John Burke
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
There is a Muslim mosque on the temple site to this day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, they broke the covenant way before that. There were several covenants. But the real covenant that God was making with – through Jesus is an unconditional one. Meaning, and so there's so much fascinating stuff, isn't there? It's just unbelievable. So Abraham, okay, back 2,000 years. God says to Abraham and Sarah, I'm gonna give you a son.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
and through him is going to be a blessing for all the nations. So again, this is the lineage of the Messiah. So that's the second way he's gonna bless all the nations, through the Messiah, okay? Well then, Abraham is told, go to the land I'm going to show you, and then you will have the son. So they go, they leave Ur, where they were living, travel to this land, which is now Palestine or Israel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's nowhere, nothing town, right? And then they don't have a kid for 10 years. And... She's getting old. She's getting old. They're old. They're older than... Hey, come on, man. Makes me feel better. So, you know, they're not having a kid. And Abraham, like all of us, is like, maybe God needs a little help, right? And Sarah's like, yeah, good idea.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Here, sleep with my maidservant, Hagar, and give us a child. We'll surrogate one. And they do. And Ishmael is born. And God's like, you didn't trust me. He said, no, there will be a child of the promise that will come. So, what is it, 10 years after that, it was like, I mean, they're really, you know, it's impossible, but it happened. Isaac is born. And
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The wild thing is God then, when Isaac's like 12, 13, something like that, close to a teenager, and the love of Abraham's life, God says to him, Abraham, I want you to take your son, your only son, who you love, and I want you to take him to a mountain I will show you, and there I want you to sacrifice him. Now, God also said through the law, don't do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Do not sacrifice your children like the other gods demand. So this is pretty confusing, right? But Abraham follows him. Now, here's the thing. He gets two of his servants. He gets Isaac. And he's struggling. But he goes. And it says he traveled three days journey to Mount Moriah, to the region of Mount Moriah. And there, God says, that's the mountain. Go up there and sacrifice your son.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So he's got two servants. They could have carried the wood on which he's going to make this altar and sacrifice his son, right? And Abraham says to his servants, you stay here. The boy and I will go offer a sacrifice, and we will return. So here's the thing. Abraham believed, even if God makes me go through,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He's going to bring him back to life somehow because he's promised to bless all nations through Isaac. And now he trusted. Now he believed. So he goes up there. This is what, Genesis 22? Yeah, 22. It's the latter part of Genesis. He goes up. He's struggling, but he's like, okay, God. And he raises the knife to do it, and God says, stop, Abraham. Now I see how much you trust me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he looks and he says there was a lamb, a ram, caught in the thicket. And he says, do not sacrifice your son, I'll provide it. And so he sacrificed the lamb or the ram in his place. And Abraham named that place, on this mount the Lord will provide. Okay, fast forward 2,000 years, and I won't get into all the how we know, but we know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That was the very place on which Jesus would walk up the hill with his own wood. And by the way, Isaac had to carry the wood. Jesus would walk up with the wood on which he would be sacrificed and the Lord would provide. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You tell them. Well, so we know that because Mount Moriah is the place on which the temple was built. And right outside the temple walls is Golgotha on Moriah, part of Moriah, Mount Moriah. And we know all that because, so the angel of the Lord appears to Gideon on the threshing floor of Arunah. And that's a whole other story in Joshua? No. Genesis. No, it's Joshua. Judges. It's on Judges.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then later, David, King David, so this is about 1,000 BC, builds the temple on the threshing floor of Arunah. So that's right there on Mount Moriah. So this was not Jerusalem. There was no city there when Abraham took Isaac, and yet it's the very place where the temple and Moriah, the hill on which Jesus was crucified, he literally had him prophetically act out what he didn't make Abraham do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's what people are like, how could God be so cruel? He wasn't. He showed what he would do out of love for us. He provided. He provided. And not only that, then he comes along and delivers the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery in about 1400-1500 BC. And they get out of Egypt on what was called the Passover.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So the Passover was when God had basically warned Pharaoh again and again 10 times, let my people go. He kept upping the ante, like, look, I'm serious. I'm God. You're not God. Obey me. Let them go. And he wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't. And the final one was the firstborn will die unless you take the blood of a lamb and paint your doorpost with it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he said, and if that's the case, the angel of death will pass over your house. So all the Israelites painted this blood of a lamb on their doorposts, Passover. That was Passover, the first Passover. They celebrated Passover and this sacrificial system where every year they had to come to Jerusalem and bring a lamb to be killed in their stead for the sins of the previous year.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And all that happened for 1,500 years until that Friday of Passover, which was what we call Good Friday, when Jesus was crucified as the Lamb of God who would finally take away the sins of the world. So this is another 1,500-year prophetic fulfillment. And like I said, the Jewish people can't do that anymore because the temple's gone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And God specifically said, you can only make sacrifices in the temple.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, so, you know, when Muhammad came in the 600s AD, so 600 years after Jesus, and interestingly, Muhammad... Mecca was Medina. It was in the caravan routes. So he knew a lot of Jews and Christians and actually, you know, had read the Bible. He calls the people of the book in the Quran. But in the 600s, you know... I'm sorry, I totally lost your question.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, so the caliphates after Muhammad, they came and took places by force. So not free will, you became a Muslim by force. And they took Jerusalem and built a mosque on the most holy site of Judaism.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And it's not an us against them. I mean, like I said, God is for everyone. He wants everyone to know what he's done.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And, you know, that's what I report on in Imagine the God of Heaven. These Muslims who, when they clinically die, that's who they're meeting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They're not meeting Allah. They're not even claiming to meet Allah. Mm-hmm. No, and by the way, the word Allah just means God. So, but they come back knowing, Bibi in Tehran came back and found Jesus. Swedeek in Rwanda, Muslim, and again and again and again. So I say that because I think many times, you know, and maybe people watching are like, well, see, this is the problem with you guys, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You're right and they're wrong. This is what causes all the problems in the world. And that's kind of this, you know, the stereotype that's put up. And I think that can be true. That can be true. But that's not God. God is for everyone. He's for all of us. And I wasn't a believer and he wasn't a believer. Before we looked at the evidence, that's where the evidence points.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And what God is leading us to is really not to war against one another, but to really see that, no, we were all created to be his children. He wants us to love one another. He wants us to seek peace with one another. And one day that will happen, but it will only happen for those who do seek his ways and his will.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Because it was burned. If you look at it, you can see the burn marks. It was in a fire in Turin in the 1500s. Somewhere in there, yeah. And what happened is it got burned. Well, nuns took it and sewed patches of cloth on to piece it back together.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And other near-death experiencers who have said the same thing. So the CEO that I interview, Randy, sees the same thing. These lights like coming into the throne of God. And he knew they were prayers and the Lord sending angels in answer to the prayers to act. Yeah. Which I would have thought, I don't know, you know, like I'm still kind of a skeptic at heart. I hate to say it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It is pretty overwhelming. And so some of the evidence now, like when they studied it, they still cannot figure out what put... Mechanism. Because the image is a... It's like an x-ray kind of thing. Well, it is. It's just on the outside of it, but it's a... What do you call it in a film, in the old film, where you, it's a negative.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's a negative on the cloth. Yeah. And so you actually have to flip it, basically, make dark light and light dark. But they do not know what the mechanism is that burned the image on there. There's nothing we have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No, no. Yeah. And when they've done, now they've done even AI three-dimensional reconstruction because the data in the cloth is three-dimensional. It's three-dimensional information. In other words, it somehow came off an actual body to put three-dimensional spatial information in the cloth in some kind of way we don't know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's not dye, it's not just radiation, it's something else, and they don't know what it is. So here's a little funny thing, fascinating thing. Heidi, who I told you about, the Jewish girl who met Jesus in her near-death experience, we're friends. She texted me when she saw that three-dimensional image. That's him. Oh, wow. Now, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, but that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I think they found something. Because she said his nose was longer than I thought, and it was a little crooked.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Dr. John Campbell. I saw some stuff he did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
There is, yeah. And that stuff, that bothers me. Yeah, me too. I mean, even near-death experiences, I was telling you, I'm doing more research. I continue to do research. And I think some of these, I'm hearing them, I think it's AI.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I think they're just saying to AI, make up a near-death experience and have Jesus say this or that or the other, and we're just gonna make a lot of money off people who believe anything. And that's why I say, if there aren't names attached and it's not videotaped and it's just, I'm very skeptical of that stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Because it was the Passover when he was crucified, and Passover is always a full moon. Full moon. That's how they know it's time for Passover. It's not our calendar. It's a full moon. You can't have an eclipse of the sun during a full moon.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, and I, you know, and at first when I started hearing these, I was like, yeah, I don't know. That's kind of, you know, yeah. But there's so many incredible stories. But so many of them saying that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And there were other extra-biblical sources that also talked about the darkness.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You know, there is. There's so much. And I think... I think that's where, you know, if people are willing to really stay open-minded enough to really seek with an open mind, with an open heart, they'll find. But then again, that's not the point. At the end of the day, the point is, do you want a relationship with your creator?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's where I think it comes back to trust and realizing, and I'll tell you, Sean, you know, I just did a podcast called The Ecstatic Love of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I love that. The Ecstatic Love of God because of what they say. So I interviewed this guy. He was a lawyer in Australia. And multiple other people, too, trying to describe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So when he clinically dies and he's going to the presence of this light that he knew was God, the love, and he says, as I'm moving toward this, and he says, in the light, I see these arms outstretched toward me like this, like, come, welcome. And he said... As I'm moving there, and he had just come to faith in Jesus the week before. So he's moving toward this and he said,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then it doesn't go against the Bible. And in fact, it aligns with what... You know, God's told us a lot in there. Our prayers really do make a difference. They actually move the hand of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And suddenly, I start to be filled up. He said, when I met the light, when I touched the light, my soul touched the light, he said, it was like we became like one. And Jesus prayed for this, John 17. I pray that they may be one with us, Father, just as I am in you and you in me, may they be in us, that the world might believe you sent me. And he said, I read that later. I hadn't read the Bible.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He said it was like that. And he said, I was being filled up, filled up, filled up with this love. But our word love doesn't even do justice. He said it was ecstasy. It was, I mean, he used all these metaphors I can't even describe. But he said, I felt like I was going to explode. And I thought to myself, I'm going to explode. And he said, then it starts to subside. And he's like, wait a second.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I didn't say that. I thought that. Did he hear my thoughts? And then he says, no, don't stop. Give me all you got. And he hears a chuckle. He hears a chuckle and he thought it was funny. And then he starts to fill him up again, more and more and more. And he said, as he enters the site, he said, I knew who this was. He said, I didn't have to ask. I knew. Didn't have a name tag. This was Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He was the way, the truth, and the life. He said, I had not read that, but I knew it. It was self-evident to me. He was the way, and I knew what that meant. And he said, there's just never been a love. He said, take all the love you've ever experienced from a spouse, for a kid, from a grandparent, any love you've experienced, put it all together in one And you have to multiply it by a billion.