Ankerberg Show

Narrator: On this edition of the John Ankerberg Show, do Americans still believe God is doing supernatural miracles today? My guest is New York Times bestselling author Lee Strobel, who 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 miracles today, with only 15% saying no.

Lee also wanted to know how many people have had an experience that they explain as only being a miracle of God. Nearly two out of five US adults, or 38%, said they have had such an experience, which means an astonishing 94,792,000 Americans are convinced that God has performed at least one miracle for them personally.

During this series, we will look at another category of supernatural events that points to a realm that only the God of the Bible controls and talks about. In this program, Lee investigates the reality of angels who sometimes materialize in the form of humans and intervene to help or protect us.

He cites credible individuals who testify to amazing encounters with angels that point to the supernatural. Accounts such as an unexpected rescue of a ten-year-old boy who tumbled out of a car speeding at 70 miles an hour and lived. This is recounted by respected theologian Roger Olson. Then the protection of Scottish missionary John G. Paton and his wife from an angry mob intent on burning down their home and killing them, as reported by Billy Graham. We will tell you how it was discovered that angels protected both the boy and the missionary couple on this edition of the John Ankerberg Show.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. My guest today is Lee Strobel, who's written this bestselling book, *Is God Real?*. Today we're going to be talking about encounters with angels that point toward the supernatural. Many of you have had encounters with angels. The others of you are skeptical. We're going to talk to both of you. We're also going to talk about this worldwide because this program goes all the way around the world, and many of you have different takes on this topic.

We are going to come with biblical evidence as well as evidence that is documented in secular literature. We're going to cover the whole gamut here, so I hope you'll hang in there. Lee, let me come to you. You said you have never heard a sermon on angels as long as you've been a Christian. You've never heard it in church. I thought, I haven't either.

Lee Strobel: Isn't that interesting? I think that is an American phenomenon. I say that because so many Americans are embarrassed by the supernatural. They want to be respectable. It's okay if my neighbor knows I'm a Christian, I go to church, I believe in God, and so forth, but I'm not going to talk about the weird stuff like angels and demons and things like that. They want to be respectable.

The reality is Jesus certainly believed in angels. I think He also has 25 references to Satan, so He believed in Satan and demons and so forth. If we're going to follow Jesus, we also have to believe in this supernatural realm that He talks about.

Dr. John Ankerberg: For Christians out there that wonder about this topic, is there an account about how angels or the awareness of angels can strengthen our faith that comes from the Old Testament?

Lee Strobel: We see stories about angels starting in Genesis and going all the way to Revelation. It's all through the Bible. I think there are 300 references to angels in scripture. When people encounter angels, when they have an experience with angels, it can deepen their faith. There is no question about that, whether it is Old Testament, New Testament, or today.

Dr. John Ankerberg: There are a lot of misconceptions about angels. What are the biggest ones?

Lee Strobel: I think people believe that maybe they're omniscient like God is. They're not. They can't read our minds. They think maybe they're omnipresent. Are they everywhere? No, they're spirit beings, so they're in one place at a time.

Can they do miracles? God can use people to do supernatural things, and He can use angels to do supernatural things. It's not in and of themselves, but God can use them to do miraculous things certainly. We see examples of that. The word angel means messenger, and so they often are carriers of messages between God and humankind.

Think of when the birth of Jesus was announced to the shepherds in the field by angels who came. If you look at the big events of history, at key times, you see angels being involved all throughout the Bible.

Dr. John Ankerberg: One of the things that really gripped my heart was when Jesus was in the garden and He was in agony. He asked the Father if there was another way of doing this besides Him going to the cross and the Father putting all the sins of the world on Him. The Father said, "No, you've got to do that." Then it says angels came and strengthened Him.

Lee Strobel: The other thing Jesus said in the garden was, "Do you not think that if I wanted to, I could call upon my Father and He would send legions of angels?" I think the number if you compute it was 60,000 angels. "Don't you think my Father would send 60,000 angels right now to protect me?" It looks at the role of angels as protectors, as warriors who can protect us.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Does the Bible anticipate that some people all around the world will have an actual encounter with an angel or angels in this world?

