian Church believes at the time of baptism you are assigned a guardian angel. Others believe that you have one from Bethlehem.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But Jesus didn't get mad at John. It was after this incident that Jesus got up and said, among those born of women, there's no one greater than John. John, the guy who asks a question.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It's a great question. I have a whole chapter of that in my book, Is God Real? So I think the two biggest questions that people ask these days are number one, why would a loving God allow suffering? And number two, why is God so hidden? And so I did a whole chapter in that book, Is God Real?, addressing that question. And there's several elements to that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I interviewed a guy who had been a, aspired to be a baseball player, professional baseball player. He's a theologian now. And he was a catcher. And he said, I picture this question like a pitcher and a catcher. He said, Jesus is the pitcher or the catcher. where does the problem lie in Jesus being, quote unquote, hidden, or God being so hidden? Does the problem lie in the pitcher or the catcher?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And he said, theologically, based on what the Bible teaches, the problem lies with the catcher, lies with us. It says in Romans 1, verse 20, that based on what we see in nature, that the existence of God is indisputable. that anyone who honestly looks at nature would walk away saying, without excuse, You know, they would have no excuse for saying, you know, not finding God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So his first point was the real problem lies with us. What the Bible says is that we tend to suppress the evidence. Why? Because we want to be gods. We want to live our own lives. We don't want to be told how to live.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
the time that you're born, the time that you become a Christian. Peter, there's some indication that Peter had a guardian angel. We see that in scripture. When Jesus was talking about little children, he said, don't disregard these little kids because their angels see the face of God every day. Well, who are their angels? I think guardian angels. Interesting. Watching over them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
We want to do what we want to do and live like we want to live and doggone, I like getting drunk and doggone it, if God's going to tell me not to do that, I'm not so sure I want to know much about him. the Greek language uses the imagery of a pedal. It's like when the evidence of God begins to become apparent to you, sometimes we push down the pedal, we suppress it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
We suppress the evidence and we turn the other way. So part of the problem is on us, that we're not looking for God. We don't really want to find God. We want to live the way we want to live. But secondly, there have been times in history where God has been especially evident.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
For instance, the parting of the Red Sea, the manna that comes down from heaven that sustained the Israelites in the desert. God's actions in the world were so obvious back then. What happened? Did they become more devout? No, they fell into apostasy again. So when we look- What is apostasy? Rebellion against God. You know, they're worshiping golden calves and things like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
They turn their back against God, even though he had made his existence obvious to anyone. I'm parting the Red Sea for goodness sake. I'm providing manna from heaven so you can live for goodness sake. And yet their response is, to turn their back and go the other way. So there's no guarantee that if God were to write in the sky, I'm here, that we would respond.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Because based on the track record of humans, last time he made himself so obvious, we'd walk the other way. And if he did do that, if he did in the sky, I'm here, I could imagine all the atheist websites talking about, yeah, it's a natural phenomenon that is precipitated by too much moisture in the atmosphere. I mean, they would come up with any explanation other than God is real and God is here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
They have an interest in not finding him. So, you know, and the other thing I would say is, you know, the Bible says, knock and you'll find. The Bible says, seek and you'll find. In the New Testament, Hebrews, it says, those who sincerely seek God will find him. In the Old Testament, Jeremiah, it says that those who seek God will find him. So the fact that someone hasn't found God yet
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
does not mean they won't find him. In fact, the Bible suggests keep knocking, keep seeking. And there might be some lessons along the way that God wants to teach you before you come to meet him. Lessons about perseverance, lessons about whatever. That could be a possibility. But the fact that someone has not yet found God does not mean they will not find God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And as I said before, I think anywhere in any culture who calls out to the one true God and seeks him, God will provide a way of making himself known to them and his message known to them. I believe that. And I've seen miraculous ways in which he's done that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Oh, yeah, I mean, I mentioned one earlier about the guy in India who was brought up by gurus who's realized that Hinduism had too many contradictions to be true. And at age 17, he called out and said, God, if you're real, I want to know you. I don't understand. This is not making sense. I know I've messed up. I want to be forgiven. I want to, you know, and God brings against,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
the laws of the land, missionaries to him who shared the gospel with him. He became a Christian, later immigrated to the United States, and we became friends. So there's an example, or we talked earlier about dreams that God would bring to, in close countries in the Muslim world, to people, Jesus' dreams. So there are ways in which Jesus, I believe, makes himself more known at certain times.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But I think for most people who say, why doesn't God make himself more known? What else do you want to know? I've got an 800,000 word book called the Bible that lays out just about everything you need to know. Have you looked at it? That kind of thing. Obviously we'd like them all to sit here and spend time with it, wouldn't we?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So there is some scripture that is outside the Protestant Bible and in the Catholic Bible that talks more about guardian angels. So Catholics may have a little bit stronger view of this than Protestants would. But I think there's sufficient evidence. I talk about this in my new book. Sufficient evidence that guardian angels really do exist. What...
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And we could ask him all these questions and he'd have much better answers than I would. And we can do that in heaven. But he has given us enough. He's given us enough to act on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And when we do act on that, what's interesting, when we do take a step of faith in the same direction the evidence is pointing, which is logical and rational to do, if the evidence for the resurrection, for the existence of God from cosmology, from physics, from biochemistry, all these streams of evidence that are flowing in a direction,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
If we respond to that by taking a step of faith in the same direction the evidence is pointing and receive this free gift of forgiveness through Christ and become a follower of his, he becomes more apparent to us. Because now as we read the Bible as believers, it takes on a whole new dimension, a whole new aspect to it that brings it home more vividly to us than when we were not a believer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So I think the Holy Spirit, as he takes residence in us as followers of Christ, when I pray to God, I sense his presence in my life stronger today than I did 20 years ago.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It doesn't mean I can have lunch with him, but it means that there are times in my life where he has guided me, where he has closed doors that, thank God, I didn't go through, but he closed those doors, and I didn't know it at the time why, but I look back and say, thank you, Lord, for not letting me go down that path, because that would have been a wrong path.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I see his evidence in my life of the guidings of the Holy Spirit, the leadings that he gives. So, I mean... There's a whole chapter in my book for those that are really interested, but it is a legitimate question, and a lot of people are asking it these days, especially among young people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Let's keep it. Miracles are, I mean, to me, it's one of the most fascinating topics where God will intervene in our world in a way that is unmistakably him. 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 he's intervening.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You know, a lot of people said, well, miracles are not possible. This is what I used to think when I was an atheist. Miracles can't happen. Why? Because they violate the laws of nature. You can't violate the laws of nature. David Hume, the famous atheist from Scotland, that was his argument. Well, you're misunderstanding what a miracle is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
If I take this cell phone and I drop it, the law of gravity says it's going to hit the ground. But if I drop this cell phone and you reach in and grab it before it hits the ground, I'm not violating, you're not violating the law of gravity. You're not overturning the law of gravity. You're intervening. And if God did create the universe,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
then of course he can intervene at his will in those laws that he himself created. It's an intervention. He's not overturning anything. It's just an intervention. So I began to look at a couple of questions. How common are miracle claims really? So I hired a public opinions company to do a scientific poll of American adults.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I asked the question, have you ever had at least one experience in your life that you can only explain as a miracle of God? And 38% of American adults said yes. So four out of 10 said yes. Now, let's say hypothetically that 99% of them are wrong. They think it was a miracle, it was just a big coincidence. Let's wipe out 99%. That would still mean a million miracles just in the United States.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
First, Jesus talking about the fact that the children, their angels see the face of God every day. So who's he referring to? These little children have angels? Yeah, that would be consistent if guardian angels actually existed. There's another case where Peter escaped from prison And everybody thought he was still locked up. And he goes and he knocks on a house to see his buddies.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So miracles, I think, are more common than we think. And what's interesting is, they cluster, they're not evenly distributed around the planet. Where the gospel is just breaking in, places like Mozambique, China, Brazil, That's where we see the miraculous taking place.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
One scholar said to me, 90% of the growth of the church in China is because someone themselves has had a miracle take place, a healing, or they know someone who it's happened to. 90% of that is the church growth in China. So God tends to intervene in those places where the gospel, and often they're societies that don't have Bibles or anything, but they'll respond to the supernatural that way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So how do we know that it's real? I began looking into this, and Sean, I found case studies published in medical journals I'll describe one of them for you. A woman, blind, blind for 12 years. She had juvenile macular degeneration, which is an incurable condition. She went to a school for the blind. She learned how to read braille. She walked with a white cane.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
She married a pastor, Baptist pastor. One night they're getting ready for bed and he comes up to her with tears in his eyes and he puts his hand on her shoulder And he begins to pray and he says, God, I know you could heal her. I know you could heal her right now. God, I pray, I ask for right now, tonight, that you would heal my wife of her blindness. And she opened her eyes to perfect eyesight.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Saw her husband for the first time. She said, I was blind and now I see. It's a miracle. She has been now, she has had perfect eyesight for 47 years. That happened 47 years ago. Been published in a, four researchers researched it, published it as a case study in a secular medical journal. So, you know, so there's a PhD from Harvard She's a professor at Indiana University, secular university.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
She's hearing stuff like this. She says, wait a minute, I'm going to test it. Let's go to Mozambique where there's supposedly an outbreak of miracles. And she brings a team in. They go into the villages and they say, bring us all your deaf and all your blind. So they bring people who are deaf, blind, or severely handicapped in those areas. And they tested them scientifically.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
What is your level of vision? What is your level of hearing? They did testing and they determined, could you see at all? They got it down. Then they were immediately prayed for in the name of Jesus by people who tend to have a track record of God using them in healings. And then immediately after that, they were tested again scientifically. Has your vision changed? Has your hearing level changed?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And guess what they found? Virtually everyone improved to one degree or the other. In fact, the average improvement in visual acuity was tenfold. One woman named Martine, when they first met her, could not hear the equivalent of a jackhammer next to her. After 10 minutes of prayer in the name of Jesus, she could hear normal conversations. So they're thinking something's going on here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So they said, let's test it somewhere else. So they went to Brazil where the gospel is breaking in. They did the same tests, they got the same results. This was a scientific study published in a peer reviewed secular scientific medical journal, the Southern Medical Journal, highly respected medical journal. And I interviewed for my book, Seeing the Supernatural, the woman PhD that did this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I said, what do you make of this? And she said, well, she said, this is not some televangelist going in and trying to create a atmosphere of emotion and tricking people and thinking they're feeling better. This isn't trickery. It isn't fraud. She said, all I can say is something's going on. And she's right. I think it's something miraculous. I interviewed a woman. I do the interview in the book.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Her name was Barbara. Barbara was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a teenager at the Mayo Clinic, have all their medical records, have multiple witnesses to this. So she goes to Mayo Clinic. She has multiple sclerosis. She began deteriorating rapidly over 16 years, worse and worse and worse and worse. Hospitalized repeatedly with lung collapses and things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And the servant hears his voice and says, hey, Peter's here. They say, he can't be here, he's in prison. Maybe it's his angel. Okay, well, is that a guardian angel they're talking about? Now, in Jewish culture in the first century, they believed in guardian angels. And some people will say, oh, well, that's not saying, according to the Bible, there are guardian angels.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Finally, her doctors and her parents got together and said, you know what? Next time she gets pneumonia, let's just let her die. I mean, this is ridiculous. She's just going to suffer this way. Let's just let her die. So she's in hospice. One lung is collapsed, one lung is at 50%. She's blind, all she can see are shapes, gray shapes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
She has a tube in her throat so she can breathe and it goes to oxygen canisters in her garage so she can be kept alive because she couldn't breathe on her own. She had lost all her muscle tone, hadn't walked in seven years. She'd lost all her muscle tone. Her fingers were so curled up that her fingers were touching her wrists and her toes were extended like this. She couldn't wear slippers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And she'd lost control of her bowel and her urination. So she's dying, she's in her bed at home, and somebody called in WNBI, which is the Christian radio station in Chicago, and said, hey, Barbara's dying, this woman, could someone pray for her? Just ask your audience, pray for her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, we documented that 450 people began praying for Barbara, because we know, because they wrote letters to Barbara saying, I'm praying for you. Pentecost Sunday comes. She's got two or three of her friends there who are reading these letters and people are praying for it, reading them to Barbara.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And out of nowhere, from the corner of the room where there was nobody sitting, she hears the voice of God saying, get up my child and walk. So she's stunned, her friends didn't hear. She said, go get my parents. And she rips the tube from her throat and she jumps out of bed. So when I'm interviewing, I said, what's the first thing you noticed? She said, Lee, I jumped out of bed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
The first thing I noticed, my feet were flat on the ground. They'd been extended for a couple of years. And then I looked and my hands had opened up. And then she said, the third thing I noticed, I could see. She said, you think that'd be the first thing I'd notice? It was actually the third thing I noticed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And her mother comes running in and grabs her calves and said, your muscle tone has returned. Her muscle tone returned to her legs. Her father came in and started waltzing around the room with her. It was Sunday night, Pentecost Sunday, and they went to a Wesleyan church in Wheaton, Illinois, and they said, let's go to church and tell people there's a service that night.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So they came to the service and as they came in, the pastor was up front and he said, does anybody have any announcements? Barbara comes walking down the main aisle. Well, nobody had seen Barbara walk in seven years. They all knew she was on the verge of dying. And the whole place exploded with people singing Amazing Grace, I Once Was Blind and Now I See.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
She was instantaneously, completely, totally healed of multiple sclerosis in that instant by God. Totally healed. She had two main doctors. One doctor, she went to see him that Monday. She went to see her doctor, and he said later, he said, when I saw her walking down the corridor, I thought, this must be a ghost. She must have died, because this is impossible. This is medically impossible.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Two of her doctors wrote books about it, because they said there is no medical explanation for this. I got to know Barbara. We have multiple eyewitnesses. We've got the doctors who knew her and treated her and wrote books about it. We've got records from the Mayo Clinic. She ended up marrying a pastor and had a little church in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And so you go, what do you do with something like that? What do you do with the guy who was born with a gastroparesis, which is a paralysis of his stomach muscles. And as an infant, he's vomiting, he can't keep down food, and they realize this is an incurable condition. We have to insert tubes into him so the food can go from his stomach to his intestine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That's just a nod to the Jewish culture of the day. I'm not so sure. I think when you look at these couple passages and also what is the purpose of angels but to minister to God's people, I think it's logical that guardian angels may exist. Others disagree. So it is a point of contention. What's the disagreement?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And he had to live with that for 16 years until one day, His parents brought him to a church and the pastor came up and put his hand on his shoulder and prayed for his healing. And the guy said later, it was like an electric shock, went from my shoulder to my stomach. And he was instantaneously healed of an incurable condition. The only case of gastroparesis that's been recorded as being healed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Four researchers investigated that case and published it as a case study in a peer reviewed medical journal. Something's going on, Sean. And I think what something is, is God from time to time chooses to intervene and to show his power and to show his love and to show his grace in ways that capture the attention of the world. Wow, that's...