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Wow. And that's consistently. And so I let you hear from all these different people. And the point is that God is the love we've always wanted. He is the relationship we were created for. And then all of our other relationships are made complete. They don't go away. Sure. They get better.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Not the psychics, but who their contact is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You know, I think sometimes, and I don't really like... when Christians just blast, just take out the machine gun and just rip it apart. I don't like it either. Yeah. Well... And look at you. You're the guy. No, so... Because I have, you know, I've been on shows with people like this, and many times they're very sincere, and they really are seeking.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I think many times maybe they're seeking and closer to finding God than others who are maybe, you know, they're just playing a Christian game. So it's not like they're all bad. We're not saying that. But I think there's a reality to the spiritual world and it's not all good. There is deception. And I think that's why, in, like you said, in Deuteronomy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So what God was warning, so the nations around Israel were worshiping these gods and many times, you know, and leading them to child sacrifice and things like that, like as a, this is what God wants. And trying to gain control, power, knowledge of the future. Is this like Moloch and some of these other? I can't remember all the names.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But through mediums or through psychics, and God warned them that don't try to contact the dead because, in fact, you're probably communicating with the demonic. And I'll tell you, I interviewed a woman in Brazil And she was a pastor with her husband, but she lost her 16-year-old son in an accident. And she was just devastated and just couldn't get over it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Went into a depression, just couldn't grieve and let it go. And she ends up getting... She ends up having an overdose of medications that she was taking, not intentionally, but she did. And she dies, and she has a near-death experience. And in her experience, she's there with Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And Jesus shows her, again, he sometimes gives parables and metaphors, and he shows her a garden and says, this is the garden I've found. I've created you to work in. And then she sees across like a divide, like a chasm. And there walking across there is her son. And Jesus said to her, and she wants to go to him. And he said, it's not your time yet. I still have you on earth for a purpose.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's your garden. He has accomplished his, he came into my gates with joy, right? And basically, you're saying, you've got to keep going on your life. He's fine. Look, I'm letting you see. But she comes back, and she still can't let it go. And she still is like, almost like idolizing her son and wanting him to be back. And one day, she told me, and again, she's telling me in Portuguese.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
This is through a translator, my translator there. You don't speak Portuguese? I don't. I'm learning Spanish. It's close. She said, my son burst into the house and flops down the couch just like he did every day after school. And she was blown away. This is what she wanted. And she even walks over and she starts to rub his head just like she used to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the angel that was with her in her near-death experience appears. and says to her, you know that's not your son. And she said, there was this terrible tension in me because I so wanted it to be true. I so wanted it to be my son. And she struggled, and finally she said, I know. Wow. And as soon as she said that, her son is a demonic creature, not her son. And then both are gone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Why did he have to come and go through that to save us? God says to him, Abraham, I want you to take your son, your only son, who you love, take him to a mountain I will show you and there I want you to sacrifice him. That was the very place on which Jesus would walk up the hill with his own wood. And by the way, Isaac had to carry the wood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I think that's a, you know, I think unfortunately, that's what we've got to pay attention to. You know, I have many near-death experience examples of Steve Kong, who was a Buddhist, who this Buddha figure appears to him as he did a death bowl. You know what that is? It's like a... smoking a bowl of marijuana but laced with PCP and meth and crack, all kinds of stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And about day 8, 9, 10 of not sleeping after doing this, the same Buddha figure who used to appear to him in the temple in Korea, uh appears to him and and starts to convince him that uh it would be best if he went ahead and took his life and if he does he'll give him he'll get 50 000 years less of hell and for some reason he decides that's a great idea
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he slits himself with a butcher knife across his stomach. His mother sees it, calls the police. The police come. He also cuts his throat. And he dies, and he is descending. He knows he's going to hell, and he realizes... This nice Buddha figure is not Buddha at all. This old man that he thought was a Buddha figure was not at all. He was demonic. And he realizes that on the other side.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he actually ends up getting rescued by Jesus. Wow. Who tells him, no more drugs, no more Buddhism, and I love you. Wow. And he's a pastor today.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Wow. So not everything that appears good is always good. You remember Howard Storm, who had the near-death experience, the atheist college professor? These really nice people in the hallway. He doesn't even know he's dead. And they're dressed like the hospital staff. And they're like, Howard, come with us. He's like, I need surgery. Oh, we know all about you. Come, come with us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They seem real nice. Yeah. And like I like to point out, if Howard's near-death experience had ended right there, he would have had a very different interpretation. Right. But he followed them, and they lead him into an outer darkness, just like Jesus talked about, where they just, you know, worst prison scene you can imagine, until he crawls out to Jesus to save him. And he does. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he leaves his tenured professorship and becomes a Christian pastor as well. In fact, do you know I know... Howard, Kyle, Paul, Yen. This is another Buddhist that Jesus saved. Who's the other one I just said? Five or six of them who had hellish near-death experiences and cried out to God and Jesus saved them, and they're all Christian pastors or missionaries today. Wow, that's awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You can't make this stuff up. How do you explain that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Is that just intuitive in him? No, the guardian told him. Oh, he told him. I was your guardian. And it is fascinating because the guardian said he, I mean, this is kind of bizarre. So let me say this. I study these and I study the commonalities. And I usually don't. I usually don't say like, okay, that's, I believe that if it's just a one-off, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, and here's the thing. Again, I don't think necessarily people know. And I think that's part of the problem is that... I don't think they're necessarily evil, wicked people. They many times have good intentions and good motives. And again, the best deception is 80, 90% true. Yeah. And so I think, like Lee was saying, I think sometimes you can have things that are helpful, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But are they, in fact, helpful for a reason to get people to follow after them, not after God?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I bet. When, you know, like Randy, the CEO I interviewed, when he, when the six... embolisms traveled up his leg and pulmonary embolism. His heart stops, body shuts down. He's rising up and he looks out over the surface of the earth, but there was something else going on. Again, you're moving into another dimensionality, I believe. But he sees a battle going on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he believes it was a battle for his soul because he was really struggling with God. He'd gone through a lot of stuff and was really struggling with God. Even though he's a believer, he was struggling. But he sees this battle going on. And Jesus talked about that. I mean, he said, the ruler of this world is coming. This is before his crucifixion.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
the ruler of this world, I thought he was the king of kings, the Messiah. What about God, the Father, you know? Well, God has given the demonic angelic host rule for a time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And again, I think it's part of God's plan. This is a very diminutive experience. This is like a one one-thousandth of the goodness to come or the horrors to come. And it's a time of living, of knowing good and evil and choosing with the opportunity for a second chance. Again, when time is not linear, there's no such thing as a second chance. There's no second. It's eternity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And so I think that's what Easter was all about. It's grace. It's God giving us chance after chance after chance of forgiveness to get things right, to learn and to grow and to become more and more of what He created us to be.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I look for three or four and it's got a line with scripture or, you know, I kind of just like put it on the shelf. So this is a little bit of one of those on the shelf things. But this guardian told him that he used to, you know, he would fly with him. I mean, Jim was a commercial airline pilot, so he's flown all over the world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I think there, yeah, there's some pretty strong- Which I have friends who, you know, I'm just, I'm thinking through the lens of, and I, so again, if we didn't tell you all this reason to believe that God was actually inspiring the writing of the scriptures to know his will and understand- But I have friends who both had a near-death experience and now are mediums.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And, you know, I've said to her the same thing. Yeah. But just hearing that fresh, I'm like, dang. I know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. What I wanted to say is I would hear that and some people may be saying, oh, so you're saying they're just cursed and damned and there's no hope for them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Exactly. And that's not what he's saying.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I mean, the thief on the cross. It was last minute. All he said was, remember me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I mean, he didn't... So is... And so this doesn't mean keep practicing it, but is that the unforgivable sin? No, it's not. David committed... King David committed adultery, murdered her husband, had her husband killed to cover up his sin, and somehow he still was forgiven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So... You know, God paid an enormous price for our justice, and that's what we don't realize. So my point is, Lee is not saying all psychics are those who, because here's, that they're all going to hell. He's not saying that. It's a matter, again, of being right with God by turning back to him and saying, okay, God, you get to be God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. But he gives us these things so that we will learn and grow and not be deceived and not be led astray. And so I think that's what the point of that is. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So people who have near-death experiences often come back and find that there are spirits wanting to channel through them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the veil seems thinner when they come back. And I've had some that I've interviewed who knew, like, I'm not letting that happen. I'm not going to be your channel. And others who have thought, hell, I guess that's why I had this, and that's what I'm supposed to do, and they go down that road.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the Guardian named himself Sky Song because Jim used to sing to himself to keep himself awake. And the Guardian named himself Sky Song of all those flights. Wow. This is when Jim was not a believer at all. Wow. But it doesn't mean God doesn't care about us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. And, you know, when we quote Scripture and people, you know, who don't know it hear that, they're like, what? 2,000-year-old book that, you know, out of touch with today. But what we've been trying to show, and if you've gotten all of this, is that, no, God has been putting very tangible evidence throughout history that he was, in fact, doing this very intentionally.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's what Jesus said. He said, you know, God by his spirit was speaking through the prophets and I am the fulfillment of it. And so that's why we both came to the conclusion like, okay, that needs to be the plumb line by which we judge all the rest. In other words, I'm not going to just go listen to whatever a near-death experiencer says and believe it. They sometimes contradict. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
but the commonality of what they say. They contradict in their interpretations, you know, but the commonality of what they're reporting is what I'm showing it aligns with what God's been revealing throughout history.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's just the start. And I mean, what people like Heidi, I was telling you about, what she said is like, he's so enjoyable. She was a 16-year-old. Yeah. And she said, we had more fun than I've ever had in my life. Now, you don't think of God or Jesus as being described that way. But that's what he is both the most powerful, majestic,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
only worthy of our worship, but also so personable, knows us so well, that he would come and live among us. And the disciples felt so close to him. Like I said, John, his youngest disciple, called himself the one Jesus loved. Because that's how he felt. Like I was the only one. You know what's fascinating? I've had four, in fact, they're on my podcast, so you can hear them talk about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Four different near-death experiencers who said, Jim Woodford, the agnostic to the very end, until his head hit the steering wheel, said in Jesus' presence, he said, you know, I knew it couldn't be true, but I felt like I was his special child, like I was the only one he loved. Yeah. And again and again and again, they say that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It doesn't mean he's not trying to get our attention. Yeah. And... Yeah, Jim said, my guardian had a rough go for many years. He was not succeeding.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Like his love for me was so unique that it was like he loved only me of the billions. And he said, but then I would, Dean Braxton said, but then I would think about my wife and I realized, oh, he loves her like that too. And I think about someone else like, oh, he loves...
