Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: Today on the John Ankerberg Show: Do Americans still believe God is doing supernatural miracles today? Lee Strobel, former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and now a New York Times best-selling author of the book, Seeing the Supernatural, is my guest. He is a former atheist, now turned Christian, with a Master of Studies and Law degree from Yale University.

Lee commissioned a national scientific survey by the Barna Group to find out if Americans believe God is still doing miracles today. He found out two out of three Americans, or 67%, said yes, they believe God still does supernatural miracles today, with only 15% saying no. So today, we're going to look at another category for the supernatural: near-death experiences.

According to a 2019 study, as many as one in ten people across 35 countries have undergone some sort of near-death experience where medical doctors declared that they had no heartbeat or brain waves and were declared dead. Three-quarters of people experience the separation of consciousness from their physical body and float up into the ceiling or into the next room where they see and hear everything that's happening.

Later, when they return back into their body, they can describe what they saw and heard in great detail. Most near-death experiences involve positive encounters, but not all. One study of 1,034 people across 35 countries showed that 73% of them related having an unpleasant or a very hellish experience. Near-death experiences strongly show that after our brain and our heart stop working and doctors declare us dead, we still live on. We survive, but where do we go? To hear the evidence, join us for this edition of the John Ankerberg Show.

Welcome to our program. I'm John Ankerberg and my honored guest today is Lee Strobel, the award-winning author that has gone on the New York Times bestseller list. He's got a new one, Seeing the Supernatural, which is what we're talking about. Today, we've got a fascinating topic, and that is deathbed visions and near-death experiences. Folks, we're all going to die, right? Have you ever gotten to the point where you thought, what's it going to be like when I actually die?

Well, you would be surprised how many people have experiences. You might have an accident and all of a sudden your heart stops beating, there's no brain waves, and you see a vision. We're going to talk about what people see and then they come back even after they've been pronounced dead by the doctor. They come back, they surprise the doctor. What do they tell him?

Then there are other visions, and I'm going to let Lee explain what the difference is between a near-death experience and a deathbed experience where you go out the door and you stay out the door.

Lee Strobel: Exactly, and that's basically the difference. A near-death experience is someone who's clinically dead. No brain waves, no heartbeat, no respiration, and they have an experience. They're conscious. They're seeing things that they otherwise could not see or hear if they didn't have an authentic out-of-body experience.

But then their body is revived and their spirit returns to their body and they're able to say what they experienced. That's a near-death experience. A deathbed vision is where people who are about to permanently die, but just before they die, they have a vision often of heaven, often of angels, something that they see just before they pass from this world.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Remember Doris? Tell the people she had, just before she died, she had a vision and it authenticated the supernatural. Tell them why.

Lee Strobel: This is the corroboration. My background is in journalism and law. I'm looking for evidence. How do I know? I'm a skeptic by heart. Doris, a very well-documented case, is on her deathbed and she has a deathbed vision. She sees the heavens open up. She sees angelic beings. She sees her father, who had died several years earlier, welcoming her to the next realm.

But then she gets this puzzled look on her face and she says, "Wait a minute, what's Vida doing with my father? Why would Vida be there?" And then she died. Vida was her sister. Her sister Vida had died a couple of weeks earlier, but no one had told Doris because she was ill and they didn't want the shock to kill her. So they withheld the news that Vida had died.

And yet, on her deathbed, she sees Vida in the next realm. So that to me is a form of corroboration. This is something that isn't just coming from Doris's imagination.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Now, we've got people all around the world, Christians and non-Christians, that are watching us. I want to say a word to Christians because Christians say, "Listen, we're only going to accept stuff that's biblical. Where's this deathbed and near-death experiences? Where does this enter into? I'm not sure I've seen it in the Bible. Where is it?"

Lee Strobel: It's in Acts chapter 7, where we have Stephen, who's described there as being full of the Holy Spirit, who's on his death. He's about to be stoned to death and he sees the heavens open up and he sees the glory of God and he sees the Son of God. That's the biblical anchor for these deathbed visions. And by the way, there are about 200 examples in the Bible of God using visions and dreams to accomplish what he wants to accomplish.