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I mean, Barbara was the sweetest person. You know, when I interview people, because I interview people for books and they're scholars, I'm tapping into their expertise. And so I always pay them because it's only right for me to compensate them for the time. And so at the end of my interview, I went to Virginia to interview Barbara on camera. I have her whole interview on camera.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I'll show it to you. And she, so I offered her payment for her time. And so she, I can't take any, I can't take anything for this. God did this. This is a testimony to him and his power and his grace. I couldn't, I couldn't take anything. That's very sweet. You're a very sweet woman. So I love stories like that. Me too. I really do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I love stories where, and this is a form of miracle, where God touches someone directly. And I have a whole chapter of that in my book about people through history and contemporaneously, in contemporary world, who are touched by God in a supernatural way. I'll give you a quick story, a guy named Robert. Robert lived an immoral life. He was a drunk, he was a gambler, he was a womanizer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He once got in a dispute with a business partner and beat him up with a baseball bat, got sent to prison for it, took his limo to prison, took a limo home, had a lot of money, very wealthy. He's standing on the beach in Florida. And he said, God spoke to me, not through my ears, but I heard it inside me. And God said, Robert, I've saved you more times than you'll ever know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Now you need to come to me through my son, Jesus. And this guy's an atheist. He said, I don't even know who Jesus, I thought Jesus was a swear word. I don't even know who he is, you know? So the only Christian he knew was Frank Gifford. Remember the sportscaster, Frank Gifford? And so he called up Frank, said, Frank, you're a Christian. I just had this experience. God talked to me. I heard him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He said, who is Jesus? And Frank said, get that book, The Case for Christ, at least, that'll explain everything. Yeah. So Robert gets my book. Anyway, Robert has a 180 degree radical transformation. 180 degrees, he becomes a devout follower of Jesus. When he is baptized, he gets baptized at the Crystal Cathedral, famous church back then in California. And he tells his story.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
about how God intervened, talked to him and how he came to faith and he began talking to people. Do you know God? Have you met him? Have you experienced him? And the pastor rips up his sermon and said, y'all have heard the gospel. Anybody wants to come up right now, receive Jesus as a forgiver and leader and be baptized on the spot, come on up. 700 people came up in two services.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
When he was buried, he died a few years later. When he was buried up in Montana, where he was from, at his request on his tombstone, it just says, believe in Jesus. Now, and thousands of people came to his funeral. And you wonder, well, why? Who was this guy? Well, people didn't know him by Robert. That was his given name. He was known by his stage name, Evel Knievel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So Evel Knievel, the famous motorcycle daredevil writer who was in the Guinness Book of World Records for more broken bones than any human being, Evel Knievel, had God speak to him, transform him. We became friends. I remember he called me for the first time. I answered my phone. I said, hello. And the voice said, is this Lee Strobel? I said, yeah. He said, this is Evel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I thought, Satan has got my phone number. Can he do that? Can Satan do this? What the heck? And he said, no, no, evil can evil. Oh, okay. So we became friends and God radically changed that guy's life. And I go, that's a miracle. That's a miracle. When God reaches down and just grabs somebody like that, like Saul of Tarsus becomes Paul the Apostle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I think the disagreement comes where people think that the scriptural support for it is not strong enough. That if indeed we did have guardian angels, it would be more explicit, it'd be clearer in the Bible that we've got guardian angels. And there's no one verse that I can point to that clearly and unequivocally says,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I do too. It's encouraging, isn't it? You know, I know you asked earlier, what do you view the state of the world? And yeah, there's a lot of bad stuff going on, but golly, God's still in control. He's still alive. He's still doing stuff like this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And when I hear stories about how he intervenes through dreams, through visions, through near-death experiences, through deathbed visions, through direct experiences, all these things, it brings me hope. I don't base my theology on it, but it tends to bolster my theology because it's consistent with the teachings of the Bible.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I kind of follow what Jesus did when he gave the Lord's prayer as kind of a model. And he prayed to the Father, my Father who art in heaven. So I tend to pray to the Father. I don't think it's wrong to pray to Jesus. I don't think it's wrong to pray to the Holy Spirit. I think that's, you could do that. But I pray to the Father and I pray to Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, and that's fine. To pray to Jesus is fine. To pray to the Holy Spirit is fine. Because that's how Jesus modeled it. Jesus, when he gave us the Lord's Prayer, said, our Father who art in heaven, So I thought, okay, then that's a good thing to model my own prayer after. If Jesus is praying to the Father, then I'll pray to the Father. But to pray, I think, to Jesus is fine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Pray to the Holy Spirit is fine. What is a little dangerous is, Some people pray to angels. And you know, Paul, was it Paul or Peter? There's an incident in scripture where one of the apostles starts to bow down to worship an angel. And the angel says, no, no, no. I'm like you, I'm not, you know, you don't worship me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I think there's, I think the danger of praying to an angel would be, number one, he's not God. Number two, there's a slippery slope that do we start worshiping angels? And no, I mean, that's not appropriate. But I mean, my son actually wrote a great book on prayer. My son's a theologian. He and John Coe, who's a well-known theologian, wrote a book called When Prayer Gets Real.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And it's something cool about your son writing a book on prayer. I mean, I'm so proud of him and it's such a profound book. I'd encourage anyone who wants to know, how do I pray with authenticity? How do I pray with power and so forth? That's a really good book. to read when prayer gets real by my son.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I'm honored to be here. I watch your show and love the way you engage with your guests. So I thought, hey, that sounds like it'd be a fun experience. So I'm glad to be here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
oh yeah, everybody has a guardian angel or every follower of God or whoever has a guardian angel. But I think the passages I just mentioned, at least two passages are suggestive that Peter had his angel and these children had their angel. Who are you talking about there? If it's theirs, that suggests that there would be an angel who was assigned to them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I do. First of all, I want to spend a time in adoration and worship. So I have a worship time in my prayer where I worship God for who he is and what he's done in my life and others. And so I spend time worshiping him. I spend a time of confession. God, I know I shouldn't have done what I did yesterday. I cut that guy off and he just wanted to talk to me and I was rude and I'm sorry.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Help me to be more attuned to other people sometimes that maybe sometimes I'm not. And so I confess my sins. Now, they've already been forgiven, but... Sometimes when we have a pattern of sin in our life, even though we're a Christian, it kind of creates a bit of static in our line in talking to God. It's a little bit of a static, and you want to clear that up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So I think it's good to confess, to spend a time of confession and to say, God, I'm sorry for this and this that I did yesterday. I knew before I did it, I shouldn't, and I did it anyway, and I just want to say I'm sorry. So I do a time of confession. Then I do a time of thanksgiving. Thank you, God. I prayed this just the other day. I said, God, I'm 70, almost 73 years old.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I've been driving since I was 16, and I've never hurt anybody driving. Thank you, God, for protecting me from that horrible experience it would be to be in a traffic accident to hurt somebody. And I've never had that. And I just want to say thank you for protecting me for all these years, not just from being hurt myself, but from hurting somebody else.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So I want to thank him for what he provides for my family, for ways that he has guided me or opened my eyes to something I needed to see. I just spent a time in thanksgiving. And then I spent a time in It's called supplication, which is asking God, God, you know, I really need your help in this area.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And of course he already knows I do, he's omniscient, but the fact that I come to him with it and am vulnerable and honest about the things I need in my life, You know, we don't have the income to get through next month. And I know you're the great provider. And this happened a lot when I took, I left journalism to go into the church world at a 60% pay cut.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And so we lived on nothing for many years. And there were many times when we would pray, God, we don't have the mortgage money this month and we need your help. And he always came through one way or the other. But just to be vulnerable and honest about the things that we need in our life. So that's a simple way to remember.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It's the acrostic acts to adore God, spend a time in worship, to confess our sins, to thank him, and then supplication, to ask for those things that we need from him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I have a time of prayer that's a little more like built around that ACTS structure.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
The adoration, confession, that kind of thing, like I just described. So I want to take time out from my day to do that. But... I'm constantly praying to God. I mean, when I'm driving, when I'm, you know, God, I need your help.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So I lean toward the idea that there is a guardian angel for folks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And sometimes we spiritualize things, you know, like I was in downtown Houston and I needed to find a parking place and I thought, God, I know this is ridiculous, but I gotta be in this meeting in 10 minutes and there's no parking anywhere. Would you just, oh, there's a parking place. You know, I mean, I'm probably just spiritualizing it, but doggone it, it happened. Mm-hmm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So, you know, I think there's an ongoing conversation we have with God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Oh, in anticipation of him already granting it. I know that's common in some churches. I don't generally do that. I thank him because I know whatever he does for me is gonna be for my best interest. And so if I pray for X, and he gives me Y, I think there's gonna be a reason for it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And so I would rather have Y in the end than X. So I know there's some in the Pentecostal realm who will pray as if God has already granted it I don't think we have the power to manifest things that way, but my approach is just to be like a father with his child. And I know when your child, you got a little kid, when he's older, he's going to come to you and say, dad, can you buy me a Corvette?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And you're going to say, I love you, son, but there's no way I'm going to buy you a Corvette, but you need to understand why. It's because I love you. And sometimes I come to God and I say, God, I really need this. And he says, no. I mean, there's an old saying, the biggest curse is getting everything you pray for.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, because if you pray, you think of the things through your life that you've prayed for and you think, thank God he didn't grant that prayer because it would have been a disaster. You know, we pray for all kinds of stuff. Well, thank goodness he knows best. That's a good point I've never heard of.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And sometimes when we don't get what we want and then we find out five years later, oh man, I'm so much better off now than I would have been if God. So God answers every prayer with either a yes or a no or a wait. But sometimes a no is a blessing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
In a sense, I mean, they would certainly be our protectors against demonic influence and demonic harassment and so forth. We see instances of them as being warriors. I'll give you an example. Billy Graham tells this story. There was a true story of a missionary from Scotland who was in a South Pacific island. And the local tribe got very upset that he was there to talk about Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, it was a great line. I was saying, I used to be able to run downstairs like that. There's a great quote that said, How to fall asleep in a chair. Number one, be old. Number two, sit in a chair. I got in the airplane yesterday. I was asleep before takeoff. And Leslie said, how do you do that? And I said, I'm old and I sit in a chair. That's all I need.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, I have to read it in context with other verses and other teachings of Jesus about prayer, I think. to put it into context. But there's nothing wrong with a sense of anticipation and saying, God, you know, I need this in my life, and I know you love me, and I know this is something that you want me to have, and so I'm going to receive it as if you've already given it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I guess there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the posture I generally take.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
There's a variety, and it's interesting. The word denomination comes from the same root as the word denominator. And yeah, there's a hundred and some odd denominations in Christianity, but we all have a common denominator, and that is the gospel. That's the core teachings of Jesus. And then we agree to disagree on some peripheral issues. How to pray? How to do this? Do you tithe? Do you not?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And you know what? It's okay that we have some differences among us as long as we hold tight to the core. So denominator, common denominator, we have a common denominator, all these denominations, but we have some different practices, and we have some different emphases, and every church is not the same.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But as long as they were a denomination, as long as they agree that Jesus is who he claimed to be, the unique son of God who proved it by returning from the dead, and so forth, and certain non-negotiables, then it's okay that we view prayer a little differently. from one church to another, that's okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
When we get to heaven, we can raise our hands and say, Jesus, would you just clarify this once and for all? Would you just lay this out in a way we can understand it? I'm gonna have my hand in the air. Jesus, how does this Calvinism and Arminian thing fit together? I'm just curious about that. I can't wait to hear what he says.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And they went to murder him and his family. And they came and surrounded his house. And so him and his family got in there and they, what can we do? We can pray, that's all we can do. This crowd, this mob is intent on killing us. And so they prayed all night, God protect us, God protect us. And the mob by dawn dissipated and nothing happened. Well, the leader of that mob later became a Christian.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
They call him that because that was the way he described himself. I am, he said. Interestingly, he would take the words I am and apply them to himself. And you think back in the Old Testament, when Moses encountered God in the form of a burning bush, and asked for his name, God identified himself as I am. And so we have Jesus using these I am statements, I think seven of them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And one of those I am statements is I am the way, the truth, and the life. And then the important part comes next. No one comes to the Father except through me. So in other words, it's only through the atoning death of Jesus and the cross, it's only through his resurrection that anybody anywhere has any hope of making it out of this thing and getting to heaven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That's not to say there might be some people in the world who don't hear the name of Jesus, but who reach out to the one true God and in some way are remarkably saved. That could happen, but they're not saved apart from Jesus. It is because of what He did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And you know, I know this is Christmas season and so forth, and it's just a reminder of God's love for us, that He made us in His image, loves us so much that He sent His Son into the world to suffer a horrible death on the cross. I mean, I've talked to medical doctors about what happens to you during crucifixion. It is a horrific, horrific death.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So bad that the Romans would not even crucify their own citizens. They exempted them because it was too horrific. And yet Jesus, the Bible says in Philippians, in the first Christmas carol, that he gave up the perks of heaven and he came into this world and he lived a life of a servant, even to the point of going to the cross.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So he willingly gave up the perks of heaven, entered in this world on Christmas, and then ultimately on Easter, he is resurrected from the dead after having paid for our sins on the cross. I mean that, he is the way, the truth, and the life There is no other path. We're all sinners.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
The only way we can be forgiven is through receiving the payment he made on our behalf when he died as our substitute to pay for the sins that we've committed. And we receive that. We become a child of God forever.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That'd be awesome. Yeah. Can I start? Absolutely. Lord, thanks for this opportunity to talk about you, to talk about the hope that you provide through your son, Jesus Christ. The fact that there is redemption. There is eternal life. There is forgiveness. And it is only through the provision that he made on the cross. And when we receive that, we become your child forever. So we thank you for that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
We thank you for your great love, for your provision for us. You could have walked the other way. You could have just snapped your fingers and turned this whole planet into a cinder. but you love us, you want to spend eternity with us. And I do pray that those who are watching, who don't know you personally, will make today the day that they say, I believe that Jesus is the unique Son of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He proved it by returning from the dead. I am a sinner. I've fallen short of how God wants me to live. I confess that. I want to turn from that. and an attitude of repentance and faith, I want to receive this free gift of forgiveness and eternal life that Jesus purchased for me on the cross. I pray many people will make today the day that they take that step.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
and that we can then reconvene someday in heaven where we won't be constrained by time and we can just extol your grace and your love and tell story after story about how you have made yourself and your ways known in this world in magnificent and miraculous ways. We pray all this in Jesus' name.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And that missionary talked to him and said, hey, by the way, what happened that one night when you came to kill us and the mob was formed around our house? Why didn't you kill us? And he said, well, we couldn't do it with all those men you had guarding the house. He said, what are you talking about? I didn't have any men guarding the house. He said, no, we saw them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Thanks, Sean. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. It was a lot of fun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Thank you. You too. God bless you, my friend.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
There were these men, they had swords that were drawn and they surrounded your house. And we figured there's no way we can go in and attack these people in light of these guards around the house. Well, who are they? They were angels. And God had sent angels to protect them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And there's stories like that. I mean, in my book, I document stories where people have experiences with angels. I was talking to a famous theologian. You know how theologians are. They're very kind of buttoned down. And he was talking about growing up in a Pentecostal family, Pentecostal church.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And he said, yeah, he said, one day, years and years and years ago, this local family from our church was driving in their car and their son was in the back seat. He was like 10 years old. And we didn't have seat belts back then. And he opened the door and he fell out of the car going like 70 miles an hour. And they thought, my gosh, our son's been killed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And they turned around, they came back and there he was standing there, perfectly fine. And they said, what happened? And he said, you didn't see the man catch me? And this theologian began to weep. He got tears in his eyes. He had to take his handkerchief out and wipe his eyes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He said, I miss that, that being in a church that really took this other worldly stuff seriously, because I believe it was an angel that saved him. Can I tell you something I don't generally tell people? Absolutely. This is like a confessional, but I was visited by an angel when I was a child. I was a youngster and I had a dream. It's the only dream I remember from my childhood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It was more vivid, more real, more colorful than any dream I'd ever had. And an angel appeared to me. And I just knew intuitively he was from heaven. And he started telling me about heaven and the beauty and the wonder and the joy of heaven. And I'm kind of nodding along, we're in the kitchen of our house, and I'm kind of nodding along. I said, well, you know, I'm gonna go there someday.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And he looked at me and said, how do you know? So what do you mean, how do I know? I'm a good kid. I obey my parents pretty much. I've been to Sunday school a couple of times. I try to be nice to people. And he looked at me and he said, that doesn't matter. And this cold chill went through me. It's like, how can that not matter?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
All my efforts to be good, all my efforts to be obedient, you're telling me they don't matter? And he said, someday you'll understand. And that was the end of the dream. 16 years later, that prophecy came true. When my wife dragged me to a church as an atheist, January 20, 1980, And the pastor got up and he talked about heaven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And he talked about heaven is not a place that we earn our way there and try to achieve something, somehow be good enough to enter into heaven. None of us is good enough to enter into the presence of God in heaven. Forgiveness and eternal life in heaven is a free gift of God's grace, because he loves you. You're made in his image. He wants to spend eternity with you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He offers forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of his grace. And my first thought was, that's what that angel was talking about 16 years ago, when he said, someday I'll understand. And I got it that day, I didn't believe it, took a while, but the first day I got, oh, I get it now. That's what Christianity is about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It's not earning your way to heaven, it's receiving a free gift of forgiveness and eternal life. Wow. How old were you when that happened? You know, I'd say maybe 10, 11, sometimes 10, 11, 12, somewhere in there. It was funny, my ordination, when I was being ordained as a pastor years ago, I thought, do I even tell this story? They're going to think I'm nuts.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I told it and they all, yeah, okay. I mean, that's... Par for the course, we all have stories like that. And not exactly, but we all have experiences of God. But yeah, that was my experience with an angel. What did the angel look like? It was male. And by the way, I did read some scholarly articles from Jewish writers saying that angels can be female, but in scripture, they're all male.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It doesn't mean they couldn't manifest themselves because they're spirits. so they could manifest himself as a male, I assume as a female, but all of them in Scripture are male. He had a soft glow to him. Didn't have wings. Didn't look like a cartoon character, but there was a gentle glow to him that just intuitively I knew, oh, this is an angel. I'm talking to an angel. So looked human.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He looked human, exactly. And even the Bible talks about the fact that sometimes when we provide hospitality to someone, we're really providing hospitality to an angel, unbeknownst to us. And so angels can manifest themselves as people. I know you're an angel, I don't know. But they can manifest themselves as human-like.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It could very well be. I mean, now we also have instances where demons will, you know, Bible says Satan can appear as a demon. a counterfeit of light. In other words, he can pass himself off as being from God or whatever. So we have to be careful because that's why we have the Bible, I think, to kind of be a plumb line to test, is this legit or not?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Because demons, they can possess people, they can influence people, they can harass people, they can appear in different ways. I think we talk about ghosts. I think ghosts are demons. Because a technical definition of a ghost is someone who dies and their spirit refuses to enter into the next life. Well, that's not a biblical definition. a description of what can happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So if ghosts are not biblical in that sense, maybe they're demonic. And I believe they are. I believe that, you know, are ghosts real? Well, there's some instances where we see apparitions that I believe are ghostly apparitions that have been quite real, but I believe they're satanic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, we have physical mobility in the sense of we are a body. We are a spirit who has a body. So God created us. It's a dualistic thing. We are spirit, but we're also physical. We also have a physical body. That's an advantage in some ways, I think. We're also... I think in the pecking order, we're actually above angels. Really? In many ways, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I think, well, actually in the Psalms it says we're created a little bit lower than the angels. But I think there are ways in which we kind of have capabilities that angels maybe don't have. And I mean, in terms of having a physical body gives us certain advantages that a spirit doesn't. that doesn't have a body, would not have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, a definition of a Christian would be someone who has done exactly what he said. In other words, someone who confesses that Jesus is Lord, Jesus is God, repents of their sin, turns from their sin, admits that, receives this free gift of forgiveness and eternal life that Jesus purchased for us on the cross when he died as our substitute to pay for all of our sins.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
When that happens, when a person, the Bible says, the verse that brought me to faith, John 1, 12, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name. So the formula there is believe plus receive equals become. So we believe based on the data, I believe anyway, based on the data of history, that Jesus is who he claimed to be.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, I'd love to. Let me pray. Father, thank you for Sean. Thank you that you've given him this curiosity about you, about faith, about issues that really, really matter. Thank you that you've given him a platform where he can take people along with him on that journey and that we can all explore and discover together.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He proved it by returning from the dead. So I believe that, but I had to take another step. I had to receive. And receiving is confessing that Jesus is who he claimed to be. He is God, he is Lord. Admitting my sin, receiving forgiveness from Jesus. When I do that, I become a Christian. Someone who is told someday by Jesus, be gone, I never knew you, would not have been a Christian.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Because a Christian, to be a Christian, would need to receive Jesus as their forgiver and leader through a prayer like that. And once that happens, I believe, once saved, always saved. Once you are adopted as a son of God that way, then he never disowns his children. And so you're safely in the kingdom of God and that when you pass from this world, you'll ultimately end up in heaven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So Jesus is not talking about, he's talking about those who are hypocrites, who claim to be his followers, but who aren't really his followers. Those are the ones that are in trouble. The ones who profess certain things and claim to be holy and claim to be righteous and so, and Jesus says in the end, I never knew you. Sorry, be gone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Do I really believe in Jesus? This is what happened to my wife. After she came to faith, she kept wondering, am I really okay with God? Am I really saved? Am I really going to heaven? And so she kept praying repeatedly this prayer, God, I believe you are who you claim to be. I believe you're Lord. Come into my life, change my life, change my character, change my values. I received this free gift.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And we do pray for your blessing on our conversation, that it would be encouraging, that it would be illuminating, that, you know, dare I even pray it, that it'd be life-changing for some people. We pray this in Jesus' name.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