Lee Strobel: There are two passages in Hebrews. One of them says, "Aren't angels created to help God's people?" Angels are created to glorify God and to serve God, but they also have a role with us. Hebrews also says that some people are actually entertaining angels in their own home unbeknownst to them. They think they're strangers who they're providing hospitality to, and yet they're angels. The Bible does anticipate that some people would have actual encounters with angelic beings.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Why did God create angels?

Lee Strobel: It's a way that He can extend His influence. Of course, He's omniscient, He's omnipresent, and so forth. He has powers beyond what the angels do. He saw a role that they could play almost in terms of a liaison between the realm of heaven and the realm of earth where they provide messages and they do protection and so forth. He created them before human beings were created, so they go back even before people were created.

Dr. John Ankerberg: You had an angelic encounter with an angel yourself. Tell us about that.

Lee Strobel: I was always embarrassed to tell people about it, seriously. Yes, I was 12 years old, I'm in my home, and an angel appeared to me in a dream. It was the only dream I remember from my childhood. It was unlike any other dream.

This angel appears and I intuitively knew he was an angel. He was kind of glowing a bit, and he was extolling heaven. He was talking about how beautiful heaven is, how wonderful it is to be in the presence of God this way. I casually said, "Well, you know, I'm going there someday." He looked at me and said, "How do you know?"

"What do you mean how do I know? I'm a good kid. I get good grades in school. I obey my parents for the most part." I'm trying to justify my goodness to get into heaven. He said to me, "That doesn't matter." A chill went down my spine. How can that not matter? All my efforts to be a good kid, you're telling me that doesn't matter? He said, "Someday you'll understand."

Sixteen years later, I later became an atheist. I wrote this dream off. I thought it was just bad pizza. It wasn't real. My wife dragged me to church and I heard the gospel for the first time. It isn't by our good deeds that God opens the door of heaven. Eternal life is a free gift of God's grace. We cannot earn it. We need to receive it in repentance and faith.

I heard that, and my mind flashed back. I thought, "Wait a minute, that's what the angel told me." The reason I believe that was an actual angelic encounter is twofold. Number one, the angel told me something that day I did not know: that salvation is by grace alone, not by good deeds. Secondly, he made a prophecy that someday I would understand, and that prophecy came true.

I was so embarrassed by this that I wouldn't tell people. Then I was being ordained as a pastor, and they have all these theologians who ask you tough questions about theology to make sure you're okay. I thought, "Do I tell them this? They're going to think I'm nuts. They're going to think I'm disqualified." I finally said, "Guys, I have to tell you about a dream I had." I told all these theologians, and they looked at me and said, "Yeah, we've heard that kind of thing before. No problem."

Dr. John Ankerberg: Lee, a lot of our people know the name Billy Graham because they went to one of his crusades somewhere around the world. He told the story of a missionary, a Scottish missionary by the name of John Paton, who went to the Hebrides Islands. Tell us that story.

Lee Strobel: John from Scotland went to a kind of remote island area in the South Pacific with his wife to share the message of Jesus with the tribespeople on the island. They lived in a little cottage, and the tribespeople weren't that happy with the message of Jesus initially.

One night, a mob of them came to burn down their cottage and to kill John and his wife. What do you do? This mob is forming around their house. You pray. You pray, "God, help us. God, protect us. God, rescue us. What do we do? We're defenseless." They prayed all night long.

By dawn, the mob just sort of dissipated. Everybody went home. Nothing happened. A year later, he led the head of that mob to faith in Jesus Christ. They're having a conversation, and he said to the guy, "Do you remember that night when you all came to burn down our house and kill us?"

The man said, "Oh yeah, I remember that." Paton asked, "Why didn't you do it?" The guy said, "Well, who were all those men that you had there?" John said, "There were no men there. It's just my wife and I." He said, "No, your house was surrounded by these muscular men in white garments with drawn swords. There's no way we could have attacked you that night. We all went home and went to bed."

