1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:00:25,192 --> 00:00:30,864 I think the fear of death drives a lot of our lives. 4 00:00:37,913 --> 00:00:40,165 We try to suppress it. We try to ignore it. 5 00:00:40,165 --> 00:00:42,542 We try to deny it. We try to distract from it. 6 00:00:42,542 --> 00:00:45,671 But the truth is, our fear of death, 7 00:00:45,671 --> 00:00:49,383 as some experts say, drives all of culture. 8 00:00:55,973 --> 00:01:01,186 This underlying fear of what happens when we die 9 00:01:01,186 --> 00:01:05,524 drives a lot of people's ambitions. 10 00:01:05,524 --> 00:01:08,277 It drives what they do and how they do it. 11 00:01:08,277 --> 00:01:11,947 They want to be immortal. 12 00:01:28,130 --> 00:01:30,757 ♪ I'm a city on a hill, yeah ♪ 13 00:01:30,757 --> 00:01:35,429 ♪ I'm a light in the darkness ♪ 14 00:01:35,429 --> 00:01:39,308 ♪ I'm a trumpet blowing down my walls of fear ♪ 15 00:01:39,308 --> 00:01:42,811 ♪ I'm filled with promise ♪ 16 00:01:42,811 --> 00:01:45,564 ♪ I am built to overcome, yeah ♪ 17 00:01:45,564 --> 00:01:50,068 ♪ I have joy in my sorrow ♪ 18 00:01:50,068 --> 00:01:53,947 ♪ And my only motivation is your love ♪ 19 00:01:53,947 --> 00:01:56,783 ♪ I'm your beloved ♪ 20 00:01:56,783 --> 00:02:03,290 ♪ Oh, you walk anew ♪ 21 00:02:03,290 --> 00:02:07,627 ♪ I know ♪ 22 00:02:07,627 --> 00:02:11,298 ♪ What I was made to do ♪ 23 00:02:11,298 --> 00:02:16,011 ♪ Will you increase my ability to be loved ♪ 24 00:02:18,805 --> 00:02:24,144 ♪ Will you increase my ability to be loved ♪ 25 00:02:24,144 --> 00:02:27,272 ♪ Be loved by you ♪ 26 00:02:47,501 --> 00:02:48,960 Your personality was changing. 27 00:02:48,960 --> 00:02:50,337 - Yeah. - Over weeks. 28 00:02:50,337 --> 00:02:52,089 Yeah. 29 00:02:52,089 --> 00:02:54,257 But it was small, little things that, you know, 30 00:02:54,257 --> 00:02:56,009 you just kind of wonder what that's about. 31 00:02:56,009 --> 00:02:58,345 But you jumped into your novel, 32 00:02:58,345 --> 00:03:00,097 started becoming part of that book 33 00:03:00,097 --> 00:03:01,473 that you had just finished. 34 00:03:01,473 --> 00:03:02,891 Yeah, I was writing the novel at the time, 35 00:03:02,891 --> 00:03:04,101 and I kind of became one of the characters in the novel. 36 00:03:04,101 --> 00:03:05,435 That's right. 37 00:03:05,435 --> 00:03:07,229 Started seeing people watching the house 38 00:03:07,229 --> 00:03:09,731 and kind of coming after you. 39 00:03:09,731 --> 00:03:13,735 You got to a point where you would not go to a doctor. 40 00:03:13,735 --> 00:03:15,654 I called your doctor. He wanted you to come in. 41 00:03:15,654 --> 00:03:17,239 I couldn't get you to come in. 42 00:03:17,239 --> 00:03:19,032 You were paranoid and thinking people were after you, 43 00:03:19,032 --> 00:03:21,827 and then that night, you went to bed, 44 00:03:21,827 --> 00:03:24,121 and thought I heard a noise in the bedroom, 45 00:03:24,121 --> 00:03:26,415 and I thought, well, maybe you're just dreaming, 46 00:03:26,415 --> 00:03:27,833 and I thought I better check. 47 00:03:27,833 --> 00:03:29,876 And there you were, 48 00:03:29,876 --> 00:03:31,586 you know, just laying there. 49 00:03:33,255 --> 00:03:34,881 The first thing I saw was the doctor, 50 00:03:34,881 --> 00:03:36,341 and he was hovering over me. 51 00:03:36,341 --> 00:03:38,260 His surgical mask was down. 52 00:03:38,260 --> 00:03:40,637 And he had a concerned look on his face. 53 00:03:40,637 --> 00:03:43,682 And I remember opening my eyes and kind of trying 54 00:03:43,682 --> 00:03:45,434 to figure out where I was, and then hearing him say, 55 00:03:45,434 --> 00:03:46,726 "You're one step away from a coma, 56 00:03:46,726 --> 00:03:48,395 two steps away from dying." 57 00:03:48,395 --> 00:03:50,564 And even before I was able to process that, 58 00:03:50,564 --> 00:03:52,441 I fell unconscious again. 59 00:03:52,441 --> 00:03:57,737 And so it was, you know, a few days 60 00:03:57,737 --> 00:04:00,240 before I started to come back around 61 00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:02,367 and feel like myself again. 62 00:04:02,367 --> 00:04:05,912 And then, looking back on all that we went through, 63 00:04:05,912 --> 00:04:09,875 I think back at that time period, 64 00:04:09,875 --> 00:04:15,547 that was where I started to really consider losing you, 65 00:04:15,547 --> 00:04:20,677 and that whatever's going on, if it does take you from us, 66 00:04:20,677 --> 00:04:24,306 his plan is beyond mine, and I can rest in that 67 00:04:24,306 --> 00:04:25,682 and know that I'll see you again. 68 00:04:25,682 --> 00:04:28,477 Yeah, aw, aw. 69 00:04:28,477 --> 00:04:30,437 But just don't go dying early, okay? 70 00:04:30,437 --> 00:04:34,483 - Okay. - Couple more centuries. 71 00:04:34,483 --> 00:04:37,861 When you're on your back in the emergency room, 72 00:04:37,861 --> 00:04:41,531 looking into the face of an emergency room physician 73 00:04:41,531 --> 00:04:43,658 who says you're one step away from a coma, 74 00:04:43,658 --> 00:04:47,204 two steps away from dying, and all of a sudden, 75 00:04:47,204 --> 00:04:51,166 this becomes the most relevant thing in the world. 76 00:04:51,166 --> 00:04:53,168 What happens next? 77 00:04:53,168 --> 00:04:55,504 What happens if I close my eyes 78 00:04:55,504 --> 00:04:57,923 and I don't open them again in this world? 79 00:05:05,263 --> 00:05:09,643 Mm, um... 80 00:05:14,231 --> 00:05:18,485 I have absolutely no idea what happens after we die. 81 00:05:23,740 --> 00:05:26,201 How do you make a movie about Heaven? 82 00:05:26,201 --> 00:05:28,078 That question frightened me. 83 00:05:28,078 --> 00:05:30,038 I think it would take a lifetime. 84 00:05:30,038 --> 00:05:31,915 I think it would take exploration 85 00:05:31,915 --> 00:05:33,792 around the world and different places, 86 00:05:33,792 --> 00:05:35,460 stories, and cultures. 87 00:05:35,460 --> 00:05:39,589 We had 12 months condensed into 90 minutes 88 00:05:39,589 --> 00:05:41,466 to make this happen. 89 00:05:41,466 --> 00:05:46,346 If we could just touch Heaven for one second in this film, 90 00:05:46,346 --> 00:05:48,682 I think that might be enough. 91 00:05:50,350 --> 00:05:52,269 The day I got the phone call from Lee, 92 00:05:52,269 --> 00:05:54,521 I wasn't expecting it, 93 00:05:54,521 --> 00:05:57,774 but I knew that it was gonna change everything. 94 00:05:57,774 --> 00:05:59,818 Hey, Mani. Lee Strobel calling. 95 00:05:59,818 --> 00:06:02,320 Hey, I've got a project I'm working on called 96 00:06:02,320 --> 00:06:04,114 "The Case for Heaven." 97 00:06:04,114 --> 00:06:06,116 Something I've learned in my life throughout the years 98 00:06:06,116 --> 00:06:09,286 is that everybody has a moment of truth. 99 00:06:09,286 --> 00:06:11,288 I think something that's crucial 100 00:06:11,288 --> 00:06:13,164 that we think about is, 101 00:06:13,164 --> 00:06:17,627 if that moment were here, would we be ready for it? 102 00:06:17,627 --> 00:06:19,838 My mother cleaned houses in Malibu. 103 00:06:19,838 --> 00:06:23,049 My dad was a dishwasher when they came to this country. 104 00:06:23,049 --> 00:06:24,467 I was born in an immigrant family 105 00:06:24,467 --> 00:06:25,802 from Guatemala. 106 00:06:25,802 --> 00:06:28,471 I was raised in South Central LA, 107 00:06:28,471 --> 00:06:31,933 definitely not the nicest place 108 00:06:31,933 --> 00:06:33,727 to grow up in. 109 00:06:33,727 --> 00:06:35,979 Though there was all this chaos outside, 110 00:06:35,979 --> 00:06:39,441 whether there were drive-bys, gangs, you know, 111 00:06:39,441 --> 00:06:42,193 even fires, and things burning down during the LA Riots, 112 00:06:42,193 --> 00:06:44,571 inside our house, there was this peace, 113 00:06:44,571 --> 00:06:46,489 there was this joy. 114 00:06:46,489 --> 00:06:49,659 And if I can claim anything to know about God, 115 00:06:49,659 --> 00:06:52,162 it's the fact that he changes everything. 116 00:07:02,255 --> 00:07:03,882 Here we go. 117 00:07:09,054 --> 00:07:12,140 To compensate for people's fear of death, 118 00:07:12,140 --> 00:07:14,768 they are trying to find some way 119 00:07:14,768 --> 00:07:18,146 to live on beyond their death. 120 00:07:18,146 --> 00:07:20,732 People are terrified of dying, 121 00:07:20,732 --> 00:07:22,233 and that's just all there is to it. 122 00:07:22,233 --> 00:07:24,444 Now, don't get me wrong, if you ask people 123 00:07:24,444 --> 00:07:26,363 if they're afraid of dying, they'll say no. 124 00:07:26,363 --> 00:07:27,947 In fact, that's what most people do. 125 00:07:27,947 --> 00:07:30,033 The first step to dealing with the fear of death is denial. 126 00:07:30,033 --> 00:07:33,536 I'm just going to ignore the fact that I'm gonna die. 127 00:07:33,536 --> 00:07:35,163 Denial doesn't work without distraction. 128 00:07:35,163 --> 00:07:37,540 You know, there's the old joke, 129 00:07:37,540 --> 00:07:39,542 think about whatever you want for the next two minutes, 130 00:07:39,542 --> 00:07:41,378 but don't think about pink elephants. 131 00:07:41,378 --> 00:07:43,588 Well, everybody knows the answer to that. 132 00:07:43,588 --> 00:07:45,465 The answer to not thinking about pink elephants 133 00:07:45,465 --> 00:07:47,092 is to think about blue ones. 134 00:07:47,092 --> 00:07:49,094 In other words, you have to think about something else. 135 00:07:49,094 --> 00:07:53,682 And that's where movies, social media, sports stars, 136 00:07:53,682 --> 00:07:56,142 singing stars, you know, all of this-- 137 00:07:56,142 --> 00:07:58,019 that's where these things come in 138 00:07:58,019 --> 00:08:00,480 because it distracts us from the fact 139 00:08:00,480 --> 00:08:01,940 that we're going to die. 140 00:08:01,940 --> 00:08:04,317 If you look at almost everything that humans do, 141 00:08:04,317 --> 00:08:06,778 they're doing it as a symbolic attempt 142 00:08:06,778 --> 00:08:08,321 to live on past their deaths 143 00:08:08,321 --> 00:08:10,365 because they're terrified of death. 144 00:08:10,365 --> 00:08:13,159 Everyone on Earth is engaged in some sort 145 00:08:13,159 --> 00:08:15,453 of a symbolic immortality project. 146 00:08:15,453 --> 00:08:17,706 Build something, to write a book, 147 00:08:17,706 --> 00:08:21,126 political activism is an immortality project. 148 00:08:21,126 --> 00:08:22,919 I'm going to change the world. 149 00:08:22,919 --> 00:08:25,630 See, in other words, I'm doing something 150 00:08:25,630 --> 00:08:28,091 to make the world a better place. 151 00:08:28,091 --> 00:08:30,844 Having children is a symbolic immortality project, 152 00:08:30,844 --> 00:08:33,054 and that's the most common one of all. 153 00:08:33,054 --> 00:08:35,807 The trouble with that is that your children 154 00:08:35,807 --> 00:08:37,267 are only half you. 155 00:08:37,267 --> 00:08:38,852 Their children-- your children's children 156 00:08:38,852 --> 00:08:40,645 are only a quarter you. 157 00:08:40,645 --> 00:08:43,231 After 20 generations, 158 00:08:43,231 --> 00:08:49,112 there will only be 0.000004% you, 159 00:08:49,112 --> 00:08:50,989 if there's any of you at all because, you know, 160 00:08:50,989 --> 00:08:54,617 genes transfer over in blocks, 161 00:08:54,617 --> 00:08:57,120 and there's regressive genes and dominant genes, 162 00:08:57,120 --> 00:08:59,164 and after just a few generations, 163 00:08:59,164 --> 00:09:02,834 there might not be any of you at all in your offspring. 164 00:09:02,834 --> 00:09:04,627 But there's one more problem. 165 00:09:04,627 --> 00:09:06,963 I've asked my classes all the time. 166 00:09:06,963 --> 00:09:10,925 I'll say, "So how many of you know the first names 167 00:09:10,925 --> 00:09:13,344 of your great-great-grandparents?" 168 00:09:13,344 --> 00:09:16,306 And I think, in all the classes I've asked-- 169 00:09:16,306 --> 00:09:17,974 I didn't write it down, but I think in all the classes 170 00:09:17,974 --> 00:09:19,309 that I've asked, 171 00:09:19,309 --> 00:09:22,520 only three students have ever said, 172 00:09:22,520 --> 00:09:26,232 "I know the first names of my great-great-grandparents." 173 00:09:26,232 --> 00:09:28,526 And then, I ask this follow-up question. 174 00:09:28,526 --> 00:09:30,653 I'll say, "Do you care?" 175 00:09:30,653 --> 00:09:32,197 Nobody cares. 176 00:09:32,197 --> 00:09:35,784 I've never had a student say, "I really wish 177 00:09:35,784 --> 00:09:39,287 I knew the first names of my great-great-grandparents." 178 00:09:39,287 --> 00:09:41,331 Nobody cares. 