She kept praying these prayers and her mentor who led her to the Lord came up to her one day and said, are you calling God a liar? No, I'm not calling him a liar. Well, the Bible 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. If you believe and you've received, then you have become a liar.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
a child of God, according to Scripture. And you don't need to worry, and you always can go back to that. I can go back to November the 8th of 1981, three o'clock in the afternoon, after a two-year investigation where I tried to use my journalism training and legal training to disprove Christianity, and I came to the conclusion, no, it's true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Jesus not only claimed to be the Son of God, he proved it by returning from the dead, and the historical documentation is overwhelming. And that's when I go back to that moment where I realize I'm in deep weeds because I am a sinner of sinners. I live an immoral, narcissistic, obscene life, and I need God. I confess that, and I admit that, and I turn from that, and I want to receive God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You as my forgiver and as my leader, I want to receive your free gift of forgiveness and eternal life. Sometimes I need to go back to that and say, did I do that at three o'clock in the afternoon, November the 8th of 1981? Yep, I did. I'm okay. Has God changed my life since then? Absolutely. So I have evidence of it. If there's no evidence of a life change, then you really have to ask,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
has God really taken root in my life? Have I really received him as my forgiver, but also my Lord? In other words, someone who leads my life. Is he really leading my life? So I can look back and say, God's changed my character, my values, my worldview, my philosophy, my attitude, my parenting, my marriage, I mean, all these things over time, over time. God's changed for the good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So I have evidence that I can look at and say, no, I can see God how, because the Bible says in 2 Corinthians, that when a person receives this free gift of God's forgiveness and grace, they become a new creature. The old is gone, the new has come. Doesn't mean we become perfect. We're still struggling in a world of sin to try to follow Jesus as best we can. We still make mistakes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
We still take one step forward and two steps back sometimes. That's okay. But the general orientation of our life ought to be different. It ought to be much more pointed toward God as being the leader of my life. And so when you look at that kind of evidence, when you look at that moment I can go back to and say, yep, that's the moment,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
then it dispels those fears that, oh, somehow this didn't take, or somehow I don't know that I'm okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Like Howard Storm's case, famous case.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, here's my hesitation on that. Because I know Howard's story and you're right. He was an atheist. He died physically, he was clinically dead and demons were mauling him. He said, I was like roadkill. And he called out to God, save me. And... This orb of light came and literally saved him. It was so profound. Then he eventually recovered from his clinical death.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And he not only renounced his atheism, he became a pastor. So he's a pastor today. That's how profound that was to him. But here's the problem. He wasn't clinically, he wasn't dead like he's never returned. He was clinically dead, but he was going to come back. And so I have a little hesitation in terms of saying that that's a universal experience.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Here's what I would say based on what I understand best in scripture, especially the Old Testament in Jeremiah, the New Testament in Hebrews. First of all, none of us lives good lives. We're all sinners. We've all screwed up. We've all made mistakes, not just made mistakes. I could say this, I think. We've all done things we knew they were wrong before we did them and we did them anyway.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I have, you have, right? We all have. We've sinned. And so, yes, we do good things too, but that doesn't negate the sin. It's like if you rob a bank, And then you live a perfect life. Do you think the government would come up to you and say, yeah, we're going to forget about that bank robbery. We got all this evidence you commit. No, you're guilty of that bank robbery.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You need to pay the penalty for robbing that bank. Even though you did all these good things, it doesn't wipe out the bad things that you've done. And so none of us is good. None of us deserves to go to heaven. We're all sinners. That's number one. Number two, I would say that
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Anyone, anywhere, in any culture, at any time, who calls out to the one true God and says, God, help me, save me, like Howard did when he had that near-death experience, said, God, help me, I can't save myself, I need help, I need you to come to my rescue. I think anybody in any culture who prays a prayer like that to the one true God, God will provide a way for them to find redemption.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I'll give you an example. I knew a guy later in his life, he grew up in India and in the province in India where he lived, it was illegal to share the Christian message. He was mentored in the Hindu faith by some gurus. He got to be about 17, 18 years old and he said, wait a minute, And look at these Hindu scriptures. They all contradict each other. They can't all be true. They contradict.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Say, God, I'm at a loss. If you're there, I want to know you. I want to meet you. I want to experience you. God, if you're there, show me. And in a remarkable set of circumstances, God brought a couple of missionaries into his life, shared the message of Jesus with them. He came to faith in Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He later immigrated to the United States and he became a member of the church where I was a pastor at in Chicago. So there's an example of how God intervened in the life of this guy. He probably didn't even know the name of Jesus. He just knew. I'm a mess, I need help, I need rescuing. God's not playing hide and seek from us. He's not hiding from us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
The other phenomenon that's going on that I write about in my new book is that in the Middle East, in many Middle Eastern countries, it's illegal to share the Christian message. And so what is God doing? He's bringing dreams about Jesus to these people. This is a phenomenon that is sweeping the Middle East. People are not going to sleep as a Muslim, meeting Jesus in a dream, becoming Christians.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That's not how it happens, because that could be just a subjective experience. No, there is corroboration to these dreams. So I'll give you an example. So a woman named Noor, mother of eight, Muslim, lives in Cairo. One night, she has a Jesus dream. It's the most profound, vivid dream, unlike any other she's ever had. And Jesus appears to her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And she feels the love and the grace and the forgiveness and the kindness of Jesus just radiating from him. And she's overwhelmed by it. She's never felt anything like it. And they're walking along a lake. And she says, Jesus, tell me more about you. And he says, my friend will tell you. And she said, who's your friend? And he gestures to another person.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
She hadn't even noticed because she was so mesmerized by Jesus. A guy was walking with them along the lakeside. He said, my friend will tell you. She wakes up from the dream. The next day, she goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo. She's walking in this crowded marketplace. She sees the man from her dream. She goes up to him, you, you were in my dream. He said, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He said, what are you talking about? Same face, same clothes, same glasses. You were the man in my dreams. And he said, did you have a dream about Jesus? She said, yes. He was a missionary undercover in Cairo. He wasn't going to go to the crowded marketplace on that Friday afternoon because it's chaotic, but he felt God had a mission for him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And he went that day, he met that woman and he took her aside, opened the Bible and shared the message of Jesus to her. So that's external confirmation that it's not just something going on in her head, but this was a special dream that points to something outside that dream. See what I mean in terms of corroboration? That's how these are happening.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I'm telling you, Sean, these are so common in the Middle East today. that sometimes you'll see an ad in the Cairo newspaper and it says, call this number and we'll tell you about the man in white that you met in your dream last night. Are you serious? Yep, yep. How are you finding this stuff out? Yep, yep.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, Tom Doyle, who is an expert on the Middle East and travels all over the Middle East, I interviewed him for my new book coming out, Seeing the Supernatural. And he describes this whole, he said, Lee, I could pick up the phone right now and call Saudi Arabia, call Jordan, and give you five more stories from just this past week. This is happening all over the Middle East.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, that tells me something about God. It tells me something, he's seeking us first, that he's not playing hide and seek from us, but that he's reaching out to us. And it's interesting when people say, well, what about the guy who lives on an island who never hears the name of Jesus? That always comes from someone who has heard the name of Jesus. And my question to them is, have you responded?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Have you responded to what you know about Jesus and received him as your forgiver and your leader? Because that's not an issue for you, but it is an issue for some people. And I believe that anyone who calls out the one true God saying, God, help me, save me. I realize I've messed up things. I want to know you. Are you there? Tell me, show me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I believe God will find a way through a dream, through a missionary, whatever, to make that happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, it's a great question. You know, the Bible is almost 800,000 words. And if you try to read the Bible, it can mess your mind up. I mean, it's difficult. I mean, there's a lot of messages. There's a lot of messages in the Bible. There's a lot there. And to really understand it takes a lot of study and so forth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But I can summarize the central message that God wants us to know from the Bible in one verse, 21 words. and the verse is Romans 6, 23, which says simply, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. So the wages of sin is death.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
What we've earned, what we deserve, because we've ignored God, we've blasphemed against him, we've violated his commands, we've turned our back on him, the wage, what we've earned because of that is death, which means eternal separation from God. We'll pay for our own sins separate from God forever. But it says, there's another part to this story, the free gift of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
is eternal life through Christ Jesus, your Lord. In other words, you can't earn it because if you try to earn a gift, it's not a gift anymore, it's a wage. No, it's not a wage, it's a gift. The free gift of God is eternal. How do you receive a gift? You know, this is Christmas. You know, there's a bunch of gifts probably under Christmas trees all over the world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
They don't become yours until you receive them. And so when we receive that gift, we become a child of God forever. You know, there's a lot of different religions in the world. They all contradict each other. But Christianity is different from, I think there's 4,200 religions in the world, something like that. Yeah, I think that's right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Every other faith system I've ever explored, and I've looked at thousands, Every other one is spelled D-O. You got to do something to try to earn your way to God. Use a Tibetan prayer wheel, go on a pilgrimage to Mecca, give alms to the poor, do good deeds. Do, do, do something and maybe someday, maybe, maybe not, but maybe you'll do enough to earn your way to heaven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That's how every other religion functions. Christianity is not spelled D-O, it's spelled D-O-N-E. It's done. Jesus said in the cross, it's finished, it's done. He paid the penalty we deserved for the sins that we've committed. In other words, we don't have to pay the penalty. He paid it on the cross on our behalf. And all we have to do, and then he offers forgiveness as a free gift.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
We just need to receive it in repentance and face. I'm sorry for how I've lived. I don't want to be separated from God. I want to know you personally. How do I do that? I receive this free gift of your grace. That's what grace is. By definition, it is free. And so that's the difference between every other religion and Christianity, because they all contradict each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I have a good friend who's a Muslim and he comes over to my house and we barbecue and we're buddies. So I've read the Quran and in the Quran in Surah 4, verse 156, it says Jesus didn't die on the cross and therefore he wasn't resurrected. The Quran also says that God does not have a son. The Quran also says that no one can bear the sins of another. Specifically, the Quran says that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Okay, those are three things I need to believe to be a Christian. Now, maybe the Quran is right. Maybe that's correct. Or maybe Christianity is correct. But they can't both be correct. They conflict. They can't both be correct. And so I look at
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
the evidence that Jesus did die on the cross and that he was resurrected from the dead, the historical data that convinced me that he not only claimed to be the son of God, he backed it up by returning from the dead. And I look at that and I go, because of that, I can trust that Jesus is who he claimed to be. So I say his message is the one that I want to respond to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
his message of grace and hope and redemption, this gift of God that he wants to give all of us. Why was Jesus sent here? I think a couple of reasons.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
What is Jesus or who is Jesus? God has existed from eternity past as the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. They've always existed in a perfect love relationship. And so God, when he decided to create humankind, because they're in this love relationship, he wanted us to experience love. And so he gave us free will. Well, what have we done with the free will?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
We've turned our back on God. We've denied him. We've, look at the world, it's a mess. We've used our free will and given God the middle finger, basically. And so God loves us. He made us in his image. We are made as, which means not physically, but our souls are fashioned in the image of God. And he loves us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And so he said, I'm gonna send Jesus into the world to be born of a virgin, fully God still and fully man. And his ultimate purpose is Easter. His ultimate purpose is to die. To die, why? To die as our substitute. who says, I'm gonna pay the penalty you deserve, because I love you. I'll pay the penalty, you don't have to, if you receive this gift of forgiveness as a free gift of grace.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I'll give you an example. There's a story, I don't think it's a true story, it's more of a parable, of a judge, and he's an honest judge. He's a righteous judge. And one day, a woman is brought in front of him on a charge of shoplifting, and it's his own daughter. And he says, what is the evidence against my daughter? And they present the evidence that she's clearly guilty, clearly guilty.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, now what does he do? He loves his daughter. It's his only daughter. He loves his daughter. but he's a righteous judge. He can't just wink and say, ah, yeah, nevermind. I forgive you. Forget the whole thing. He can't do that because if he did that, he would not be a righteous judge. He would not be an honest judge. So what does he do? He looks out at his daughter, says, I find you guilty.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I'm sorry, but you're guilty. And I have to say that, I have to declare it. You are guilty and I sentence you to jail for 60 days. and a fine or a fine of $10,000. Well, he knows she doesn't have $10,000. She's going to have to be separated from him in jail for 60 days. But what else could he do? He's an honest judge. You know what he does?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He takes off his robe and he walks down in front of the bench and he opens his checkbook and he writes out a check for $10,000. and he rips it off and he says, I want to give this to you so you can pay the penalty that you deserve, but I'm going to pay it for you. Now, she has a choice. She could turn it down, say, no, no, no, I'd rather go to jail. I don't think she'd do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I think she'd say, thank you, Father, for loving me so much that you paid the penalty I deserve because I'm guilty. And she receives that check, and she's set free.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That is a analogy for what goes on with Jesus, why Jesus came into the world to die in our place as our substitute so that our sins could be wiped out, because only perfect people can go to heaven. And so we have to be forgiven, completely forgiven. And we have to be clothed in the righteousness of God, which also happens when we receive him as our forgiver and leader.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And then the doors of heaven are flung open for us. But that was the only way, because God is a righteous judge. He is holy. He can't just wink and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, forget it. I know you've done all these evil things in your life, but yeah, yeah, yeah, let's just forget about it. No, they have to be paid for.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
If I lend you my car and you're gone for a day and you come back and it's got a big scratch down it, I could say, oh, I just forgive you. But then I got to pay for the scratch. I got to pay to have it repaired. Or if I don't, when I sell the car, I'm going to take a loss for the amount equivalent to fixing that scratch. I'm going to have to pay the penalty in one way or the other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I can't just wink and say, forget it. So God can't just wink and say, I'm going to ignore the fact that you're sinners. No, no, no, because that would be a lie. And he can't lie. So do you see? So the purpose of Christmas, ultimately, is Easter. Now, along the way, God showed us how to live life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
An atheist says, there is no God. An agnostic says, I don't think there's a God. So that's kind of the dividing line. A lot of people who call themselves atheists are really agnostic. Because when you think about it, to say there is no God, you would have to be God to have that omniscience to know that God does not exist. So it's kind of a self-refuting definition.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He talked about how we should care for others, how we should prioritize people who are hurting, how we should reach out in love to people who are in need of our love and our kindness and so forth. He showed us how to live the perfect life. But if he only did that, none of us would get to heaven. He had to, Easter had to happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He had to go, he had to not only die on that cross, but then be resurrected from the dead so that when we die, we can be resurrected as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Who is Jesus? He is still alive. He is still, yeah, he is still with us, so to speak. I talked to him this morning. We talked to him at breakfast when we prayed. So he is still who he is. Now he was united with a human form at the time of his incarnation and born on Christmas of a virgin. And when the Holy Spirit overcame Mary, it says, therefore the child was born holy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So that process of the Holy Spirit leading to the birth of Jesus made it possible for him to be without sin. He was made holy somehow. We don't understand the entire process. The incarnation is mind boggling. It's the timeless becoming time bound. It's the eternal becoming time bound. It's the immaterial becoming material.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I mean, it's beyond our ability to understand, but clearly scripture says because of the way the incarnation took place, it means that Jesus was holy. Jesus was without sin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Joseph would be- Is he the caretaker? He would be an earthly, quote unquote, father, just like if you adopted a son. You're not the biological father, but you're the father. You're an adopted father. Yeah, be more of that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, there's certainly God restrains evil to some degree. If there are specific rules Why are there rules? Well, I wouldn't posture it as rules. I would posture it more as God rules over all. It seems like there's some kind of law. Okay, I see where you're going. Yeah, there is a moral law that comes from God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But generally, people who are atheists say, there is no God. Agnostics say, I just don't know. I'm not sure. I don't believe it. I'm not there. I'm questioning. I'm doubting. I'm a doubter. But you were a straight atheist. Yeah, I was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I think it's a great gesture just to say we want our foundation to be God. I love that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well- I mean, when you told me about burying those Bibles in the foundation, I just thought that's a great symbol of the fact that we want our organization as best we can, yeah, we're gonna make mistakes, we're gonna mess things up from time to time, but we want ultimately for God to be honored by what we do. That's one thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I don't know, and I would, you know, we can get into the realm of superstition at some point and say, does that mean that demons cannot somehow penetrate that because the foundation? I think that's more of a superstition than it would be. Now, it could be that if you are declaring to the world that it's our hope, it's our intention, it's our desire that our faith
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
be honoring to God, that's gonna be a deterrent to demonic activity. Let me bring up another example.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And that goes back to the Bible. That goes back to Jesus casting out. I mean, one of the things that Jesus is best known for are not only miracles, but exorcisms, casting out demons. I think half of Jesus' activity in the Gospel of Mark involves casting out demons. casting out demons and so forth. So how did he do that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It is something that he instructed his followers to do, to challenge and confront the demons in the name of Jesus. to depart, so that comes from the Bible. So, I mean, do I believe that demon possession exists? Yes, and in my book coming out in March, I mean, I have a whole chapter on that. Yes, I believe it can happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, it kind of came in stages. So the first step was when I was in middle school. And I started asking all those questions that middle schoolers like to ask. Like, well, if there's a God, how can there be suffering in the world? Or if there's a God, why would he send people to hell? And nobody wanted to talk about it. And I thought, oh, I get it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I don't believe it happens to Christians, because we are, by definition, indwelled by the Holy Spirit, so we can't be indwelled by a demon at the same time. But Satan can hector us, he can harass us. And that's why we want to, as the Bible talks about, put on the full armor of God to protect ourselves from that through understanding and reading the scriptures, through prayer and so forth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So yeah, that's a good example of what I call a rule, but it's a... an action we can take to cast out the demonic as Jesus did in his ministry. So that would be a good example. But I think sometimes, you know, it's hard to... to draw a line between what can be a superstitious belief versus what's a biblical belief.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And so I can look at that and say, is casting out a demon in the name of Jesus, is that a rule that God approves of? Yeah, because we have examples in scripture of Jesus casting out demons and we want to do that in his name. But if you tell me that, oh, if you wear a crucifix around your neck, that it will ward off the demonic, I don't see that in Scripture.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So I always go back to, is it in the Bible? Can I trust it? That gives me a plumb line. It gives me something that I can speculate about other stuff, but that's just me speculating. What does that really matter? I think the Bible has more weight than that. What version of the Bible do you read? I read several.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I think it's healthy to read several sometimes to get a different, a little bit translation difference. I like the NIV. That's my publisher, also publishes that version. It's a great version. The ESV is a good version. The new King James version is a good one. The new, what's it called? The... Oh, NLT, the New Living Translation. That's a really good translation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So what people have to understand, though, is there is a difference between a Bible translation and a paraphrase. So a translation goes back to the original as best we have them, the existing documents in the Greek and in the Hebrew, and translates those into modern language that we can understand. That's a translation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
There are also things like a thing called the message, which is a Bible, but it's a paraphrase. It's a well-educated Christian scholar who kind of, puts it in vernacular that maybe we can understand better, and maybe he takes a little liberty with it, and that's okay because it's consistent with what the Bible says.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So there's a difference there, and I encourage people to use a translation because that is staying true to what was originally written as best we can determine it. By the way, talking about, I want to give you a little anecdote because we talked at breakfast about numbers and how numbers can be really interesting sometimes. And you know, it's very commonly said that the number of Satan is 666.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
A friend of mine is named Dr. Daniel B. Wallace. He's a professor at Dallas Seminary. He's probably the world's leading expert on the manuscripts of the New Testament. And his ministry is to travel the world and to go to museums and seminaries and places that have ancient manuscripts and to take high quality photographs of them for scholars so we can preserve them forever.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
They don't want to talk about this because there are no good answers. That was my first step. Second step in atheism was in high school when I took biology and I was taught that neo-Darwinism explains the origin and diversity of life. So God's out of a job. You don't need God to be a creator. Science explains it away.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I was talking to him once and I said, he said, yeah, I discovered something interesting. I said, what? He said, I took the oldest manuscript we've got of the Book of Revelation and I examined it under a microscope And the number of Satan is not 666, it's 616. I said, really? And it always stuck in my mind. I called him back about a year later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I said, did I understand you right when you said you examined under a microscope and the real number is 616? He said, yeah. So, I mean, that's why it's important that we go back to the sources as best we can. You know, the original documents are all lost. They're all reduced to dust because they were made of papyrus and so forth, scrolls.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But we have reliable documents because handwritten copies were made. We have thousands of copies that we can compare and contrast, and we can come to a conclusion about what the original said. And that's the translations we have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Different versions of what? The Bible. That you see in a store, for instance? Yeah, they're all translations, but a translation committee may choose a certain word, say the Greek says this, we're gonna translate it this way. And another group might get together of scholars and say, yeah, that's good, but we think it's a little sharper, a little better to translate it this way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And so they're very careful about that. There's a Bible called the NET Bible. I think it's the New English Translation. Daniel B. Wallace, who I mentioned, is the editor of that. That has thousands, literally thousands of footnotes that explain why they translate the Greek and the Hebrew in the way they did. So it says, you know, we had a choice here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