They both agreed that was an example of God sending angels to protect them from this mob that was forming.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Let's go the opposite way. God created angels, and He gave them free choice. The first one that chose against God was one of the highest, and that was Satan. He was so skilled at deceiving people that he deceived a third of the angels in heaven that went with him.

Then he came to this earth. God put Adam and Eve down here and had a theocracy. Adam was supposed to take care of the land, and Satan thought, "No, I want all the worship." His pride took over, and first of all, he deceived Eve, and then he deceived Adam. After that, he's been deceiving men along the line. People are seeing a lot of angels, but some are not the good angels. How can they evaluate an angelic encounter to make sure it's an authentic and not a demonic encounter?

Lee Strobel: That's a hugely important question because the Bible specifically says that Satan has the ability to masquerade as an angel of light. If he can masquerade as an angel, he could fool people into thinking that what you're hearing from this angel is coming from God when it's coming from somewhere else. It's coming from a point of evil, a point of temptation, a point of being an adversary to God.

We have to be so careful if we ever have what we think is an encounter with an angel. The number one thing that we need to do is compare it to scripture. The Bible says that God never contradicts Himself. He will never tell us something that is contradictory to the teachings of scripture. If someone presents a different gospel to you, a different means of salvation, and this angel is telling me something that is different than what the Bible is explaining, that's a good sign this is not authentic. It is not a real angel. It is Satan or one of his demons that's masquerading as an angel of light.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Let's switch hats again. When we're born, do we each have a guardian angel that's been assigned to us? What does the Bible actually have to say about that?

Lee Strobel: A lot of people wonder about that. Some traditions, like the Orthodox tradition, believe that at the moment of baptism, you're assigned a guardian angel. That's their belief. I go back to what the Bible says.

There are two verses that suggest to some theologians that we do have a guardian angel. One is a passage in Matthew where Jesus is talking to a group and He says, "Do not despise these little ones because their angels see the face of God every day in heaven." Who are their angels? Is that a guardian angel?

The second example is in the book of Acts where Peter escapes from prison. He comes and he knocks on the door of a house where some Christians had gathered. The servant, Rhoda, says, "Who's there?" He says, "It's Peter." She calls out to them, "Hey, Peter's here." They say, "It can't be Peter. He's in prison. It must be his angel."

Some theologians say based on those two scriptures, yes, we probably do have a guardian angel. Other theologians say that's not quite enough evidence for them to convince them that we do. Certainly, the role of angels is to be guardians in many ways. Certainly, we can be protected by angels at various times in our lives. Do we have one assigned to us? There are some theologians who say yes, some say no. That's the biblical evidence, and people can kind of reach their own conclusion. I tend to lean toward yes just based on those two passages.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Here's a tricky one: should Christians pray to angels?

Lee Strobel: There are some traditions who rely on books that are not in the Bible, ancient writings that are not included in the Protestant Bible, who tend to want to pray to angels. No, I do not think we should pray to angels. I say that on biblical evidence.

If you remember the case where Peter encountered an angel and falls down to worship him, the angel says, "No, don't worship me. I'm a servant of God just like you are. Only worship God." The danger is if we start praying to angels, I think it can slip down that slippery slope into worship. We don't want to go down that slope.

I don't see any biblical precedent for praying to angels. We can pray to God about angels. That's certainly legitimate. Martin Luther, in the Small Catechism, has an evening prayer at the end of that book where he says, "Lord, send your holy angel to protect me from the evil one." Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, said, "I could call upon my Father right now. He would send 60,000 angels to protect me if I wanted him to." It's okay, I believe, to pray to God about angelic protection.

I never used to do that until I did the research for *Is God Real?*. I'm doing this research on angels. Again, a lot of us don't research this a lot. I'm seeing these accounts, and I'm reading the account of John Paton and what happened to him, and I'm thinking, "Why would I not want to ask God, 'God, send your holy angels to provide a hedge around my family, around my grandchildren, around my wife and I, around my ministry, to protect me from the forces of the evil one'?" The evil one is very active and very present and has no higher goal than to lure people into apostasy and away from the kingdom of God.