Dr. John Ankerberg: How common are deathbed visions around the world?

Lee Strobel: This is shocking to me. A team of researchers went to a huge hospice facility in New York State and they told all the dying people, "If you have a vision, something unlike anything you've ever had, would you please tell us?" A lot of people are embarrassed by it. They don't want to say anything because they think people will think they are nuts if they tell them what they saw. So a lot of people don't want to say anything.

No, they said tell us. Eighty-eight percent of them reported a pre-death vision. I think the other 12% may have had one, but they died before they were able to tell somebody. Or some people were just scared that people would think they're nuts, or heavily medicated and so forth. So we don't know, but this is extremely common.

My wife, both her mom and her dad had pre-death visions. In fact, her dad saw his sister who had died two days earlier. He didn't know she was dead yet. My wife, Leslie, comes in to visit him in hospice on his deathbed and he says, "Where's Marge?" "What do you mean?" "Marge was just here. She was telling me about heaven. Where is she? Where is she? She was just here." "Dad, Marge died two days ago." "Oh." So this is extremely common.

Dr. John Ankerberg: The deal is that you've got skeptical doctors that are not Christians and they're seeing this stuff. I want to know about the corroboration. Studies have been done and you did all the research on this. You've got Steve Miller, PhD, from Columbia International University, and you've got others. But let's start with Steve Miller. I think he did how many studies?

Lee Strobel: Steve is probably the world's leading expert on these things. He got his PhD in it and he reports that there was one case where researchers examined 3,000 cases of deathbed visions. Their conclusion, comparing them to the characteristics of other phenomena, they said these are not something that's coming from their imagination.

It's not a hallucination. It's not something that's based on wishful thinking. This is something else that they can't quite quantify what it is. I think it's best explained as being an authentic peek at what is to come.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Along the way, after he was given this documentation, for some reason you asked him the question, did you ever have one in your own family? What did he say?

Lee Strobel: He had a relative, a cousin, I believe, highly educated, PhD, as I recall, in history, who had an experience at night where he felt he was having a heart attack almost. He had an out-of-body experience where he viewed himself from a distance and then the phone rings. It turns out his father in a distant city just died of a heart attack at that same moment. What do you do with that? That's one of those odd connections that we see many times and talk about in my book that are documented by credible eyewitnesses.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Let's talk about people on their deathbed often see angels coming for them. Is there a biblical precedent for this?

Lee Strobel: There is. Luke 16 verse 22, where Jesus is telling the story about Lazarus, who was a beggar who died. Jesus says angels carried him to this place of bliss, this intermediate heaven. So it is biblical to see angels and it is extremely common. Here's the corroboration: children who are dying will see angels coming for them.

But they don't see them like you would expect them to see them. For instance, a five-year-old or six-year-old child, what's an angel to them? A cartoon character. It's big wings, maybe some feathers, maybe a halo. That's what they think of. That's not what they see.

There's one case in a doctoral dissertation of a little girl who was dying and she says to her mom, "Mommy, Mommy, do you see them?" "What, honey?" "The angels, they're here. You can't see them? They're here. Oh, listen to their singing, it's so beautiful. Their eyes are so beautiful."

The mother didn't want to disappoint her, so the mother said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I see the angels. Look at their big wings." The little girl said, "Oh, Mommy, you don't have to lie. They don't have big wings." She went on to describe them in vivid detail. The Bible doesn't say that all angels have wings. There are stories in the Bible where they're walking along and people didn't know.

In fact, I think Hebrews says that you've got to be careful when you're entertaining visitors because some have entertained angels unaware. But little kids understand that. If this was a phenomenon just driven by their imagination, you would think they would see angels as a little kid would see an angel: big wings and halo and feathers or whatever. That's not what they see.