We could have used this word in English or we could have used this one. This is why we chose this one. But we just want you to know, you know, we could have chosen this other one, but these are the reasons why. So it's really a handy Bible to have. I've got one. I refer to it all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
there's a relational component to it. In other words, God the Father has existed from eternity past. God the Son has existed from eternity past. Well, that refers to a relational, how they relate to each other. God the Holy Spirit has existed from eternity past. And so in some ways they have some different functions in the sense that it was Jesus that came and left behind the perks of heaven
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And then third and final step in atheism happened in college when I took a course on the historical Jesus from a skeptic. And he taught me, you can't trust anything that the Bible tells you about Jesus. It's all fairytale, make-believe, wishful thinking. And that kind of was the final nail in the coffin that convinced me that, yeah, God doesn't exist. I tend to be a skeptical person.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
was born among us on Christmas, lived the perfect life, went to the cross to pay the penalty for our sin. That is a role that he fulfilled as part of the Godhead with the permission of, and the leading of the Father and the Holy Spirit. So there's one God, but three persons. And how do I know that? Because if you read scripture, you can see it teaches four things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and there is one God. Those four teachings are clear in scripture, and so how that plays out is kind of a mind bender, but we can know that they are all God, they are God, there is one God, and that is God in three persons.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, there's a problem with that. There's a heresy called modalism. Modalism says that there's one God, but he changes, like he's the Father now, but then he changes, like water changes to steam when it's heated. and now he becomes the sun, and then he changes again, because water can become ice, and becomes the Holy Spirit. That's a heresy. That's not how it works.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
There are three distinct persons in the Godhead who are God. So it's not like they change roles or go from water to ice to steam. A lot of people use that illustration and you just have to be careful because that can lead to a heretical belief that God changes from the Father to the Son to the Holy Spirit depending on the circumstances. That's just not what happens.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, they can each have different roles. What would those roles be? Well, the role of the Holy Spirit, for instance, in my life is to indwell me, to live in me, to guide me, to be sort of an internal conscience, to help me incrementally over time to become more like Jesus, to change my values, to change my character.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So one of the roles of the Holy Spirit in our life is to minister to us as we grow in our relationship with God. That's one of the roles that he performs. But there are other roles too, like it was through him, through the Holy Spirit, that Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And Jesus has the role of being the savior of the world, but they all have that role in the sense the Holy Spirit was involved. When you look in Genesis, even in early Hebrew writings, You can see the spirit and you can see the different elements of God, the different elements of God's wrong term. You can see the three persons of the Trinity playing a role in creation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Jesus played a role in creation. The Father played a role in creation. The Holy Spirit played a role in creation. So they're working together as one Godhead to accomplish all the creation that we have. How did Jesus play a role in creation? There's a scripture in the New Testament that says nothing that was created was created without Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So he played a role from eternity past in the creation of the world. Wow. Yeah, pretty wild.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That's who I am. My background's in journalism and law. So you put those together, you know, you get kind of a jerk and kind of a skeptic. And that's who I was. So I just thought the mere concept of an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe, come on, it's crazy. Wasn't even worth my time exploring. So it is actually a belief system. It is. Oh, definitely, definitely.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I believe there is faith involved. that you have to have a certain amount of faith, not in God, but in your own intellect, in your own ability to discern and figure out that there is no God behind all this stuff. So I think there's faith involved.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, I was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. and got married young, and I was an atheist. My wife was an agnostic. She didn't know what to believe. And she came up to me one day and gave me the worst news any atheist husband could get. She said, I've become a Christian. You know, now she's going to start judging me. Now she's going to try to get me not to hang out with my friends.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Now she's going to make the kids think that there's something wrong with me because I don't believe in God. I thought I just saw trouble on the horizon. And trouble came because all of a sudden she becomes a devout Christian and I'm an adamant atheist. Well, we're just butting heads and we'd never done that. We met when we were 14, we got married at 19 and 20.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
We're best friends and yet for the first time in our marriage, we're at loggerheads. She wants to go to church. Am I gonna stay home with the kids while you go to church? I got other things to do. I remember when she came to me, she said, I'd like to give some money to the church. I said, I got a good idea. Why don't you take the money and flush it down the toilet?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
because that'll have the same effect. So that was what she was up against. I mean, and I thought, I got to get my marriage back together here. How do I do that? Well, wait a minute, there's an easy way. All I have to do is disprove Christianity. You know, I went to Yale Law School. I understand what evidence is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Take me a long weekend, maybe a three-day weekend, and I'm sure I can poke enough holes in Christianity that it would fall apart. What brought your wife to faith? It's interesting. We moved into a condo in suburban Chicago, and the doorbell rang, and it was a neighbor. It was a woman. She was a nurse. And her name was Linda. And she had a child on her hip who was six months old.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, we had a nine-month-old daughter. And so Linda introduces herself, brought a plate of cookies, and said, hey, you know, let's get together sometime. So they became best friends. Well, Linda was a Christian, a strong Christian. And they would have long conversations about God. And Leslie wasn't hostile like I was. She just had questions like anybody would. And Linda had answers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
faith means trust, you're putting your trust in yourself, that I'm smarter than everybody else, I know that there is no God, and I'm gonna live a life consistent with that, and that's what I did. I lived a life consistent with my atheism. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And she went to church with her. She checked it out. And then she brought me that news that she had become a Christian.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Oh, my gosh. I just saw it. This is the last thing I need in my life. Because I just had this caricature of Christians who were going to be judgmental and going to look down their nose at me. And by the way, I thought I was a man in her life. Now who's this Jesus character? Well, you weren't wrong. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I know. There is a lot of that. And that's what I was recoiling against. And so... I thought I could disprove it. I ended up spending a year and nine months taking my journalism training, my legal training, and probing the historical data concerning the resurrection of Jesus mainly. Because even as an atheist, I understood everything, everything, everything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
depends on whether Jesus returned from the dead or not. Because clearly, Jesus made transcendent and messianic and divine claims about himself. He claimed he was the Son of God. At one point, he gets up before a group of people And he says, I and the Father are one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And the word in Greek there for one is not masculine, it's neuter, which means Jesus was not saying I and the Father are the same person. He was saying I and the Father are the same thing. We're one in nature, we're one in essence. And the audience got it. They said, oh, you're a man and you're claiming to be God. So they were gonna kill him for claiming to be God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He claimed to be God, but so what? I could claim to be God. Well, maybe not you. Anybody could claim that they're God. But if Jesus claimed to be God, died, and then three days later rose from the dead, that's pretty good evidence he's telling the truth. So even as an atheist, I recognize this is the ballgame. And if I could just disprove it, I'd be home free.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I could rescue her from this cult and go on with our life as it was. Where do you start to disprove something? It's so funny you ask that because this is back in 1980 or so when you're at the library with microfiche and microfilm and you're doing interlibrary loans that take four months to get an ancient book out of the library. You're going to museums to look at manuscripts. You're
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But, you know, I was trained to investigate. I was an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune. I did major investigations. I did a lot of the original reporting on the Ford Pinto case, which is before your time, but it was a big deal back then. And so I knew to pick up the phone and say, call a scholar and say, I'm Lee Strobel from the Chicago Tribune.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Oh, he probably thought I'm working on an article. And say, hey, I got a question for you. What about this? Oh, okay. Well, great. Thanks. So I just began calling people, researching history, checking stuff out. And nowadays, it's a lot easier. Nowadays, it's very easy to investigate this stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
One of the greatest scholars, probably the greatest scholar on the resurrection, Dr. Gary Habermas, is writing a... four or five volumes set, each volume is like 800 pages or so, on the resurrection, refuting every counter argument out there and presenting the case affirmatively and so forth. And so there's plenty of stuff out there now if someone wants to check it out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I ended up writing a book on it called The Case for Christ. When I did the book, I needed to retrace a lot of these interviews that I did because I wasn't planning to write a book. I didn't keep notes. This is for me and my curiosity like you. I had a bunch of questions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But then when I wrote the book, of course, I had to do in-depth interviews, tape record them, make sure they were accurate and so forth. And so that book really summarizes the evidence.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, John 1.12 says it's not enough just to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. The Bible says demons believe that Jesus is God. And they shudder because they know the implications of it for them. It's not enough just to believe it. We have to receive, receive this free gift of forgiveness and eternal life, this free gift of God's grace.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And when we do that, John 1, 12 says, we become a child of God forever. Well, I didn't believe, and I thought it was fairytales. I thought it was make-believe. I thought Christianity was based on wishful thinking, mythology and legend. That's what I thought. But as I began to investigate the resurrection,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, I would scoff, I would mock. I didn't spend a lot of time trying to deconstruct their faith, but I certainly didn't buy it and would make fun of it and make light of it. Because my attitude was, okay, if there is no God, if there is no heaven, if there is no hell, if there is no judgment, if there is no ultimate accountability,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I was stunned because when I was a little kid, I don't know if you had this when you were a kid, my parents for Christmas gave me this punching clown. It was weighted on the bottom. It was about three feet tall and it was inflated and it was a clown. And you would hit it like a punching bag.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And because it was weighted on the bottom, it would go down when you would hit it, but then it would bounce back up and then you'd hit it again. It was a toy that I got when I was a kid. That's how I pictured this. I thought I had a knockdown punch. I thought I could disprove Christianity. So I'd hit it with an objection and it would bounce back. There's an answer to that. Doggone it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
What about this? Bang, I hit it again and it would bounce back. There's an answer to that. So I was stunned because I did not expect there to be any historical validity to the fact that Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead. But I can summarize it really quickly, what I found, using four words that begin with the letter E. That way people can remember. Because remember, it's Christmas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
The reason Jesus came was Easter, the resurrection. How do we know it's true? Four words that begin with the letter E, execution. Jesus was dead after being crucified. I thought maybe he survived and the cool, damp air of the tomb resuscitated him. That's what I thought. No, we have no record anywhere of anyone surviving a full Roman crucifixion, anywhere.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Not only do we have multiple accounts in the documents of the New Testament that tell us that Jesus was dead after being crucified, we've got five ancient sources outside the Bible that talk about him being dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Oh, like Josephus, Tacitus. These are early historians. Meribah Serapion, Lucian. Even the Jewish Talmud admits that Jesus was executed. So Jesus was clearly dead. In fact, get this. The Journal of the American Medical Association, a secular, scientific, peer-reviewed medical journal carried an investigation into the death of Jesus. And this was their conclusion, quote,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead even before the wound to his side was inflicted. That's the Journal of the American Medical Association. You could go to an atheist New Testament scholar like Gerd Ludeman, and he will tell you the death of Jesus on the cross by crucifixion is historically indisputable. That's the atheist speaking.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So the first E is for execution, Jesus was dead. The second E stands for early reports that he rose from the dead. In other words, reports that didn't come after decades of legendary development, but go right back to the cross itself. In other words, I used to think as a skeptic, okay, I got to give you the fact, Jesus was dead, get it. But the resurrection is a legend.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I knew it took time for legend to develop in the ancient world. You know, the great historian A. N. Sherwin White of Oxford said, the passage of two generations of time is not even enough for legend to grow up and wipe out a solid core of historical truth. So I knew it took a few generations for legend to develop. Well, what I learned,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
is that we have a report of the resurrection of Jesus, including named eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses that said he died, why? For our sins, he was buried, and the third day he rose from the dead. And these eyewitnesses, groups of eyewitnesses and individuals, this report has been dated back by scholars to within months of his death. within months. Yeah, wow. That's a newsflash.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You can see this. It's in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 15, starting at verse two. That is a nugget. that talks about the resurrection of Jesus. Who wrote 1 Corinthians? Paul. Paul had been someone who didn't believe in God. He was a Pharisee. He didn't believe in Jesus. He was persecuting Christians. He's on the road to Damascus. Boom, he has this encounter with the risen Christ.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
then the most logical way for me to live my life would be as a hedonist, someone who just pursued pleasure. And so that's what I did. I lived a very immoral, drunken, profane, narcissistic, self-absorbed, In some ways, self-destructive kind of life. That was my life. What people saw was my success. I was the legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. I was writing books, doing television.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He realized that Jesus is God and he becomes the apostle Paul. 22 years later, he writes his letter to the church in Corinth. That's what we call 1 Corinthians in the Bible. And he includes this report about the resurrection. Where did he get that report?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, we know that it was one to three years after the death of Jesus that he had this experience with the risen Christ and became the apostle Paul. He immediately went into Damascus and he met with some apostles. Many people believe that's when he was given this report about the resurrection.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Some people believe it was a few years later, a couple years later, he went to Jerusalem and he met for 15 days with two eyewitnesses to the resurrection who were mentioned in that report, Peter and James. And the Greek word that Paul uses to describe that meeting is this is an investigative meeting. They're checking each other out. What did you see? What do you know? What do you know for sure?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
What do you experience? Some people believe that's when he was given this report by two people named in the report. But either way, it means within one to six years after the death of Jesus, this creed, this report is already in existence. And therefore the beliefs that make up this report go back even earlier, virtually to the cross itself.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So there's no huge time gap between the death of Jesus and the later development of a legend that he rose from the dead. We got a news flash and probably the greatest historian on the first century is Dr. James D.G. Dunn of the United Kingdom. He analyzed this report, which comes in the form of a creed of the earliest church with eyewitnesses to the resurrection.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He analyzed it historically and here was his conclusion. He says, we can be entirely confident that this report was written originally within months of the death of Jesus, within months. That is a newsflash from ancient history, much too quick to be a legend that developed over the generations. So we got an execution, he's dead. We got this early report and we got other early reports right there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
First generation, same generation of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then John comes a little bit later, but also I would say in the first generation. So we've got these other reports too, but this one that I mentioned. Is it the original report too?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, he's reporting it in his letter to the church in Corinth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And that's what we have today.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, the original letter's been turned to dust because it was written in parchment or on scrolls and papyrus and so forth. But we have people who copied it. And so we've got multiple copies. So we got an execution, we got the early report. Third E is empty tomb. And what's interesting about that is even the enemies of Jesus admitted the tomb was empty. How do we know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Because we know from history sources inside and outside the Bible that when the disciples began saying, oh, Jesus had been resurrected, what the enemies of Jesus said was, oh, well, the disciples stole his body. Think about that. That's a cover story. They're admitting the tomb is empty. They're just saying, this is how it got empty. They stole the body.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So they're conceding implicitly that the tomb is empty. It's like if you're a student and a teacher comes up, if you're a teacher. You mean the government lied? Even in the first century. I can't believe that. But if you're a teacher and a student comes up to you and says, the dog ate my homework, he's admitting he doesn't have his homework, but he's trying to explain what happened to it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It's the same thing. So even the enemies of Jesus admitted the tomb was empty. The disciples didn't have the motive, the means, or the opportunity to steal the body. Nobody did. And then we look at the fourth E, eyewitnesses. Most of what we accept as being true from the ancient world is based on maybe one source or two sources of information.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I appreciate it. It's been a great adventure. You know, if you told me, you know, years ago that I would end up not only being a Christian but telling other people about Jesus, I would have slammed the door in your face. I would not have anticipated this at all.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
When you get right down to it, we know things about famous people through ancient history because maybe one source or two sources For the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources, inside and outside the New Testament, confirming and corroborating the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the risen Christ.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I mean, they would see the success side. What they didn't see was me literally drunk in the snow in an alley on Saturday night. So they weren't getting the full picture of who I was. But for me, it's like, if there is no judgment, accountability, this is all you get.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That is an avalanche of historical data. So, I mean, I looked at this kind of stuff for almost two years. And I mean, there's much more depth we could go into, but- Let's go into it. Yeah, well, here's a fact that this was the final fact that convinced me. It was like I was putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I didn't know what the picture was gonna be. And I got this final puzzle piece to go in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And when it went in, I stepped back and I saw it was a picture of Jesus. What was that puzzle piece? People would tell me, oh, the disciples really believe that Jesus appeared to them resurrected because they were willing to die for that conviction. And I would say, that doesn't convince me, so what? In World War II, kamikaze pilots crashed their airplanes into boats, why?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Because they thought if they died that way, they'd go to heaven. Today, why would a terrorist crash into the World Trade Center in an airplane and kill himself and a whole bunch of people? Because he sincerely believed with his whole heart if he dies that way, he's going to paradise. So don't tell me that the disciples' willingness to die means anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And then somebody clarified, they say, wait a minute, let's use, I'm fast forwarding, because this is before September 11th, but we use that as an illustration, the September 11th terrorist attacks. So huge difference between the terror attacks of September 11th and the disciples being willing to die for their convictions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
The difference is those hijackers who hijacked the plane and crashed them into the World Trade Center did not know for a fact If they died that way, they'd go to heaven. They believed it with all their heart. They were taught it, they believed it, they had faith in it, and having faith in it, they were willing to die that way. That tells me nothing about the truth of their convictions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Now, let's think about the disciples. Of all human beings who've ever lived on the planet, they were in a unique position. They were there. They touched the resurrected Jesus. They talked with him. They ate with him. Of all people who ever lived, they knew the truth about whether he had returned from the dead and proved he's the son of God because they were there. They knew the truth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Knowing the truth, they were willing to die for it. That's the difference. And I went, a light bulb went on. I said, whoa, I get it. That gives me confidence in what they were saying because they were there, they touched him, they ate with him, they talked to him. They knew whether this was a lie. Somebody said to me, Lee, nobody knowingly and willingly dies for what they know is a lie.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You might as well just try to keep yourself happy, live as a hedonist, try to bring as much quote unquote happiness into life as you can. And I was the friendliest drunk in the bar. You know, I would be the guy who'd get plastered by midnight, and then I'd get pitchers of beer and just go around, fill everybody's glasses up, and I was the friendliest guy in the bar.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
They knew if this is true or was a lie. They were willing to die for it. Why? Because they knew it was true. That was the last puzzle piece. It was November the 8th of 1981. It was a Sunday afternoon, about three in the afternoon. And I thought, I believe based on the data of history that Jesus claimed to be God and backed it up by returning from the dead. But now what? Do I just go back to life?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Do I just, because remember the demons believe this too and they shudder. And then my wife Leslie pointed out a verse to me, John 1, 12. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name. And I looked at that and I thought, okay, I get the equation. Believe, I do, plus receive.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Oh, that's what I have to do to become a child of God. So I got on my knees and I poured out a confession. of a lifetime of immorality that would absolutely curl your hair. And at that moment, I received complete, total forgiveness through Jesus Christ and I became a child of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I remember I went out and I told Leslie and she burst into tears and she threw her arms around my neck and she said, I almost gave up on you a thousand times. She said, when I was a new Christian, I told some women about you at church. I said, I don't have any hope for my husband. He is the hard-headed, hard-hearted legal editor of the Chicago Tribune.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He's never going to bend his knee to Jesus. And this one elderly woman named Sylvia put her arm around Leslie's shoulder, pulled her to the side and said, oh, Leslie, no one is beyond hope. And she gave her a verse from the Old Testament, Ezekiel 36, 26, that says, moreover, I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit within you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And so what I never knew, that whole two years that I'm on this investigative journey, what I never knew at the time is my wife, every day on her knees in private, prayed that verse for me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
God, on November the 8th of 1981, when I received his free gift of grace, became a child of God, that verse became true because he began to change, not overnight, but over time, my values, my character, my morality, my attitudes, my philosophy, everything about my life. Am I perfect? No, far cry from it. Do I still sin? Yes, I do. But I grieve when I do now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I pray for God to help me next time so I won't sin. And so I take a couple steps forward, a couple steps back, but I grow a little bit. every year in my relationship with God, and He changes me from the inside. That's the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian. Things that I used to do that didn't bother me now would, I couldn't, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I mean, when I was an atheist in college, I helped set up an abortion for a girl I knew who had gotten pregnant. Her boyfriend had walked out on her. I said, ah, don't worry about it. We'll just get rid of the baby. I set up that abortion. We killed that child. Didn't bother me a bit back then. I realized God's forgiven me of that. And now I know, I mean, God's changed my values.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
If I could go back, of course I wouldn't do that again. So things change, fortunately. The Bible said in 2 Corinthians, you know, when you come to faith like that, the old is gone, the new has come. Wow. Sorry to get emotional, but I kind of relive it when I tell it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I mean, I go back to that moment and think, gosh, I just poured out my heart of this gross things that I had done in my life, terrible sins, and just laying that all out to God and saying, God, I believe based on what I've learned, that Jesus has paid for all that. He paid the penalty I deserve for the sins that I've committed. And I want to receive that gift right now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And that sense of being forgiven, of having that washed away, wiped away, was just so liberating. Just, I felt like I was 10 pounds lighter. And, you know, that's a pivotal moment in my life. Pivotal moment, I think, of my eternity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah. I thought it'd be a lot easier. I really did. I thought, oh my gosh, you're telling me someone rose from the dead? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me a break. I think I could disprove that overnight. Gosh, it was like hitting that thing and it just bounced back up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Great question. If he were just to... There's always a payment involved when forgiveness happens.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