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
we ought to be weeping in light of what he did for us and still to this day when i interview i mean the ceo you know he he was a medical executive fastest growing pharmaceutical company then started a biotech firm this commercial airline pilot captain dale black and
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
When they talk about looking into the eyes of Jesus, they say, I could get lost in his eyes forever because it was like he saw into me everything, every good, every dark thing, but loved me, accepted me. He's my best friend and my father and everything. and they can't hold it together. Every time. I do, I'll ask them. So, well, tell me about when you were with them and these are brilliant guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I mean, these are like very smart people, double PhDs and stuff. They've been in the world, they've lived in the world and yet they say, What it felt like was so wonderful. It overwhelms my emotions. When I think about it, I'm there and it overwhelms me. So that's the point of Easter. That's the point of the resurrection. That's the Jesus we can know. It's not just for forgiveness of our sins.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's to realize that God entered into our very suffering. And though we still have to go through it, He's with us. He's always with us. Like he told Randy, the CEO, he showed Randy when he was still an agnostic. And Randy said in his life review, he said, you mean you were there when I went through that and that? And even when I hated you? And he was at Northwestern and he tried to disprove God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he said, Jesus said, I was always there, just waiting for you to turn to me. Wow. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, I don't know for sure, but I think they can take different forms. i think we see that in scripture yeah as well right um i mean sometimes you know, angels come and they look like people in the scriptures even. I mean, that was the case with Abraham. When the angel of God, which is in the Old Testament, the kind of human manifestation of God, I think it was the pre-incarnate Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
We'll talk about it later. We can debate that later. Yeah. I think it was because he allows worship and no other angel allows worship. So, think about Gideon. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Gideon worships him on the floor of Arunah. So, anyway, that's a side.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So this is a funny thing. Yeah. You never knew about all my near-death experience research. So we worked together in the 90s. That's true. But I didn't tell anybody either. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No, they're going to think I'm weird. I will not. I mean, when I went to write Imagine Heaven in 2015, right before I hit send, I said, well, Lord, this is probably the end of my ministry, but you told me to do it, so here goes. And I heard in my mind, I've opened a door in heaven no one can close. Wow. Yeah. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So we'll start with you. Well, so it's interesting. Near-death experiences commonly report that the communication of heaven can be verbal. Like... with his angel in your vivid dream, but- Telepathic. Well, so a lot of people use the word telepathic, but many say, no, it's more than that. It's not just thoughts. It's thoughts, it's feelings, it's every associated thought. It's pure, perfect.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
There's no way to misunderstand. Now, I believe that's how God communicates to us today. Thoughts. It's thoughts, but it's, you could call it intuition, but it's different than that. It's more than that. And you have to learn it. You know, Jesus- God instinct. Well, Jesus often said, whoever has ears to hear, let them hear what the Spirit is saying. Well, we all have these. So what do you mean?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I can relate. I know. I was trying to get you to talk me out of it last time I was on the show, and you didn't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, I think he meant you have to develop a spiritual willingness to hear what the Holy Spirit is trying to communicate. And it is thought to thought. One of the things I used to say to people in our church is like, we always want God to speak in an audible voice, right? Like, just tell me. But that's actually less direct communication.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Right now, I'm trying to get all my thoughts that are in my brain into your brain or your brain, whoever's listening to this. But I have to use words. I can only get so many words out in so much time. You're thinking other thoughts a lot faster than you can hear my words. There's all kind of other noise and distractions. So this is a very inefficient form of communication.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What would be more direct is if I could just put all the things I'm thinking in your mind right now. And you could still go like, well, that's a stupid thought and push it aside, right? Or you could consider it. And I can't do that, but God can. So I think those times when, especially when it's repetitive, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I remember when I was a brand new believer, what helped me start to understand this is I was praying one day, and I was praying for friends and other things, I was praying, and I had this thought, call Allison. Allison's my younger sister. And I was like, I'm not gonna call Allison, and I kept praying. Again, and it wasn't just a thought.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It was like a thought and a feeling like I'm supposed to call Allison. And I was like, Allison's at school. She's not going to answer the phone. Yeah, I'm not going to call Allison. Third time, call Allison. And the third time, because I think I was praying, I was like, God, am I supposed to call Allison? Like... This just feels like my stupid thought.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I thought, well, okay, look, it's not gonna cost me anything. I'll just do it. I call her. She'd skipped school. She was severely depressed. She'd been bullied and she was home. And I was able to help her. It was her big brother. And so when I hung up the phone, I was like, oh my gosh, I think I might've heard the voice of God. Now I'll tell you, Sean,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I have journaled my journey of faith for the last 35, 40 years. Those happen all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. And it's not just... Yeah. So, fascinatingly, I just interviewed a helicopter pilot. He's a medic. And he's going 140 miles an hour after... He flies life flight. A bird went 140 miles an hour, threw his windshield right, hit his car.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's like a baseball at 140 miles an hour. Boom. He's dead. Like, he's out. And he suddenly finds himself outside the helicopter, like, just floating there. And he sees his body in there, slumped over, his partner, you know, flying. And it's a cold night. It's 20 degrees outside, and yet he feels warm. Anyways, pretty consistent near-death experience.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He then finds himself moving toward the light of God. He sees the outline of what he thought was Jesus. He is a follower of Jesus. And the Lord said to him, welcome, faithful servant. And here's just this ordinary guy, very ordinary, medic, just doing his job and all that, and he was ready to die. And here's the fascinating thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The Lord showed him in his life review several times, and he said, that was me testing you. So this one time he was talking about was it was a guy who was walking down the street in the rain and he drove by him and he had the thought, go pick him up. And he's like, I'm not going to pick him up. It's raining. And then another one, same thing, thought, feeling, go pick him up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Third time, louder, go pick him up. And so Jeff was like, all right. All right, I'll do it. And he goes back and he picks him up and takes him to his... Where do you want to go? I don't know. Drop me off at the... It's just like a normal... I wouldn't think anything. But Jesus said, that was me. Testing. Wow. So I've had those, I've had those.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I remember one time I'm doing a leadership meeting at our church and I'm late and I'm driving down the street and I see these two teenage girls in a broken down car on the side of the street and they're walking around. I could tell they're trying to fix a tire and I drive by because I'm late, right? And I hear again, you should go back and get them. And I'm like, That's a dumb thought.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I don't have time. I'm going to be late. I got 100 people waiting for me. Second, turn around. Go back. I'm like, so now I'm like, Lord, is this you? Because I've done this before. And it's usually three. It's usually three. And I'm like, I can't. I'm going to be late. And the third, it was like, what do you think you're trying to teach these people to do? Go back. And I obeyed. I went back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I turn around. I go back. I help them. Okay, fast forward. So I'm late to my meeting. I just apologized and explained. Two years later, maybe it was three, I meet this African-American woman in our church who's now a leader of our sexual abuse healing ministry. And she tells me, Yeah, you know how I got here? My daughters came home one day. I'm a single mom.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
She had been through all that, of course, but she was now a psychologist and was helping others. Her daughters came home one day and told her about the pastor guy down the street who helped them change the tire. And she's like, okay, that church I might be willing to try. Interesting. They all came to faith. Her daughter now works for World Vision, helping kids around the world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And she was a leader in our ministry for years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, because you can get it wrong in your intuition if you don't know the will of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And so interesting tagging onto that, because people will say, and like I said, I'm a skeptic, so I think that way. Like, well, what about all those other people? Doesn't he care about them? And I had an interesting thing. I think he's speaking to us all the time, but we have to develop that quiet willingness to hear, to listen. So my own family. So, you know...
