Phil Cook

Our society abounds with skeptics. And you know what? We need more.

Skepticism can be healthy. We are lied to daily by a host of voices, by politicians, by news media, by countless “influencers” on social media, yes we even lie to ourselves. This is especially pernicious for youth who have not developed a sophisticated skepticism for what they are fed regularly on TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit and the like.

What does one do with the story of an infant who was diagnosed with gastroparesis by doctors and relied on two feeding tubes for the following 16 years, but then claims he was healed at church?

Lee Strobel is a skeptic. As a materialist atheist, he received degrees from the University of Missouri and Yale Law School. As the legal editor of The Chicago Tribune, United Press International of Illinois gave him its highest honors for both investigative reporting and public service journalism. He has been a professor at the university level.

He is a New York Times best-selling author of more than 40 books, selling over 18 million copies. His books have received more than 25,000 five-star reviews on Amazon.

Irritated when his wife became a Christian, he decided to focus his skepticism to disprove her new beliefs, which shouldn’t be hard, he thought. But after two intense years, his searching probe into the hard evidence led him not to reject Jesus, but to fully become a follower.

That was 44 years ago. Now Strobel has a new book out called “Seeing the Supernatural.” His argument, that there is more to life than what we can see and touch, is full of case studies.

Strobel says he’s noticing a current robust scientific inquiry into this subject.

“In other words, they’re testing them scientifically,” Strobel said. “And we’re seeing cases of documented miracles that are really waking people up to the fact that this is not wishful thinking, it’s not … the placebo effect, it’s not fraud, it’s not fakery. There are documented cases.”

Still a natural skeptic, Strobel carefully footnotes each incident he relates. They are not just hearsay or rumors. They are verifiable and have been corroborated in scientific or medical journals.

The incident mentioned above regarding the 16-year-old who had been suffering from an incurable digestive issue was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine. The authors go into great detail about how the young man received PIP (proximal intercessory prayer) at a church and felt a bolt of electricity go through his body into his stomach.

The journal abstract says, “After the prayer experience, he was unexpectedly able to tolerate oral feedings. The g- and j-tube were removed four months later and he did not require any further special treatments for his condition as all symptoms had resolved. Over seven years later, he has been free from symptoms.”

Strobel’s book has an entire chapter on near-death experiences. For example, one well documented event occurred in a London hospital. A woman died, left her body, and watched the medical staff attempt resuscitation. After she was revived, she told them about a red sticker on the top side of a ceiling fan blade in the hospital room. Doubtful, the staff got a ladder and, sure enough, the sticker, that no one knew about, was there.

Likewise, there was a woman who died in a Seattle hospital. As the staff rushed to her side, she also left her body and watched. Then she floated out of the hospital. Later, after being revived, she described a tennis shoe that was stuck on a ledge near the third floor of the hospital, a light blue left men’s shoe with atypical wear marks. When they looked and found the shoe, they discovered that the only way she would have known these details was if she had seen them from an angle outside and above the hospital.

Strobel mentions that there have been over 900 articles in professional journals discussing this phenomenon.

This is consistent with Christianity but not consistent with naturalism.

Although he could talk endlessly of anecdotal reports from everyday people, for this discussion Strobel relies on what has been documented in scientific peer reviewed journals. This gives more force to his argument than a single person’s report which an unbelieving skeptic could say was just the result of hallucinations, wishful thinking, dementia, fantasies, grief induced memories, products of the subconscious mind, or even just the effects of an overactive imagination.

His book has chapters on miracles, the existence of the soul, life-changing spiritual encounters, angels, evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, what we can know about heaven, and more.

He says, “The supernatural realm is as natural as the physical realm you see all around you … even more so.”

Ultimately, we must choose where to place our skepticism.