In a sense, yeah. In a sense, it's kind of a law of the world in that... when you sin against me and you scratch my car or something, I can forgive you and just say, yeah, just walk away. But then I got to pay for it. I got to pay to have a fix or I'm going to lose money when I trade it in. So I'm going to end up paying for it. Someone has to pay the price.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Especially himself. Because the only way that God could forgive all of humankind would be to send the perfect person, that is, Jesus, who is fully God and fully man, who lived the perfect life, who himself was without sin, to pay for the sins of others. So it had to be someone who himself was sinless. Well, who's that? Well, it's only God himself and it's who Jesus is, fully God, fully man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So he lived the sinless life. So he becomes the sacrifice. In fact, the whole sacrificial system in the Old Testament among the Jewish people was pointing toward this. How on the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go in and he would sacrifice an animal, symbolic of that animal's a life being taken to pay for the sins of the Jewish people. How did that work?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It worked because it was foreshadowing. It was trying to say, ultimately, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is gonna come. He's gonna be born in Bethlehem on Christmas. He's gonna live the perfect life, and he's gonna be the one who's gonna be sacrificed to pay for the sins of the world. So there's always a payment. It's kind of one of those realities.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And Jesus is the only one, by virtue of his sinless life and his nature being fully God and fully man, the only one who could be a sacrifice for all of humanity. Man, it's just... It's mind-boggling. It's not.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
No, I think it's more that he loves us. God is love, the Bible says. God loves us beyond a love that we can even comprehend. And he knows because we have used our free will to turn our back on him, to violate his laws, we've sinned. And because we have sinned, we can never enter heaven. So what's God to do? You're right. Well, God can't do anything. He can do many things. He's powerful.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He's omniscient. He's omnipotent. He can't do everything. He can't lie. You know, he can't, you know, there's certain things he can't do. But in order for him to accomplish the atonement for our sins so that, because the choice is this, Sean, you can pay for your sin. The sins that you've committed, you want to pay for those? Okay, you can do that. The Bible says the wages of sin is death.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You'll be separated from God forever because you can't come into his presence because you're a sinner. If you want to do that, that's your free will. That's your choice. But God doesn't want you to do that. He loves you. He wants to spend eternity with you in heaven. And so he said, how can I erase this sin from Sean's life? Jesus, what if Jesus paid for that sin? What if he atoned for that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Nice. Thank you. What else you got?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
What if he was the sacrifice who paid the penalty that you deserved for the sins that you've committed? He said, no, no, no, I'm paying for him. Not as some third party, but he is the God that we sinned against. So he's not some innocent third party. No, he is the God we sinned against. So he is the one who's gonna go to the cross to pay that penalty.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Because God loves you, he wants to spend eternity with you. And by wiping out the sin, clothing you in the righteousness of God, the doors of heaven are opened up and you can spend eternity with him forever. So I don't know what else God could have done. How else could he have achieved payment for the sins of the world, apart from forcing all of us to pay for our own sins?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Awesome. Well, thanks. I appreciate it. I got a gift for you. Thank you. You know, I have a new book coming out in March of 2025. It's called Seeing the Supernatural. And the subtitle is Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World. And so I spent a lot of time on this book.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I don't know how else he could have done it. I think it was the only path that makes sense to me. And I think, honestly, God has left a trail in history. For people like you and me and others who are curious, does this really make sense? Did Jesus really return from the dead and prove he's God and that Christianity is true and therefore we can trust what he says and so forth?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I think God intentionally left evidence that leads us, that can be used to lead us to the conclusion that Jesus is who he claimed to be. You know, when I was in law school, One of my heroes was a guy who was the greatest lawyer in the world. He was in the, later I think it was, he was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful defense attorney who ever lived.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
His name was Sir Lionel LeCoultre. Get this, you'll appreciate this. He won 247 murder trials in a row as a defense attorney, either before the jury or on appeal.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, nobody's ever done it. He's in the Guinness Book of World Records, greatest lawyer ever lived. He was a skeptic like I was about the resurrection. He thought, Jesus didn't return from the dead and prove. He says, give me a break. And someone challenged him, Sir Lionel, you're the greatest lawyer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Have you ever taken your monumental legal skill and applied it to the historical record and come to an informed conclusion about whether or not Jesus did return from the dead? He said, no, I haven't, but I will. So he set out, he did what I did. He spent years investigating the evidence. And I'll recite to you one sentence he wrote that summarizes his conclusion.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He says, I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof, which leaves absolutely no room for doubt. This is a guy that knows evidence. He could take what looks like an airtight case against his client and find all the flaws. He was knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He became a member of the Supreme Court of his country. And that was his conclusion about the evidence. By the way, I shared that story in California at a church where I just moved back in 2000 and a woman came up to me afterwards and she said, I'm your new neighbor. You just moved into my neighborhood. You haven't met everybody yet. I live down the block. I said, oh, great to meet you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
She said, yeah, I'm Sir Lionel's sister. Well, it's his sister.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I said, did I tell the story accurately? She said, absolutely. She said, in fact, let me show you some of his private papers where he did his research and so forth. And so she showed me some of his private writings and stuff. He later resigned from practice of law and became an evangelist. But that just shows you. Now, do most people check it out? No, most people don't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You know, most people don't take two years of their life like I did and really delve into it. But that's why I wrote the case for Christ to say, you know, maybe this is a way. So I just interview scholars and let them present the case in an affirmative way. But, you know, I just encourage anybody who's watching to say, you know, if you question, if you doubt it, do what I did. Check it out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
There's plenty of evidence out there. Do the due diligence. and come to an informed conclusion about whether Jesus is who he claimed to be, because if he is, then what he says about us, how he says we should live, what he says about heaven, what he says about the eternal condition of our soul and so forth, we can trust it if he is who we claim to be.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And what publishers do is they produce what's called an advanced reader's copy that goes out to reviewers and to the media. The actual book is a jacketed hardcover and everything. But this is the first copy. That's copy number one. This is copy number one. I signed it to you, to Sean. First copy. I just thought you might like to have it. Oh, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I think there are gradations of sin. I don't think they're all equal. Jesus said a couple of times, for instance, that people in villages that he went into and demonstrated his divinity through his miracles and still rejected God, they will suffer greater punishment than others. The Bible also says- Say that again. In other words, people who had advanced knowledge of sin
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
him through his miracles and so forth, and yet reject him anyway, they will be judged more harshly than those who didn't see those miracles and so forth. The Bible also talks about the unforgivable sin, the sin that can't be forgiven. And that's the blaspheming of the Holy Spirit. It says that it will not be forgiven in this life or the life to come. What exactly does that mean?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That's a good question. And here's my best attempt at an answer. The Holy Spirit is who draws us toward Christ. It is God reaching out to us, whispering in our ear, God loves you, Sean. God made you for him to spend eternity with you. He is the one seeking us before we even seek God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
To blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to turn our back on that and say, forget you, don't want anything, and you live your life saying, I don't care about God, and you die in a way that means you're gonna end up paying for your own sin, because you didn't accept Jesus' payment on your behalf.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And so I believe that blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, the unforgivable sin, is rejecting the God who is calling out to you to come to him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I did it. I did it. But the end of my life wasn't there yet. In other words, after that, then I accepted.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah. So you can, you know, you live a life opposed to God as an atheist, or I did. But then that turns when you come to faith.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I'm just trying to do good. And social media, it's so public and it's so instant and it's so in your face. And it's people that don't know you and don't have the courtesy to call you up and say, hey, why are you doing this? Oh, really? Oh, okay, I guess I get it. You know, I mean, they judge you based on what they see. There may be a slice of what you've done. And I know it's hard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And there's a lot of churches that have that kind of reputation of being judgmental.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I hope not, but I fear you may be right. I mean, it's sad. You know, the Bible says, should we judge? Yes, we are to judge. But the Bible says with gentleness and respect, we should make judgments about things. That's okay. That's good to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, the Bible says that. But... It's how we judge. In other words, judgmentalism is a hypocritical, holier-than-thou, looking down your nose, pushing people away, you're not good enough, excluding people on whatever basis. That's what chases people away. You know, When we talk about Jesus, it's gonna be a natural divide.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
There are gonna be people who are gonna say, yep, yep, gotcha, I'm with you. There are gonna be people, I don't wanna hear that, or I reject that, or he's making me mad. I'm not gonna shy away from the people it makes mad because there are people who need to hear the message, who wanna hear the message, and they're gonna respond to the message. So I get all kinds of hate mail.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I get people fantasizing about murdering me. I get all kinds of stuff like that. Are you serious? Oh, yeah. Why would they wanna do that? What did you say? I know. Well, look at what happened to Jesus. They killed him. They killed the disciples, or the apostles. So that comes with the territory in a sense. What do you think about humanity as a whole?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I think we are... headed on the wrong path generally, that we are sinners, that are manifesting our sins in a variety of different ways.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I think there's a lot of good people, when I say good, not perfect people, but people who wanna do what's right, who are trying to follow the teachings of Scripture, who wanna love others, who wanna encourage others, who wanna be positive and share this message of hope and grace and love and redemption and eternal life. But you know, the Bible says we're coming to a crisis.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
We're coming to a conclusion. At some point, history is gonna be consummated and Jesus is gonna come back. And when that happens, it's gonna be too late for people who haven't made that choice yet to receive him as their forgiver and leader. So, you know, in a sense, I've read the end of the story. And the end of the story is history will be consummated. Satan will be thrown into the lake of fire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It's a great question. We live in a scientific age. We live in a technological age. And there's a lot of people who say that science disproves Christianity, disproves faith, which I disagree with. And they say there's nothing more to reality than what we can see and touch. And I said, that's not true. There is more to reality than what we can see and touch.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That's metaphorical. And Jesus will come back to judge. And, you know, you don't want to be found wanting at that moment. You want to be someone who's safely adopted as a son or a daughter of God because he won't, his own children. What does that mean for my one-year-old daughter when he comes back? Yeah, that's a great question.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Exactly. My conviction on this, I've written about this and interviewed scholars about this, that in the case of people below the age of accountability, who don't really have that sense of right and wrong, who are too young, that...
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
they will not be held accountable for the things that they've done that may have been, shouldn't have done, the naughty things that they've done as infants and so forth. So in other words, I think that God will, it's sort of, you know, there's a term, a Latin term, in loco parentis, and it means I act in the place of your parents.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So if my parents are out of the country, if you're a kid and you're injured in an accident and your parents are out of the country, the court can say, I can act in loco parentis, I can act in your parents' place and make decisions about you. I kind of picture this as when you're that young, Jesus acts in loco parentis.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He steps in the place of your parents and in a sense brings redemption to children. You know, there's a scripture that says that David who committed sin with Bathsheba and so forth, says that that child cannot come to me, but I can go to him. So in other words, that child's going to be in heaven. Someday I'm going to go to heaven. I will be with that child someday.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So yeah, I think that before the age of accountability, children are not responsible. They're not committing a sin because that involves some volition, you know, some choice. And, you know, kids are kids.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Definitely, but he did it with gentleness and respect. You know, we're told that in 1 Peter 3.15, all Christians, you know, are to present evidence for the faith, to defend the faith, but do it gently and respectfully. There's nothing wrong with judging as long as it's done respectfully and gently. We make judgments all the time. Now, there's a famous verse that says, do not judge.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But you have to keep reading. And when you keep reading, you understand it says, don't judge inappropriately. Don't be judgmental in a way that is hypocritical. It says, I'm better than you. And who are you to call the name of Jesus? You're... No, that's being judgmental. We need to make good judgments. We make judgments about everything every day and that's okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But to be judgmental is to be sort of like the Pharisees in the New Testament who were, you know, they would make a show of their faith and they would pray on the street corners. And Jesus said, you know what, you're gonna pray, go to your prayer closet and pray in private. Don't make a show of it. the way these hypocrites do. And that's kind of judging others by, I'm better than you. Look at me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I wanted to document it in this book by looking at things like miracles, God's intervention in his creation in a way that cannot be explained in any other way other than God is entering into our world and creating a miracle. Deathbed visions, people see just before they die, often a glimpse of what's to come. Stephen, in the Bible, just before he died, he saw a glimpse of heaven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I'm praying on a street corner. Boy, I must be really loved by God. No, that's judgmentalism. That's hypocrisy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Oh, definitely. Here's how I would envision it. I'm kind of, I like mathematics. So here's kind of the equation as I see it, and as I believe the Bible presents it. Jesus plus nothing equals eternal life plus good deeds. So in other words, coming to faith in Christ is a gift. We can't earn it. We don't deserve it. We don't merit it. We can only receive it in a prayer of repentance and faith.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I'm sorry for my sins. I want to turn from that. I want to receive you as my Lord and savior, my forgiver, my leader. I want to follow you all the days of my life. Thank you for forgiving my sins. Jesus plus nothing that we can merit equals eternal life. But then there's the other part of the equation. So now you've become a Christian. Now you have eternal life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So it's Jesus plus nothing equals eternal life plus good deeds. The good deeds are on the other side of the equation. They don't earn your way to heaven. They come because now you've become a follower of Jesus and you do good deeds because the Holy Spirit is working in you. And you wanna, you know, like I did this abortion, set up this abortion for this woman when I was an atheist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Now, as a Christian, I do fundraising for crisis pregnancy centers that help women who have a pregnancy that is unwanted to realize that they could keep their child or they can adopt it out and to help them through that crisis. So am I doing good deeds to earn my way to heaven? No, I'm doing that because God has changed my life. I'm doing that because God has changed my values.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You're doing good deeds, not in a desperate attempt to claw your way to God. I hope I do enough. I hope my balance between good and bad is, no, you're doing good deeds because when you come to Christ as a free gift, Now your values change and now yes, you do do good deeds. You do serve others.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You do live as hopefully with a sense of the way Jesus lived in helping other people who are in need and so forth. So yes, good deeds have a role in the Christian life, but not a role that contributes in any way to salvation. it comes after salvation, after we've received Christ as our forgiver and leader, then we do good deeds because we're changed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And you know, I do things today I never would have done when I was an atheist. So I didn't give a rip about people. Now I do, because they're made in the image of God. And so I see that now and God's changed my values. And so now I do hopefully some good things. And does God take cognizance of that? Yeah, he does.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And this is extremely common, so I have a chapter on that. Near-death experiences, people who are clinically dead and yet have an experience that's corroborated in one way or the other. direct encounters from God, how God reaches down and touches lives, mystical dreams. I believe, and the Bible teaches this, that there is a realm beyond what we can currently see and touch.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Most scholars I interview believe that there will be rewards in heaven based on how we've lived our Christian life. In other words, our journey to heaven is not based on how good we are. It's based on forgiveness, this free gift of grace. But then how we live our life as Christians, how we serve others, how we do good stuff for others, God will ultimately reward us for that. In heaven. How so?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, that's a good question because let's say we both get to heaven and I'm looking at you and going, hey, he's getting treated better than me. He's getting rewarded because Sean, you know, he did a bunch of nice things and I didn't do as many. And so now I feel bad and here I am in heaven and I'm pissed off. I mean, that could happen. Here's the way I think it happens. Um,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Let's say that you're a connoisseur, an expert on classical music. You studied it. You play the violin maybe. You know all the great composers. You love to listen to classical music. It feeds your soul. I don't. I like rock and roll. I'm an average guy. I don't have that sensitivity. In heaven, where there is incredible music
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I will listen to it as someone without much music taste and go, wow, that is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. You will listen to it as a connoisseur of classical music. Your appreciation of it will be deeper. Because you will experience it in a deeper way. I won't know that, just being next to you. We'll sit next to you, we'll go, isn't this music unbelievable?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You go, yeah, it's unbelievable. But you're experiencing it on a deeper level than I am, because I don't have what you have. I didn't spend my life studying classical music. You see what I'm saying? So that way, I'm not jealous of you. We're both really enjoying this music in heaven. But you're experiencing it at a deeper level. I think that's kind of how it's gonna work.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So that I don't get jealous and think that I've missed out. And part of it is when you live a lifestyle of serving others, of doing good deeds, of living like Jesus, yes, I think God will reward you for that, but you will resonate so much more
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
with this perfect place called heaven, then maybe I will, who is maybe a pretty good guy, but I didn't quite do much with my life as a Christian, but I made it in, because I received Christ and I did some good things, but my rewards are gonna be less. So you believe it will be, you believe
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Jesus himself said, blessed are those when you are persecuted and when people say all kinds of false things about you because of me, because great will your reward be in heaven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
So Sean, when you step out and you do things pointing people toward Jesus through your show, and you're criticized for it, and people attack you on social media or whatever, God is saying, blessed are you when you honor me despite the persecution, the arrows of hate that you get, because great will your reward be in heaven. That's one example that he gives in scripture of how he will reward people
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
who have endured persecution and hatred and social media attacks in this world because of him, great will they be rewarded in heaven. So I think, yes, I think there will be rewards in heaven. I think it will be, it won't be the same exact experience for everybody. Not every theologian agrees with that, but I think the evidence is strong that that's true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, I quote, I did a book called The Case for Heaven. And in that book, I interviewed a scholar. And I think he made reference to another scholar who just doesn't believe it. Doesn't believe that anybody's going to be treated any differently in heaven, that we'll all be treated exactly the same in heaven. And I'm sure we will be all treated exactly the same.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And it is every bit as real as the realm that we're in and experience day by day. Spiritual warfare comes in because part of that other realm is there is a demonic element. We have angels, literally hundreds of millions of angels that exist. They're spirits, but there's also demons. And Satan, whose name had been Lucifer before he fell as an angel and is now in warfare with God's plan,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But for some people, because of who they are and how they live their life, it will resonate deeper with them. in my view, and their experience, even though others will not sense it, their experience will be ever deeper than what other people might have. I think that's biblical.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, so good deeds are a good thing. And when they're done for the right purpose, when they're done trying to earn our way to God, they're useless. But when they're done out of a heart of gratitude to God, and God, I want to serve you, I want to honor you. God, you know what I'm going to do? I know this sounds crazy. I know I'm going to get attacked for this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I'm going to bury four Bibles in the cement foundation that we're building, just as a way of saying, I want to build what I'm doing on you. I think he'll reward that. I think that's the kind of thing he'll say, you know what? You're going to get attacked for that. You're going to get made fun of for that. Blessed are you when you take those insults from me. Great will your reward be in heaven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He sees that stuff. He sees how people live for him. And I don't believe it's a wasted effort because it comes out of a sincere heart. You're not motivated by anything except, I believe sincerely, I want to do this as a way to honor God. And he knows that. Do those attacks bother you when they happen? You know, yeah, of course they do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You know, to some degree, and I always go back to that verse from Jesus saying, greater is your reward in heaven. Blessed are you when men persecute you and say all kinds of things falsely about you because of me. But it still hurts. You know, you're on social media, and 90% of the people I meet on social media are really nice folks. And then there's that 10% that just love to attack.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And, yeah, it gets you down a bit. I mean, I'm just being honest.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I've had a couple of scholars that have attacked me. That's why I like to interview people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
renowned scholars in my research so that I'm going to the best possible sources for things but you'll get other scholars and I don't know he's wrong and here's why and I go I always listen to him but then I think yeah this first scholar makes more sense yeah you know I watched I think uh I found uh John I gotta thank John too for connecting me John Burke yeah um
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I talked to this one professor, and he said, I have a large class of students. I always ask this question. How many of you know the first names of your great-great-grandparents? He said, all the years, nobody has known the first name of their great-great-grandparents except one guy. He said, we're forgotten. we will be forgotten.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And some people will try to write the great American novel, or they'll try to paint the most beautiful painting of the world, or they'll try to create a skyscraper so that somehow they'll be remembered. but it's a vain attempt. We're gonna be forgotten. Some people remember it a little longer than others, but the truth is most people are forgotten pretty quickly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But that motivates a lot of people in a negative way too. Who's the guy that killed John Lennon, Chapman? He told the parole board, I killed him because I wanted a piece of his fame. He wanted to be famous, so he killed John Lennon, the Beatle. People do evil things to be known. So be remembered. Or they try to do great things. Well, neither of them work. I mean, it's a vain attempt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He sometimes reaches into our world and there are, in my book, I document cases of possession, demonic possession. This is real stuff. Now, Demons cannot possess a Christian because we're indwelled by the Holy Spirit. We can't be indwelled at the same time by a demonic spirit. But Satan can hector us, he can harass us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