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I got all interested in this near-death experience stuff when my dad was dying of cancer, right, as I shared with you. And that actually led me to start reading the Bible, and that's how I came to faith in Christ. But during that time, so my dad was a smoker and a drinker, and so he did not want to get a physical. Because he didn't want the bad news.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So he goes finally for a physical after about five or six years. And the night after they gave my dad the results, my mom's good friend wakes up having had a very vivid dream that kind of like your angel dream. And vivid dreams are very different than just a normal dream. I've had two or three of them and they're very different. very vivid dream that someone in our family was horribly sick.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
There was something terribly wrong. And she calls my mom and tells her, and my mom is like, well, you know, the kids are fine and now everybody's okay. And, you know, John was my dad's name, just had a physical and everything came back great. Well, they told my dad they found a scar on his lungs, but they thought it was just a scar from pneumonia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But it turns out that was actually the beginning of cancer and they missed it. And two years later, when they found it, it was too late. So I've always wondered, was the Lord trying to, you know, it does say in the Old Testament that God speaks in various ways. You know, in thoughts or impressions, in dreams, through his word, through his prophets, and through Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So I've always wondered about that. Like, what if we had been more attuned? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And so I, you know, anytime those kinds of things happen, I don't freak out about them and I don't, but I'm always like, Lord, is there something I need to know here? Is there something I need to pay attention to?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. You do. And you have to be seeking. You have to, you know. And that's why I think, you know, I think daily making time and space to read God's Word, meditate on what is true, what is His will, and pray. You know, and prayer is not like some formal ritualistic thing. It's just talking. You know, it's just talking things over with God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the more you get used to just doing that throughout the day, then I find the more in tune you are to those promptings.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I always tell people, Don't think every thought is your own. It's not. How to succeed full above all things, the Bible says. I've had, you know, gosh, I remember. I've got many of these, but I remember one guy who, when I was a pastor, was telling me, you know, God's been telling me I've got to follow love.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And what he was basically doing was hooking up with a younger, prettier woman because his wife had had a child who was severely disabled. And it was really hard. And he was going to abandon them and his first marriage because this was a lot prettier and easier and more fun. And God was telling him. I guarantee you God was not telling them that. Yeah. And how do I know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, because... It violates scripture. God wants us to be faithful. You know, he says, never will I leave you or forsake you. And marriage is a mirror of that. You know, Jesus said God's the one who brings two together as one, and they're meant to mirror the oneness he wants to have with us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You do? Yeah, I read and studied. But I'm not an expert on it, so I'm out of my lane talking about it. But I think what they're referring to is that God is a God of order. He's created... laws of nature, I think spiritual laws as well. And yes, what I have heard is that, you know, there is, it's like the military. There's certain levels of authority and hierarchy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I mean, Paul references that in Ephesians 5, 6, in Ephesians 6. There's powers, principalities, the dark forces of evil in the world. And he's talking about... A hierarchy. There's a hierarchy. There is an organization to both the angel and the demonic. And so I think what they're talking about is that, for instance...
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
If we choose to give ourselves over, let's say you like wine or alcohol, whatever, but you choose to keep giving yourself over to it again and again and again. A vice. Yeah, anything. It can be a good thing, but it can then gain control over you, mastery over you. And I think that is maybe what that legal thing is talking about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Because if you think about how evil works in the world, I don't think evil really has much power except in the power of the lie. So I've used the example, I've counseled like anorexic women in our church before, right? But guys have their own thing. But I remember this woman who literally was starving herself to death thinking that she was horribly overweight and terribly ugly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
None of it was true. But she had believed a lie, and that lie was now controlling her to actually slowly kill herself. Well, same thing with suicidal ideation. It's a lie. There's no other way out. It's hopeless. This is going to end the pain and the despair. Well, near-death experiencers consistently say, no, it doesn't. Yeah, it's just a doorway.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's just a step into another life, but you take yourself with you and all the baggage. You got to work it out here. And so, yeah, so I think... I think that's probably what they're talking about. That we, you know, there are laws of nature, but there are spiritual laws as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And she's basing that on scripture.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Okay, okay. Yeah, and I would say, and even though I started a church and led the church, A small group, I think, is the best. And that's, you know, I didn't come to faith through the church. I actually came to faith through a small group where I could ask my questions and wrestle, and we were doing that. And what I like to say is start with the most clear and then work back from there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So the Bible... You know, I think the reason it's so daunting is there's no other book like it. It's not a book. It's a library of books. It's 66 books, you know, like we talked about the first time, written over 1,500 years in three different languages by 40 different authors and yet consistent theme about God's story throughout human history, the God of all nations, right? So...
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The thing about it, though, is throughout it consistently tells of a time that God would intersect human history in a form we could understand. God is far beyond what Jesus revealed, but all of the character, the full representation of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
in human form and so starting with the gospels with jesus life and teachings the four eyewitnesses that report on it because i think jesus even said i have not come to do away with the law and the prophets which is all the old testament so i've come to fulfill them
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Which I think means that all of that, the law and the prophets and the history of the Old Testament and humanity and all that comes to fulfillment in Jesus. And then he becomes, and his teaching becomes the lens to look back and understand and interpret the less clear. So for instance, he was asked, how do you sum up the whole Old Testament? What's most important? Right? This is Matthew 22.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he says, the first and most important command is to love God with all you've got. And, you know, so he's quoting Deuteronomy 6, 4, the Shema, the creed of Judaism. Love God. You know, there's only one God. The second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. That's in Leviticus. So he's quoting the Torah, the Old Testament. And then he says...
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
do these and you fulfill all the commands of Scripture. Which basically means all the rest of the commands of Scripture are commentary on what love actually looks like. Okay, okay. So I agree with Lee, though. There are great tools out there now. I mean... I read the Bible on my phone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
There's an app, the YouVersion Bible, and you can get a... I use the New Living Translation because it's a consistent translation of the original Greek into English that we can understand and does a really good job, or the New International Version, those two translations. And then there are things like... Right now, I'm doing the Bible Recap. It's really good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It takes you through the Bible, but every day this woman, Tara Lee Cobble, comes on and gives a little seven-minute, like, here's what you just read, and here's how to make sense of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I know. I was going to say, we started down the rabbit hole.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Jesus would walk up with the wood on which he would be sacrificed and the Lord would provide. Wow. It's all over.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, and so this is what actually convinced me when I was a skeptic. And learning this, so as you know, My father's dying of cancer. I read this first research on near-death experiences. I'd always said, well, Jesus is probably a legend. God, who can know? There's no evidence. And then I read this and I'm like, oh my gosh, maybe this is evidence.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And because so many were talking about in their near-death experience this God of light, who is love, and even Jesus, I was like, well, maybe I should be more open to reading the Bible. So I start reading the Bible. I go to a small group, and I'm asking my questions and wrestling. And here's what I learned that actually—it wasn't near-death experiences that led me to faith. It was this. Mm-hmm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Everything Lee just explained is history. Historians that are not believers, they will not deny these things. These are facts, okay? But all that God told in advance. Jesus was a man with an address in history. I think you said that, didn't you? Quoting my good friend. But the who, the where, the how, the why, the what, the why, all of that God foretold so that we would know this is real.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
This is not myth. So, for instance... in Isaiah, in the book of Isaiah. And remember, Isaiah, we found a complete copy of the book of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948, complete copy that you can read online if you can read the Hebrew, but you can read a translation. It reads exactly like our modern-day Bible.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
My God, trying to get your attention about something.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. all these prophecies. Now we have... What prophecies? I'm going to tell you. But we have a surviving copy of the whole scroll of Isaiah that carbon dates to 150 to 300 years before Jesus. So this is a copy of Isaiah's original written in 780 BC, but we have it in a museum. It tours the United States. You can go read it online, exactly what it says. And here's what it says.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
that where that that um isaiah 9 that to galilee a light has come for a child is born a son is given and he will be called mighty god everlasting father uh prince of peace So this is Judaism. So you don't call any human God. There's only one God, and he's the eternal Yahweh, the I am, the eternal self-existent one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And yet here in Judaism in about 780 BC, and even before that with Moses, is this foretelling of this time that God is going to enter into humanity. and reveal himself in the form of a son, a child, and come to Galilee. Okay, so the whole world, this is a very specific place, right? Specific identification of a human. He's gonna come from the lineage of David.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