179 00:09:41,331 --> 00:09:44,334 Unfortunately, a lot of people figure, 180 00:09:44,334 --> 00:09:46,377 "I'm gonna go out in a blaze of glory, 181 00:09:46,377 --> 00:09:48,880 "in a blaze of gunfire. 182 00:09:48,880 --> 00:09:51,841 "I'm gonna do something that will make people 183 00:09:51,841 --> 00:09:55,637 "remember my name even if it means blowing up a school 184 00:09:55,637 --> 00:09:57,514 or murdering somebody famous." 185 00:09:57,514 --> 00:09:59,349 The investigation into the high school massacre 186 00:09:59,349 --> 00:10:01,142 is slow-moving and dangerous. 187 00:10:01,142 --> 00:10:03,144 The two gunmen who went on the rampage 188 00:10:03,144 --> 00:10:06,064 booby-trapped the building and even themselves. 189 00:10:06,064 --> 00:10:09,025 Mark David Chapman, who murdered John Lennon, 190 00:10:09,025 --> 00:10:12,570 said that he was trying to steal his fame. 191 00:10:12,570 --> 00:10:15,532 He walked past me. 192 00:10:15,532 --> 00:10:18,535 I took five steps toward the street, 193 00:10:18,535 --> 00:10:20,370 turned, 194 00:10:20,370 --> 00:10:25,208 withdrew my Charter Arms .38, 195 00:10:25,208 --> 00:10:28,878 and fired five shots into his back. 196 00:10:28,878 --> 00:10:32,674 The Columbine killers, the day before they went 197 00:10:32,674 --> 00:10:35,260 on this murderous spree at that high school, 198 00:10:35,260 --> 00:10:38,596 were talking about, "Which director is gonna direct 199 00:10:38,596 --> 00:10:40,390 the movie about our life?" 200 00:10:40,390 --> 00:10:43,351 Witnesses say they laughed as they fired their weapons, 201 00:10:43,351 --> 00:10:46,396 executing their classmates, who begged for their lives. 202 00:10:46,396 --> 00:10:48,273 Screaming after they'd shoot up something, 203 00:10:48,273 --> 00:10:50,817 they'd go, "Whoo!" 204 00:10:50,817 --> 00:10:52,819 Just the pleasure for them. 205 00:10:52,819 --> 00:10:57,490 Some people will commit atrocious crimes 206 00:10:57,490 --> 00:10:59,576 because they want to be remembered. 207 00:10:59,576 --> 00:11:03,329 That's the dark side of symbolic immortality. 208 00:11:13,673 --> 00:11:15,258 What is a soul, 209 00:11:15,258 --> 00:11:18,386 and why include it into your investigation? 210 00:11:18,386 --> 00:11:20,847 The soul is our spirit. It is our self. 211 00:11:20,847 --> 00:11:25,393 It is the locus of our introspection, 212 00:11:25,393 --> 00:11:28,563 our emotions, our desires, our thoughts. 213 00:11:28,563 --> 00:11:31,941 It is the essential you. 214 00:11:31,941 --> 00:11:34,027 It's our first-person perspective. 215 00:11:34,027 --> 00:11:35,236 It's "I." 216 00:11:35,236 --> 00:11:37,405 The key question is, 217 00:11:37,405 --> 00:11:41,868 does the soul survive physical death? 218 00:11:41,868 --> 00:11:44,871 When we die, our spirit, 219 00:11:44,871 --> 00:11:47,582 our soul, separates from our body. 220 00:11:47,582 --> 00:11:49,459 So I wanted to look at--what is the evidence 221 00:11:49,459 --> 00:11:51,252 that we have a soul, first of all, 222 00:11:51,252 --> 00:11:53,254 and then secondly, what evidence do we have 223 00:11:53,254 --> 00:11:55,798 that it can survive our physical death? 224 00:11:55,798 --> 00:11:57,800 So in other words, Jesus, on the cross, said 225 00:11:57,800 --> 00:11:59,969 to the thief next to him that, 226 00:11:59,969 --> 00:12:02,055 "Today, you'll be with me in paradise." 227 00:12:02,055 --> 00:12:05,391 Apostle Paul said to be absent from the body 228 00:12:05,391 --> 00:12:07,060 is to be present with the Lord. 229 00:12:07,060 --> 00:12:11,147 So when we die, our spirit, 230 00:12:11,147 --> 00:12:13,316 our soul separates from our body. 231 00:12:13,316 --> 00:12:15,902 And as one philosopher said, 232 00:12:15,902 --> 00:12:19,364 "I am a soul, and I have a body." 233 00:12:19,364 --> 00:12:21,658 I think that's a good way to look at it. 234 00:12:26,663 --> 00:12:30,291 One of the views that we find being expressed 235 00:12:30,291 --> 00:12:33,252 is that you are your brain, that everything you do, 236 00:12:33,252 --> 00:12:36,881 think, and say originates 237 00:12:36,881 --> 00:12:40,301 and is driven by the neurons in your head. 238 00:12:40,301 --> 00:12:43,554 But is that all that there is to being a human being, 239 00:12:43,554 --> 00:12:46,474 or is there actually more to it? 240 00:12:46,474 --> 00:12:49,268 Well, it's true that we have a brain. 241 00:12:49,268 --> 00:12:52,438 That's very important, but we also have a mind, 242 00:12:52,438 --> 00:12:55,775 and we have this--there's something that it is to be us. 243 00:12:55,775 --> 00:12:58,528 There's something that it is like to be you 244 00:12:58,528 --> 00:13:03,574 that actually neurons alone can't completely explain. 245 00:13:09,664 --> 00:13:12,542 I grew up in a very loving home 246 00:13:12,542 --> 00:13:15,920 in the northeast of England, 247 00:13:15,920 --> 00:13:19,632 and it was a setting of which kind of religious beliefs 248 00:13:19,632 --> 00:13:22,844 weren't really talked about either way, 249 00:13:22,844 --> 00:13:26,055 and so there wasn't any particular agenda 250 00:13:26,055 --> 00:13:29,684 or belief system that was being pushed on me. 251 00:13:31,894 --> 00:13:35,231 Probably, I'd say, by the time I was a teenager, 252 00:13:35,231 --> 00:13:38,818 I knew that I wanted to be a scientist. 253 00:13:38,818 --> 00:13:41,362 I loved the sciences. 254 00:13:41,362 --> 00:13:45,033 And I remember my biology teacher 255 00:13:45,033 --> 00:13:48,703 handing me a book by Richard Dawkins 256 00:13:48,703 --> 00:13:54,584 about this idea that we are essentially gene machines, 257 00:13:54,584 --> 00:13:56,919 and that the purpose of our lives is 258 00:13:56,919 --> 00:13:59,922 to be DNA carriers, 259 00:13:59,922 --> 00:14:02,300 and I think I absorbed the view 260 00:14:02,300 --> 00:14:04,260 that that must be the only way 261 00:14:04,260 --> 00:14:07,388 of looking at life from other sources as well, 262 00:14:07,388 --> 00:14:10,391 like magazines, and radio, and from other people 263 00:14:10,391 --> 00:14:11,893 that I was meeting. 264 00:14:11,893 --> 00:14:15,772 And you can't be a credible scientist 265 00:14:15,772 --> 00:14:18,066 and believe in God at the same time, 266 00:14:18,066 --> 00:14:21,110 and so I needed to find out whether I was being asked 267 00:14:21,110 --> 00:14:24,739 to choose between God and a theory. 268 00:14:31,829 --> 00:14:35,166 Is free will an illusion? 269 00:14:35,166 --> 00:14:37,418 Scientists will have their different views, 270 00:14:37,418 --> 00:14:39,796 but there is one question 271 00:14:39,796 --> 00:14:43,466 that really science isn't able to answer: 272 00:14:43,466 --> 00:14:45,927 why can we think in the first place? 273 00:14:45,927 --> 00:14:48,846 And if the forces of nature are not enough 274 00:14:48,846 --> 00:14:50,640 to explain the human mind, 275 00:14:50,640 --> 00:14:53,810 then maybe our explanations for the human mind lie 276 00:14:53,810 --> 00:14:56,938 beyond the forces of nature. 277 00:15:02,944 --> 00:15:05,571 A significant part of my story is 278 00:15:05,571 --> 00:15:08,783 when I was invited to a carol service 279 00:15:08,783 --> 00:15:11,953 around Christmastime when I was at university, 280 00:15:11,953 --> 00:15:15,915 and I was just really moved by the experience 281 00:15:15,915 --> 00:15:18,501 of what was happening, 282 00:15:18,501 --> 00:15:21,379 and there was more going on than just the music. 283 00:15:21,379 --> 00:15:25,174 There was something else that really was moving me 284 00:15:25,174 --> 00:15:27,718 on quite a deep level. 285 00:15:29,679 --> 00:15:32,598 What was that? What is that? 286 00:15:32,598 --> 00:15:34,684 And, you know, if all that there is 287 00:15:34,684 --> 00:15:36,686 to this world is physical things, 288 00:15:36,686 --> 00:15:40,481 then there wasn't really a way to make sense of that. 289 00:15:47,655 --> 00:15:52,118 One of the go-tos of those that are trying to say, 290 00:15:52,118 --> 00:15:54,912 "No, there's more to a human being than just their brain," 291 00:15:54,912 --> 00:15:59,041 is the idea that we have these experiences all the time 292 00:15:59,041 --> 00:16:02,170 that are very difficult to describe purely in terms 293 00:16:02,170 --> 00:16:07,675 of physical interactions and physical descriptions. 294 00:16:07,675 --> 00:16:11,137 You know, one example would be coffee. 295 00:16:11,137 --> 00:16:13,097 You know, here we are drinking coffee. 296 00:16:13,097 --> 00:16:17,059 Imagine I were to ask you to describe to me the smell 297 00:16:17,059 --> 00:16:22,106 of coffee purely in terms of physical descriptions. 298 00:16:22,106 --> 00:16:25,359 You know, we might come up with the chemical structure 299 00:16:25,359 --> 00:16:27,236 of caffeine, but that wouldn't 300 00:16:27,236 --> 00:16:30,448 actually get us any closer to the smell of coffee. 301 00:16:30,448 --> 00:16:33,868 Or we might describe what's happening physiologically 302 00:16:33,868 --> 00:16:36,495 as it goes into our body and we digest it, 303 00:16:36,495 --> 00:16:38,039 but that doesn't get you any closer... 304 00:16:38,039 --> 00:16:40,291 - Yeah. - To the smell of coffee. 305 00:16:40,291 --> 00:16:41,834 If you want to understand the smell of coffee, 306 00:16:41,834 --> 00:16:43,377 you need to smell it, 307 00:16:43,377 --> 00:16:46,005 and this is an example of a quale in the singular, 308 00:16:46,005 --> 00:16:48,257 or qualia, in its plural. 309 00:16:52,094 --> 00:16:54,972 Life is full of qualia, 310 00:16:54,972 --> 00:16:59,769 and these things cannot be described in physical terms. 311 00:16:59,769 --> 00:17:02,855 They are in a category of their own. 312 00:17:02,855 --> 00:17:05,650 And ultimately, there's the qualia 313 00:17:05,650 --> 00:17:07,401 of what it is like to be you, 314 00:17:07,401 --> 00:17:09,946 the experience-- the first-person experience 315 00:17:09,946 --> 00:17:11,280 of being a human being. 316 00:17:15,826 --> 00:17:18,913 You know, maybe there's a sort of a bigger experience 317 00:17:18,913 --> 00:17:20,831 that is out there. 318 00:17:20,831 --> 00:17:23,584 And if physical descriptions aren't enough, 319 00:17:23,584 --> 00:17:26,045 maybe the ultimate reason for that lies 320 00:17:26,045 --> 00:17:27,755 beyond the physical. 321 00:17:27,755 --> 00:17:30,549 And where I really kind of land with this is that, 322 00:17:30,549 --> 00:17:32,385 you know, we are conscious, 323 00:17:32,385 --> 00:17:34,971 we have these conscious experiences 324 00:17:34,971 --> 00:17:39,475 because we're made by a god who is himself conscious 325 00:17:39,475 --> 00:17:42,353 in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 326 00:17:42,353 --> 00:17:45,356 and who has made a world in which that kind 327 00:17:45,356 --> 00:17:48,609 of consciousness is extended into human beings. 328 00:17:48,609 --> 00:17:51,821 And so we think because God does. 329 00:17:51,821 --> 00:17:54,824 We have a mind because God does, 330 00:17:54,824 --> 00:17:57,201 which is kind of radical, because a lot of people think 331 00:17:57,201 --> 00:18:00,621 to be a Christian or to be a spiritual person 332 00:18:00,621 --> 00:18:02,707 is perhaps to throw out your brain 333 00:18:02,707 --> 00:18:05,334 and start believing impossible things 334 00:18:05,334 --> 00:18:08,087 that have no bearing on life, but actually no. 335 00:18:08,087 --> 00:18:10,256 Actually, to be a thinking person 336 00:18:10,256 --> 00:18:12,967 is to live out what it means 337 00:18:12,967 --> 00:18:15,636 to be made in the image of God. 338 00:18:27,315 --> 00:18:29,525 A famous old recording engineer-- 339 00:18:29,525 --> 00:18:31,193 his name's Walter Sear. 340 00:18:31,193 --> 00:18:33,571 He had a place called Sear Sound in New York City. 341 00:18:36,574 --> 00:18:38,701 I read something he said once, 342 00:18:38,701 --> 00:18:43,039 that everything we do in here is a lie 343 00:18:43,039 --> 00:18:45,207 because you've got these two speakers, 344 00:18:45,207 --> 00:18:47,084 these two crappy little speakers, 345 00:18:47,084 --> 00:18:49,378 and you're trying to create these giant worlds, 346 00:18:49,378 --> 00:18:52,590 like you're in a big hall, or you're, you know, 347 00:18:52,590 --> 00:18:54,592 in a giant silo with a drummer. 348 00:19:01,766 --> 00:19:03,726 So everything you have to do in here 349 00:19:03,726 --> 00:19:08,731 is extremely calculated to create this illusion 350 00:19:08,731 --> 00:19:11,525 that there's this world coming out of these speakers. 