We'll all be forgotten. Do you think about that often? It doesn't bother me as much anymore after I did that movie and wrote that book about heaven. It's like, you know, I know where I'm going after I die. And I don't have to worry about that. I came close to death. We were talking at breakfast in 2011. lingered between life and death for several days.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And that was maybe the most clarifying experience of my life because all of a sudden I'm saying, what is really important? What really matters? When you're, you know, I had the doctor look at me and say, you're one step away from a coma, two steps away from dying. I was on the verge of dying and my wife found me unconscious. And when you're in that situation, Nothing is more important.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Nothing matters more than what happens when I close my eyes for the last time in this world. That's it. You don't care about a legacy. You don't care, am I going to be remembered or forgotten? Doesn't matter. What matters is what happens when I close my eyes for the last time in this world. Where do I open them next? That's all that matters.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, well, that's why we share Jesus with our family, with our grandkids, with our son and daughter, both Christians. And I think the highest achievement I can attain as a grandfather, as a father, is to see my children come to faith in Jesus. And my son's a PhD in theology, a professor at a seminary, written many books about prayer and so forth. And my daughter is a novelist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
She writes fiction, but she always weaves the gospel into the fiction. They're both serving God. And my little grandchildren are coming to faith one by one. And that becomes the most important thing to me. People say, what do you do in the later years of your life? You're in your 70s now. I want to see my grandkids come to faith. I want to see them, and they are, one by one. That's thrilling.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. In fact, deathbed visions, I write about deathbed visions, are different than near-death experience. Near-death experience, a person is clinically dead, maybe no heartbeat, no brain waves, and yet they see things and hear things. Some of them they couldn't see or hear if they didn't have an authentic out-of-body experience, but they're gonna come back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
They're temporarily dead, so to speak. Deathbed visions happen when a person is about to die permanently. And it's a fascinating, I interviewed the world's leading expert on these, and tens of thousands of these cases have been studied. This is very common. In the Bible, Stephen, before he was stoned to death, saw heaven open up and he got a glimpse of what was to come.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And many people, before they die, get a glimpse of what is to come. It's interesting, Jesus told a story about Lazarus and the beggar. The beggar during his lifetime ignored or was treated poorly by Lazarus. Lazarus was rich and he treated the beggar with disdain. And yet here we have Lazarus now dead, but in Hades, separated from God. And the beggar is with God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And so spiritual warfare is a way that we protect ourselves through prayer and through vigilance and through reading scripture and understanding why we believe what we believe. These various things we can do to kind of ward off these attacks that we otherwise might experience. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And Jesus said something interesting. He said, the angels carried Lazarus to God. And what's fascinating about these visions, deathbed visions, is how many people seeing angels coming for them. I mean, it is so common at one hospice, which was a huge hospice operation in New York State.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
They asked people, they said, tell us if you have a vision or a vivid dream before you die that is astounding to you or gives you a glimpse of what's to come or whatever. 88% had something like that. Are you serious? 88%.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, yeah. It's very common. And here's how we know that they're authentic. A couple things tell me that these are authentic. Number one, how common they are. Here we are. What were the chances that you've had direct experience with that through a relative? Sorry, I just want to interject, too. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I'm telling you, Sean, it is so common. Billy Graham's pulpit partner, Charles Templeton, who became an atheist and later came back to faith before he died, said to his wife on his deathbed, Madeline, can you see them? They're here. She said, what are you talking about? The angels, you can't see them, they're here, they're right here in this room, they're coming for me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
They're singing, they're so beautiful, I'm going to heaven. Billy Graham's maternal grandmother, same thing. And they often see people, but here's what's interesting, children who die,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
You would think if this is just something in someone's imagination, subjective experience, a child, if they saw an angel before they died, would think they would have wings because children's stories always have wings on the angels. That's not what happens. So there's a case I studied of a child. She was dying and she said to her mother, mommy, can you see them? Can you see the angels?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
They've come for me. They're so beautiful. And her mother didn't want to deny anything, so she lied and she said, oh yeah, yeah, I see him, I see him. Oh, the wings are so big. And her daughter said, mommy, they don't have wings. You don't have to lie. They don't have wings. And then she died.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Because there's a passage in Scripture where John gets a vision of the post-resurrection Jesus on his throne. And he says there are 10,000 times 10,000 angels there. Well, that's 100 million angels just in that setting around the throne of Jesus worshiping him. So we got a minimum of 100 million angels. I believe that's just the tip of an iceberg. So do we become angels when we die?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And it's just an example of, you know, seeing something, not what she would have anticipated, but seeing angels without wings. That's very common. So These deathbed visions are powerful, I think, in terms of giving us a glimpse into what's to come. The other example is a woman who was dying after childbirth in England, and great documentation of her case.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And on her deathbed, she sees, can you see these beautiful, wonderful beings? I see them, I see them. And she, oh, here's my father, right? And father's saying, Ed, I can't remember his name. He says, Ed, he's beckoning to me. Yes, I'm going to come, Ed, I'm going to come. Oh, there's Vida. Why is Vida there? And then she died. Well, Vida was her sister.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
She didn't know three weeks earlier Vida had died. They didn't tell her because she was so sick, they didn't want to cause her to die from the shock of her sister dying. So they never told her. And here she is seeing her in the life to come. That's another kind of corroboration that I always look for corroboration. How do I know it's not just in your head?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And so I think that's a good example of corroboration. When people see something that they could not have anticipated, like a relative they didn't know had died.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I think one of the most powerful discoveries of modern ages, this only goes back, what, 50 to 100 years, people used to think that the universe was eternal. It always existed. But now we know from a series of scientific discoveries and philosophical arguments from the last century or so that the universe had a beginning in the past. At some point in the past, the universe began to exist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
In fact, the great cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, him and two other cosmologists – cosmology just means the study of the origin of the universe – came up with a theorem that says that even if our universe turns out to be one small part of a multiverse, the multiverse itself must have had a beginning. So what does that mean, that the universe had a beginning?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, it harkens back to an argument for the existence of God that's been popularized by my friend, a philosopher, Dr. William Lane Craig. It goes like this. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. We now know that the universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause behind it. What kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, it must be transcendent, which means apart from creation. It must be immaterial or spirit, because it existed before the physical world. Must be timeless or eternal, because it existed before physical time came into being. Must be powerful, given the immensity of the creation event. Must be smart, given the incredible precision of the creation event.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
must be personal because they had to make the decision to create, must be caring because he so carefully crafted a habitat that we could exist in. And the scientific principle of Occam's razor tells us there would be just one creator. So that's a description of the God of the Bible, right there, transcendent, immaterial spirit, eternal, powerful, smart, personal, caring.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
It's a description of the God of the Bible. That discovery of the universe having a beginning, I think is probably the single strongest argument from science that God must exist. The second area is physics, the fine tuning of the universe. The universe is finely tuned on a razor's edge so that life can exist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
In other words, the numbers that govern the operation of the universe, if you were to change them just slightly, life would be impossible. So in other words, if you go out on a summer night and look up at the sky, and instead of seeing a sky full of stars, you saw 50 to 100 giant dials in the sky. And each dial could be calibrated to one of trillions of possible settings.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That is a picture of what modern physics tells us our universe is like. 50 to 100 of these dimensions of physics, it'd have to be perfectly calibrated so life can, I'll give you some examples. We all know what gravity is, right? If I drop my cell phone for the millionth time, if I drop this cell phone, it's going to hit the ground because of gravity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
But gravity is finely tuned so that life can exist. How finely tuned? Picture a ruler across the entire known universe, 15 billion light years, and it's broken down in one-inch increments. That ruler represents the range along which the force of gravity could have been calibrated anywhere along that ruler, but it happens to be at the exact right place so that life can exist. What if we changed it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
No, no, we are made in God's image. We have capabilities that angels don't have. They have capabilities we don't have, but they are a separate creation. What kind of capabilities? That they would have? Both. Well, first of all, they're not embodied, so they're spirits. So they have the ability to move and transport themselves at great speed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Let's change the force of gravity one inch compared to 15 billion light year width of the universe. Intelligent life is impossible anywhere in the universe, just with that single change. My favorite example is the ratio between the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force. It has to be finely tuned to one part in 10,000 trillion, trillion, trillion. So how do we visualize that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That would be like taking a continent the size of North America and piling it with dimes to the moon, 238,000 miles of dimes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
and then taking a billion continents, the size of North America, and piling them with dimes up to the moon, and then taking one dime and spray painting it red, and then mixing it among all the dimes and the billion continents going up 238,000 miles, and then I blindfold you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I say, you can dig in among all these billion continents, the dimes all the way to the moon, but you can only reach in one time and pick out one dime. What are the odds you'd get the dime, spray painted red? One chance in 10,000 trillion, trillion, trillion. So that shows you how astronomical the odds are against this. It cannot happen by chance.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I interviewed one physicist and I said, what are the odds that these numbers are astronomical? What are the odds this could have just happened by chance? He said, oh, we physicists have a term for that. I said, oh, what is it? He said, ain't going to happen. The other area of science, and again, this is discoveries just within the last century for sure, maybe within the last 50, 80 years, is DNA.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Your body has 100 trillion cells in it. Open up any cell, and if you were to unravel the double helix of DNA from one cell, it would be six feet tall. Embedded in that DNA is a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out the precise assembly instructions for every protein out of which you're made. Just like English uses a 26-letter alphabet to spell out words,
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
DNA uses this four-letter chemical alphabet to spell out how to build you, how to build the proteins that make you. There are more words in one cell in your body than you would find in 200 years of the Sunday New York Times. Where does that come from? Nature cannot produce information. It can produce patterns. I live in Houston.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
If I go down to Galveston and the beach and the sand is wet from overnight and there's ripple marks in the sand, it would be logical for me to say the waves made those ripple marks in the sand because nature can make patterns. But if I'm walking down the beach and in the wet sand, I see John Loves Mary with a heart around it and an arrow through it, I wouldn't say, oh, the waves made that. Why?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Because that's information. And without an exception, whenever we see information, whether it's a painting on a cave wall, whether it's a computer code, whether it's a novel, whenever we see information, there is always an intelligence behind it. Stephen Meyer with a PhD from Cambridge University on origin of life interviewed him for my book, Is God Real?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And he looks at every alternative explanation, none of them hold water. The only explanation is there must be a creator who in a sense signed every cell in our body. He left behind instructions, written instructions, four letter chemical alphabet on how to build you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
That's why you see many pictures of angels with wings on them. They don't technically have wings generally, but they're able to move a lot faster than we are because their spirits are not encumbered by a human body. They don't grow old. They don't age. So, because there's no physical body to get older and older. Have they always been? Yeah, no, God at some point created them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I think you take those three areas of science together, cosmology, physics, biochemistry, they make a really strong case that God is real. Isn't that mind-blowing?
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Six feet of DNA in one cell in your body, and you have, what, 100 trillion cells or something like that. It's just mind-boggling. And to spell it out with precision, I mean, it's just... I mean, the more we study in science, when we learn the universe has an origin, when we learn about the fine-tuning of the... That's only in the last 50 years or so we've understood the fine-tuning of the universe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And now we're understanding DNA more and more. We look at all that and we go... How can anybody today deny that there is a supernatural creator? I don't know. And then when you pair it with the resurrection of Jesus, you go, well, which God are we talking about? Now we have Jesus demonstrated through his resurrection that he is who we claim to be, the unique son of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And now we have a really strong case for not just the existence of God, but for the truth of Christianity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
I mean, one of the joys of my life, I get to sit down with all these great scholars and just sit there for hours, sometimes days, and just riddle them with questions like you do with folks. And, you know, every once in a while, they just blow my mind. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Well, yeah, it came up because I saw on your water bottle you gave me, it says the Sean Ryan show, which is really cool. And I was saying, I used to have a national TV show called Faith Under Fire. And I got an opportunity to interview Hugh Hefner about his faith. And so we go to the Playboy mansion, and we're sitting there. Of course, he's in his silk pajamas and, you know, usual outfit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
This would have probably been before the creation of the world. And he created these legions of angels whose purpose is described in scripture to minister to God's people. And there are indications, this is a bit of a dispute in the Christian world, but there are indications that we have a guardian angel. That is an angel who specifically kind of guards over us and watches over us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And he had the same kind of water bottle, except it had the Playboy symbol on it. And so I'm drinking from this, and I said, this isn't from the grotto, is it, this water? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
He said, you want a tour? No, no, that's all right. I'm fine. I'll just stay here in the living room. That's fine. What did he say about his faith? It was very interesting. He had kind of a deistic faith. In other words, faith about a vague, all-powerful something kind of a deal. But not Jesus and not Christianity. He said, it's a little too childlike for me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Yeah, yeah. So it's obvious why, because he was living a very immoral life. And if he were to put his trust in Jesus, all of a sudden that would be out the window. So it's easier to put your trust in a deistic general idea of a God who has no demands on you, who has no moral authority in your life. But then after the cameras turned off, I said, I'd like to give you a gift.
Shawn Ryan Show
#152 Lee Strobel - Who is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
And I gave him a copy of my book, The Case for Christ. And he was fascinated. He said, oh, and he opened it up, and he said, is there any real evidence for Christianity? I said, yeah. I said, have you ever looked in the resurrection? He said, no. I said, well, actually, there's really good evidence of resurrection. Really? And he was very interested, and we had a great conversation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So he died on the cross, they put him in a tomb. Yes. Why was it three days? There's some really powerful new analysis of the shroud that indicates it may very well be the burial cloth of Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's interesting, too, that when you look at the Koran, which I read when I was doing my investigation, you know, trying to check out all the possible options and so forth, when you get to Surah 4, verse 156, 157, most people interpret it as saying Jesus was not crucified. and therefore couldn't have been resurrected. So... I thought they thought he was crucified, but he survived it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It wasn't him. No, it wasn't him. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. God replaced him with something, there's Judas that he replaced him with.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But the point is, the Quran specifically highlights things and says that are not true that you must believe if you're a Christian. So it says in Surah 4, 156 or 157 that Jesus didn't die on the cross. Well, then he wouldn't have been resurrected. And history. Yeah, well, yeah. Secondly, it says no one can bear the sins of another. It also says God does not have a son.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So these are specific teachings the Quran explicitly rejects that Christians must accept. Now, I have a good friend who's a Muslim, and he came over, we were grilling steaks, and I said, let's set aside religion. Let's just look at history.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I said, here's what I have from first century sources about the crucifixion of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and I went through some of that, and I said, now, what have you got on your side? Honestly, you've got a guy 600 years later in a cave that said it isn't true. Which is the most credibility? And his response was, I choose to believe the Quran. Okay, that's his choice.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But I think the evidence of history points powerfully toward the truth of the Christian's claim in a way that it doesn't support those claims of the Quran.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And we see this in the, in my book I talk about these supernatural dreams that people are having and visions of Jesus in closed countries, Islamic countries, where God says, I love these people so much that you can't close out my gospel from them. I'm going to intervene through supernatural dreams that are happening to these people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
in a remarkable way, and they're corroborated by outside events and so forth, so we know they're not just being generated by a subconscious mind, because he loves them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Oh, the Shroud of Turin. Well, the Shroud of Turin is a very fascinating topic. I've been doing research into this. Yes, John Campbell, Dr. John Campbell. There's some really powerful new analysis of the Shroud that indicates it may very well be the burial cloth of Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
In fact, many years ago, they did a study of it, and they took a piece of it, and they did radiocarbon dating, and they said, oh, it dates back to the Middle Ages, so it's a forgery. Well, they had taken... by mistake, threads that were part of a patch that was added in the Middle Ages.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So they accidentally dated that. But now when they date it, there is, and I'm not an expert on it, but Dr. Jeremiah Johnston and several others are writing books and doing lectures on it now. There's a lot of new stuff coming out on the Shroud that really does suggest. By the way, one of the most powerful moments
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I've ever had was, there was a guy, and I met him, I used to do a TV show, and I had him as a guest. He was the official photographer of the Shroud of Turan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, a Jewish guy, Barry Schwartz, I think his name. And he made several life-size, actual-size copies of the photo of the Shroud. And I met a guy who has one. He has a traveling exhibit that he has. It was out east. And so he said, do you want to see it? And I said, yes. I'm telling you, when you come face to face with this image and you contemplate the possibility that is an image of my Jesus,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Wow. That's fascinating. Didn't they find some pollen in the shroud that they could trace back to first century Jerusalem? I don't know about that. I think that's true. Anyway, it'd be great to have an expert on who could really.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Like that? Yeah, like that. No, there's a lot of fraudulent stuff. A lot of fraudulent. There's a piece of the cross. You can buy it for $1,500.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You know? Yeah. There's another species of evidence, not physical evidence, but interesting, about the darkness that fell over the earth at the time of the crucifixion. The Bible says the earth went dark for a period of time. And I'm thinking when I'm reading this for the first time— No, specifically from the sixth to the ninth hour. Right. So— Yeah, exactly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It says those three hours it was dark. Right, right. And I'm reading this thinking, wouldn't somebody have noticed this? Wouldn't somebody else have written something about this if the earth actually went dark during that time period? Well, there was a guy named Thallus who was a historian who wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean world about 50 AD, which is shortly after this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Couldn't you just do stuff directly rather than dispatch agents?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The Roman history. Roman, that's right. And his works have been lost, but in the year 221, a guy named Julius Africanus had a copy of what he wrote, and he was kind of responding to it and said, oh yeah, Thales says that the darkness was as a result of an eclipse. Of the sun. Which we knew it couldn't have been because of the timing of the Passover.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Right. So there you have it. report by a Roman scholar and historian that is corroborating a claim in the scriptures that many people would read and say, that can't be true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Actually, footnote in my book, Case for Christ. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's fascinating. It really is. There's so much. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's the name of the podcast? Yes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. John Payton was a Scottish missionary in the New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific. And he and his wife lived in this little cottage. And the local tribespeople didn't like the fact they were talking about Jesus all the time. So they came to burn down their house and kill him. So this mob is forming. So what do they do? They're praying.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I actually have a chapter in my book on ghosts and psychics. And I talk about the biblical admonition to avoid mediums, to avoid psychics. I actually talk about ways in which psychics use different techniques of cold readings, warm readings, and hot readings. There are different ways in which they can make it appear that they know things that they don't really know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They're discerning things supernaturally, which they're really just trying to figure out by a naturalistic means. Do I believe some are demonic? Yeah, I believe some are in contact with demons.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Exactly, yeah, who their contact is. There was a case with President Carter. And there was an airplane that went down, I think in Africa somewhere, a twin-engine plane. And the government, CIA, was trying to find it. And they couldn't find it. They moved satellites. They're looking for it. They couldn't find this plane.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So there are those cases. What do you do with that? And I think there's probably, I mean, my hypothesis would be that there was a demon who was very intent on convincing others that she is psychic and a reliable source of information for future tapping into. And so he might have had knowledge of where the plane was and provided it that way. I'm not saying the psychic herself was culpable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They're praying, God, here we are, we're alone, we're in this home, they're coming to kill us, they're coming to burn down our house, pray us, protect us, help us. And by dawn, the crowd dissipated. Later, he leads the head of that mob to Jesus Christ, and they become friends. This is a year later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I'm just saying I Given the Bible's admonition against psychics, against divination, they call it, against mediums, I don't think God would honor that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
In Deuteronomy, there's... Actually, in my book, I quote it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he says to them, by the way, do you remember that night that you led that mob to come to our house and burn it down? Why didn't you kill us? They said, well, who were all those men that you had? I said, what do you mean? I didn't have any mission. It's just my wife and I. What are you talking about? Your house was surrounded by these muscular men in white garments with drawn swords.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
There's no way we could have come into your house. Wow. Lots of stories like that. Lots of stories like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Lee, what were you going to say? Oh, I was just going to reference, I interviewed a scholar on this question of psychics and mediums and so forth for my book, and this is what he said. The Bible condemns all forms of occultism. Leviticus 19.26 commands, do not practice divination or seek omens. Similarly, Leviticus 19.31 warns, do not turn to mediums. Sorry, I don't have my reading glasses.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. The Old Testament asserts that those who associate with familiar spirits are cursed by God. Furthermore, Exodus 22.18 and Leviticus 20.27 mandate that sorcerers and mediums living at that time be put to death. Deuteronomy 18 verses 10 through 12 is explicit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Let no one be found among you who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord. Revelation 9.21 promises that all who practice sorcery will face God's judgment. Their destiny is not heaven, but rather the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. Take a look at Revelation 21 verse 8 and 22 verse 15. So I think you're right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I think it's dangerous because of how Satan may intervene in ways that people are unconscious of and lead people to conclusions that are not biblical.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I will follow you. An unrepentant sinner is in trouble.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Someone who persists despite admonition and despite biblical teaching and persists to the end and resists to the end. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. I mean... You know, I lived an incredibly immoral life before I became a Christian. God has forgiven me of all of that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And all of us who have come to faith have been forgiven of things that, you know, I look at the grace of God and say, I can't even fathom how deep and how wide and how strong it is. So anyone who comes to him in repentance and faith, I believe, has eternal life through Jesus Christ and him alone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's why Scripture, I think, is so important in terms of the guide. You know, that's our plumb line. And we go to that and say, what can I learn from that? That God told me through Scripture to protect me and to nurture my spirit and not to defile me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