If you've ever read the Bible, you always wonder, why do they put all these stupid genealogies in there? Because it's relating back, it's showing that this is in fact what happened, okay? So, that's the who, a little bit of the where.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Actually, in Micah 5.2, it also says that Bethlehem is going to, so though it's the least of the villages, from you will come a ruler over Israel whose days are from eternity, okay? Okay, so who comes from days of eternity, right? So he's gonna come from Bethlehem and Galilee. So that's the where. Then you have the when. So in the book of Daniel, In Daniel chapter 9, Daniel is praying.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They're in captivity in Babylon, the Jewish people. Okay, so this is in like the 500s, 400s BC. Daniel's praying, what's going to happen to us? And an angel, Gabriel, comes to him and says, I've come to tell you what's going to happen to the Jewish people. And he's saying, till all human history is fulfilled, okay?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he says, from the decree of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, okay, Jerusalem had been wiped out by the Babylonians. This is real history. From the decree of the rebuilding of Jerusalem until Meshach, which is what we translate Messiah, until the anointed one, the Messiah comes, and then he gives a timeline. and literally a timeline. Like he says, basically they're gonna be seven plus 42 sevens.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I think there's a good reason to believe they're sevens of years. So 49 times seven years, 483 years from the starting point of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem. Now, interestingly, in Ezra 7, We have that decree. It was Artaxerxes, who's a Persian king. And the decree, though the Bible's written the Old Testament in Hebrew, this decree is written in Aramaic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So that's the language of the Persians. So it's literally the decree just put into the text of Ezra. And it was in the seventh year of Artaxerxes. Encyclopedia Britannica tells us when Artaxerxes ruled. It started in 465. So, literally, we know from 457, go 483 years, and Messiah's going to come. Well, that's 27 AD. It's the when.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And by the way, even if you don't do the church math and don't follow that, the angel goes on and says to Daniel, this is all in Daniel 9, he says, "...the Messiah will come and be killed..." and then the ruler will come who will destroy the city and the temple." Okay, so the city of Jerusalem and the temple. Okay, so think about this. That happened too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
70 AD, the Roman general Titus wipes out the city, destroys a temple, and the angel says the Messiah will be killed before that happens. So this is real history.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No. And then in Isaiah 53, now remember all this, we have a copy predating Jesus. So it wasn't doctored up after the fact. That's what I initially said as a skeptic, like, oh, you know, Jesus came and then they just redacted the text. No. Proof, no. In Isaiah 53, it says, and actually in 52, it paints a picture. It says that he was so, they're talking about the suffering servant.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's what he's called. It says what we don't realize is Jesus is going to come and rule, but first he had to come and suffer. And that was foretold. And it said, he will be so marred and disfigured, like no human before him, he was barely recognizable, I think is the way it says. And then it says, to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Okay, so the idea is like, through Jesus, we're not seeing all of the infinite creator God who can't be contained in time and space. It's like his arm reaching into our reality. and it said he grew up before him so he grew up before god the eternal father um He was despised and rejected by mankind. He was pierced for our transgressions. This is before crucifixion was ever implemented. Even known.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, and it says why. So it says what he will do. And it says, by his wounds we were healed, and for our iniquities... He took on our punishment because, and this is Isaiah 53, all of us like sheep have wandered off, we've gone astray, but God laid on him the sins of us all.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, before we go there, I want to tie to what Lee was just saying, because even Jesus on the cross, these are all real things, and he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Well, that harkens back to- Who cried that out?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. He says, he says, They pierced my hands and my feet. They circle me like a pack of dogs. They divide my garments among them. The soldiers cast lots to see who would get his cloak. My mouth is dried up like a pot's herd. He was thirsty. Which is a product of hypovolemic shock. My heart has turned to wax within me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, and so here David is foretelling what, from the Messiah's viewpoint, what crucifixion was going to be like. And his heart turns to wax. His bones are all out of joint. He's pierced through his hands and his feet. His heart turns to wax.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They were trying to send a message, don't screw with Rome. And that's why they put them up publicly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. Well, and so what Lee was saying that Dr. Methrel said about the blood and the water. So think about this. A thousand years before Jesus' crucifixion, it says, my heart has turned to wax within me. So what the eyewitnesses of Jesus' crucifixion say is that he was hung between two thieves. And it was on the Passover, which is also significant. Yes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And they came and broke the legs of the two thieves again so they can't push up and get air.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Because they wanted them dead before the Passover evening began. And so the Romans said, okay, whatever. And they did. They broke their legs, but they didn't break Jesus' legs, which was another thing. Not a bone in his body was broken. Right. Instead, the Roman guy makes sure he's dead by stabbing him in the side.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And like Lee said, John reports, before the medical knowledge of this would be, he didn't know. He didn't know the implications of what he was saying. He said blood and water came out. Okay, so what that indicates and what Lee found interviewing Dr. Metherell is when you have a heart attack, the pericardial fluid builds up. It's this clear fluid around the heart, and that's what happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Jesus died of a heart attack. Just like Psalm 22 says, my heart has turned to wax within me. And so I believe, and I don't know what you think about this, but I believe that When Jesus cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he's referring to that psalm. At that moment, he experienced all of the sins and hurt and hatred and woundedness of every human for all history. He felt it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And his heart couldn't take it. His human heart couldn't take it. So he didn't actually die. He died on the cross. Yeah. But he died from taking on all our sins and paying for them. And he, of course, was the sinless sacrifice. So this is another wild thing is the whole sacrificial system of Judaism foretold 1,500 years. Right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And they had to sacrifice these lambs every year to pay for and cover their sins for the year before so that their faith in God, that he is going to pay ultimately, all right? So this whole sacrificial system happened in the temple. It could only happen in the temple, according to Moses.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the last Passover, okay, so Jesus is crucified on the Passover, which is when all this would take place, the sacrificial yearly thing. So he dies on the Passover. And then, like we've said, 40 years later, the temple is destroyed, so no more sacrifices can happen. Right. So it's a conundrum for Jewish people. Where does... Exactly. And John... Where are your sins paid for?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, it was paid for once and for all.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Now, here's what's fascinating is, so, you know, I started opening up to God and faith by reading about near-death experiences because of the experiences they were having. But it was that that led me to faith. And then I start studying the Bible, but I'm also curious about these near-death experiences. I'm trying to figure out, how does this fit together?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's how I, you know, ended up writing the books I did. But interestingly, Some of the people that I've interviewed all around the world that have had near-death experiences, I think just confirmed the resurrection. Which, by the way, was also in Isaiah 53. After he pays for their sins, he will see the light of life and be satisfied. Even resurrection is right there foretold.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So I interviewed this one guy, Swadeek. He was a Muslim imam in Rwanda. You can see him on my podcast. You can hear him talking about it. Okay, so he's not a believer in Jesus. He was actually an apologist for Islam. So he would fight in the streets against Christians, why they were wrong. Amazing story. His mom was a Hutu. His dad was a Tutsi. Oh, wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
During the genocide, ripped their family apart. He ended up a street kid at age eight. Wow. Doing cocaine, dealing cocaine. And then there's this whole experience where he has a mental breakdown. Yeah. And these people from the Anglican church pray for him and he's healed. It was like a Nebuchadnezzar kind of like. And he's healed and he didn't know what to do with that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then like a year and a half later, he gets blood cancer and it's fourth stage blood cancer. And so they put him on palliative care. He's gonna die. And his mom actually worshiped the African goddess, Beko. His dad was a sheik, so an imam in the Muslim faith. And he had become an imam. Nothing the Muslims do could heal him. Nothing Beko could do could heal him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
His mom, out of desperation, knowing that he had been healed after they prayed, in Jesus' name, goes to the Anglican church. and says, will you ask Jesus, your God, to heal him? And they said, yes, we will, but you need to pray to him too. Swedeek dies, and he is in this hellish place. He called it, he said to me it was like a slaughterhouse. That's the way he described it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And these three human-like but very distorted creatures people, creatures come in, one with an ax, one with a sith and a bucket, and they're about to put the ax through his chest. It's like a torture. And he says, into this room steps this man of light in a robe with a beard, and he holds out his hands, and in his wrists are holes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the light coming out of them and light coming out of him into me, Swadeek said, like looking right through every part of me. And he said, and I felt a peace and a warmth because he was terrified and suddenly he's at peace. And he said, I knew who this was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he knew because when the Passion of the Christ had come to Kirigali, Rwanda, he'd been given three free movie tickets, and that was one of them. And even though he didn't want to see something about Jesus, he wanted his full money's worth, so he went. And Jesus says to him, he never said, I'm Jesus. But I mean, he's... He knows. He said, I died for mankind. You are among those I died for.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Never deny it again and tell everyone. And Swadeek sits up and a sheet falls off his face. And suddenly there are all these people screaming and running. And he's like, what's going on? And he had died that evening. It was the next morning and it was his burial. He looks down to the right and there's a grave dug. Wow. Wow. And he goes, Jesus is here. Jesus saved me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Jesus brought me back from hell. And half, I mean, half the Muslims are just freaked out and half of them came to faith that day. But here's the thing. He is now an Anglican pastor and has had seven attempts on his life, including by his father. Wow. Because you can't become a Christian out of Islam. So what motivates him to keep doing that? And he's still going at it today.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He's a great young guy. Wow. But my point is he's not the only one who has seen the risen Jesus and the whole – he keeps the scars – He keeps the holes because they are the sign of his love. They're the reminder of the price he would pay for every one of us. Wow. That's awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I'll tell you, you know, in the new book, In Imagine the God of Heaven, one of my favorite stories, I got to know him well, is a man named Santosh Akarchi. He's a Hindu. He grew up in India. Manufacturing engineer, very smart guy. He has his gallstones erupt into his pancreas. He's in the hospital for a week. He's got a 200 beat per minute heart rate. They can't get it down in order to operate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He hears code blue, code blue, his heart stop. And he, like most near-death experiences, he said to me this, he said, I thought when you die, it's just nothing, or maybe I'd come back as another life form. But he said, that's not what happened. He said, I saw my body down below and this divine light comes, brighter than the sun, but not hard to look at.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he said, I fell in love with this light because I knew this light was for me and was there to protect me. And this god of light takes him and... similar through journey to this place. And he finds himself standing up high, looking out over what he described to me as a giant compound. Now, if you've ever been to India, there are gated communities everywhere.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