351 00:19:11,525 --> 00:19:14,737 And hopefully, you feel enveloped in them. 352 00:19:14,737 --> 00:19:16,614 You're gonna have the paper in your hand for this? 353 00:19:16,614 --> 00:19:18,324 Yeah. Does it look bad if I do? 354 00:19:18,324 --> 00:19:19,283 - I don't-- - I don't mind it. 355 00:19:19,283 --> 00:19:20,534 I don't mind. 356 00:19:20,534 --> 00:19:23,037 This is real stuff, okay, guys? 357 00:19:23,037 --> 00:19:24,872 - Yeah. - We didn't cut this. 358 00:19:24,872 --> 00:19:26,374 I think I called you on the phone. 359 00:19:26,374 --> 00:19:27,875 I was in Georgia. 360 00:19:27,875 --> 00:19:29,585 I called you, "Hey, Lee, I have this idea." 361 00:19:29,585 --> 00:19:32,254 You know, you had an id--something in your book 362 00:19:32,254 --> 00:19:33,547 about how you went to a concert. 363 00:19:33,547 --> 00:19:34,715 - Yeah. - You know, the experience. 364 00:19:34,715 --> 00:19:36,133 And I was like, 365 00:19:36,133 --> 00:19:37,468 "Hey, Lee, I want to do something at a studio." 366 00:19:37,468 --> 00:19:38,719 What was your first impression? 367 00:19:38,719 --> 00:19:40,137 Well, I didn't know what to expect. 368 00:19:40,137 --> 00:19:42,223 You know, entering into your thinking process... 369 00:19:42,223 --> 00:19:43,849 - Yes. - Is always an adventure. 370 00:19:43,849 --> 00:19:45,393 Yes. 371 00:19:45,393 --> 00:19:47,478 And so I just kind of went along for the ride. 372 00:19:47,478 --> 00:19:50,272 And I think there's a couple of ways to look at it. 373 00:19:50,272 --> 00:19:53,150 You know, there's a lot in the Bible about Heaven, 374 00:19:53,150 --> 00:19:56,362 but a lot of it is metaphorical. 375 00:19:56,362 --> 00:20:00,324 A lot of it uses imagery to convey something 376 00:20:00,324 --> 00:20:03,494 that may not be figuratively accurate and so forth. 377 00:20:03,494 --> 00:20:06,038 So we know a lot about Heaven, 378 00:20:06,038 --> 00:20:07,873 but we don't know a lot about Heaven. 379 00:20:07,873 --> 00:20:10,709 And I think ultimately, it's gonna be the kind of place 380 00:20:10,709 --> 00:20:12,211 where you're gonna have to say, 381 00:20:12,211 --> 00:20:14,046 you just gotta go and experience it 382 00:20:14,046 --> 00:20:15,673 to really understand it. 383 00:20:15,673 --> 00:20:19,218 And so today, with this whole musical experience, 384 00:20:19,218 --> 00:20:21,345 which is so alien to my background, 385 00:20:21,345 --> 00:20:23,264 was the kind of thing 386 00:20:23,264 --> 00:20:25,641 that you just kind of had to experience. 387 00:20:25,641 --> 00:20:28,352 How different in dynamics was it actually hearing it 388 00:20:28,352 --> 00:20:29,854 back through the speakers? 389 00:20:29,854 --> 00:20:32,022 It's very different because, first of all, 390 00:20:32,022 --> 00:20:34,483 Bob was totally into it 391 00:20:34,483 --> 00:20:36,861 and was kind of sending hand signals 392 00:20:36,861 --> 00:20:39,697 through the glass to the drum player and so forth. 393 00:20:39,697 --> 00:20:41,198 Yeah, yeah. 394 00:20:41,198 --> 00:20:43,117 And the idea that it comes 395 00:20:43,117 --> 00:20:45,411 through some pretty basic speakers, 396 00:20:45,411 --> 00:20:47,413 but then through the system, 397 00:20:47,413 --> 00:20:52,751 that can enrich the sound, and the product that you get 398 00:20:52,751 --> 00:20:56,005 in the end is so much more vibrant 399 00:20:56,005 --> 00:20:59,675 and robust than just listening to somebody play an instrument. 400 00:21:03,846 --> 00:21:06,640 Leslie and I, when we were newly wed, 401 00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:09,477 went to a concert with the Rolling Stones 402 00:21:09,477 --> 00:21:11,687 and with Ike and Tina Turner. 403 00:21:11,687 --> 00:21:15,566 I remember afterwards trying to communicate to a friend 404 00:21:15,566 --> 00:21:17,985 of mine what that was like. 405 00:21:17,985 --> 00:21:21,363 And I'm trying to tell him about the sound, 406 00:21:21,363 --> 00:21:26,035 and the ambience of the room, and the crowd, 407 00:21:26,035 --> 00:21:30,247 and the songs, which songs were played. 408 00:21:30,247 --> 00:21:32,249 And at the end, it was so--at the end, I said, 409 00:21:32,249 --> 00:21:34,043 "Well, you just had to be there." 410 00:21:34,043 --> 00:21:35,920 'cause mere words 411 00:21:35,920 --> 00:21:38,714 couldn't communicate the whole experience. 412 00:21:44,762 --> 00:21:48,224 A lot of scientists believe that we are just our brains. 413 00:21:48,224 --> 00:21:50,726 We're just a meat computer basically. 414 00:21:50,726 --> 00:21:52,770 Well, there's a lot of implications of that, 415 00:21:52,770 --> 00:21:54,688 and a lot of them are good. 416 00:21:54,688 --> 00:21:57,066 For instance, if we're just a meat computer, 417 00:21:57,066 --> 00:21:59,109 we don't really have free will. 418 00:21:59,109 --> 00:22:01,403 How do you punish someone for doing something illegal 419 00:22:01,403 --> 00:22:02,863 if there's no free will? 420 00:22:02,863 --> 00:22:04,490 He didn't have a choice. 421 00:22:04,490 --> 00:22:07,201 How do you congratulate someone does something great? 422 00:22:07,201 --> 00:22:08,661 It doesn't make sense, 423 00:22:08,661 --> 00:22:10,287 but a lot of scientists believe that. 424 00:22:10,287 --> 00:22:14,959 And yet, we know that we are more than our brain, 425 00:22:14,959 --> 00:22:18,128 that our brain can tell us, if you go to a concert, 426 00:22:18,128 --> 00:22:20,089 which notes were played, 427 00:22:20,089 --> 00:22:22,383 what the temperature of the room was, 428 00:22:22,383 --> 00:22:25,970 and so forth, but it can't convey the experience. 429 00:22:25,970 --> 00:22:28,264 We are more than a meat machine. 430 00:22:28,264 --> 00:22:29,890 We are more than just our brains. 431 00:22:29,890 --> 00:22:31,600 We have a spirit. We have a soul. 432 00:22:31,600 --> 00:22:33,269 We have a consciousness. 433 00:22:33,269 --> 00:22:35,688 It's the seat of our volition, of our emotions, 434 00:22:35,688 --> 00:22:38,107 of our feelings, and so forth. 435 00:22:38,107 --> 00:22:43,195 And you can't open a cell in your brain and say, 436 00:22:43,195 --> 00:22:45,072 "Oh, here's Lee's emotions." 437 00:22:45,072 --> 00:22:47,032 It doesn't work that way. 438 00:22:47,032 --> 00:22:50,536 We are a hyphenated people. 439 00:22:50,536 --> 00:22:52,621 In other words, we are a body, 440 00:22:52,621 --> 00:22:54,456 but we're also a soul, a spirit. 441 00:22:54,456 --> 00:22:56,959 And what's important about that is that, 442 00:22:56,959 --> 00:22:58,669 if that is true, 443 00:22:58,669 --> 00:23:03,299 then it would make sense that if our physical body died, 444 00:23:03,299 --> 00:23:08,554 our immaterial body, that is, our spirit or our soul, 445 00:23:08,554 --> 00:23:10,556 could continue to live. 446 00:23:14,560 --> 00:23:18,105 Near-death experiences-- I was a skeptic about it. 447 00:23:18,105 --> 00:23:20,649 Even as a Christian, I was skeptical 448 00:23:20,649 --> 00:23:22,359 about near-death experiences initially 449 00:23:22,359 --> 00:23:24,403 until I did the research. 450 00:23:24,403 --> 00:23:26,780 One of the things that John Burke did in his research 451 00:23:26,780 --> 00:23:28,866 when he wrote his book "Imagine Heaven," 452 00:23:28,866 --> 00:23:32,411 about near-death experiences is, he only interviewed people 453 00:23:32,411 --> 00:23:35,456 who had nothing to gain and a lot to lose 454 00:23:35,456 --> 00:23:37,333 by talking about their near-death experiences. 455 00:23:37,333 --> 00:23:38,792 There's two questions, really. 456 00:23:38,792 --> 00:23:43,005 One question is, are we a body and a spirit 457 00:23:43,005 --> 00:23:46,884 or soul, or consciousness, and if we are, 458 00:23:46,884 --> 00:23:49,053 how do we know that consciousness 459 00:23:49,053 --> 00:23:51,555 survives clinical death? 460 00:23:51,555 --> 00:23:54,516 And that's where we get into near-death experiences. 461 00:23:54,516 --> 00:23:56,101 - That's our segue right now. - Yeah. 462 00:23:56,101 --> 00:23:57,936 Which I love, because 463 00:23:57,936 --> 00:23:59,647 as our conversations have developed, 464 00:23:59,647 --> 00:24:04,360 and we're moving through, you know, these topics, 465 00:24:04,360 --> 00:24:06,111 I think the near-death experiences is 466 00:24:06,111 --> 00:24:07,446 the thing that--'cause I was gonna say, 467 00:24:07,446 --> 00:24:08,530 well, how do you prove that? 468 00:24:08,530 --> 00:24:10,491 Yeah. 469 00:24:14,036 --> 00:24:16,872 For me, it started when I was still an agnostic 470 00:24:16,872 --> 00:24:18,874 and a skeptic. 471 00:24:18,874 --> 00:24:21,210 I was an engineer for a number of years, 472 00:24:21,210 --> 00:24:24,254 and that's kind of how my mind works. 473 00:24:24,254 --> 00:24:27,132 God, the afterlife, all that-- I just didn't know, 474 00:24:27,132 --> 00:24:29,009 and I honestly didn't care. 475 00:24:29,009 --> 00:24:32,513 But my dad was dying of cancer, and someone gave him 476 00:24:32,513 --> 00:24:36,016 the very first research on what's come 477 00:24:36,016 --> 00:24:37,685 to be called near-death experiences. 478 00:24:39,853 --> 00:24:43,190 When someone clinically dies, their heart stops beating, 479 00:24:43,190 --> 00:24:45,275 in some cases, brain waves cease, 480 00:24:45,275 --> 00:24:49,655 and yet modern medicine, or miracle, whatever, 481 00:24:49,655 --> 00:24:52,032 brings them back, and they actually talk 482 00:24:52,032 --> 00:24:54,451 about a life to come. 483 00:24:54,451 --> 00:24:59,039 And that began a whole journey of really exploring, 484 00:24:59,039 --> 00:25:02,167 and questioning, and trying to understand all of this 485 00:25:02,167 --> 00:25:06,046 that has gone on for about 35 years. 486 00:25:06,046 --> 00:25:08,257 These commonalities that people report, 487 00:25:08,257 --> 00:25:10,217 and they report these same commonalities 488 00:25:10,217 --> 00:25:11,760 around the globe-- 489 00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:13,470 how does that actually intersect 490 00:25:13,470 --> 00:25:15,597 with what the Bible says? 491 00:25:24,314 --> 00:25:28,235 In a court of law, you know, if you had ten people 492 00:25:28,235 --> 00:25:30,028 who witnessed an accident 493 00:25:30,028 --> 00:25:32,239 and they all say exactly the same thing, 494 00:25:32,239 --> 00:25:34,450 that's collusion, right? 495 00:25:34,450 --> 00:25:36,785 That would be thrown out 496 00:25:36,785 --> 00:25:39,830 because people would never say exactly the same thing 497 00:25:39,830 --> 00:25:42,166 unless they colluded together to say the same thing. 498 00:25:42,166 --> 00:25:43,917 But if you have ten people 499 00:25:43,917 --> 00:25:45,753 who say slightly different things 500 00:25:45,753 --> 00:25:48,005 from different perspectives, but they all overlap 501 00:25:48,005 --> 00:25:50,632 to make a bigger picture, well, that's a strong case. 502 00:25:50,632 --> 00:25:54,261 I mean, I've personally studied over a thousand of them, 503 00:25:54,261 --> 00:25:57,723 but you have millions all over the globe. 504 00:25:57,723 --> 00:25:59,683 In fact, the Gallup poll did a survey 505 00:25:59,683 --> 00:26:02,519 and found 1 out of 25 Americans has had one 506 00:26:02,519 --> 00:26:04,521 of these near-death experiences. 507 00:26:04,521 --> 00:26:07,775 That's like 13 million Americans. 508 00:26:07,775 --> 00:26:10,360 European Academy of Neuroscience recently did 509 00:26:10,360 --> 00:26:13,197 a study across 35 countries, 510 00:26:13,197 --> 00:26:17,075 and they found that more like one in ten Europeans 511 00:26:17,075 --> 00:26:18,827 have had one of these experiences. 512 00:26:18,827 --> 00:26:21,288 So these are not uncommon. 513 00:26:28,504 --> 00:26:31,507 In order to show that we have a consciousness 514 00:26:31,507 --> 00:26:36,094 that survives our death, we just need one authentic, 515 00:26:36,094 --> 00:26:39,306 corroborated near-death experience, 516 00:26:39,306 --> 00:26:42,142 and we have a lot more than one of those examples. 517 00:26:42,142 --> 00:26:44,353 My favorite example is Pamela Reynolds. 518 00:26:44,353 --> 00:26:46,355 Here's a 35-year-old woman 519 00:26:46,355 --> 00:26:48,357 who is having a brain aneurysm, 520 00:26:48,357 --> 00:26:52,903 so she had to have a highly unusual operation. 521 00:26:52,903 --> 00:26:55,030 They put her under deep anesthetic. 522 00:26:55,030 --> 00:26:57,908 Her body was cooled to 50 degrees, 523 00:26:57,908 --> 00:27:02,538 and all of the blood was drained from her brain. 524 00:27:02,538 --> 00:27:05,249 Three tests showed that 525 00:27:05,249 --> 00:27:09,336 there was no measurable brain activity whatsoever. 