covered a lot of ground today. We did. I'm excited about Easter, doggone it. You know, it is awesome. When you think about Jesus and the shroud kind of brings that to life, whether or not we determine ultimately it is authentic or not, it just kind of reminds us this is a person who died for me to pay the penalty I should have died for and said, no, no, no, I love you so much.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yes, the penalty has to be paid for because that's justice and God is just, but I'm going to offer you forgiveness. I'll take it upon myself. It's just awesome. And then to the resurrection, to say, as I have conquered death, so will you. So will you, who follow him. We'll all conquer death.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It reminds me of a story of a woman who is a hospice nurse. She's retired now, and I have her story in my book where she came into the room of a guy who was dying, and he was weeping, uncontrollably weeping. He was a brilliant guy. His name was Frederick, and he was in his 70s, but very highly educated person, weeping uncontrollably. And she said, what's wrong? What's wrong?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he said, Jesus was here. I saw him. He came. He stood right here. And I felt the love and the grace, and it was so overwhelming. And she said, if I saw him, would I cry? I said, oh, yes, you'd cry. She said, why would I cry? Because you would feel the depth of his love and forgiveness, and it would just overwhelm you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And here's a guy, a brilliant guy who knew a lot about life, but he didn't know the depth of God's love until he had that pre-death vision right before he died where God met him in that moment through Jesus Christ. And it just reminds me of that moment when we recognize Easter what it is and you go, oh my goodness.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I had – I usually didn't talk – I never talked about this for years because I was embarrassed by it. And never talked to a group of people about it until my ordination, where I had all these theologians questioning me about my doctrine. I thought, do I tell them that I had an angelic encounter with my guardian angel? You did? Yeah, I did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I was embarrassed by it because I thought, they'll think I'm nuts. I'm not going to talk about this. But with all these theologians there, I thought, I better tell them. They're going to ordain me. They better know about this. So I tell them. And when I was 12 years old or so, my guardian angel appeared to me. And you asked what he looked like. I knew that's who it was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Even though I can't describe him in detail, I knew that he was an angel. It was intuitive. It was intuitive. And here's what was important about the incident. I'm in my kitchen at home. I'm a little kid, 12 years old. And he starts extolling heaven, how beautiful and wonderful heaven is. And so I casually said, well, I'm going to go there someday. And he looked at me and said, how do you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What do you mean? How do I know? I'm a good kid. I obey my parents pretty much. I get good grades in school. I'm nice to my friends. You're saying that? I'm saying this to them. I'm trying to justify that I'm good enough to get to heaven. Is it verbal communication?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No, verbal communication. Interesting. And he looks at me and he says, that doesn't matter. And a chill went down my spine. How could my efforts to be a good kid and to do good, how does that not matter? I was just at a loss. And he said, someday you'll understand. Well, about 16 years. And that was it? That was it. He disappeared. And that was the only dream I remember from my childhood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It was more vivid than any dream ever. Was it a dream? It was a dream. Oh, a vivid dream. But it was a vivid dream unlike any I'd ever had. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I suppressed it. I thought, oh, I must have had a bad pizza. That's crazy. And ultimately became an atheist. But then my wife brought me to church on January the 20th of 1980. And I heard the gospel for the first time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's not based on your good works, how hard you try to be good that the doors of heaven are flung open. No, it is a free gift of God's grace that we receive in repentance and faith. Good deeds come later because we're seeking to please God and to live and to love others as he loves us. And so here I am, and two things happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Number one, I realized that angel told me something when I was 12 years old that I didn't know. So it wasn't just something coming from my imagination. And secondly, he made a prophecy that someday I'll understand that came true 16 years later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
All kinds. Those intuitions that you believe are really from God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Wow. And there are these moments. I mean, I think the question, how do you hear the voice of God, for me, and you, I'm sure, agree, generally through reading Scripture. Yes. You hear the voice of God through the scripture that speaks to you and tells you what God wants you to know and so forth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And everything has to be measured against that to make sure because God's not going to lead you to do something that's inconsistent. But I've had those moments too. I had one in 1994 back when we used travel agents, remember, to book airline flights. So I had to fly to a city in Ohio.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And so I'm on the phone and the travel agent said, okay, you got to fly to Pittsburgh and then you get in a smaller commuter plane and it takes you, it lands right across the street from where you're going in Canton, Ohio. And I said, okay, sounds great. And you hear the type, type, type, she's typing my reservation. And I had one of those impressions of, Is there another way to go?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No, no, no, you have to fly, I think it was to Cleveland and rent a car and drive for several hours. No, no, this is perfect, gets you right where you're going. I just don't feel comfortable with it. All right, well, I can, so type, type, type. She unbooks me on that first flight, books me on the United flight heading somewhere else to Cleveland or wherever it was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Both flights took off at the same time, the one to Pittsburgh that I would have been on and the one to Cleveland that I was on. And I rent a car, I get dinner, I get back in the car, I'm going to drive down to Canton or whatever it was, and I turn on the radio and that other plane had crashed. Wow. That was the 1994 crash in Pittsburgh of the US Air flight that killed everybody on board.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I think about that and I go, was that God impressing on me that, you know what, I don't want you on that flight? Or was that just me saying, you know, it's US Air, I don't like them as much or whatever. I think it was God. I think it was God protecting me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What I typically do in my prayers in the morning is at the end, I say, Lord, I'm just going to stay still for a few minutes. And if there's something you want me to know, if you want to communicate something more directly to me, I'm open, I'm in a posture of receptivity, and I just spend a minute or two in that posture and most of the time, nothing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But then every once in a while, there's this impression about something. And I remember when I was in, I was a journalist at the Chicago Tribune, very successful in what I was doing, and I felt God was starting to call me out of that into, after I became a Christian, into the staff of a church at a 60% pay cut. And- I remember that too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You're gonna have to tell me three times for this. But those are the moments that you're receptive to that kind of thing. I think to take the initiative to say, almost like putting up an antenna and saying, God, I'm here, I'm waiting, I'm listening. And if you don't have anything for me, that's fine. But if you do, then please,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's a good example, too, of how we evaluate whether or not it's God really speaking. It's to go to a brother, to go to a sister, a fellow believer, and say, hey, what do you think? And to have you say to him, no, no. And by the way, he didn't listen. Yeah, well. Usually don't. But the demonic world is real. And I have a chapter on my book. I tell the story.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
This is really amazing about the reality of the demonic world. There's a guy named Richard Gallagher. He's a psychiatrist. So he's a medical doctor as well as trained in psychiatry. Ivy League trained. He was a professor at several major, very influential elite institutions in the Northeast.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I have a quote from the president, former of the American Psychiatric Association, saying this guy is a total man of integrity, total man of credibility. I mean, just this is a great, great human being. And he and his wife had two cats. And they loved each other. They slept together. They were always together. But one night— They went nuts on each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They're attacking each other, hissing, they're growling, they're snarling, they're trying to kill each other. They literally had to rip them apart. So what the heck is going on? And they couldn't figure it out. Well, the next morning, the doorbell rings at nine in the morning, and it was a previous appointment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
A Catholic priest was bringing a woman who claimed to be a high priestess of a satanic cult to be evaluated by him to see if she was mentally ill or perhaps demon-possessed or whatever. So 9 o'clock, the doorbell rings. He opens the door, and here's this woman who claims to be a priestess of a satanic cult. And she kind of sneers at him, and she says, how'd you like those cats last night? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Wow. I'm talking about a chill going down someone's spine. He ended up spending 20 years investigating the demonic worlds. He's written books about it. Incredibly credible individual who talks about exorcisms that he has witnessed, that there are things that take place that, as he says, are not the results of a psychiatric issue because he's a great psychiatrist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He knows what psychiatry can tell us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And this is different when people are speaking Latin in a language they don't know. When one petite woman picked up a 217-pound Lutheran deacon and threw him across the room. When eight witnesses observed someone levitating off a bed. Wow. This kind of thing. So, the demonic world is real. Satan can present himself as an angel of light. Mm-hmm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And we have to be so careful when we think we're, you know, our heart is deceitful and we have our own motivations and so forth. So, you know, you have to consult scriptures, assist with scripture. I have a good friend, Mark Middleburg. You know, Mark, very godly individual. He knows everything about me. I know everything about him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And if I ever have something that I think is an impression from God, I call Mark. What do you think? Do you think this is legitimate or not?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
We have to be really careful. But does God communicate in these – gosh, there are 200 examples in Scripture of dreams being used to communicate to people. So, yeah, God does that through dreams. He speaks in different ways, as you say. So, we have to be open to it, but at the same time, I think, discerning. Cautious. Yeah, cautious and discerning. So, is –
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, I read it when I was an atheist during my investigation and found a lot of it, like you say, very hard to understand and put together in a coherent way. But what I discovered is God gifts certain people to be able to teach the Bible in a way that – truthfully and accurately conveys to us the contents.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And so I think being part of a church that systematically goes through scripture and is based on the Bible, there's a lot of churches that aren't, but a church where the Bible is taught in a systematic way is very, very helpful. I found it very helpful being part of a small group of guys. We'd get together on Saturday morning and we'd go through a book of the Bible together and talk about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And there's some wonderful books called commentaries written by scholars and experts that illuminate each book of the Bible and tell you things that You had no way of knowing because we don't know the context of a lot of this stuff independently. It was written a long time ago.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And a good commentary really explains the context, the background, some of the nuances of the language that the layperson just doesn't understand. So I think it's really important to be part of a Bible-believing church that teaches the Bible, some sort of, if you can, a mentoring or a small group relationship with someone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
My wife had a friend named Linda that they met with all the time, and Linda would help walk her through Scripture. And I think over time, and it takes a period of time, you begin to feel like you have a better handle on not only what the Bible is saying, but how I can find in the Bible guidance for this particular issue that I'm facing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So I'll call my friend Mark, say, Mark, I'm wrestling with something and I feel like God's leading me in this direction and I don't know what to do. And he'll say, Lee, you know what? You should read the fourth chapter of Ephesians or something and let's talk about it because I think you may or may not be on the right track.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
To have somebody like that in my life who cares about me and helps me and guides me along in understanding scripture and how to apply it to my life, is invaluable to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I would encourage anybody who feels that, as we all do when you first open the Bible, it's very confusing, take advantage of those resources, but especially a local church where you can really dig in and over time develop that confidence that you're understanding not just the general flow of the Bible, but the specific teachings of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I have a friend named Skip Heitzig who wrote a book called The Bible from 30,000 Feet. And the idea is kind of get that orientation, you know, get the basics and get it kind of figured out in your mind how this all fits together. That's a great resource. I like the Net Bible. You ever use the Net Bible? No. It's a pretty new translation headed up by Daniel B. Wallace of Dallas Seminary.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But what I like about it, it has thousands of footnotes explaining why certain translation decisions were made. And you can really get into, oh, you could have translated this way or this way, and footnotes and say, this is why we chose this way, because this and this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Things you wouldn't understand about the Greek or the Hebrew, but they kind of illuminate and help you understand the decisions that were made behind the translation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, I'd be glad to pray. Yeah. Lord, thanks for this opportunity to talk not just to Sean, but all these folks who are listening in, watching in. We pray that you would move in all of our hearts to draw us closer and closer to you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Those that are skeptics or those that are seekers, we pray that even today be the day that they cross that line, receive you as a forgiver and leader through your son, Jesus. And for those of us who are your children and been your followers for a long time, we pray that you would encourage us, enlighten us, and point us ever more strongly toward the reality of who you are. In Jesus' name, amen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, I mean, I would go back a little further to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus, it says, sweated blood. And I read that when I was a skeptic and thought, that just shows this is just fantasy land. This is just a literary device to suggest that he was under stress or something.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then I find there are like 70 cases in medical journals of this medical phenomenon called hematidrosis, hematidrosis, which is when you're under extreme stress, your capillaries in your sweat glands break down and blood seeps in and you sweat a combination of sweat and blood. And so there's actually a medical support for that description of Jesus sweating blood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But the other thing that happens with that medical phenomenon is that it makes your skin ever more sensitive. And so Jesus was set up for an incredibly painful next step, which was being flogged by the Roman soldiers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Now, there's only like a sentence or so in the Bible that says he was flogged, but that was an incredibly brutal experience, that he was stripped, that he was tied to a post, that he was beaten with a whip that had jagged bits of sheep bone embedded in it and balls of lead. The balls of lead would break open the back. The jagged sheep bone would cut the flesh.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
There's an eyewitness to a Roman flogging who described it this way. He said, the sufferer's veins were laid bare, and the very muscles and tendons and bowels of the victim were laid open to exposure. So this was a horrific beating. Torture. Yeah, torture. It was a horrific beating that he endured. And it put him in what's called hypovolemic shock, which is shock from a great loss of blood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And you can see evidence of that in the fact he couldn't carry the crossbeam of the cross very far. And also he had great thirst and so forth. So here he is already in critical condition before he's even crucified. And then nails are driven through his wrists, not through the hand, because it would just tear, but driven through his wrists and through his feet. He's hoisted on the cross.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And what happens when you're in that position is that it puts incredible stresses on your chest muscles. So you can't breathe. And so you're hanging on that cross, you're having trouble breathing. You can take air in, but should not expel the air. And so you're on the cross, and the only way you can continue to breathe is by lessening the stress on your chest muscles.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The only way you can do that is push up with your feet, which of course have a spike through them, and your bloodied back is now scraping against the coarse wood of the cross.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
and you let up and you can exhale, and then you inhale again, and then you settle down, and then you just keep going through that motion time and time again until you can't do it anymore, and your acidic qualities are building up in your blood, your heart rate is now getting irregular, and you actually end up dying of asphyxiation, ultimately can't breathe, that causes your heart to fail.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And what's interesting as well is that this would cause fluid to collect around your heart and around your lungs. And so when the spear was thrust into him to make sure he was dead, John interestingly describes water and blood coming out. And people think, oh, well, that's just a metaphor for baptism or something. No, no, no. That is what would happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The pericardial effusion, in other words, the membrane of fluid around the heart and the lung was punctured. And what looked like water would come out as well as blood. And he was declared dead. Now, I used to think like a skeptic, oh, wait a minute, maybe he survived the cross somehow. Maybe he fainted and they thought he was dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, that's been disproven a thousand times in many different ways. But the Journal of the American Medical Association several years ago published an evaluation of the death of Jesus Christ. And the conclusion was, quote, clearly the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead even before the wound to his side was inflicted.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So, and in fact, the atheist New Testament scholar, Gerrit Ludeman, says it's indisputable that Jesus was truly dead after being crucified. We have no record anywhere of anyone ever surviving a full Roman crucifixion. And not only do we have multiple reports of his death in the documents of the New Testament, we got five-inch sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So we have Josephus, a first century Jewish historian who worked for the Romans. Tacitus, another early historian. Meribah, Serapion, Lucian. Even the Jewish Talmud admits that he was executed. So this idea that somehow Jesus survived the cross and was revived by the cool, damp air of the tomb is ridiculous.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I would say... it approached how bad it was, but didn't fully capture it. I don't think it could have because people would have been so, people would have been vomiting in the audience watching if they had taken it to the, don't you think? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's how many years before the death of Jesus, 600 years or so? So 780 years before Jesus, Isaiah writes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So if Jesus isn't the Messiah, there will never be a Messiah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
This is before the Romans invented crucifixion. And Psalm says his bones were out of joint, which is what happens to your shoulders when you're crucified.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's actually a quote. In the old days back then, they didn't have numbers on the Psalms. So they would quote the first line to indicate I'm applying this Psalm. So here Jesus is on the cross and he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's the first line of Psalm 22. The Psalm of David in 1000 BC, 1000 years before. Go ahead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Foretelling, I mean, the bones be out of joint and so forth. This idea of the crucifixion before crucifixion was even invented.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Okay, so that's what Lee studied with Dr. Metherell, you and I. Yeah, Dr. Alexander Metherell, who was like the world's leading authority on the crucifixion of Jesus. I interviewed with my book, The Case for Christ. And of course, all of this, predicting it just amplifies the reality of what we're talking about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
This was an event in history, but it was an event foretold hundreds and hundreds of years in advance, which gives it that much more credibility and supernatural implications.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the hand in that day, in the Greek and Hebrew, the hand was considered, or the wrist was considered to be part of the hand. Yeah. Yeah, and that's where people say it was. Which you can imagine the nerve there. There's a nerve there. And it's like taking your nerve here and taking pliers and just squeezing it when you insert a seven-inch spike through your wrist. Horrible, horrible way to die.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They exempted Roman citizens from crucifixion. You couldn't crucify a Roman citizen because it's too awful.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I have a friend who was a GI from Vietnam and came back and was on a street corner, ran into an evangelist there. And he was Jewish, my friend. And the guy showed him Isaiah 53 and 52 and 53 that John's talking about that foretold Jesus. And he said, who do you think this is talking about? And my friend Lewis said, well, Jesus, but obviously that's been doctored. Obviously it's been, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So he called his relative and said, send me the original, you know, our scriptures. I want to compare. He read it and realized this is the original. And the odds of all of this coming true were so ridiculously astronomical that he received Jesus as his forgiver and leader, and he became a pastor. Louis Lapise is his name.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's how they would accelerate the death, break their legs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Right. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So he's applying this Jewish sacrificial system to the ultimate sacrifice, who is a sinless son of God, who would pay the sacrifice that we deserve for the sins that we've committed, and yet takes that on so that we can be forgiven. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The guardian angel thing is a fascinating topic. I have a chapter in my book, Seeing the Supernatural on Angels, and I deal with the guardian angel question. Do we really have guardian angels? And it's interesting. There's some Christian scholars who say no. But you go back in history, Jerome, the great Bible translator, said yes. Thomas Aquinas said yes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And Martin Luther certainly believed in guardian angels before. Well, I would say in angel, protective angels. But there's two passages that jump out to me. Yeah, there's two passages that jump out to me. One is Jesus was talking to some folks and he said about little children. He said, do not despise these little ones because their angels see the face of God in heaven every day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, our sins separate us from God. God is holy. God is perfect. God is pure. We're not. We sin every day. We violate His commands. You still do? Yeah. Let me tell you about it. And that has separated us from God. And the question is, how do we become reconciled with God? Somebody has to pay the price of the sin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And either we do, which would be an eternity separated from God, or Jesus says, let me pay the price for you on the cross, the penalty you deserve for the sins that you've committed, so that I can offer forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of my grace. And still be just. And still be just. That's the key. And so Romans 6.23 says, for the wages of sin is death.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
In other words, what we earn, what we deserve, because of the sin in our life is death, which is separation from God for eternity. But, the verse says, the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. It's Jesus who paid the penalty to bridge that gap between us and God. And when we receive his free gift of grace, then we become reconciled with God forever. And so,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It required a payment of that kind, of the sinless Son of God, in order to atone for the sins that we've committed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, they're angels. That would be a guardian angel, right? And then Peter is in prison in the book of Acts, and an angel frees him. And he shows up at a house where some Christians are gathered, and he knocks on the door and says, hey, Peter. And the servant says, hey, Peter's at the door. And they say, he can't be at the door. He's in prison. It must be his angel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I interview a scholar for my book on that question. He says, I think that is sufficient biblical evidence to say that yeah, we do have a guardian angel. The Orthodox Christian Church believes that at the moment of baptism, you're assigned a guardian angel. So this is a very interesting phenomenon, because people don't think of that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
We're cautioned, I think, through the experience of John in Revelation, not to worship angels, And therefore, I would suggest from at least the Protestant writings that you don't pray to angels, but to pray about angels and to pray for God's intervention through his angels is certainly biblical, I believe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, the Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Three persons, one God. What's interesting, Jesus, at one point, shortly before he was killed, got up before a group and he said, I and the Father are one. But the Greek word for one there is not masculine, it's neuter, which means Jesus was not saying, I and the Father are the same person.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
In fact, Jesus, when he was being arrested, said, could not my father right now send, what was it, 12 legions of angels? Yeah, to protect me if I wanted to? Yeah. Yeah, and in the small catechism that Martin Luther wrote, his evening prayer says, Lord, send your angels to protect me from the evil one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He was saying, I and the Father are the same thing. We're one in nature. We're one in essence. And that's why people picked up stones and kill them, because they said, you're just a man and you're claiming to be God. So Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. He was saying, I'm not the same person, but we are the same God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's part of the mystery of the Trinity, that he was praying to the Father. And on the cross, it's interesting too, when he prays, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Here are these people, we've talked about the horror of the cross, the flogging it went through, this torture of the cross, and yet...