There are gates with high walls, and they call them compounds. But what he was describing was the city. Thousands of miles, he said, square-shaped, And he's looking in and he's describing these beautiful grounds and other buildings of otherworldly building material. That's the way he described it. He was a manufacturing engineer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Which is what I love is these people are still themselves fully, even on the other side. And he's describing this place and he longs to go in. And he said, this is the longing of every human heart to live there in this place. And he was looking for a way in and he said, I counted, there were 12 gates.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He said, I counted all the way around because your eyesight there is like telescopic, which I used to think, no, that's not biblical. Then I read Revelation 21, John is taken in the spirit to a very high mountain. and yet he reads the names on the foundation stones of the city. How, right? So, Santosh says all these same things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He's describing the holy city of God just like John does in Revelation 21. He's a Hindu. He's never read the Bible. He's only read the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita and the Hindu scriptures. Then he's like, where am I? And he realizes I'm up on a very high platform looking, and he looks down to his left, and he said, what I saw terrifies me even to say it to this day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He said, because what I saw was an abyss of darkness, and at the end of it, a lake of fire that I would fall into if I fell. And I knew if I go there, it's hopeless. There's no way out. And it's like he got a vision of hell. And he doesn't want to go there, and he wants to go in the city, but he can't. He sees angels guarding the gates. He's like, how do I get in?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then he turns, and there on the platform, he sees this. He said, I knew this was the Almighty on this giant throne, but he's in the form of a man. And he looks at him. Now, he later said, I believe that was the risen Jesus. He didn't know that at the time. He said, because I looked up into his eyes and his eyes were like lightning.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, that's what John describes in Revelation 21 of the risen Jesus. He said his eyes were like lightning and his feet gold or like bronze glowing metal. Santosh said the same thing. And he... Instantly, as soon as he looks in his eyes, his whole life flashes before him. And this is a life review, which we talked about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's common in near-death experiences because time doesn't work the same way on the other side. And so he re-experiences life and realizes because of his sin, I deserve hell. I deserve that separation from God. And he falls to his knees and says, forgive me. Forgive me, God. Forgive me. Forgive me. And he expected that the Lord was gonna send him there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he said, but when he spoke to me, he said, Santosh, I'm gonna send you back. And when you go back, you must love, love your family and especially your daughter. She needs you right now. And he said, I was shocked. I was shocked because I knew what I deserved. And he said, God is just. That's what he said to me. God is just. And he knew what he deserved.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And by the way, this is a commonality of near-death experiences. And we can hide and pretend and defer and deflect our wrongs and justify. But on the other side, it's all very clear. Yeah. And he said, but God's voice was so tender and merciful and compassionate and full of love for me. I was shocked.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And they had this conversation because what happened is he sees a very narrow, he called it the very narrow gate or door right to the side of the throne that was open to him into the kingdom of God. And he was confused. He was like, okay, all these 12 gates are closed, but that narrow gate is open. And he wanted to go in, but he knew he couldn't without permission.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
This is the authority of all authorities. And so after this long conversation, we're basically, God, you know, he's asking, which mosque, which synagogue, which temple, which church, what do I do? And he's thinking religious observance. And the Lord says to him, No, Santosh, I want to see how honest, how honest, how real you are with me. Not one day a week, but 24-7, 365 days walk with me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then he said, the wages of sin is death. Exactly what Lee just quoted from Romans 6.23. So this Hindu guy, right? And then he says, surrender yourself. And Santosh says, I should underline surrender. Surrender yourself to me in your daily life. And Santosh comes back. Oh, well, before he came back, he said, Lord, when I come back, I want to go through that narrow gate into your kingdom.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
How do I go through that narrow gate? He didn't tell him. And he sends him back. Okay, so, and I told Lee, we were talking about this, and I told him, you know, it's so fascinating because God, for people who have not necessarily searched or don't know Jesus, he often gives them parables, even on the other side, which is fascinating because Jesus taught in parables. And no one liked it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What is a parable? A parable... is a teaching that doesn't just tell you what to do. It makes you think and it makes you search. And if you're just impatient and you're like, just either tell me or I'm done with you, God's like, okay, I guess you're done with me, but I want you to seek. And when you seek, you will find. And that's why Jesus taught in parables. He wanted to see what's in the heart.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
See, because that's what God is after. He's after our hearts. He wants relationship. That's what he said to Santosh. I want relationship. How honest will you be walking with me? Santosh didn't understand any of that, but he comes back. And he is seeking God. Every day he's praying. He's like, Lord, you weren't like the gods I learned about in the Vedas. Who are you?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Who is this God of compassion and love and mercy? I want to know you. And his daughter, two years later, so he's seeking for two years. His daughter is invited to sing at a church with a friend because she was a choral major in college. Santosh goes to hear her sing. walks into the church and feels the same loving presence of this God of light.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the message that day was Matthew 7, about the narrow gate that leads to heaven. There's a narrow gate through which you must go through. And then John 10, where Jesus said, I am the gate for the sheep. Whoever enters in through me will be saved and will find eternal, will find rest. And Santosh was blown away. He was like, oh my gosh, this is like just for me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So he goes home, he starts reading the Bible. He said, John, everything I experienced, I found in that book. And he became a follower of Jesus. So, you know, the risen Jesus is now being testified to by, I've interviewed people from every religious background having a similar experience in a near-death experience of the risen Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So not only is there biblical evidence from all history, but I think what God's doing today is he's saying, look, I created all people of all nations to be my children. And like Lee said, the reason he did what he did through Jesus is so that anybody anywhere
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
can simply turn their heart back to God, wanting forgiveness, because we all know we've screwed up and we continue to, and wanting His leadership. Like, meaning, God, you get to be God instead of me playing God. What's your will instead of just what's my will be done?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So I have a whole chapter in Imagine the God of Heaven. And I am trying to show that, because what I found fascinating is people I've interviewed who had no prior understanding of the triune nature of God, which let me just say that the word Trinity is not in the Bible, okay? So what we have instead is a progressive revelation of the mystery of God. So all the way back,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
with Moses, so before Moses, he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so the forefathers, right? But even to Abraham, he appears with two angels as a man. Genesis, where is that, Genesis 15? Yeah, under the oak of Mamre or whatever it is, and Abraham, worships and offers sacrifice to him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So even then, and I think that's when it says the angel of the Lord, many times I think this is the pre-incarnate Jesus, the third person of the Trinity. But there's not the word Trinity. But the idea is there. So again, to Moses, goes up on Mount Sinai, And sees this, he calls it this burning bush, okay? So, it's a brilliant light that doesn't burn the bush.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, hello, that's exactly what near-death experiencers are meeting all over the globe. This God of light, they say brighter than the sun a thousand times and yet not hard to look at. And God, he asks, what's your name? And he says, I am is my name, Yahweh. But then he says, I am. Tell them, I am. I am who I am. I am, meaning the self-existent one. Now, here's what's interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Jesus then, I think in the same passage, is it John 8 that you just quoted? Yeah, I think so, yeah. He says, before Abraham was born, okay? Abraham was the father of the Jewish nation, right? So 2,000 years before. Before Abraham was born, Ego eimi is the Greek. I am. So he's applying that to himself. And they pick up stones to stone him because they understood exactly what he was claiming.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then they said, how can you, being a man, claim you were before our father Abraham? And then he said, Abraham saw my day and he rejoiced in it. So he's very clearly... associating with the God of the Old Testament. Now in the book, so one person I interviewed, Heidi, she was Jewish, grew up in a Jewish home, But her father was an atheist, a lawyer. So what's the thing with lawyers?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And not a nice man. He was very abusive. And every night he said to his girls, there is no God. Your life is worthless. Jesus Christ is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind. Like this is his mantra every night. And he was also, he was very abusive. Wow. But Heidi, despite the fact that her mom was agnostic, her dad is atheist, always believed in God and prayed to God every night.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And she remembers as a little eight-year-old girl, you know, coming, talking to God as she was going to bed about the abuses and the things and sorting it out and always felt like God was there comforting her, putting her to bed at night. So she always felt like God was my father. At 16, she's riding bareback on her horse on a mountainside.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Her horse steps back off, rears up, steps back off, and lands on her and crushes her. She said, I was 30 feet up in the air instantly. I knew I was dead. She sees her sisters panicking. She said, but I felt fine. I was at peace. I just felt bad that they had to watch me die like this. And she said, and then I see a light over my shoulder and it was a cloudy day. So I wondered like, what is that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's not the sun. And she turns and she said, there floating with me 30 feet in the air is this. She said, I knew who this was instantly. And he was this man of light, but he was Jesus. And she said, I knew he was Jesus. No doubt in my mind. And she said, I know you. And he gets this big grin. And she said, it was like this reunion because I knew this was the God I had prayed to my whole life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No doubt in her mind. And interestingly, Jesus then shows her life review. And he shows her when she was a little girl of eight praying, she sees him there. like in what was really happening spiritually.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Then he takes her, he grabs her hand and takes her, and they're off, and he takes her, she said, to this light that was felt infinite that they enter into that she knew was God, and she found herself, she felt like, with God the Father, But she said, but Jesus was also there. You couldn't separate them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then she said to me, I don't understand how God can be light and God can be a man and God can be love. But that's what I experienced. So then he puts her, he says, it's not your time. You have to go back. And when he puts her back in her body, Jesus does. He left, but he left his presence with her, she said.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, and, you know, my study into near-death experiences, you know, having studied thousands of them, definitely confirms all that Lee just said. Really? Yeah. And, you know, I think about, like, Jim Woodford, this commercial airline pilot who – When he died, he had been an agnostic his whole life, very wealthy man. He was several multimillion-dollar businesses.