526 00:27:09,336 --> 00:27:13,423 She had devices inserted into her ears 527 00:27:13,423 --> 00:27:16,927 so that all she could hear was 100 decibels of sound, 528 00:27:16,927 --> 00:27:19,847 which is like a subway train going right next to you. 529 00:27:19,847 --> 00:27:21,890 And then her eyes were taped shut. 530 00:27:21,890 --> 00:27:24,309 And all the surgical instruments were shrouded 531 00:27:24,309 --> 00:27:26,228 before the surgery began. 532 00:27:28,438 --> 00:27:33,485 And yet, she was conscious, she said, during that surgery. 533 00:27:33,485 --> 00:27:35,946 Even though there was no measurable brain activity, 534 00:27:35,946 --> 00:27:37,447 she was conscious. 535 00:27:37,447 --> 00:27:41,201 She described witnessing the surgery take place. 536 00:27:41,201 --> 00:27:43,120 She described going through a tunnel, 537 00:27:43,120 --> 00:27:46,707 meeting dead relatives, coming back into her body. 538 00:27:46,707 --> 00:27:50,085 She was able to recall specific details 539 00:27:50,085 --> 00:27:52,963 about the highly unusual instruments 540 00:27:52,963 --> 00:27:54,798 that were used during her surgery. 541 00:27:54,798 --> 00:27:57,009 And, even more than that, 542 00:27:57,009 --> 00:28:00,512 she recalls specific conversations 543 00:28:00,512 --> 00:28:03,640 that took place while she was brain-dead, 544 00:28:03,640 --> 00:28:05,434 while she was clinically dead. 545 00:28:05,434 --> 00:28:08,270 She remembers one person saying, 546 00:28:08,270 --> 00:28:11,064 "We have a problem. Her arteries are too small," 547 00:28:11,064 --> 00:28:14,735 and a male voice responding, "Go to the other side." 548 00:28:14,735 --> 00:28:18,989 So she witnessed things that she had no way of knowing 549 00:28:18,989 --> 00:28:21,074 unless her consciousness 550 00:28:21,074 --> 00:28:24,161 somehow survived her clinical death. 551 00:28:27,456 --> 00:28:31,710 Another researcher studied 93 patients 552 00:28:31,710 --> 00:28:36,381 who reported specific details that they encountered 553 00:28:36,381 --> 00:28:38,050 during their near-death experience, 554 00:28:38,050 --> 00:28:39,927 like Pamela Reynolds identifying 555 00:28:39,927 --> 00:28:41,637 the surgical instruments that were used 556 00:28:41,637 --> 00:28:43,805 and the conversations that were spoken. 557 00:28:43,805 --> 00:28:48,435 And what she discovered is that a remarkable 92% of them 558 00:28:48,435 --> 00:28:50,729 were absolutely accurate 559 00:28:50,729 --> 00:28:53,899 in what they verifiably claimed. 560 00:28:53,899 --> 00:28:57,319 Another 6% were largely accurate. 561 00:28:57,319 --> 00:28:59,947 Well, that's almost a perfect record 562 00:28:59,947 --> 00:29:02,324 of these people observing things 563 00:29:02,324 --> 00:29:04,117 that they otherwise could not have observed 564 00:29:04,117 --> 00:29:06,328 because they were clinically dead at the time, 565 00:29:06,328 --> 00:29:11,083 and yet reporting correctly what they had seen. 566 00:29:11,083 --> 00:29:13,043 One of the commonalities of people 567 00:29:13,043 --> 00:29:16,171 who have NDEs is a life review. 568 00:29:16,171 --> 00:29:19,508 And because time doesn't work the same on the other side, 569 00:29:19,508 --> 00:29:21,885 they often relive their entire lives. 570 00:29:21,885 --> 00:29:23,512 It's like watching 571 00:29:23,512 --> 00:29:27,349 a three-dimensional panoramic replay of your life, 572 00:29:27,349 --> 00:29:31,353 but what they say is they're watching not only everything 573 00:29:31,353 --> 00:29:34,856 they did, but their interactions with other people, 574 00:29:34,856 --> 00:29:39,945 and they can experience how it felt to the other people. 575 00:29:39,945 --> 00:29:41,571 So they're not just experiencing 576 00:29:41,571 --> 00:29:43,031 what they thought and felt. 577 00:29:43,031 --> 00:29:44,408 They're experiencing what others thought 578 00:29:44,408 --> 00:29:46,076 and felt as well. 579 00:29:47,869 --> 00:29:52,457 When I was being interviewed on the news in New York City, 580 00:29:52,457 --> 00:29:56,044 I got an email afterwards from Heidi. 581 00:29:56,044 --> 00:29:58,213 She was a hospice nurse. 582 00:29:58,213 --> 00:30:00,924 And she said, "Hey, I saw you on the news. 583 00:30:00,924 --> 00:30:03,385 "I heard about your book. I've never read your book. 584 00:30:03,385 --> 00:30:04,886 "I don't know who you are. 585 00:30:04,886 --> 00:30:08,432 But that happened to me when I was 16 years old." 586 00:30:08,432 --> 00:30:11,935 And she said, "I grew up in a Jewish home, 587 00:30:11,935 --> 00:30:16,314 "but my father and mother-- they were agnostic atheist. 588 00:30:16,314 --> 00:30:18,817 "My dad used to tell me that, 589 00:30:18,817 --> 00:30:22,029 "'You're no more significant than a speck of dust, 590 00:30:22,029 --> 00:30:24,740 "'and Jesus Christ was the biggest hoax 591 00:30:24,740 --> 00:30:27,117 ever perpetrated on humanity.'" 592 00:30:30,454 --> 00:30:34,708 "When I was 16, my horse reared back, and fell on me, 593 00:30:34,708 --> 00:30:37,586 "and completely crushed my pelvis and my chest, 594 00:30:37,586 --> 00:30:39,755 and I died." 595 00:30:42,299 --> 00:30:46,219 She said, "I was up above my body about 30 feet, 596 00:30:46,219 --> 00:30:49,806 "and I'm watching my sisters freak out, 597 00:30:49,806 --> 00:30:52,184 "and I'm thinking, 598 00:30:52,184 --> 00:30:55,812 I wish my sisters didn't have to watch me die." 599 00:30:55,812 --> 00:30:58,315 She felt great, but she was sad that they had to watch that. 600 00:31:00,650 --> 00:31:03,278 And then she sees a light over her shoulder, she said. 601 00:31:03,278 --> 00:31:06,573 And she turns, and there's Jesus. 602 00:31:06,573 --> 00:31:09,910 She fully wasn't expecting Jesus. 603 00:31:09,910 --> 00:31:13,914 And yet, she said, "I knew this was God. 604 00:31:13,914 --> 00:31:16,458 "And he looked just like Jesus. 605 00:31:16,458 --> 00:31:18,418 And I felt like I had always known him." 606 00:31:21,379 --> 00:31:23,715 Since she was a little girl, 607 00:31:23,715 --> 00:31:26,968 she had always believed in God and had always prayed to God. 608 00:31:26,968 --> 00:31:29,888 And Jesus ends up in this near-death experience 609 00:31:29,888 --> 00:31:31,765 giving her a life review. 610 00:31:31,765 --> 00:31:34,726 And he shows her in the life review, 611 00:31:34,726 --> 00:31:36,770 when she was a little girl praying 612 00:31:36,770 --> 00:31:39,189 and she would feel this sense of peace, 613 00:31:39,189 --> 00:31:42,484 that he was actually the one sitting on her bedside 614 00:31:42,484 --> 00:31:44,319 when she would pray. 615 00:31:44,319 --> 00:31:48,532 She came back from that experience knowing 616 00:31:48,532 --> 00:31:52,202 that Jesus was God, and yet she's Jewish. 617 00:31:52,202 --> 00:31:56,289 And she's been able to see that the Jewish prophets 618 00:31:56,289 --> 00:32:00,335 foretold all about Jesus, and so she's Jewish, 619 00:32:00,335 --> 00:32:03,004 but she believes that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah 620 00:32:03,004 --> 00:32:05,132 who was foretold. 621 00:32:08,677 --> 00:32:11,596 And so we have a famous case of a woman 622 00:32:11,596 --> 00:32:16,852 who was clinically dead, and she describes how 623 00:32:16,852 --> 00:32:18,812 her soul separated from her body. 624 00:32:26,987 --> 00:32:29,614 She was watching them trying to resuscitate her, 625 00:32:29,614 --> 00:32:33,034 and she floated up through the floors of the hospital 626 00:32:33,034 --> 00:32:34,661 to the roof of the hospital. 627 00:32:41,209 --> 00:32:45,130 When she came back into her body, 628 00:32:45,130 --> 00:32:47,132 and was telling people about this, she said, 629 00:32:47,132 --> 00:32:50,135 "By the way, while I was floating up there, 630 00:32:50,135 --> 00:32:52,596 "on the third-floor ledge of the hospital, 631 00:32:52,596 --> 00:32:55,307 "there's a man's blue tennis shoe 632 00:32:55,307 --> 00:32:58,810 "with some wearing over the little toe area, 633 00:32:58,810 --> 00:33:03,023 "and it's sitting on that ledge 634 00:33:03,023 --> 00:33:06,109 with the shoelace underneath the heel." 635 00:33:14,201 --> 00:33:16,620 Well, then they go up, and they find, 636 00:33:16,620 --> 00:33:18,872 yes, here it is, exactly as she said. 637 00:33:26,504 --> 00:33:27,923 That's corroboration. 638 00:33:27,923 --> 00:33:31,092 That is something she could not have known 639 00:33:31,092 --> 00:33:34,179 if she didn't have a real out-of-body experience. 640 00:33:41,645 --> 00:33:45,190 I think at first, John decided to write 641 00:33:45,190 --> 00:33:47,442 about the NDEs and about Heaven 642 00:33:47,442 --> 00:33:50,195 using the near-death experiences as part of it. 643 00:33:50,195 --> 00:33:53,657 We knew that it was gonna get a lot of resistance. 644 00:33:53,657 --> 00:33:59,246 And we knew that people would maybe think 645 00:33:59,246 --> 00:34:02,499 that we were going away from Scripture, 646 00:34:02,499 --> 00:34:05,794 or even some of our pastor friends 647 00:34:05,794 --> 00:34:07,629 might not understand 648 00:34:07,629 --> 00:34:11,258 because nobody was really taking theology of Heaven 649 00:34:11,258 --> 00:34:12,926 and the near-death experiences 650 00:34:12,926 --> 00:34:16,012 and showing how they can line up. 651 00:34:18,181 --> 00:34:20,475 You know, John actually gave a talk on this 652 00:34:20,475 --> 00:34:22,477 back in the late '80s 653 00:34:22,477 --> 00:34:24,646 at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 654 00:34:24,646 --> 00:34:26,231 The Christian community was giving a lot 655 00:34:26,231 --> 00:34:27,816 of pushback to this. 656 00:34:27,816 --> 00:34:30,193 People that were sharing their near-death stories 657 00:34:30,193 --> 00:34:33,571 did not get well-received. 658 00:34:33,571 --> 00:34:36,199 And in many cases, they were judged 659 00:34:36,199 --> 00:34:38,326 for what they had experienced. 660 00:34:56,177 --> 00:35:01,766 My 35 years of research have completely changed my view 661 00:35:01,766 --> 00:35:04,144 from what it was earlier on 662 00:35:04,144 --> 00:35:07,439 of what the life to come is gonna be like. 663 00:35:07,439 --> 00:35:10,942 What I've realized is that every good thing 664 00:35:10,942 --> 00:35:13,361 that we experience on this Earth, 665 00:35:13,361 --> 00:35:16,906 everything we love-- first of all, God created it, 666 00:35:16,906 --> 00:35:18,867 and that's why we love it. 667 00:35:18,867 --> 00:35:22,620 He created it for us to enjoy it and to love it. 668 00:35:22,620 --> 00:35:26,124 But all of it is just a shadow of the real thing 669 00:35:26,124 --> 00:35:29,044 that he created us to enjoy in Heaven. 670 00:35:29,044 --> 00:35:31,921 So all of this life is just a shadow 671 00:35:31,921 --> 00:35:36,134 of the real one we were meant to experience, relationally, 672 00:35:36,134 --> 00:35:39,804 with beauty, with fun and excitement, 673 00:35:39,804 --> 00:35:42,974 with work and pleasure, with all of it. 674 00:35:42,974 --> 00:35:44,768 I mean, the best is yet to come. 675 00:35:47,604 --> 00:35:51,358 In the over a thousand near-death experiences 676 00:35:51,358 --> 00:35:53,068 I've studied, 677 00:35:53,068 --> 00:35:56,821 it's this incredible picture of how, when we die, 678 00:35:56,821 --> 00:36:00,909 we leave our natural bodies, but we're still ourselves. 679 00:36:00,909 --> 00:36:03,787 We have spiritual bodies, and not with five senses, 680 00:36:03,787 --> 00:36:06,122 more like 50 senses. 681 00:36:06,122 --> 00:36:09,084 It's life on steroids. 682 00:36:09,084 --> 00:36:12,545 It's life beyond anything we've experienced. 683 00:36:12,545 --> 00:36:14,881 The colors that people talk about 684 00:36:14,881 --> 00:36:17,550 are the color spectrums far beyond Earth, 685 00:36:17,550 --> 00:36:19,177 but that's what you would expect 686 00:36:19,177 --> 00:36:21,137 because the color spectrum of Earth 687 00:36:21,137 --> 00:36:22,847 is the color spectrum of the sun, 688 00:36:22,847 --> 00:36:24,724 but the color spectrum of Heaven 689 00:36:24,724 --> 00:36:26,226 is the color spectrum of God. 690 00:36:28,812 --> 00:36:31,356 There's this great welcoming committee 691 00:36:31,356 --> 00:36:33,441 of people who have passed on before them, 692 00:36:33,441 --> 00:36:34,943 who are there to welcome them. 693 00:36:34,943 --> 00:36:38,822 And Jesus said, "Use your Earthly resources, 694 00:36:38,822 --> 00:36:41,157 "you know, to make friends, so that when you die, 695 00:36:41,157 --> 00:36:43,743 they will welcome you into eternal dwellings." 696 00:36:43,743 --> 00:36:48,039 It's gonna be life and beauty not unlike Earth. 