The other thing, John, is the incredible comfort that they have knowing they're going to die. The angels are coming for them. Of course, the parents are frantic. They're going to lose their child; it's a horrible situation to them. But often it's the child who's comforting the parents because they feel like I'm going to a place where I need to go.

Dr. John Ankerberg: All right, now let's take some examples. I grew up with Billy Graham. My dad was a pastor in Chicago and he was a pastor out at Western Springs and they were pulled into an organization that eventually grew and then Billy went off doing his crusades around the world and became the best-known evangelist around the world. But one of the things is he had a friend by the name of Charles Templeton. He was a great preacher, and then he went to seminary for some more education. Tell the folks what happened.

Lee Strobel: He lost his faith at Princeton Seminary. He tried to talk Billy out of Billy's faith. Charles Templeton's a wonderful guy. People thought he would be the great evangelist. He was more articulate than Billy. He had a huge church up in Toronto. He lost his faith. He wrote an ugly book called Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith.

I met him because I did a book called The Case for Faith where I answered all his objections to God and we became friends. I actually sent him a copy of the manuscript to the book before he died and he read it, actually his wife read it to him. But what most people don't know is, even though he was the most famous skeptic in Canada, there's indications he did come back to faith in Jesus Christ before he died, thank God.

But on his deathbed, he called out to his wife, Madeleine, who by the way is not a Christian, she's not trying to color this one way or the other. She's a deist. She believes in a kind of a distant God. But he called out to her. He said, "Madeleine, do you see them?" "Chuck, what are you talking about?" "The angels, they're here in this room. They're right here at the foot of my bed. You can't see them? Oh, they're singing, it's so beautiful. Look at their eyes. Their eyes are so beautiful."

He said, "I'm going home. I'm going to heaven. I'm going to be with God." And then he died. I just thought how interesting it is that this man who had tried to lure so many people out of their faith, in the end came back to faith and himself saw angels bringing him to the world to come.

Dr. John Ankerberg: There's two illustrations that when I read your book, you made me start to think about when I was growing up. My best friend was 11, he had a sister who was 10, and I was nine. We would hang out a lot and her name was Rita. I got to know her, talked with her, and so on. But she came down with a disease and they took her to the hospital.

I remember sitting with my friend on the porch in Chicago and all of a sudden the phone rang. I remember it ringing and they came running out the door. They went to their old DeSoto and they took off and they just said we'll be back. When they came back, we said what happened? They had tears in their eyes and they said, "Well, Rita died today."

I'd never gone to a funeral when I was nine years old. My dad was the pastor of the church, but what do I know about funerals? This was my friend; I grew up with her. So I thought let's go see what this funeral's all about. Church was packed out. I was sitting on the front row, my friend Rodge was sitting right next, and we were listening. They were doing the regular stuff, the pastors and all the choir and all this kind of stuff.

But then there was a little lady that everybody respected. She was a wise biblical lady. She was kind and she had volunteered to stay with Rita at the hospital all day and all night when the parents weren't there so Rita always had somebody to talk with. She was asked to come up at the funeral service and talk about what happened when she died. I am all ears. I want to hear this one.

She got up there and she said, "I was sitting there with Rita and she had been quiet the whole day, but all of a sudden she sat up in her bed and she said, 'Look, look, I see Jesus, I see the angels,' and she put her head back and she died." That one knocked me out right there. I started thinking about what she saw and where she was at.

Now, I said there was a scholar that was sitting right where you're sitting and that was Ed Hindson. He had his own television program and then he came back and he was chairman of the department at Liberty University. Smart as a whip. I used to use him in the prophecy programs. He could close the program; if we were three minutes, he could close it from any topic we were at and go right to it.

I loved him and I invited him back for a program. We were a couple of weeks away from doing the program and all of a sudden his wife calls me. She says we're sitting around a table with the family and Ed all of a sudden, while he's talking about other topics, all of a sudden says, "Look, look, I never thought that heaven was this beautiful. Look at the colors. Look at the angels," and he died, two weeks before he's supposed to come here. So when you're talking about this in your book, I'm going through the people that have said things like that to me.