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And she later realized that she thinks that was his Holy Spirit who was always with her to guide her. Now, this is a little Jewish girl raised by atheists, and yet she testifies to the triune nature of God. And then I interview another woman, 12-year-old, nurse, almost the same identical experience.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Dean Braxton, who also had a near-death experience, and he said to me, you could not separate them there. So when I was speaking to Jesus, I knew I was also speaking to the Father and the Holy Spirit. And when I was there at the throne of God with the Father speaking to him, though Jesus was always here with me, he was also there. And I can't explain how that makes sense.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And in our time and space, it doesn't, but it made perfect sense there. And what he says, they are one. So in the book, I give an analogy. And You can see a picture of it there. So it's a contradiction to us, right? We say, okay, three persons, but they're only one. Well, that doesn't work. The three of us are not one, right? Okay, but think about it by analogy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So imagine I create a flat two-dimensional world, okay, that only has forward and back and side to side. There's no up or down, all right, in this flat world. and then I decide I'm going to enter this world and I stick my three fingers through that plane, the flat people there would see three slices of me, okay?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But what if I said to them, well, I'm actually not three slices, I'm actually one being. But that would be a contradiction to them because in Flatland, three slices can never stack up an arm into one being because that can only happen on a third dimension. They don't even have that dimension.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And so what I say is perhaps, and every analogy breaks down, so I'm not claiming to have the ultimate analogy, but perhaps... Father, Son, and Spirit, the personhood of God, unites in dimensions beyond ours in ways that sound like a contradiction to us, but in fact it's not. And that actually is what near-death experiences Tell us. I think that's fascinating, by the way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But there are lots of mysteries. I mean, go try to understand quantum physics. Tried. Tried to understand my wife. No, I'm kidding. I'm going to tell Leslie you said that. She says that about me. Yeah, I'm sure she does. Well, and so, but think about it. Even what I told you before about Isaiah 53. To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So Jesus, this suffering Messiah foretold, was the arm of the Lord reaching in, like me reaching into the flatland, right? And people, you know, skeptics have said over the years to me, you know, like, okay, you know, so Jesus is God, well then, and supposedly he died on a cross, then who is ruling the universe while he's dead, right? Or while he's here, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And again, that assumes that the infinite God who is spirit was somehow completely contained in the body of Jesus, and he wasn't. And that's not the claim of Scripture. So yes, just like I can reveal myself as a slice in Flatland, and they might even kill me in Flatland, but I'm much more than my little slice. Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Never prayed a day in his life, but his wife was a believer and was praying for him and for his salvation. And he told me, he said, John, you know when you're dying. You know. And he knew. He had an opioid overdose. He had Guillain-Barre and ended up addicted and accidental in his truck looking at the sunset.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's why I think when he's saying I and the Father are one, it's really true. But God, and this is a phenomenal thing if you think about it, that God is love. And every bit of love we've ever experienced, it comes from him. We just borrow it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So God is a relationship, and that's why relationship is so important to God. Not only God's relationship with us, but also our relationships with each other. And that is consistently, these near-death experiences around the globe, when they're in God's presence and they have a life review, they re-experience their lives.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But what they consistently say is, you know, what was interesting is the emphasis was on my interaction with people, not my accomplishments. And what consistently God wants them to see is that every little act of kindness mattered and every little mean thing mattered and it had a ripple effect through humanity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And they consistently say exactly what Moses said and what Jesus taught, God is love and how we love or treat one another is what matters most. So again, you have these near-death experiences. I mean, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. Because I think they are testimony to, again, I don't advise people to believe everything every near-death experiencer says. I don't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But the commonality of consistency of what they say fully aligns with what God's revealed throughout history. And I think we have a reason to trust it first, the Bible. But this just confirms that. It's another window. It's another window of witness that, yes, indeed, this is true and real. And God loves us more than we can possibly imagine. I mean, so much so, he took the bullet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's just like, you know, I mean, the greatest act of heroism is someone who jumps in front of the bullet for a fellow soldier, right? Well, that is the love of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And as he was dying, he had this thought, you've never thanked God for the life you thought was your own making. Wow. Wow. And he looks back now and says he thinks that was the Lord going, one last time, buddy. Yeah. What are you going to do? Yeah. And he cried out, God forgive me, as his head hit the steering wheel. Wow. Which, he's a jokester, so I like to joke with him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, there's no historian that would doubt that today.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Jim, I think you beat the thief on the cross for last minute, buddy. Yeah, really.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, and it's recorded in 1 Corinthians 15.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Which was written, you know, sometime in the 60s, probably?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
20 years after Jesus' crucifixion, so that's not time for legend to develop.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But he first, so he first has a hellish feeling. vision of actually a creature who knew his name calling to him. And again, he cries out to God for help. And these three angels come and rescue him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, he did quote the sign of Jonah. This generation will not be given a sign except the sign. They were demanding. I mean, just think about this. So he had been... healing people, raising people from the dead. That's why he had thousands following him everywhere. That's why the Jewish authorities were, and he was also calling them hypocrites because they were playing a religious game.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Their hearts were far from God, he said. So they look good on the outside and go, read Matthew 23, man. He just rips them a new one. Seriously, he does. He holds no punches back. And so, they are like, we can't put up with this because they are leading Israel astray, away from us and our power and our prestige. And so, they decide to crucify him. But they were saying, you're really the Messiah?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Give us a sign. Give us a sign. He said, you're not going to be given any sign. I mean, given them tons of signs. We talked about all the signs that were already in their scriptures. And they're pointing in that direction. I mean, all of it's there, right? He's going to come from Bethlehem. He was born in Bethlehem. He's going to come from Galilee. He did most of his ministry in Galilee.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's all in Isaiah. So they were blinded to it because of their... and their desire for power and greed and money. So he says this generation will be given no sign except the sign of Jonah. Which would be three days. Three days.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And interestingly, in near-death experiences, when it is last-minute kind of foxhole conversion, I find God lets them see where they were going before rescuing them and show them where their eternity is going to be. So that happens to Jim. And he's there with these three magnificent angels, and one was his guardian. One was a scribe angel and one was a warrior.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
How many died for their faith without recounting it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Which was just what people around the world are encountering today on the Damascus. And Paul was one of the Pharisees of the Pharisees who had Jesus crucified. Right. So he was the enemy. Exactly. It's like the Taliban now, you know, coming on our side kind of thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And it says on the Damascus Road, he's going to arrest and kill Christians. He was there when Stephen was martyred, giving two thumbs up, because Stephen believed in Jesus as the Messiah. And he's like, that's wrong. We're getting rid of these people. When on the Damascus Road, this brilliant God of light appears to him. Sound familiar? All over the world today, this is near-death experiences.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And people consistently describe those three categories. Interesting. And what's fascinating too, because I'll be honest, I had no interest in angels or demons. I didn't. It's just kind of like, yeah, we're not supposed to pray to them, just like you said. So I'm sure they're there, but who cares? Not who cares, but kind of. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Who are you, Lord? He asked. And he says, I am Jesus whom you're persecuting. And Jesus didn't tell him the gospel. He didn't tell him what to do. He said, you'll be told. And then later sends Ananias to explain to him. And Paul still had a choice because he had a lot to lose. Is he going to leave behind his power and his prestige and then suffer? Because he did. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But, I mean, that's a, you know, that's a huge.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
but how many near-death experiencers talked about them, consistently the same. Always in threes? One was 10 feet, one another 12 and 15 feet. And I was always like, what? That's bizarre. But they kept saying, same kind of estimation of height too. Interesting. I know. And so the guardian told Jim that yes, he was assigned to him since his conception. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Can you tell he's a lawyer? I'm not a lawyer, I just have a law degree. Well, no, but here's the significance is what Lee's saying, and he was, he was the legal editor for the Chicago Tribune, so not a slouch. But also, Simon Greenleaf, who was a lawyer who wrote the Treaties of Legal Evidence, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, there you have it. I went to the University of Texas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Okay. So, Simon Greenleaf was always making fun of Christians and Christianity in his legal classes until some of his students came up and challenged him to take his treaties, his works on legal evidence, how to evaluate legal evidence, and put it against all the documents and evidence that Lee just said. he came to faith just like Lee.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, yeah. But here's the point. And this is what got me into this. This is why I left my career in engineering. I was like, there's so much evidence. Why has no one told me this? And we haven't even gone into all the near-death experience stuff that also connects to all the historical and... It's overwhelming. But people don't look at it. People don't take the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And here's why all this is—the so what of all this. So, I'll never forget when all of this evidence kind of came— you know, formulated in my head and I was like, this is true. Like God really did send Jesus. He really did die for our sins. He really does love me. And then it was like, and here was the thought that came into my head, now what are you gonna do with it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that was a scary thought to me because it wasn't, it's not the head knowledge. Like we can believe in God. We can believe Jesus died for our sins. intellectually, but that's not what God wants. What God wants is our hearts. Like he created us and he loves us. And what he wants is that we would love him back. And what do we have to give the one who gave us everything? Nothing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I've heard that from others as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But he actually gave us a free will so we would have something to give him. And what we can give Him is our very lives. Like, I'm going to trust you. I'm going to follow you. And I'll never forget, you know, that was like a... It was like, oh, wow. And that was scary. And that was scary because I already knew what I wanted my life to be about. Right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I've got a plan for my life, and you're not going to...