697 00:36:48,039 --> 00:36:49,582 You know, there are mountains, 698 00:36:49,582 --> 00:36:52,043 and flowers, and trees, and streams, 699 00:36:52,043 --> 00:36:53,962 and all of that's talked about in the Book of Isaiah 700 00:36:53,962 --> 00:36:55,630 and the Book of Revelation. 701 00:36:55,630 --> 00:36:58,508 And that's exactly what near-death experiencers 702 00:36:58,508 --> 00:37:01,469 talk about, except they experience it 703 00:37:01,469 --> 00:37:04,556 in expanded dimensions of space, 704 00:37:04,556 --> 00:37:07,225 more than three dimensions of space, 705 00:37:07,225 --> 00:37:10,937 and more dimensions of time, just like it says in the Bible. 706 00:37:12,856 --> 00:37:15,900 The greatest experience on Earth is just like 707 00:37:15,900 --> 00:37:18,236 a tiny taste compared to the feast 708 00:37:18,236 --> 00:37:20,530 that I believe God has prepared for us, 709 00:37:20,530 --> 00:37:23,950 and I can't wait to discover all these new things. 710 00:37:23,950 --> 00:37:27,662 I mean, imagine a universe of billions of stars 711 00:37:27,662 --> 00:37:30,457 and planets that we thought were beyond our reach, 712 00:37:30,457 --> 00:37:35,128 but what if, in a thought, we can go explore them? 713 00:37:35,128 --> 00:37:38,965 Endless, endless exploration. 714 00:37:59,777 --> 00:38:02,530 I remember one day, on the fourth floor newsroom 715 00:38:02,530 --> 00:38:04,824 of the "Chicago Tribune," one of the copy editors 716 00:38:04,824 --> 00:38:07,202 walked all the way across the newspaper 717 00:38:07,202 --> 00:38:08,870 and looked at me and said, 718 00:38:08,870 --> 00:38:10,872 "Strobel, you're not the best writer in the world, 719 00:38:10,872 --> 00:38:13,541 but doggone it, you're a clear writer." 720 00:38:13,541 --> 00:38:15,502 And to me, that was the biggest compliment 721 00:38:15,502 --> 00:38:17,420 'cause that's what I think good writing really is. 722 00:38:23,885 --> 00:38:26,179 This really represents to me, as you say, 723 00:38:26,179 --> 00:38:28,139 the pinnacle of my journalism career. 724 00:38:28,139 --> 00:38:30,850 I mean, this is back when newspapers mattered. 725 00:38:30,850 --> 00:38:32,602 This is back when our daily circulation was 726 00:38:32,602 --> 00:38:34,604 almost a million every day. 727 00:38:34,604 --> 00:38:36,689 This was back when everybody got the newspaper. 728 00:38:36,689 --> 00:38:38,066 It made a big difference. 729 00:38:38,066 --> 00:38:39,442 And to know that you could write an article 730 00:38:39,442 --> 00:38:41,486 that could change the city, 731 00:38:41,486 --> 00:38:43,947 that could end up with people getting locked up 732 00:38:43,947 --> 00:38:45,907 in prison because of crimes 733 00:38:45,907 --> 00:38:47,534 that had never been exposed before, 734 00:38:47,534 --> 00:38:49,827 political corruption and so forth. 735 00:38:49,827 --> 00:38:52,747 You had a lot of influence back then 736 00:38:52,747 --> 00:38:54,290 that newspapers really don't have today. 737 00:38:57,710 --> 00:38:59,671 I just felt that, 738 00:38:59,671 --> 00:39:01,422 if I could get a front-page byline 739 00:39:01,422 --> 00:39:03,007 in the "Chicago Tribune," 740 00:39:03,007 --> 00:39:05,009 which I had by the end of my first week at the "Tribune," 741 00:39:05,009 --> 00:39:06,719 I had a front-page byline, 742 00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:09,681 that sort of established my credibility, 743 00:39:09,681 --> 00:39:11,808 and it showed that I made something of myself, 744 00:39:11,808 --> 00:39:13,351 that I was successful, 745 00:39:13,351 --> 00:39:15,186 that I was making a difference, 746 00:39:15,186 --> 00:39:16,521 that I was climbing the ladder, 747 00:39:16,521 --> 00:39:18,481 that I was on the road to success. 748 00:39:18,481 --> 00:39:20,984 All that was represented by that little byline 749 00:39:20,984 --> 00:39:22,986 on the front page of the "Tribune." 750 00:39:44,090 --> 00:39:46,759 Everyone wants to be remembered by something, huh? 751 00:39:58,771 --> 00:40:00,815 Before I got into skateboarding, 752 00:40:00,815 --> 00:40:03,610 I was really heavily into BMX, and bikes, and motorcycles, 753 00:40:03,610 --> 00:40:06,821 obviously because I was a huge fan of Evel Knievel, 754 00:40:06,821 --> 00:40:09,657 and the only way that we can emulate Evel Knievel 755 00:40:09,657 --> 00:40:11,200 was on a bicycle. 756 00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:12,535 You know, I used to put the card in the spokes 757 00:40:12,535 --> 00:40:13,995 to try to make it sound like a motor. 758 00:40:13,995 --> 00:40:16,456 I used to buy these plastic gas tanks 759 00:40:16,456 --> 00:40:20,251 to put over my bike to make it look like a motorcycle. 760 00:40:20,251 --> 00:40:23,129 We used to make ramps to try to jump over garbage cans, 761 00:40:23,129 --> 00:40:25,548 pretend like we're jumping cars. 762 00:40:25,548 --> 00:40:27,800 I chose skateboarding 763 00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:31,304 because it really didn't matter how big you were, 764 00:40:31,304 --> 00:40:33,514 how strong you were, how tall. 765 00:40:42,774 --> 00:40:45,318 No, didn't fear God at all. 766 00:40:45,318 --> 00:40:46,944 I didn't believe in God, really, 767 00:40:46,944 --> 00:40:49,238 you know, so at that time, 768 00:40:49,238 --> 00:40:52,784 I didn't really care whether I was going to Heaven or Hell, 769 00:40:52,784 --> 00:40:54,744 or even thought about it. 770 00:40:54,744 --> 00:40:57,664 I had a conversation with an old teammate 771 00:40:57,664 --> 00:40:59,499 from the Bones Brigade days. 772 00:40:59,499 --> 00:41:01,042 His name is Lance Mountain. 773 00:41:01,042 --> 00:41:03,544 He was a teammate of mine on Powell Peralta, 774 00:41:03,544 --> 00:41:05,338 and he's been a devout Christian 775 00:41:05,338 --> 00:41:09,592 ever since I've known him, since the late '70s. 776 00:41:09,592 --> 00:41:13,221 And I remember, I was in his car, 777 00:41:13,221 --> 00:41:14,514 and we were having a debate, 778 00:41:14,514 --> 00:41:17,433 argument about God and about science. 779 00:41:17,433 --> 00:41:21,354 And I don't really remember for sure 780 00:41:21,354 --> 00:41:23,231 specifically what we were talking about, 781 00:41:23,231 --> 00:41:25,566 but basically, I told straight up--I said, 782 00:41:25,566 --> 00:41:28,277 "Hey, Lance, you know, 783 00:41:28,277 --> 00:41:31,072 "I know you want to try to show me something about God, 784 00:41:31,072 --> 00:41:36,244 "and try to make me understand, but I'm not going to, 785 00:41:36,244 --> 00:41:39,455 "you know, 786 00:41:39,455 --> 00:41:43,084 "even think about God or give God the time of day 787 00:41:43,084 --> 00:41:44,585 "unless he reveals himself to me. 788 00:41:44,585 --> 00:41:46,629 "And once he reveals himself to me, 789 00:41:46,629 --> 00:41:50,299 then I'll look into it." 790 00:41:50,299 --> 00:41:52,719 And sure enough, six months later, 791 00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:55,471 he revealed himself, you know, to me in a big way. 792 00:42:01,477 --> 00:42:05,106 I just remember just having my eyes closed, 793 00:42:05,106 --> 00:42:07,817 and then just hearing this voice in my head. 794 00:42:07,817 --> 00:42:09,986 Call my sister-in-law Kathy, 795 00:42:09,986 --> 00:42:13,489 who's married to my brother Eddie. 796 00:42:13,489 --> 00:42:16,033 Out of the blue, I'm like, "Where did that come from?" 797 00:42:16,033 --> 00:42:17,618 You know? 798 00:42:17,618 --> 00:42:19,704 And so I did, you know, 799 00:42:19,704 --> 00:42:22,165 'cause I trusted that voice in my head. 800 00:42:22,165 --> 00:42:23,624 And I said, "You know what? She's gonna give me 801 00:42:23,624 --> 00:42:26,711 the answers that I need." 802 00:42:26,711 --> 00:42:29,380 You know, I had just gone through a divorce. 803 00:42:29,380 --> 00:42:32,133 You know, I was dating. 804 00:42:32,133 --> 00:42:34,427 You know, I wanted something solid again. 805 00:42:34,427 --> 00:42:40,558 And I got together with this woman, 806 00:42:40,558 --> 00:42:42,643 and shared a relationship with her, 807 00:42:42,643 --> 00:42:44,979 and--which was built on trust, 808 00:42:44,979 --> 00:42:48,274 you know, and the trust was broken months later. 809 00:42:48,274 --> 00:42:52,195 I just really couldn't really understand being 40 years old 810 00:42:52,195 --> 00:42:54,864 and dealing with this drama relationship. 811 00:42:54,864 --> 00:42:57,575 And I'm hurt, you know? I'm sad. 812 00:42:59,118 --> 00:43:01,037 I was sad. 813 00:43:09,462 --> 00:43:12,548 Even after all this time, it still hurts. 814 00:43:15,218 --> 00:43:18,012 But she told me--she said, 815 00:43:18,012 --> 00:43:22,016 "Steven, you know, 816 00:43:22,016 --> 00:43:25,728 "you've had all this success, you know. 817 00:43:25,728 --> 00:43:29,315 "You're a famous skateboarder. You've done so well. 818 00:43:29,315 --> 00:43:32,735 But there's something missing in your life, you know." 819 00:43:35,238 --> 00:43:37,156 And I had a feeling she was gonna say 820 00:43:37,156 --> 00:43:40,034 that I needed Jesus in my life 821 00:43:40,034 --> 00:43:42,203 'cause I was calling her for the answers. 822 00:43:42,203 --> 00:43:47,500 And so I was ready to hear it. 823 00:43:47,500 --> 00:43:53,130 My heart was not a heart anymore. 824 00:43:53,130 --> 00:43:59,011 And it turned out to be one 825 00:43:59,011 --> 00:44:01,389 of the greatest decisions I've made in my whole life. 826 00:44:13,442 --> 00:44:14,819 Okay, yeah. 827 00:44:15,528 --> 00:44:17,071 I wrote it with two friends of mine, 828 00:44:17,071 --> 00:44:19,156 Jason Ingram and Matt Bronleewe, yeah. 829 00:44:21,117 --> 00:44:23,286 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. 830 00:44:26,372 --> 00:44:28,624 Yeah, yeah. 831 00:44:46,601 --> 00:44:47,727 Yeah. 832 00:44:50,104 --> 00:44:54,275 Yeah, When I look back at, like, Hawk Nelson songs 833 00:44:54,275 --> 00:44:58,237 I was a part of writing, I feel complicated about it. 834 00:44:58,237 --> 00:45:01,532 ♪ A little louder, open your heart ♪ 835 00:45:01,532 --> 00:45:04,577 ♪ It's time that we start again ♪ 836 00:45:04,577 --> 00:45:06,329 Sing it out! 837 00:45:06,329 --> 00:45:09,373 On one hand, I'm really proud of the work that we did. 838 00:45:09,373 --> 00:45:11,834 ♪ Love can go, just how deep ♪ 839 00:45:11,834 --> 00:45:14,670 Our goal was always to really encourage people. 840 00:45:14,670 --> 00:45:16,339 And that's still my goal. 841 00:45:16,339 --> 00:45:20,217 So in a sense, there's a throughline there for me. 842 00:45:20,217 --> 00:45:24,680 ♪ He says, "I am for you," yeah ♪ 843 00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:27,850 ♪ "I'm not against you" ♪ 844 00:45:34,857 --> 00:45:37,193 Thank you, EO! 845 00:45:37,193 --> 00:45:39,904 We love you so much! 846 00:45:43,866 --> 00:45:45,451 I grew up 847 00:45:45,451 --> 00:45:47,745 in a very charismatic evangelical setting. 848 00:45:47,745 --> 00:45:49,288 My dad's a pastor. 849 00:45:49,288 --> 00:45:53,626 And he was pastoring a church in southern Ontario 850 00:45:53,626 --> 00:45:56,420 for a lot of the years of my childhood. 851 00:45:56,420 --> 00:45:58,297 As I was growing up, 852 00:45:58,297 --> 00:46:00,091 I got really interested in music. 853 00:46:00,091 --> 00:46:04,345 My musical education was very much in, like, worship teams, 854 00:46:04,345 --> 00:46:06,806 and being a worship leader, and that kind of thing. 855 00:46:06,806 --> 00:46:09,433 And I ended up joining this band, Hawk Nelson. 856 00:46:12,937 --> 00:46:15,856 ♪ Here and now, I'm in the fire ♪ 857 00:46:15,856 --> 00:46:18,401 ♪ In above my head ♪ 858 00:46:18,401 --> 00:46:21,070 Yeah, the idea that it could be a career 859 00:46:21,070 --> 00:46:24,532 was like a dream that was, like, worth chasing, 860 00:46:24,532 --> 00:46:26,450 even if it felt unlikely. 861 00:46:26,450 --> 00:46:29,245 But it did become something that I did for a career 862 00:46:29,245 --> 00:46:31,163 for, you know, 15, 16 years. 863 00:46:39,338 --> 00:46:42,758 I think, as I was writing that stuff, 864 00:46:42,758 --> 00:46:47,763 it, for me, represented what I wanted to believe. 865 00:46:47,763 --> 00:46:51,600 And when you want to believe something really deeply, 866 00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:56,105 you have periods of time where you sort of can, right? 