You had a great saying in your book to people that don't know Jesus. If they came to the point of dying, the Bible says there's a heaven, but the Bible Jesus said there's also a hell. I want you to say a word to the people that if they were to die—a heart attack, if they were to have a stroke, if they were to have an aneurysm, if they were to have an accident—so many people that we're hearing on the news that are just all of a sudden taken. You've got to be prepared.

Talk to those folks about how to be prepared so that they actually go to heaven to be with Jesus. There is a real heaven, there's a real Jesus. You've done the research on all of this, it's in your book and so on, but talk to them about how they can know Jesus personally.

Lee Strobel: Because, John, there are lots of cases—and we don't like to talk about this but we have to—cases where people have a deathbed vision or a near-death experience that are horrific, that are horrible. You don't want that. You don't want to get to the end of your life and as John said, you don't know what's going to happen. It could be a car accident, could be a heart attack that happens, something you don't plan for obviously, but it could occur at any time.

You don't want that kind of horrific experience to take place. What do you want? You want what your friend had, which is a vision of the beauty of heaven and angels coming to take you there. That's what you want. So how do you know? How can you be sure? How can you be confident? The first verse I memorized as a new Christian is from 1 John. It says these things in the Bible are written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God in order that you may know that you have eternal life.

God says you can know, you can have confidence, you can be sure. You don't have to wonder and have anxiety and confusion. So pray this prayer, if you want to be sure, just right now, just say:

"Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner. I've not lived according to how you wanted me to live. I know that, I confess that, and I turn from that. In an attitude of repentance and faith, I want to receive your free gift of forgiveness and eternal life. You purchased it for me on the cross when you died as my substitute to pay for all of my sin.

I want to receive that free gift of your grace right now. Thank you for dying so that we can be reconciled forever. When I get to the end of my life and I close my eyes for the last time in this world, I can open them in the presence of you forever. Amen."

Dr. John Ankerberg: Amen. And again, I always think of that verse: whosoever shall call—whosoever means you, meant me the day that I called—whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord. When you ask him, which if you did right now, if you meant it, he came into your life. He forgave your sins.

And you say, "Well, hey, I'm into drugs, I'm into alcohol, I'm into something else that is tying me up, habits." He also, when he comes into your life, puts the Holy Spirit in your life and he gives you the power to start changing from the inside. He gives you desires that you never had before. That's what I didn't know when I first accepted Christ: how do I change? God's already planned for that and he'll help you. I don't care what you're into.

Now, we're talking about Lee's book and it's going up on the charts on the New York Times bestselling books and hopefully it'll be up there number one by the time we do this program. Next week we're going to talk about another encounter with the supernatural. It's called Seeing the Supernatural.

We're telling you stories, but the documentation in here is Strobel documentation, which means the footnotes are a mile long and the fact is it's all from people that are Christian and non-Christian: doctors and neurologists and people that have done the studies on this that were more skeptical than anything that we're saying. They found out that this stuff actually happened and they documented it in medical journals and you can read all about it. That's why this book is taking the world by storm.

I want you to know that. I also want you to know that we have done our homework in terms of finding out if this stuff is really true. We've experienced it personally in our own life and we're trying to share it with you. You might be in Canada, you might be in Africa, you might be in South America, you might be in Russia, you might be in the Ukraine, you might be in Israel, you might be in the Orient someplace and you're listening.

Listen, God can see the whole world and he can see you. If he's talking to you, then do business with him. Thanks for joining me this week. I hope you enjoyed this and we've got a lot more to talk about. Next week we're going to be talking about encounters with angels that point toward the supernatural.

Have you seen an angel? A lot of people have. We're going to talk about the encounters with angels that people have had that point to the supernatural. I hope you won't miss that, but please stay tuned because I've got a personal word for you in just a moment.

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