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The imperfect tense of the Greek in the original language in which that passage is written suggests he didn't just say it once, but he kept repeating it over and over again, maybe even while the nails were being driven through his feet, maybe while the nails were being driven through his hands, maybe when he was hoisted on the cross.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He kept repeating, he kept praying, Father, forgive them, Father, forgive them, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. I mean, that is an expression of the love of God that, you know, how can we not pray for people in our life who are spiritually confused after him praying for people who are so depraved they're torturing to death?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But that just is another expression of the depth and the breadth of the love of God for us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So for us to pray to God for protection by angelic beings, to believe and trust that he has perhaps even assigned a guardian angel to protect us, I think tells us something about the love of God the power of God, His concern for every aspect of our life. And I just find it very encouraging. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Am I a heretic? No, no, no. That's a process. But for me, when you delve into scriptures A to Z, Genesis to Revelation, I see four things being taught. Number one, the Father is God. Number two, the Son is God. Number three, the Holy Spirit is God. And number four, there is one God. That's the Trinity. How it fits together, I think your analogy is fascinating. We may not understand.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I don't see it as a contradiction. I see it as something beyond our, perhaps, ability to comprehend. But I don't think it's necessarily a contradiction. No. A mystery, yeah. A mystery, yeah, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And if God is love, there must be an object of that love, which is the Trinity, which is existing from eternity past in a perfect love relationship. Otherwise, if it's just God, one God, one person, not triune, who is he loving before he created humankind?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What is the— Well, we said earlier Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. He said, I and the Father are one. People recognized that was his claim. They picked up stones to kill him. But so what? I could claim to be God. John could—well, maybe not John. Anybody could claim to be God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But if Jesus claimed to be God, died, and then came back to life on the third day, that's pretty good evidence he's telling the truth. So for me as a skeptic, the first confirmation of his claim of divinity was whether or not he fulfilled this prophecy of the Messiah returning from the dead. And I think the evidence is clear. I think it's compelling.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I look at it, I summarize it with four words that begin with the letter E. That way it's easy to remember. First E is execution. We talked earlier about all the evidence that Jesus truly died when he was crucified. Even the atheist scholar Gerd Ludemann says it's indisputable that he was dead. Even the Journal of the American Medical Association says that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No, no. So first E is for execution. Second E stands for the word early. We have early accounts that he rose from the dead. In other words, reports that go back virtually to the cross itself. Why is that important? Because I used to think, like a lot of skeptics, that the resurrection was a legend. Gotta give you the fact he was dead. Okay, I'll give you that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Raising from the dead, that's a legend. It must have taken a few generations to develop in the ancient world. Stories were invented, mythologies were created. That's where I thought it came from. But we have preserved for us a creed of the earliest Christians. The first Christians right there in the first century gathered around this creedal statement based on facts that they knew to be true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's kind of a rallying point. And this creed says Jesus died. Why? For our sins. He was buried. On the third day, he rose from the dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then it mentions the specific names of eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses to whom he appeared, including 500 people at once, including a skeptic like James, a half-brother of Jesus, who didn't follow Jesus during Jesus' lifetime and yet ended up dying as a leader of the church in Jerusalem. Why? Because Jesus appeared to him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So we've got this creedal statement that, including named eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses, that has been dated back by scholars, including James D.G. Dunn, who is one of the most eminent historians of, he recently passed, but of the last hundred years in England. It has been dated back to within months of the death of Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So if I can, from memory, quote what Dr. Dunn said, he said, this tradition, this creed, we can be entirely confident was formulated as a creed within months of Jesus' death. I mean, that is a newsflash from ancient history, far too quick, in my opinion, to be a legend that developed over the 100, 150, 200 years later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's right, if anybody wants to check it out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No, no, no, in the 50s, yeah. 50s. Yeah, well, but we can go back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Not only that, you're right, but within 20 years or so, that would tell us it existed, but... We know Saul of Tarsus became the Apostle Paul one to three years after the crucifixion. So he's on the road to Damascus. He has this encounter with the risen Christ. He becomes the Apostle Paul. Immediately he goes into Damascus and he meets with some apostles.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Many people believe this is when he was given that creed that he later wrote to the church in Corinth. Others say it was three years later, he went to Jerusalem and he met for 15 days with two eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus who were named in the creed, Peter and James.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And they had a meeting in Jerusalem for 15 days and some believe that's when he was given the creed by two people named in the creed as eyewitnesses. Either way, that means within one to six years after the death of Jesus, this creed is already in existence, therefore the beliefs that make up that creed go back even earlier, virtually to the cross itself.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then you have a scholar like James D.G. Jones say, no, it's within months. So this is— And even Bart Ehrman, doesn't he— I'm not sure where he's at on that. But, you know, I read stuff like— Can we go through the timeline real quick?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, why was it three days? You know, he predicted like Jonah was in the fish for three days that he would be coming back in three days. So that was kind of a—I don't think it's a requirement necessarily, but it was three days on the third day he returned. The Jewish word for day was reckoned as an onah, which is O-N-A-H. And it meant a night and a day is an ona.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But any portion of an ona was considered as the whole. And so he died on Friday. He was in the tomb on Saturday. And he rose sometime Sunday morning. That's parts of three days that he was in, one day fully and parts of two others. But according to the Jewish reckoning of time, that's the third day. So he returns on the third day. You don't think there's any significance to that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What would you say, John? I think the fact that he did liken it to Jonah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's a fulfillment of that. So I think that's the significance. Yeah, that would be the significance. So you've got the execution, and by the way, that's not the only early report we've got. We have others in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the book of Acts, all of which were circulating during the lifetimes of Jesus' contemporaries.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And they would have pointed out the errors if they were making this stuff up. So we've got an execution, he's dead. We got early reports that he rose from the dead, too quick to be a legend. Third, we have an empty tomb.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And we could talk all day about all the evidence the tomb was empty, but the best evidence to me was we know from sources inside and outside the New Testament that when the disciples began proclaiming that Jesus had risen, what the enemies of Jesus said was, oh, well, the disciples stole the body. Now they're admitting the tomb is empty. They're admitting it's empty. The ones who crucified it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. They're just trying to explain how it got empty. It's like if you're a teacher and a student comes up to you and says, the dog ate my homework. As soon as admitting it, look, I don't have my homework, but I can explain what happened to it. The dog ate. It's the same thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So everybody in the first century, whether they're supporters of Jesus explicitly saying the tomb is empty or the enemies of Jesus implicitly admitting it was empty, everybody's conceding the tomb is empty. The real question is, how did it get empty? And you go through the usual list of suspects. The Romans weren't about to steal the body. They wanted Jesus dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The Jewish leaders of the day weren't about to steal the body. They wanted Jesus to stay dead. The disciples weren't about to steal the body. They didn't have the motive. They didn't have the means. And they didn't have the opportunity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
In fact, I found seven ancient sources, six of them outside the Bible, that report that the disciples lived lives of deprivation and suffering as a result of their proclamation that Jesus had risen. Why were they willing to do that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And their willingness to die is well established. How a couple of them died gets a little bit misty in history, but their willingness to die, seven sources tell me that they willingly lived lives of deprivation and suffering. Think about this. Of all human beings who've ever lived on the planet, They were in a unique position to know, is this a lie or is it true? Because they were there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They touched the resurrected Jesus. They talked with him. They ate with him. Of all people who ever lived, they knew the truth. They didn't just believe it. They just have faith in it. They knew the truth, and knowing the truth, they were willing to die for it. That's the difference between a terrorist today who crashes an airplane into the Trade Center.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He believes if he dies that way, he's going to go to paradise. Does he know for sure? No, he couldn't know for sure. He just believes it so much that he's willing to die that way. That tells me nothing about the veracity of his claims. But the disciples were in a position to know for a fact, is this true? Is it false? Knowing it was true, they were willing to die for it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So we have an execution, he was dead. We have early reports, too quick to be a legend. We've got the empty tomb. And then fourth E is eyewitnesses. Over a period of time, Jesus appears alive in a dozen different instances to more than 515 people, a lot more than that, but to doubters and to skeptics, to men, to women, to groups, to individuals, indoors, outdoors, daytime, nighttime.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What I found fascinating in studying this as a skeptic is that when you study ancient history, and you're looking at some fact about the life of Alexander the Great, for instance, and you dig down, how do I know this fact is true? Most of the time, it's based on one source, maybe two sources of information.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But for the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources inside and outside the New Testament confirming and corroborating the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the risen Jesus. I can tick them off real quick so you know what they are.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The first is that creed I mentioned earlier, a creed whose historical credentials are so strong that one of the few Jewish New Testament scholars, Pinchas Lapid said, it may be taken as a statement of eyewitnesses. Second, we have Paul's testimony, because Paul said, I encountered the risen Christ, and then he got to know the disciples.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's huge, absolutely huge. No incentive to do that. But what's also interesting is after he became the Apostle Paul, he became friends with many of the disciples, the other eyewitnesses. So he knew Peter, James, and John. And he says in 1 Corinthians, in his letter he wrote, he said, whether it is I or they, this is what we preach.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So he's saying, look, I encountered the risen Christ, so have they. So he's confirming that the disciples were eyewitnesses. He's another point of confirmation. The third area of evidence, corroboration, is the Book of Acts. Even skeptical scholars will accept that the Book of Acts is the account of the spread of the early church. And what is the thing that drove it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It was the proclamation of the resurrection. So here we have Peter in Acts chapter two, who gets up before a crowd and he says, men of Israel, listen to these words. This Jesus, a man attested to you by miracles and wonders and signs, which he did in your midst, you know that he did. He's appealing to their common knowledge.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then he says, this Jesus God raised from the dead, to which we're all witnesses. And how did they react? History tells us that 3,000 people said, Peter, we know you're telling this truth. What do we do? They repented, and the church was born. So that's the first three sources.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Then we have the next four sources, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which are historical biographies based on eyewitness accounts. There's, what, nine appearances of the risen Jesus in those four gospels. So that's seven ancient sources. But then... Plus you've got Luke who interviewed Mary. Oh, yeah, there's other sources, right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But we have sources from people who sat under the teachings of the eyewitnesses. So, for instance, if you still were teaching at your church in Austin, if, Sean, if you were to come to his church for three years— you'd have a pretty good idea what he believes, right? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, we have writings by people who sat under the teachings of the apostles themselves and can report what they said about the resurrection. So we have a letter that was written by Clement. Clement was, we believe, ordained by Peter himself. And Clement writes a letter in the first century to the church in Corinth, and he says that the disciples had complete confidence. Why?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Why did they have so much confidence? Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because there were eyewitnesses to the risen Lord. And then Polycarp, who was appointed by John himself to be bishop at Smyrna, He writes a letter to the Philippian church, and he mentions the resurrection five times in that letter.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he said, talking about Paul and the other apostles, he said, for they did not love the present age, but him who died for them and was raised by God on the third day. So he's confirming the teachings of these eyewitnesses that they encountered the risen Christ. That's nine times.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
very early eyewitness-based account or accounts of the corroboration of the eyewitnesses, the disciples who encountered personally the risen Jesus. That is an avalanche of historical data.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He's the guy who made Harvard Law School what it is today, the second best law school, because I went to Yale.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I remember when I was- When he looked at the evidence. That's right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, when I was an atheist, I went and I'm doing this investigation into the resurrection. I remember going to the library. And of course, they didn't have Simon Greenlee's book, which was written in the 1800s. And so I put an interlibrary loan, and it took about six months.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And six months later, they give me this copy from the 1800s of this book by Simon Greenleaf, this great legal scholar who reports on the resurrection and so forth. And it was held together by rubber bands. But back then, we didn't have the internet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But, you know, that's another great example is Sir Lionel LeCoultre, who is the greatest defense attorney in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
245 convictions in a row that he—well, he won acquittals 245 times in a row, either before the jury or on appeal. Knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth, became a member of the Supreme Court of his country, and he was a doubter about the resurrection. Same thing. He was challenged to investigate it. He did, and I'll recite to you one sentence he wrote that summarizes his conclusion.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He said, I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof, which leaves absolutely no room for doubt. This from the greatest defense attorney who ever lived. And here's the funny thing. I told that story at Saddleback Church in Southern California where Leslie and I had moved in the year 2000 to be a pastor there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And a woman came up to me afterwards and she said, hey, I'm your new neighbor. You're moving into my neighborhood. We haven't met yet. I said, oh, great to meet you. Said, yeah. Said, I'm Sir Lionel LeCoultre's sister. No way. It was his sister. And she not only confirmed the story, she showed me his private documents that he had done his research on. Oh, how great.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I remember sharing with Hugh Hefner in the Playboy Mansion. Really? Yeah. Wait a second. Yeah, well, I was— We're going to hear this one. I had a TV show at the time, and we were interviewing him about his faith. So he said, you want a tour? I said, no, I don't want a tour. I just want to interview you about your faith. So I interviewed him, but he was a very bright guy, very smart guy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I started to show him. He got fascinated by my book, Case for Christ. I showed him the table of contents. He said, look at this. He said, are you telling me there's evidence that Jesus, because he said, if the resurrection is true, it changes everything. Are you telling me there's evidence for it? I said, yes, yes. Had he ever checked it out? No. Did he read my book? I don't know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So many people know it's the linchpin of the faith, but they don't investigate it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Wow. I think there's sufficient biblical evidence for it. And this is near-death experience stuff that just confirms that. It does. And I find that encouraging, don't you? Yeah. Because like you, it's like, yeah, I'm more interested in some of the stuff I can see and touch and evidence and so forth. But then to know that God cares about me so much that he's watching over me in that way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Screw it up, right? For me, it was Leslie pointed out the verse John 1, 12. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name. So that forms an equation of what it means to become a child of God. Believe, as you said, intellectually, I agree with that. I believe it. Plus receive. That's the heart. That's the heart.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's where you receive this free gift of forgiveness and eternal life and a prayer of repentance and faith. And you become then a child of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's a great question. It is. It's a very interesting question because in first century Jewish and Roman culture, the testimony of women was not considered reliable. Wouldn't even allow it in a court of law. Right. They wouldn't allow it to be testified. And yet— the first people to encounter the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene. And Joanna. And Joanna at the tomb. It's Joanna.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he's assigned someone to really provide protection and guidance and
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, and part of it too is that's one reason we know we can trust the story. Because if you're going to make up a story and try to convince people in the first century, you would never say women discover the tomb empty.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, when he appeared in the resurrection with Thomas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, we're talking about the women discovering the tomb empty. And that's become a point of contention among some skeptics. Because if you look at the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke say there were multiple women going to the tomb. But John only mentions Mary Magdalene. Right. And they say, oh, there's a discrepancy that it can't both be true, that's false.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But Dr. Michael Lacona, who's a historian, recently published an analysis of the Gospels based on how ancient biographers would write in that era. So Plutarch and others who were historians of that day the literary techniques they would use, because the Gospels are considered ancient biographies, and you would think they'd use the same literary techniques in writing the Gospels.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, one literary technique is called spotlighting. And what I mean by that is if I were to text my wife right now and say, hey, I'm sitting here with Sean Ryan, That would be true, but I didn't mention there's other people in the room. I'm spotlighting you because I want to highlight you. You're spotlighting the important people. Yeah, exactly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So it's not false to say I'm with Sean Ryan, but I'm just spotlighting you. And if you look at what John says with Mary Magdalene, yes, he's the only one that he mentions going to the tomb, but then she says, they have taken my Savior and And we don't know where they've taken them. Well, who's the we? It's the others who were there. But he's not highlighting them. He's highlighting her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But she refers to the we that, you know, we don't know where they've taken them. So that reconciled that issue. And there's virtually every... so-called contradiction in the Gospels, it disappears when you begin reading them in the same way you would read Plutarch or any other ancient historian, using the same literary techniques that they used in that day and they use today.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's right. But they didn't. And somebody did it in the year 175 AD. It was a Tatian. He developed what's called the Diatessaron. He went through the four Gospels and blended them. Took out all the discrepancies. Just blended them together. You know what? Nobody reads that. Nobody cares. The first century folks didn't see this as being an issue.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They didn't see a discrepancy because they were reading it as they would read any other ancient writing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They were the ones chosen through whom the Messiah would come into humankind and bless all nations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I gotcha. You know, it striked me because you and I were talking about Santa Barbara earlier and how you love Santa Barbara. And I was thinking that, you know, we've talked about these prophecies that hundreds of years before Jesus that point toward the crucifixion, the resurrection, all this stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And, you know, when I was a skeptic, I used to think, oh, he just maneuvered his life to, you know, like it says, the Messiah will ride a donkey into Jerusalem and he just got a donkey and rode in. So it He knew all this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He knew all that, but there was all these things he couldn't have fulfilled, like where he was born and the time he was born and soldiers gambling for his garment, all these things he couldn't have fulfilled.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Nations coming together. Which happened, Rome. Exactly. Herod. You talk about Santa Barbara, there was a professor there at Westmont College named Peter Stoner. And Peter Stoner said one day, he said, you know what? You can quantify everything. the likelihood, what are the odds that any one of these prophecies could be fulfilled? For instance, Micah says- He's the one who did that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, Westmont. Micah says that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Well, how many people have been born in Bethlehem? So you could figure out the odds. So he got a group of mathematics students together and he said, let's run the odds. Because there are like 61 prophecies just of the Messiah. Right. So, he took 48 of them and he said, let's run the numbers. Here's this question.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What are the odds that any human being throughout history could fulfill 48 of these prophecies? And they calculated it was one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion. That's equal to the number of atoms. It's like one atom in a trillion, trillion, billion universes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I mean, this is an astronomical—it's not 12 trillion. It's 12 trillions, you know, the odds of any human being fulfilling these— Yeah, I talked to one physicist. I said, when you get the numbers that big, what are the odds it can actually happen? He said, oh, we scientists have a term for that. I said, what is it? He said, ain't going to happen. It ain't going to happen. And yet it did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And it only happened in Jesus. He's the only one. And as you pointed out earlier, quite accurately, that because of the timeframe, if Jesus isn't the Messiah, there will never be one. Can't be. Can't be. Because he had to come before the temple was destroyed. The temple was destroyed in the 70s.