867 00:46:56,105 --> 00:46:58,983 Like, you sort of can believe that this is true, 868 00:46:58,983 --> 00:47:01,152 and you have experiences, 869 00:47:01,152 --> 00:47:02,778 and you interpret them through that lens, 870 00:47:02,778 --> 00:47:04,155 and you go, like, "Oh, yeah! 871 00:47:04,155 --> 00:47:06,866 "Like, God does love me this much. 872 00:47:06,866 --> 00:47:09,660 And I had this experience, and I kind of felt it." 873 00:47:09,660 --> 00:47:11,537 You know, sometimes, I think there's a trope 874 00:47:11,537 --> 00:47:14,665 that gets trotted out that, like, oh, well, like, 875 00:47:14,665 --> 00:47:16,959 people choose not to believe in God 'cause they just want 876 00:47:16,959 --> 00:47:20,046 to go do some sinnin', and, like, that was not me. 877 00:47:20,046 --> 00:47:22,214 I, like--I really wanted to believe. 878 00:47:22,214 --> 00:47:23,591 And the more I read and learned, 879 00:47:23,591 --> 00:47:24,925 the more I just found 880 00:47:24,925 --> 00:47:25,968 that it was difficult for me to believe. 881 00:47:25,968 --> 00:47:28,679 So that culminated in me 882 00:47:28,679 --> 00:47:31,057 finally feeling like I really needed 883 00:47:31,057 --> 00:47:33,225 to say something publicly because I had been talking 884 00:47:33,225 --> 00:47:35,936 about my faith publicly for so many years 885 00:47:35,936 --> 00:47:39,732 that to talk about this only privately, 886 00:47:39,732 --> 00:47:42,359 and to hide it publicly, felt really disingenuous to me. 887 00:47:42,359 --> 00:47:44,779 So I finally wrote this post. 888 00:47:44,779 --> 00:47:47,948 I posted it on Instagram May 20 of 2020. 889 00:47:47,948 --> 00:47:50,242 And I said, 890 00:47:50,242 --> 00:47:52,119 "I'm finding that I no longer believe in God, 891 00:47:52,119 --> 00:47:54,038 and here's why." 892 00:47:54,038 --> 00:47:58,125 And it was terrifying to post that 893 00:47:58,125 --> 00:48:00,086 'cause I knew my life would change. 894 00:48:00,086 --> 00:48:02,671 And I knew it was gonna affect my family. 895 00:48:02,671 --> 00:48:04,465 I knew it was gonna affect, you know, 896 00:48:04,465 --> 00:48:09,178 like, my parents, my siblings, guys I'd been in a band with. 897 00:48:09,178 --> 00:48:12,515 So you know, I remember posting it, 898 00:48:12,515 --> 00:48:14,100 and then, you know, I hit Post, 899 00:48:14,100 --> 00:48:15,601 and then I literally put the phone down and, 900 00:48:15,601 --> 00:48:17,770 like, walked away, and I was like, "Ahh!" 901 00:48:17,770 --> 00:48:19,522 You know, I think I probably had a beer or two 902 00:48:19,522 --> 00:48:20,689 and, like, relaxed. 903 00:48:20,689 --> 00:48:22,441 You know, like, I need to chill. 904 00:48:22,441 --> 00:48:25,486 But the response was really interesting. 905 00:48:31,367 --> 00:48:33,953 I had a lot of my Christian friends though, 906 00:48:33,953 --> 00:48:37,164 who were very kind and supportive. 907 00:48:37,164 --> 00:48:38,958 And while they didn't agree 908 00:48:38,958 --> 00:48:41,544 with where I was at or my conclusions, 909 00:48:41,544 --> 00:48:43,629 they still cared about me as a person. 910 00:48:43,629 --> 00:48:46,465 And I really appreciated that. 911 00:48:46,465 --> 00:48:49,218 And then I also had a ton of people 912 00:48:49,218 --> 00:48:50,845 who messaged me privately, 913 00:48:50,845 --> 00:48:53,222 and, like, in the first two weeks after that post, 914 00:48:53,222 --> 00:48:57,643 I probably got 10,000 messages from people saying something 915 00:48:57,643 --> 00:49:00,646 along the lines of, "I'm wondering some 916 00:49:00,646 --> 00:49:02,189 "of the same things you're wondering, 917 00:49:02,189 --> 00:49:04,150 and I thought I was the only one." 918 00:49:10,030 --> 00:49:14,326 You know, God--if he's real, he has chosen to make himself 919 00:49:14,326 --> 00:49:17,288 hidden in such a way that we could plausibly say, 920 00:49:17,288 --> 00:49:19,290 "I don't even know if God's there." 921 00:49:19,290 --> 00:49:26,130 And then, with that in mind, in Christianity, 922 00:49:26,130 --> 00:49:28,841 we're often told, well, now you have to make a belief 923 00:49:28,841 --> 00:49:31,802 that God is there, you have to make a decision, 924 00:49:31,802 --> 00:49:35,347 and you have to affirm God's existence and his--you know, 925 00:49:35,347 --> 00:49:37,558 Jesus' lordship in your life. 926 00:49:37,558 --> 00:49:39,143 And if you don't do that, 927 00:49:39,143 --> 00:49:40,895 you're gonna burn in Hell forever. 928 00:49:40,895 --> 00:49:44,231 And I just go, as a father, like, 929 00:49:44,231 --> 00:49:50,070 would I make myself hidden to my son who I love dearly? 930 00:49:50,070 --> 00:49:54,325 Would I hide myself from him his entire life, 931 00:49:54,325 --> 00:49:57,286 and then if he denies my existence 932 00:49:57,286 --> 00:49:59,747 or doesn't, like, love me enough, 933 00:49:59,747 --> 00:50:02,416 or the right way, or believe the right things about me, 934 00:50:02,416 --> 00:50:04,168 burn him forever? 935 00:50:04,168 --> 00:50:06,503 Like, no one would look at a parent 936 00:50:06,503 --> 00:50:09,089 and say, like, "That's a good parent." 937 00:50:09,089 --> 00:50:11,884 And, you know, that's one of the reasons 938 00:50:11,884 --> 00:50:16,180 that I just--I cannot believe in this whole structure 939 00:50:16,180 --> 00:50:19,475 of way of looking at God and eternity. 940 00:50:19,475 --> 00:50:21,310 It just doesn't work for me. 941 00:50:21,310 --> 00:50:24,396 And if that is true, that God is not loving. 942 00:50:28,984 --> 00:50:33,364 I think some people have a lot of anxiety about Hell. 943 00:50:33,364 --> 00:50:35,324 If we're gonna believe 944 00:50:35,324 --> 00:50:37,534 that there is this eternal conscious torment 945 00:50:37,534 --> 00:50:40,120 that's a punishment for not believing the right things, 946 00:50:40,120 --> 00:50:43,832 then it's sort of like there's a gun to your head. 947 00:50:43,832 --> 00:50:48,587 I don't believe that an all-powerful and all-loving God 948 00:50:48,587 --> 00:50:51,548 is compatible with the idea of Hell in the way 949 00:50:51,548 --> 00:50:53,008 that we often think about it. 950 00:50:53,008 --> 00:50:55,386 I think those two things are incompatible. 951 00:50:59,556 --> 00:51:03,811 I have absolutely no idea what happens after we die. 952 00:51:03,811 --> 00:51:06,355 I haven't been there. 953 00:51:18,284 --> 00:51:19,994 What would you say to someone 954 00:51:19,994 --> 00:51:21,662 whose loved one died, 955 00:51:21,662 --> 00:51:24,081 and they don't know whether they accepted Christ? 956 00:51:24,081 --> 00:51:26,166 What do you say to that? 957 00:51:26,166 --> 00:51:27,918 You know, the truth is, we don't know 958 00:51:27,918 --> 00:51:29,878 what happens in those final moments 959 00:51:29,878 --> 00:51:31,630 before a person dies. 960 00:51:31,630 --> 00:51:33,882 We don't know how many people call out to God 961 00:51:33,882 --> 00:51:36,385 and say "save me" in those final moments. 962 00:51:36,385 --> 00:51:39,179 My brother was an atheist, an outspoken atheist, 963 00:51:39,179 --> 00:51:43,559 virtually his entire life, and he died not long ago, 964 00:51:43,559 --> 00:51:45,811 right at the beginning of the COVID crisis. 965 00:51:45,811 --> 00:51:47,896 I don't know what happened in that day. 966 00:51:47,896 --> 00:51:51,692 I hope he reached out to God, but I don't know. 967 00:51:51,692 --> 00:51:53,694 I'll find out someday in Heaven. 968 00:53:05,516 --> 00:53:08,394 You know, C.S. Lewis said if there was any doctrine 969 00:53:08,394 --> 00:53:11,563 of Christianity he wishes he could change or eliminate, 970 00:53:11,563 --> 00:53:13,899 it would be Hell, and I get that. 971 00:53:13,899 --> 00:53:15,734 It's a difficult concept. 972 00:53:15,734 --> 00:53:18,404 It's much better and more fun to talk about Heaven, I think. 973 00:53:18,404 --> 00:53:20,614 But there are a lot of misconceptions 974 00:53:20,614 --> 00:53:22,574 about Hell that confuse people. 975 00:53:22,574 --> 00:53:26,286 First of all, God does not send people to Hell. 976 00:53:26,286 --> 00:53:29,498 In a sense, we send ourselves to Hell. 977 00:53:29,498 --> 00:53:31,250 The Bible says explicitly that God 978 00:53:31,250 --> 00:53:33,252 does not want anyone to perish. 979 00:53:33,252 --> 00:53:34,878 He wants everyone to come to repentance. 980 00:53:34,878 --> 00:53:36,463 He wants everyone to come to faith. 981 00:53:36,463 --> 00:53:39,466 He wants everyone to experience Heaven 982 00:53:39,466 --> 00:53:42,302 with him forever, but like any gift, 983 00:53:42,302 --> 00:53:44,388 it's only ours when we receive it. 984 00:53:44,388 --> 00:53:46,807 You know, God gave us free will. 985 00:53:46,807 --> 00:53:48,559 It's like, if we're drowning, 986 00:53:48,559 --> 00:53:50,310 and someone throws us a life preserver, 987 00:53:50,310 --> 00:53:52,563 it's up to us whether we want to clutch it or not. 988 00:53:52,563 --> 00:53:54,231 And so we have free will. 989 00:53:54,231 --> 00:53:56,316 We could decide we want to live without God, 990 00:53:56,316 --> 00:53:58,485 we want to ignore God, we want to reject God, 991 00:53:58,485 --> 00:54:00,696 we want to live in a way 992 00:54:00,696 --> 00:54:02,281 that we know God would not approve of, 993 00:54:02,281 --> 00:54:04,491 so we don't want God to be part of our lives, 994 00:54:04,491 --> 00:54:07,161 and we shun him during our lifetime, 995 00:54:07,161 --> 00:54:10,080 and at the end of our life, God will say to us, 996 00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:13,125 "You chose to be separate from me your entire life, 997 00:54:13,125 --> 00:54:17,713 and now you will be separated from me for eternity in Hell." 998 00:54:20,257 --> 00:54:22,551 Hell is not a torture chamber. 999 00:54:22,551 --> 00:54:25,846 Torture is imposed from without. 1000 00:54:25,846 --> 00:54:29,725 Hell is more about torment, where it comes from within. 1001 00:54:29,725 --> 00:54:31,560 It's a sense of regret. It's a sense a anger. 1002 00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:33,312 It's a sense of loss. 1003 00:54:33,312 --> 00:54:36,607 It's a sense of suffering that people have 1004 00:54:36,607 --> 00:54:39,485 because of the predicament that they find themselves in, 1005 00:54:39,485 --> 00:54:41,820 that they themselves have opened the door to. 1006 00:54:44,323 --> 00:54:46,200 People think that Hell is 1007 00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:48,869 kind of a one-size-fits-all experience. 1008 00:54:48,869 --> 00:54:52,456 And yet, we know from the New Testament of the Bible 1009 00:54:52,456 --> 00:54:56,710 that people--their experience in Hell will be proportionate 1010 00:54:56,710 --> 00:54:58,462 to how they lived their life. 1011 00:54:58,462 --> 00:55:00,380 In other words, Adolf Hitler's experience 1012 00:55:00,380 --> 00:55:02,883 in Hell is not gonna be the same as my neighbor, 1013 00:55:02,883 --> 00:55:05,010 who may be an atheist, 1014 00:55:05,010 --> 00:55:06,970 who doesn't want anything to do with God, 1015 00:55:06,970 --> 00:55:08,639 has rejected God his whole life. 1016 00:55:08,639 --> 00:55:10,432 His experience in Hell and Adolf Hitler's 1017 00:55:10,432 --> 00:55:11,892 are gonna be quite different. 1018 00:55:11,892 --> 00:55:14,686 I think that matches the fairness of God. 1019 00:55:14,686 --> 00:55:16,688 You know, the Bible says, "Will not the judge 1020 00:55:16,688 --> 00:55:18,732 of all the Earth do what's right?" 1021 00:55:18,732 --> 00:55:22,277 And nobody after being judged by God 1022 00:55:22,277 --> 00:55:24,780 will be able to legitimately shake their fist at God 1023 00:55:24,780 --> 00:55:26,865 and say that was unfair. 1024 00:55:26,865 --> 00:55:30,869 We will ultimately see the fairness of God. 1025 00:55:34,623 --> 00:55:37,584 Another misconception involves the figurative language 1026 00:55:37,584 --> 00:55:39,795 that the Bible uses to describe Hell. 1027 00:55:39,795 --> 00:55:44,258 For instance, it uses metaphors like flames and like darkness. 1028 00:55:44,258 --> 00:55:46,009 But those are clearly metaphors. 1029 00:55:46,009 --> 00:55:47,427 They're not literally true 1030 00:55:47,427 --> 00:55:49,263 because if they were literally true, 1031 00:55:49,263 --> 00:55:51,515 the flames would light up the darkness, 1032 00:55:51,515 --> 00:55:53,308 so that doesn't make sense. 1033 00:55:53,308 --> 00:55:55,769 And so I don't think that Hell is a place 1034 00:55:55,769 --> 00:55:59,940 of excessive thermal output, in other words. 