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, and the point of the whole thing is not just get your ticket stamped, okay, you go to heaven one day. The point of it is that we were created for relationship with our creator, and we don't become what we were intended to be without that. And what he wants is that we would walk through life in a relationship, like we were talking about before, learning how to listen to those promptings.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's like any other relationship. To be in a deep, intimate relationship, you've got to know the person and you've got to let yourself be known. And then you have to trust. You have to entrust more vulnerable things about yourself to that person and you have to trust them more. And then it takes time. And over time, that relationship grows. And that's exactly the same with the Lord.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's what it's all about, is that we would walk with God moment by moment throughout our days, and He would then naturally grow in us what He calls the fruits of His Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, goodness. That's what it says in Galatians 5. That's what his spirit does in us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
All we have to do is just, Jesus said, like a branch stays connected to a tree, and the nutrients flow and fruit grows naturally. He says, that's all you have to do. Just stay connected to me. It's what he said to Santosh. The wages of sinners' death... I don't want your religious once a week thing. I want to see how honest you'll be with me. I want to see your relationship with me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Another follower of Jesus. So there were disciples or beyond the 12. There were many disciples, and some of them were women who it says even provided for them. So Joanna was one of them. She was in the royal household, right? I think Luke actually interviewed her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So it is a fascinating thing because it was almost like God was like putting it on the guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the disciples, remember, are writing this. That's right. They would never say, yeah, we were wrong. They were right. Right. Because the disciples, they were scared to death. Because Jesus, their leader, just got crucified. And guess what? You're next. They're hiding out. They're literally hiding out. And the women come back from the tomb. He's risen. He's risen. This is what he said.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, and another guy, a CEO that I interviewed, he's there before the throne of God, and he sees that prayers, and Jim did too, that prayers are tangible. They're real things. We just think, oh, it's just hitting the ceiling or whatever, and it's just my thoughts. But to God, that's not true. They actually... You know, they are seen in heaven, kind of like lights.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He's risen. And they're like, you're crazy. No, he isn't. And then in closed doors, locked, Jesus appears to them, except Thomas isn't there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What did he say? Well, so Mary Magdalene, who remember was delivered, she was a very immoral woman from what we know and demon-possessed. And then he delivered her. He set her free. And she became one of his followers. And she sees the tomb is empty, and she thinks someone's stolen the body. And then she sees someone outside and she thinks it's the gardener.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And she's weeping and she runs out and she says, where have you put my Lord? What have you done with him? Correct me if I'm getting this wrong. And then she realizes, he says, Mary. And she hears his voice and she realizes it's him. And she falls at his feet. The gardener? The gardener was Jesus. Yeah. Wasn't a gardener. Yeah. Falls at his feet and grabs his feet and is crying, Lord.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he says, don't hold on to me, for I've not yet gone to my Father in heaven. But go and tell your brothers, I have risen just as I said, and basically meet me in Galilee. Which is kind of a funny thing because he couldn't even wait. Yeah, right. He didn't wait for them to meet him in Galilee. That's right. He showed up in the room. You know, the other thing, when I was an atheist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I think he was having fun. I really seriously, because then think about the two disciples on the Emmaus Road.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Right. He kind of played with them. So, there are these two guys, not the 12, but there are also two disciples on the Emmaus Road. They're going, this is a town outside of Jerusalem called Emmaus. They're walking and they're talking. And this guy comes up next to them and goes, what are you guys talking about?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And they say, you know, haven't you heard, you know, Jesus, who we thought was going to be the Messiah, and this happened? And he's like, no. He says, are you the only one in Jerusalem who doesn't know this? And they keep telling him all the things that Jesus taught him and did and all this. So they don't recognize him until they invite him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He's a stranger walking with them on the road, and they invite him to eat. He sits down at the table with them. He takes the bread and breaks it. And they probably see the wounds. And then they realize who he is. They know this is the risen Jesus. And then he's gone. And interestingly, I think... Well, I won't even go there. It's the whole risen body, the resurrected body. But it is fascinating.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Let's go there. What is it? Well, so when we die, you know, we leave our bodies, but we still have a body. We have a spiritual body. Our soul still has a spiritual body. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 15. So he says, our bodies are buried, a natural body. They're raised a spiritual body.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They're buried in weakness, but they're raised, and the Greek word is induname, which is the word from which we get dynamite. They're raised in power.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's what near-death experiencers say is they leave their body, they still are themselves in the spiritual body with new powers of sight, like we talked about, like telescopic, of communication, of movement, not five senses, more like 50 senses. Howard Storm said, I felt like Superman. But here's the thing is that But we in our spiritual bodies cannot communicate with people on earth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
We can't, and that's what they realize. They're trying to get the attention of the people doing the resuscitation, and they can't. So this is version 1.0, this physical body. I think version 2.0 is when we die, our soul leaves, but we're in a spiritual body. But version 3.0 is coming. Jesus, it says, is it in 1 Corinthians 15, was the first fruits of the resurrection.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Jim, so Jim is there with these angels, and he sees these six streaks of light going up. And he thought, you know, he's a commercial airline pilot. He's like, are those contrails? You know, like the smoke from, or the, you know. Chemtrails. Yes. Chemtrail, right. And he said to the angel, what are those?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So right now, heaven and earth are separated, that they are separate. But there's a day coming, it says in Revelation 20, when God is going to make a new heaven and new earth, and the two are gonna be one. They're gonna be joined again. And our bodies, our physical bodies will be resurrected and joined to our spiritual bodies. So now think about this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And it says Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection. So he went first. So he's what we will be. So he could both be seen, he's seen by these near-death experiencers. Sometimes as his physical human self, But sometimes it's the glorified, resurrected Jesus, you know, this brilliant God of light. Well, guess what?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
On the Mount Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John, through Jesus' disciples, said he was transfigured before him. They saw his glory and his face shone like the sun. Jesus said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but have the light of life. So this is who he is, but his body, near-death experiencers are not resurrected, they're resuscitated.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Jesus' body died permanently. but his body was resurrected. It was reconstituted and rejoined to his spiritual body so that he then can both interact in heaven, but he shows up to the disciples after the resurrection in this room and Thomas, you know, who was called Doubting Thomas, he wasn't there the first time. And the disciples, you know, Mary and Joanna said, yeah, we saw him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The other disciples, yeah, he showed up. And he's like, I don't believe it. I'm not going to believe it. In fact, I won't believe it unless I see the holes in his hands and his side and I put my hand in it. He's like, I'm, you know, I'm not going to believe it. Well, then Jesus shows up when he's there. And Jesus says to him, Look, it's me. I'm not a ghost. Touch me. Give a piece of fish.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Give him a piece of fish. He eats it. So he is able to interact in our world. Unlike those who are dead, near-death experiencers experience, Jesus has this version three resurrected body. That was a rabbit hole.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You mean in the resurrection appearances? Yeah. I think. Well, so to the guys on the Emmaus Road, they didn't recognize him until he wanted to be recognized. So obviously he can somewhat change appearance. And like... To Santosh, this Hindu guy I was telling you about, he appeared huge, but just like John described in Revelation 1. John sees Jesus, and he knows he's Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the angel said, those are the prayers of your family for your soul going to the throne of God even as we speak. Wow. At that point. Now, he's dead. His body's dead in a truck. The Canadian Royal Mounted Guard, what's the police? Mounted police, yeah. Mounted police. Find him the next morning. He was dead overnight.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Jesus says, I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end. I died, but I have come back to life again. You know, how did he say it? It was like basically that, Revelation 1. And John said his eyes were like lightning. He was like full of light. His feet were like glowing bronze metal on fire. That's exactly what Santosh, this Hindu guy, said.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But that's also, interestingly, I interviewed a woman in Tehran who is giving me her story in Persian, in Farsi. She dies of a heart attack. She's Muslim. She dies of a heart attack. And she thought, you know, the Shiite belief is that the prophet Ali is gonna come right after death and judge you. And that's not what she said happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
She said, instead, this giant man in this glowing regal robe with a beard, but his face, I couldn't make out his face because of the light of it, comes and says to her, I am he who is. And boom, she's back in her body. But with a peace and a joy she had never felt before. And she's like, who was it? She knew this is God. He's divine. But who was that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And, you know, of course, this is exactly what God said to Moses on Mount Sinai. I am who I am. I am the self-existent one. It's what Jesus, we said, quoted before Abraham was born. I am... quoting the exact word. So, yeah, I mean, there's triangulation all around the globe even today.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So he could go through walls. He could also, he floated up into the clouds before their very sight, it says in Acts 1. Yeah. Somewhere in there. Which, again, is what near-death experiencers say, too. You know, that we have new abilities and new powers. So there's a lot left to come.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But his family, six family members were circled up in his home, holding hands, praying that Jesus would rescue him and send him back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, plus, you know, people... The word on the street that too many people believe, because again, do we really seek to understand, right? Is that, you know, oh, well, they've been changed over the years. The New Testament's been changed so much and transmission, which that's not true. And textual criticism has proven that's not true. We have more sources for the validity of the New Testament
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
by far than any ancient. 24,000 manuscripts. The second best in history is Homer's Iliad with 643. So just as a comparison. Wow. They've actually found a few more recently, but still, it's a pittance compared. But even the fact that over the centuries, They didn't change, they didn't try to reconcile these discrepancies like Lee's talking about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The discrepancies being one, eyewitness writing like Mark is writing for Peter or Matthew spotlights Mary was at the tomb, but then others are saying Mary and Joanne. Right, others. If they were just making it up, they would have tried to reconcile it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But the significance, back to your question about the significance of the resurrection. You know, it says something about the character in the heart of God. So again, this is something that God has been doing throughout human history, is that we, yes, we are born in the knowledge of both good and evil. All of us fall. At some point, all of us stray away. We go our own way rather than God's way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's the problem of the world. That's the thing we hate about the world. But from the very beginning, so all the way back in Genesis chapter 12, God says to Abraham and Sarah, I'm going to raise up a nation out of you. And it was the Jewish nation, also the Arab nation also came from Abraham and Sarah. I'm going to bless you to be a blessing to all nations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Okay, so we're talking 4,000 years ago, God intervenes in human history to say, I'm gonna do something to bless all nations. And what was he doing? Well, he was creating this nation with all their peculiar laws and idiosyncrasies to protect what he was doing, which I believe is revealing through the prophets his will, his words, his history. And we have that today. It's unbelievable how –
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I mean, there's so many reasons to believe God actually inspired this. He was doing something throughout history. I've given you some of them just in the prophecies. But also Jesus said that, you know, of much that he said, don't think I've come to abolish the law and the prophets, which is the sum of the whole Old Testament. He said, no, I've come to fulfill it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And not a single word, not a jot or tittle, which is like a dot of the I or a cross of the T will be done away with until all of it's fulfilled. So God was doing something from the beginning of human history for all nations. And Jesus, when he then comes in fulfillment of all these prophecies we've talked about, after the resurrection appears to the disciples and he says,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
All these things that I've been teaching you, this was pointing toward this fulfillment. He said he opened their minds to see how all the scriptures of old were pointing toward him. And he said, go and tell it to all the nations. There's forgiveness in my name. So what he was doing... was so that all people of all nations can turn back to God and be forgiven. And yet, God be just.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Because we don't like injustice, by the way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Chosen is very misunderstood. Chosen does not mean I like you more than someone else. Because that's the way I always tell people. Right. No, you can be chosen. for a special mission. That's a responsibility.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It was a responsibility, not a, I like you better than others. So it was always for all nations. And in fact, John... And they broke the promise, correct? Well, I mean, not all of them. Some of them were faithful and many, but... They, yes, they, yeah. I mean, we all have. We've all fallen short.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's a good question, isn't it? Is that the time of Moses? When they set up the laws and the... Well, even before that. Well, but... That's a great question. Get back to us on that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Or how about also the nations coming together.