Lee Strobel is a best-selling Christian author, journalist, and apologist known for works exploring evidence for Christianity. Strobel began his professional career as a legal editor for the Chicago Tribune, earning awards for investigative reporting. Once an atheist, he set out to disprove Christianity after his wife became a believer, leading to his conversion in 1981. His most famous book, The Case for Christ, chronicles his journey and has inspired millions to explore faith thoughtfully and thoroughly. Strobel has served as a teaching pastor and founded the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. He has authored over 40 books, including The Case for Faith and The Case for a Creator. A sought-after speaker and filmmaker, Strobel lives in Texas with his wife Leslie, where he continues to equip others to explore and share their faith. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://helixsleep.com/srs https://shopify.com/srs https://bubsnaturals.com/shawn https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Lee Strobel Links: X - https://x.com/leestrobel IG - https://www.instagram.com/lee_strobel Website - https://leestrobel.com Books - https://leestrobel.com/books Speaking - https://leestrobel.com/speaking Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Lee Strobel and what is his background?
Lee Strobel. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Sean. Great to be with you. I'm honored to have you here.
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.
Well, thank you. Thank you for saying that. So sorry about the wait. I get nervous for every one of these interviews. So half the time when I say I'm down there going through my outline, I'm just procrastinating. But no, seriously, though, we've been trying to get a hold of you for over a year now. And we finally got you.
And so I've just, I've been really anticipating this interview and it's just, you've been a major part in my journey to faith. And I know you don't know that, but as I'm sure you have been for millions and millions of people. And so it is truly an honor to have you here.
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.
Yeah. Well, I can't wait to dive into that. So we're going to release this episode on Christmas. Probably it'll be either Christmas Eve or Christmas, but we haven't decided yet. But I've been wanting to do this, like I said, since last year. And so to have it here in time to get it edited for Christmas is... I think you're just the perfect guest. Oh, thanks.
So I want to dive into your backstory, some of the books you've written, especially Case for Christ. And I want to... I'm learning here. So I'm a very curious person. I use my curiosity in all of my interviews. And... The thing that I'm most curious about more than anything, any of the other stuff that I interview is Jesus Christ and the Bible. And so if you can help me, I would like to keep...
We're going to go into some dark places. I'm sure we're going to go into some rabbit holes, but overall, I really want to talk about who is Jesus Christ and what does he mean to you and the rest of Christianity. And so if you could- My favorite subject. Good, good. Mine too. Good, good. So, and like I said, I'm learning. I'm learning.
We all are. We all are.
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Chapter 2: What led Lee Strobel to investigate Christianity?
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
When you say hundreds of millions of angels, where do you come up with that?
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Chapter 3: What evidence supports the resurrection of Jesus?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
We're getting way into it already here, but what evidence is there that they have guardian angels?
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.
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