1035 00:55:59,940 --> 00:56:04,361 And yet, metaphors are intended to point us to a broader truth 1036 00:56:04,361 --> 00:56:06,655 that we may not be able to fully comprehend yet, 1037 00:56:06,655 --> 00:56:08,532 and that broader truth is, 1038 00:56:08,532 --> 00:56:11,952 Hell is the very worst situation 1039 00:56:11,952 --> 00:56:15,122 that anybody could ever find themselves in. 1040 00:56:19,251 --> 00:56:24,548 June 1, 1985, at Hotel De Lima, 1041 00:56:24,548 --> 00:56:27,759 Rue Saint-Germain, Paris, France, 1042 00:56:27,759 --> 00:56:30,345 my first thought was that I'd been shot. 1043 00:56:30,345 --> 00:56:33,640 Because it was like, right there, bang, 1044 00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:36,226 the most acute pain I'd ever experienced in my life. 1045 00:56:36,226 --> 00:56:37,686 Went to the hospital. 1046 00:56:37,686 --> 00:56:39,730 We went to emergency. 1047 00:56:39,730 --> 00:56:41,648 Two doctors examined me, 1048 00:56:41,648 --> 00:56:44,484 said the same thing that the doctor at the hotel said: 1049 00:56:44,484 --> 00:56:46,320 I had a perforation of duodenum, 1050 00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:47,988 and that if I didn't have surgery right away, 1051 00:56:47,988 --> 00:56:49,406 I would die. 1052 00:56:49,406 --> 00:56:52,451 But I didn't want to die because I knew 1053 00:56:52,451 --> 00:56:55,495 with 100% certainty that when you die, 1054 00:56:55,495 --> 00:56:57,247 that's it, it's over. 1055 00:56:58,332 --> 00:57:00,125 The screen goes black, 1056 00:57:00,125 --> 00:57:02,169 like in the movie theater, you know? 1057 00:57:02,169 --> 00:57:05,464 Says "the end," blackness, nothing. 1058 00:57:05,464 --> 00:57:07,633 I was 38 years old. I had a wife. 1059 00:57:07,633 --> 00:57:09,343 I had two kids. I had a good job. 1060 00:57:09,343 --> 00:57:10,677 I had a career. 1061 00:57:10,677 --> 00:57:12,179 I had art galleries showing my work. 1062 00:57:12,179 --> 00:57:13,388 I was winning prizes. 1063 00:57:13,388 --> 00:57:15,223 You know, I was making money. 1064 00:57:15,223 --> 00:57:16,725 This is not right. 1065 00:57:16,725 --> 00:57:19,394 This is not time for me to die. 1066 00:57:19,394 --> 00:57:22,898 I woke from unconsciousness, 1067 00:57:22,898 --> 00:57:24,691 and I was standing next to the bed, 1068 00:57:24,691 --> 00:57:26,151 and I felt wonderful, 1069 00:57:26,151 --> 00:57:27,986 better than I ever felt my whole life. 1070 00:57:27,986 --> 00:57:32,866 And I noticed that the big, dead lump 1071 00:57:32,866 --> 00:57:36,411 in the bed was me. 1072 00:57:40,666 --> 00:57:43,377 But I couldn't accept that, because it's not--I mean, 1073 00:57:43,377 --> 00:57:45,545 that's impossible. 1074 00:57:45,545 --> 00:57:47,798 Then I heard people outside the room 1075 00:57:47,798 --> 00:57:49,466 calling me by name in English, 1076 00:57:49,466 --> 00:57:51,968 which I thought was weird because everybody 1077 00:57:51,968 --> 00:57:54,012 in the French hospital spoke French. 1078 00:57:54,012 --> 00:57:55,722 And they said, "Hurry up. 1079 00:57:55,722 --> 00:57:59,476 "We've been waiting for you. We know everything. 1080 00:57:59,476 --> 00:58:00,977 "We've been waiting and waiting, 1081 00:58:00,977 --> 00:58:02,771 and it's time for you to come with us." 1082 00:58:02,771 --> 00:58:06,108 So I assumed, since I had mentioned the doctor, 1083 00:58:06,108 --> 00:58:07,734 that they were gonna take me to the doctor. 1084 00:58:07,734 --> 00:58:10,487 So I left the light of the room and went out 1085 00:58:10,487 --> 00:58:14,825 into the very gray, dank hallway, 1086 00:58:14,825 --> 00:58:16,827 where there was this group of people 1087 00:58:16,827 --> 00:58:19,329 that stayed back in the darkness 1088 00:58:19,329 --> 00:58:21,540 away from the light of the room. 1089 00:58:21,540 --> 00:58:25,085 And they led me what at first I thought was the hallway, 1090 00:58:25,085 --> 00:58:27,713 but then we walked for miles, and miles, and miles, 1091 00:58:27,713 --> 00:58:31,550 and we never went up or down. 1092 00:58:31,550 --> 00:58:35,554 We just--they encircled me and just shepherd me 1093 00:58:35,554 --> 00:58:39,558 into ever-increasing darkness. 1094 00:58:39,558 --> 00:58:43,019 It started off with them being very officious. 1095 00:58:43,019 --> 00:58:46,982 Like, "This way, keep moving, hurry up." 1096 00:58:46,982 --> 00:58:52,195 That evolved into, "What's the matter with you? 1097 00:58:52,195 --> 00:58:55,323 Move, move faster. You're too slow." 1098 00:58:55,323 --> 00:59:00,162 That became vulgar. 1099 00:59:00,162 --> 00:59:03,749 And then it became clear that they were gonna have at me. 1100 00:59:03,749 --> 00:59:09,379 They began by kicking, punching, pulling. 1101 00:59:09,379 --> 00:59:14,217 Then they started biting, and ripping, and tearing. 1102 00:59:14,217 --> 00:59:18,138 And then they started 1103 00:59:18,138 --> 00:59:21,266 invading me physically. 1104 00:59:21,266 --> 00:59:25,103 So eventually, I was completely torn apart, 1105 00:59:25,103 --> 00:59:27,564 lying on the ground, unable to even move 1106 00:59:27,564 --> 00:59:30,901 or defend myself in any way. 1107 00:59:30,901 --> 00:59:35,071 I'm completely defeated, 1108 00:59:35,071 --> 00:59:36,615 completely depressed and despair. 1109 00:59:36,615 --> 00:59:38,158 And I couldn't think of any way out. 1110 00:59:38,158 --> 00:59:40,869 This is it forever, and ever, and ever 1111 00:59:40,869 --> 00:59:43,580 with these horrible people. 1112 00:59:43,580 --> 00:59:46,958 And I heard a voice say, "Pray to God." 1113 00:59:46,958 --> 00:59:49,461 And I thought, "I don't believe in God. 1114 00:59:49,461 --> 00:59:51,004 I don't pray." 1115 00:59:51,004 --> 00:59:53,465 And the voice said, "Pray to God," kind of strong. 1116 00:59:53,465 --> 00:59:56,635 And I thought, "I don't know how to pray. 1117 00:59:56,635 --> 00:59:58,011 I can't pray." 1118 00:59:58,011 --> 01:00:01,348 And the voice said, "Pray to God." 1119 01:00:03,642 --> 01:00:09,397 My mind went involuntarily to me as a little boy 1120 01:00:09,397 --> 01:00:13,485 in a Sunday classroom singing "Jesus Loves Me." 1121 01:00:13,485 --> 01:00:16,905 I could see it vividly. I could hear it vividly. 1122 01:00:16,905 --> 01:00:19,825 But much more importantly, I could feel it vividly, 1123 01:00:19,825 --> 01:00:22,577 that as a little boy, when I sang "Jesus Loved Me," 1124 01:00:22,577 --> 01:00:26,039 I believed that there was this really cool guy named Jesus, 1125 01:00:26,039 --> 01:00:27,999 and the lions, and tigers, and bears would come out 1126 01:00:27,999 --> 01:00:30,961 of the closet, you know, and start swarming 1127 01:00:30,961 --> 01:00:33,129 around my bedroom in the middle of the night. 1128 01:00:33,129 --> 01:00:34,506 You know, I would pray to Jesus, 1129 01:00:34,506 --> 01:00:36,675 and they would all flee. 1130 01:00:41,221 --> 01:00:44,474 And I believed in him as a little boy. 1131 01:00:44,474 --> 01:00:46,434 That's why when I was 12, I wanted to get baptized 1132 01:00:46,434 --> 01:00:48,979 'cause I wanted to know him. 1133 01:00:48,979 --> 01:00:54,526 And when 1134 01:00:54,526 --> 01:00:57,404 that happened, 1135 01:00:57,404 --> 01:01:00,323 I decided that I needed to take a chance 1136 01:01:00,323 --> 01:01:04,202 'cause I didn't know what I did not. 1137 01:01:04,202 --> 01:01:05,954 What I didn't know is whether he would care 1138 01:01:05,954 --> 01:01:07,414 about me or not. 1139 01:01:07,414 --> 01:01:10,208 As far as I was concerned, his best option would be 1140 01:01:10,208 --> 01:01:12,419 to leave me there. 1141 01:01:12,419 --> 01:01:18,258 And I called out to him, "Jesus, please save me." 1142 01:01:18,258 --> 01:01:20,302 and with that, a tiny light appeared in the darkness 1143 01:01:20,302 --> 01:01:23,179 and got very bright, and it came upon me. 1144 01:01:23,179 --> 01:01:24,931 It was impossibly brilliant. 1145 01:01:24,931 --> 01:01:27,726 If it had been light as we experience light 1146 01:01:27,726 --> 01:01:30,145 in this world, it would have consumed me. 1147 01:01:30,145 --> 01:01:31,980 I mean, I just would have been burnt up. 1148 01:01:31,980 --> 01:01:34,524 But it was that bright. 1149 01:01:34,524 --> 01:01:37,444 Out of it emerged hands and arms, 1150 01:01:37,444 --> 01:01:40,280 and he reached down and touched me, 1151 01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:43,491 and I saw myself come back together 1152 01:01:43,491 --> 01:01:45,911 from the roadkill that I was. 1153 01:01:45,911 --> 01:01:48,705 You know, I became complete. 1154 01:01:48,705 --> 01:01:51,291 And much more important to me was 1155 01:01:51,291 --> 01:01:53,084 that he filled me with the love 1156 01:01:53,084 --> 01:01:57,839 that I never experienced in this world. 1157 01:01:57,839 --> 01:02:02,135 And his hands and arms picked me up 1158 01:02:02,135 --> 01:02:04,638 without any effort, 1159 01:02:04,638 --> 01:02:07,057 and he brought me up against himself, 1160 01:02:07,057 --> 01:02:08,808 and put his arms around me, 1161 01:02:08,808 --> 01:02:12,228 to stroke my back like a mother or father would 1162 01:02:12,228 --> 01:02:14,105 with their child. 1163 01:02:14,105 --> 01:02:17,359 And I cried out of joy into his chest, 1164 01:02:17,359 --> 01:02:21,321 slobbering all over him. 1165 01:02:21,321 --> 01:02:26,576 The people who took me into that place of darkness 1166 01:02:26,576 --> 01:02:29,287 were people just like me. 1167 01:02:29,287 --> 01:02:31,665 They were people who had rejected God, 1168 01:02:31,665 --> 01:02:33,625 rejected God's love, 1169 01:02:33,625 --> 01:02:36,628 and God gave them exactly what they wanted. 1170 01:02:36,628 --> 01:02:39,506 I don't believe God punishes anybody. 1171 01:02:39,506 --> 01:02:43,677 I believe God gives everybody exactly what they want. 1172 01:02:43,677 --> 01:02:47,764 The Bible says humans judge by appearances, 1173 01:02:47,764 --> 01:02:50,183 God judges by the heart, 1174 01:02:50,183 --> 01:02:53,812 and if we seek God and seek God's love, 1175 01:02:53,812 --> 01:02:57,899 we will find it in this world and in the next. 1176 01:02:57,899 --> 01:03:02,237 And if we reject God and reject God's love, 1177 01:03:02,237 --> 01:03:04,781 we get to go to a world where those things don't happen. 1178 01:03:04,781 --> 01:03:06,866 And I don't mean this as a joke. 1179 01:03:06,866 --> 01:03:08,743 I mean this absolutely sincerely. 1180 01:03:08,743 --> 01:03:11,287 Hell's not so bad. 1181 01:03:11,287 --> 01:03:13,289 The problem is the people that are there. 1182 01:03:13,289 --> 01:03:16,626 They're awful. They're really awful. 1183 01:03:16,626 --> 01:03:19,963 There's nothing to do there except torment one another, 1184 01:03:19,963 --> 01:03:22,590 so Hell is a place of continuous torment. 1185 01:03:22,590 --> 01:03:26,428 It's a place of complete hopelessness and despair. 1186 01:03:29,347 --> 01:03:32,225 What do you make out of Howard Storm? 1187 01:03:32,225 --> 01:03:35,729 Like, I know he's in the book, but how did you discover him? 1188 01:03:35,729 --> 01:03:37,313 - Yeah. - And why him? 1189 01:03:37,313 --> 01:03:38,648 Well, you know, there was a series of studies 1190 01:03:38,648 --> 01:03:40,358 that we've done that showed that, 1191 01:03:40,358 --> 01:03:43,153 of 1,400 people who had had near-death experiences, 1192 01:03:43,153 --> 01:03:45,572 23% had negative experiences 1193 01:03:45,572 --> 01:03:50,910 that ranged from distressing to frightening and terrorizing. 1194 01:03:50,910 --> 01:03:53,038 And his was an example of someone 1195 01:03:53,038 --> 01:03:55,331 who had a terrorizing experience. 1196 01:03:55,331 --> 01:03:57,083 How do you go about, like, for that one, 1197 01:03:57,083 --> 01:03:59,044 verifying, like, its validity? 1198 01:03:59,044 --> 01:04:00,754 Yeah, that's a good question. 1199 01:04:00,754 --> 01:04:02,255 'Cause it's like, you hear a lot about "I went to Heaven." 1200 01:04:02,255 --> 01:04:03,339 Yeah. 1201 01:04:03,339 --> 01:04:04,758 But very few "I went to Hell." 1202 01:04:04,758 --> 01:04:07,052 Yeah, I think it's against a person's interest 1203 01:04:07,052 --> 01:04:09,304 to talk about having gone to Hell 1204 01:04:09,304 --> 01:04:11,222 because it's embarrassing. 1205 01:04:11,222 --> 01:04:13,933 Who wants to say, "Oh, yeah, I was in the trash bin 1206 01:04:13,933 --> 01:04:16,186 of the afterlife," you know. 1207 01:04:16,186 --> 01:04:17,937 So it's embarrassing. 1208 01:04:17,937 --> 01:04:20,648 It's traumatic to the degree that I think some 1209 01:04:20,648 --> 01:04:22,734 of them have post-traumatic stress syndrome, 1210 01:04:22,734 --> 01:04:24,569 and they don't want to talk about it, 1211 01:04:24,569 --> 01:04:26,321 they don't want to revisit it and so forth. 