Lee Strobel and Glenn Beck America’s supernatural obsession

Today, atheism and materialism — ideologies that reject the notion of a spiritual dimension and emphasize the primacy of physical matter — are on the decline. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in the supernatural in some capacity.

But sadly, this openness has led many astray. A significant percentage of people who consider themselves spiritual reject the biblical reality of angels, demons, heaven, hell, and the triune God. Instead of scripture, they consult Ouiji boards, tarot cards, and mediums, all of which have exploded in recent years, and adopt popular New Age spiritualist practices, which are merely gateways to occultism.

But what’s the truth about the unseen realm? What’s really going on behind a miracle or an act of heinous evil? And why are people suddenly so interested in knowing the answers to these kinds of questions?

To explore these queries, Glenn Beck interviewed award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and Christian apologist Lee Strobel, who dove deep into this subject in his new book, “Seeing the Supernatural: Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World.”

While many lost souls are seeking answers in all the wrong places, Lee is nonetheless heartened by the fact that so many people, especially youth, haven’t grown cold in their pursuit of truth. “I love the engagement that I get with young people — their curiosity, their questions, their sincerity. It’s a real sincere quest,” he tells Glenn.

Neither he nor Glenn is surprised that there’s been an uptick in interest in the supernatural. For one, how does one explain miraculous healings, unmitigated evil, and phenomena? Second, with what modern science has uncovered in the fields of cosmology, physics, and biochemistry, among others, it’s hard to reckon with our universe without entertaining the idea of divinity.

“It makes more sense logically and rationally today to believe in God than I think any time in history,” says Lee.

For example, we now have hundreds of accounts of individuals who have clinically died and then been resuscitated. They return to consciousness with jaw-dropping stories that indicate “their spirit, their soul, their consciousness separates from their body and continues to live on,” says Lee.

But instead of believing in the eternal soul destined for one of two places, many will adopt the erroneous belief that ghosts haunt the earthly realm, unable to pass into a neutral afterlife. Glenn and Lee, however, reject the notion of lingering spirits of the dead. What people call ghosts, they call “demonic apparitions,” which certainly haunt and prowl the earth.

Lee tells several harrowing stories of demon-possessed people with supernatural abilities, like levitation, super strength, and spell casting.

He warns against two pitfalls when it comes to demons: “deny that they exist” or “see a demon under every bush.”

On the flip side, angels are another commonly misunderstood supernatural being. Many misguided spiritualists “believe that angels are relatives,” says Glenn, but they’re as deluded as those who believe in ghosts. While seeing dead relatives, especially on one’s death bed, is a common phenomenon, those are not angels people are seeing, as the Bible describes angels as being distinct from human beings.

“People on their deathbed will have a pre-death vision of what’s to come, and often there are dead relatives who they will see,” says Lee, citing Acts chapter 7 as evidence that this phenomenon is biblical. Again, he shares several incredible stories of people who have had astounding visions before their death, many of which revealed information impossible for them to know.

Glenn also shares his own father’s strange deathbed experience and his daughter’s childhood encounters with angels.

Angels, Lee explains, are “a separate creation of God.”

“They are spirit. There’s lots of them — millions. … It says in the book of Hebrews in the Bible that they are there to serve God but also to serve His people,” he says, sharing a story about an angel who visited him when he was 12 years old.

The duo dive into several other subjects, including end times, the possibility of guardian angels assigned to individual people, the dangers of AI and technology, spiritual awakening in the Middle East, and several others. To hear the full conversation, watch the episode above.

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