Dr. John Ankerberg: When I first started this ministry 50 years ago, I invited leaders of cults to come on. I always found out they were getting their information from so-called angels, good angels. The doctrine differed from what was in scripture. When you would ask them about that, they would say, "Well, this is just a little addition to it."

Isn't it great that God gave us a plum line? He gave us the Holy Spirit. When we come to Him in repentance and faith, we receive this free gift of God's grace. We're indwelt by His Holy Spirit who provides us with guidance, and then He gave us His word, the Bible. We've got this way of measuring if this angel is telling me something about how salvation really is based on how well you behave and so forth.

Wait a minute, I've got this whole book that gives me a different message. This is another gospel, and the Bible's very clear: any angel that brings you another gospel is anathema. Stay away from that. Reject that. In light of all this, how has the study of angels changed your own devotional life?

Lee Strobel: It really has changed my devotional life in the sense that I have this real sense now of understanding that the angelic realm is real. Jesus believed in it. He believed in demons. The worst thing I can do is go the other way or deny it. I want to learn about it. I want to learn about angels.

I want to have that sense that when I pray to God and say, "God, send your holy angels to protect me," that I'm being protected by them. That changes a lot. It gives you that sense of confidence. It deepens your faith.

I was talking to a famous theologian, and he said back years ago before seat belts, a family was driving in a car and a little kid fell out the back of the car. They thought, "Oh my goodness, the kid's been killed." They turned around, they went back, and the kid is standing in the road.

They said, "What happened?" He said, "Didn't you see the man who caught me?" That theologian, this very dapper, very buttoned-down theologian, picked up a handkerchief and dabbed his eye and said, "That was an angelic encounter. An angel caught that child. We ought to live in the anticipation that God will send His angels to be our servants when we're in times of need."

Dr. John Ankerberg: I was thinking of that exact story when you said it. Here's the thing I would like you to pray with people. Some folks have been getting information from angels that are actually demons. They've been posing as angels of light.

It's amazing to me that people do not open their Bible to actually see what the Bible says. If the angels are saying something that is different than what scripture says, believe the scripture. That's the word of God. That's our plum line.

You're in trouble on the other side. You need to get rid of them. You need to pray and say, "God, send them away." If you're getting all kinds of disturbances, ask God to take care of that. You don't take care of it; ask God to take care of the demons. The other thing is the demons keep you away from asking Jesus to come into your life. It's always an excuse for not inviting Him in to come in. People say, "Yeah, I'm going to do it someday." I'd like you to say a prayer today for the people that right now, if they died, they wouldn't go to heaven. The door would be locked and they would be going to hell. I'd like you to say a prayer for those people that they wouldn't waste any more time. Today they would actually invite Christ into their life.

Lee Strobel: Let's make it this moment. If you want to pray that prayer, just say: Lord, as best I can, I do believe that You sent Your Son Jesus to die for the sins that I committed, to pay the penalty I deserve for the sins that I've committed. I believe that, and I confess my sins, and I turn from that in repentance. I receive right now, right at this moment, I receive Your free gift of grace, Your free gift of forgiveness and eternal life. Thank You that You love me so much. You died so that we could be reconciled forever. Help me to live according to how You want me to live because from this moment on, I am Yours. Amen.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Next week, folks, we're going to do the opposite. Today we talked about the good angels that God has created, but the angels that rebelled, say a third of the angels in heaven rebelled, and they're the demonic. We're going to talk about the chilling encounters with demons that point to the supernatural. Again, this has been cataloged by secular scholars. We're going to tell you the chilling stories, and I hope that you will join us. Thanks for being with me today and stay tuned because I've got a personal word for you in just a minute.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to the John Ankerberg Show. We're a listener-supported ministry, and your gifts help us continue to share the gospel with millions of people worldwide. To learn more about our resources or to support our mission, visit jashow.org or please call us at 1-800-805-3030. If you're in Canada, please visit jashow.ca or call us at 1-866-746-5803. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube. Your support makes a difference in spreading God's word.