1212 01:04:26,321 --> 01:04:28,239 And in the case of Howard Storm, 1213 01:04:28,239 --> 01:04:31,743 here's someone who came back from that experience, 1214 01:04:31,743 --> 01:04:35,121 and it was so profound, it was so real to him, 1215 01:04:35,121 --> 01:04:38,500 that he resigned his position, his tenured professorship, 1216 01:04:38,500 --> 01:04:40,418 his chairmanship of the art department 1217 01:04:40,418 --> 01:04:41,753 at this university, 1218 01:04:41,753 --> 01:04:44,756 and became a pastor of a tiny church 1219 01:04:44,756 --> 01:04:47,425 that he continues to serve to this day. 1220 01:04:47,425 --> 01:04:49,594 That's some evidence that this was more 1221 01:04:49,594 --> 01:04:51,513 than just some loose hallucination. 1222 01:04:51,513 --> 01:04:54,641 There was something profound that happened to him, 1223 01:04:54,641 --> 01:04:58,394 something that chilled him to the bone. 1224 01:04:58,394 --> 01:05:00,563 Would you say that there's more sermons about Hell 1225 01:05:00,563 --> 01:05:02,649 than there are Heaven or vice versa? 1226 01:05:02,649 --> 01:05:05,485 I think there's a lot more sermons about Heaven 1227 01:05:05,485 --> 01:05:07,237 than there are Hell. 1228 01:05:07,237 --> 01:05:10,865 Very few pastors like to talk about Hell. 1229 01:05:16,663 --> 01:05:21,042 So we are in Chinatown, San Francisco, 1230 01:05:21,042 --> 01:05:23,670 and this is where I was born. 1231 01:05:23,670 --> 01:05:27,799 This is the hospital, back in 1967. 1232 01:05:27,799 --> 01:05:30,051 This is also where Bruce Lee was born, 1233 01:05:30,051 --> 01:05:32,887 which is kind of cool. 1234 01:05:32,887 --> 01:05:37,392 And this is where my mother died 54 years ago. 1235 01:05:41,479 --> 01:05:45,525 Yeah, my dad kind of flipped out, 1236 01:05:45,525 --> 01:05:49,946 and I feel like that's why he always resented me, 1237 01:05:49,946 --> 01:05:52,991 and I think it's because I was the one that caused her death. 1238 01:05:55,618 --> 01:05:57,704 We never even talked about it. 1239 01:05:57,704 --> 01:06:00,957 Like, he just--the only time he ever talked to me was 1240 01:06:00,957 --> 01:06:04,252 when he was beating me, you know, just yelling at me, 1241 01:06:04,252 --> 01:06:06,296 maybe giving me instructions, telling me what to do. 1242 01:06:06,296 --> 01:06:09,299 But we didn't have conversations, 1243 01:06:09,299 --> 01:06:11,050 which isn't really that abnormal 1244 01:06:11,050 --> 01:06:12,969 in a Chinese family. 1245 01:06:12,969 --> 01:06:19,350 I don't know the whole story, but my mother--when she died, 1246 01:06:19,350 --> 01:06:21,978 you know, people blamed the hospital or whatever, 1247 01:06:21,978 --> 01:06:23,521 but she basically bled out. 1248 01:06:23,521 --> 01:06:25,899 It was something that was pretty--should be 1249 01:06:25,899 --> 01:06:28,902 pretty simple nowadays. 1250 01:06:28,902 --> 01:06:30,445 Because she died, 1251 01:06:30,445 --> 01:06:32,739 and I think my dad just had a hard time, 1252 01:06:32,739 --> 01:06:36,784 like, you know, living in the U.S., making a living, 1253 01:06:36,784 --> 01:06:39,454 he had me sent to Hong Kong 1254 01:06:39,454 --> 01:06:42,081 to grow up with my grandmothers. 1255 01:06:46,294 --> 01:06:50,131 My name in Chinese is Chan Yang Fan, 1256 01:06:50,131 --> 01:06:54,636 and that last character is the same character 1257 01:06:54,636 --> 01:06:56,471 in San Francisco. 1258 01:06:56,471 --> 01:07:01,434 I'm assuming my dad just took the translation into English 1259 01:07:01,434 --> 01:07:03,228 and named me Francis. 1260 01:07:03,228 --> 01:07:07,440 So I guess, in a sense, I'm named after the city. 1261 01:07:07,440 --> 01:07:10,485 And it's weird 'cause my stepmom... 1262 01:07:10,485 --> 01:07:12,654 it says "Chin" here, 1263 01:07:12,654 --> 01:07:15,281 and that's what it says on my birth certificate. 1264 01:07:15,281 --> 01:07:18,368 But then my stepmom is Chan, and my dad is Chan. 1265 01:07:18,368 --> 01:07:20,119 And so I don't know. 1266 01:07:20,119 --> 01:07:22,455 You know, back then, everything was just a little more screwy, 1267 01:07:22,455 --> 01:07:25,959 so who knows who I am? 1268 01:07:34,550 --> 01:07:39,222 Death is so ugly. 1269 01:07:41,266 --> 01:07:45,645 And it's awful in so many ways. 1270 01:07:45,645 --> 01:07:47,814 Like, you know, having seven kids, 1271 01:07:47,814 --> 01:07:49,565 there's that fear. 1272 01:07:49,565 --> 01:07:51,943 Having grandkids, I have that fear. 1273 01:07:51,943 --> 01:07:53,695 Being married to a woman that I love, 1274 01:07:53,695 --> 01:07:55,446 there's fear. 1275 01:07:55,446 --> 01:07:58,533 Like, I don't like the thought 1276 01:07:58,533 --> 01:08:01,286 that that could end at any moment. 1277 01:08:01,286 --> 01:08:07,083 At the same time... 1278 01:08:07,083 --> 01:08:09,961 the whole point of the resurrection 1279 01:08:09,961 --> 01:08:13,131 is that I wouldn't have to fear it in a sense of, 1280 01:08:13,131 --> 01:08:15,216 "Oh, no, what's gonna happen next?" 1281 01:08:15,216 --> 01:08:18,428 In a lot of ways, it's like, that's what I anticipate. 1282 01:08:18,428 --> 01:08:21,180 Like, God, bring it. I'm ready to go. 1283 01:08:21,180 --> 01:08:24,350 I'm done with this Earth. 1284 01:08:24,350 --> 01:08:26,227 You know, I'll do whatever you want me to do. 1285 01:08:26,227 --> 01:08:28,271 I'll stay here as long as you want me to stay here. 1286 01:08:28,271 --> 01:08:30,523 But there's so much of me that's like, 1287 01:08:30,523 --> 01:08:32,692 oh, I can't wait to die. 1288 01:08:32,692 --> 01:08:34,944 I can't wait to get out of here. 1289 01:08:41,492 --> 01:08:43,119 Like, it's weird. 1290 01:08:43,119 --> 01:08:45,580 Like, I would love to know what it would feel like 1291 01:08:45,580 --> 01:08:49,417 to have a mom that gave birth to me 1292 01:08:49,417 --> 01:08:52,420 and loved me, and--but I'll never have that. 1293 01:08:52,420 --> 01:08:54,756 I'd love to have a dad right now, 1294 01:08:54,756 --> 01:08:57,508 and just wonder, what did he think of my life? 1295 01:08:57,508 --> 01:08:59,427 I know we didn't talk, you know, 1296 01:08:59,427 --> 01:09:01,804 the whole time you were alive, but would it have changed-- 1297 01:09:01,804 --> 01:09:06,434 you know, of course, there's some of that curiosity. 1298 01:09:06,434 --> 01:09:09,103 Sometimes, I'll think about her on Mother's Day, 1299 01:09:09,103 --> 01:09:13,608 like, just grateful that she decided to have me 1300 01:09:13,608 --> 01:09:18,071 and lost her life so that I could be on this Earth. 1301 01:09:18,071 --> 01:09:20,365 I have no idea what would have happened 1302 01:09:20,365 --> 01:09:22,575 if my parents stayed alive. 1303 01:09:25,912 --> 01:09:27,830 I don't know. 1304 01:09:27,830 --> 01:09:29,874 Before I left for China, 1305 01:09:29,874 --> 01:09:32,835 I found these old pictures of her, 1306 01:09:32,835 --> 01:09:38,424 and it showed the location of where she did ministry, 1307 01:09:38,424 --> 01:09:42,428 And it happened to be exactly where they had 1308 01:09:42,428 --> 01:09:44,722 set up an office for me. 1309 01:09:44,722 --> 01:09:47,600 And so I thought, that is crazy 1310 01:09:47,600 --> 01:09:52,772 that 60 years ago, 1311 01:09:52,772 --> 01:09:56,442 my mom was doing ministry in that exact same spot 1312 01:09:56,442 --> 01:09:59,070 where God was calling me now. 1313 01:10:19,590 --> 01:10:21,634 What do you think your life would have been like 1314 01:10:21,634 --> 01:10:23,344 if you had not come to Christ, 1315 01:10:23,344 --> 01:10:26,055 if you had not taken on that challenge to investigate, 1316 01:10:26,055 --> 01:10:28,015 you know, the resurrection of Jesus? 1317 01:10:28,015 --> 01:10:32,395 I've thought about that, and I don't know for sure, 1318 01:10:32,395 --> 01:10:34,105 but I was headed down a dark path. 1319 01:10:39,026 --> 01:10:41,320 We were childhood sweethearts. 1320 01:10:41,320 --> 01:10:43,364 I mean, we dated on and off in high school, 1321 01:10:43,364 --> 01:10:45,158 and we enjoyed each other, 1322 01:10:45,158 --> 01:10:47,326 and we had a certain expectation 1323 01:10:47,326 --> 01:10:49,454 of what our future would be like. 1324 01:10:49,454 --> 01:10:52,165 And then, one day, she came up to me 1325 01:10:52,165 --> 01:10:54,542 and gave me the worst news that an atheist could get. 1326 01:10:54,542 --> 01:10:55,960 She said, "I've decided 1327 01:10:55,960 --> 01:10:58,254 to become a follower of Jesus." 1328 01:10:58,254 --> 01:11:02,383 And first word that went through my mind was divorce. 1329 01:11:02,383 --> 01:11:04,844 I was gonna walk out. 1330 01:11:07,555 --> 01:11:10,808 You know, I was a narcissist. 1331 01:11:10,808 --> 01:11:13,102 I was a drunk. 1332 01:11:13,102 --> 01:11:16,230 I was self-absorbed. 1333 01:11:16,230 --> 01:11:18,733 I was a liar. I was a cheater. 1334 01:11:20,526 --> 01:11:22,069 People thought I was a great guy. 1335 01:11:22,069 --> 01:11:23,905 They didn't know the inside of me. 1336 01:11:23,905 --> 01:11:26,866 They didn't know--they didn't see me 1337 01:11:26,866 --> 01:11:28,743 when I was literally drunk in the snow 1338 01:11:28,743 --> 01:11:30,578 in an alley on Saturday night. 1339 01:11:30,578 --> 01:11:32,830 You know, I had all this success in journalism, 1340 01:11:32,830 --> 01:11:35,500 but it masked what was really going on in me. 1341 01:12:06,822 --> 01:12:13,412 ♪ Oh-oh-oh-oh ♪ 1342 01:12:13,412 --> 01:12:16,749 ♪ Oh-oh-oh ♪ 1343 01:12:16,749 --> 01:12:18,709 When you look around this world, man, 1344 01:12:18,709 --> 01:12:21,170 and there are choices that we make, you know, 1345 01:12:21,170 --> 01:12:24,090 and those choices lead to... 1346 01:12:24,090 --> 01:12:26,259 well, instead of saying good or bad, 1347 01:12:26,259 --> 01:12:28,761 I'd like to say life or death, right? 1348 01:12:28,761 --> 01:12:31,305 The choices that we make will usually lead 1349 01:12:31,305 --> 01:12:33,474 to one or the other, seldom just right 1350 01:12:33,474 --> 01:12:34,892 in the middle of the road, right? 1351 01:12:34,892 --> 01:12:36,519 Things bring us life, or they bring us death. 1352 01:12:36,519 --> 01:12:38,229 We make those choices all the time. 1353 01:12:42,275 --> 01:12:45,528 I think the essence of what we long for 1354 01:12:45,528 --> 01:12:48,239 is to know that we're loved. 1355 01:12:48,239 --> 01:12:50,700 While we're here on this Earth, 1356 01:12:50,700 --> 01:12:52,785 I think it's safe to say that we all 1357 01:12:52,785 --> 01:12:56,497 have some significant doubts about the fact 1358 01:12:56,497 --> 01:12:58,207 that we're truly loved. 1359 01:12:58,207 --> 01:13:02,795 But it's God's purpose to reveal that to us here. 1360 01:13:02,795 --> 01:13:06,048 And it's our purpose to open our hearts to it 1361 01:13:06,048 --> 01:13:10,303 and in turn reveal that truth to each other. 1362 01:13:33,034 --> 01:13:38,748 ♪ I was there when you looked up into the night ♪ 1363 01:13:40,499 --> 01:13:44,962 ♪ Looking far beyond the stars and asking why ♪ 1364 01:13:47,131 --> 01:13:51,177 ♪ Although you thought you were alone ♪ 1365 01:13:51,177 --> 01:13:56,849 ♪ When you fell into the unknown ♪ 1366 01:13:56,849 --> 01:13:59,268 ♪ All the while, my love ♪ 1367 01:13:59,268 --> 01:14:04,398 ♪ You were a child of mine ♪ 1368 01:14:04,398 --> 01:14:10,363 ♪ Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh ♪ 1369 01:14:19,080 --> 01:14:25,002 ♪ Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh ♪ 1370 01:14:33,052 --> 01:14:38,516 ♪ Yeah ♪ 1371 01:14:38,516 --> 01:14:41,560 How much does pain, suffering, betrayal, 1372 01:14:41,560 --> 01:14:46,691 hurt, questions play into writing your music? 1373 01:14:46,691 --> 01:14:50,236 Pain and longing accompany each other in the way that, 1374 01:14:50,236 --> 01:14:52,488 when we experience that longing, 1375 01:14:52,488 --> 01:14:54,073 there is a sense of, 1376 01:14:54,073 --> 01:14:57,076 "Hey, things aren't right here in this Earth" 1377 01:14:57,076 --> 01:15:00,955 in the way that we know, somewhere deep down, 1378 01:15:00,955 --> 01:15:03,416 it's supposed to be right. 1379 01:15:03,416 --> 01:15:05,459 When there's injustice, 1380 01:15:05,459 --> 01:15:07,628 we know that somewhere there's supposed 1381 01:15:07,628 --> 01:15:11,799 to be a place that is just. 1382 01:15:11,799 --> 01:15:13,884 So the question is, where does that come from? 1383 01:15:13,884 --> 01:15:16,387 If it doesn't exist somewhere, 1384 01:15:16,387 --> 01:15:18,889 why would we long for something like that? 1385 01:15:28,482 --> 01:15:34,155 Eric, tell us how some of these sounds and things 1386 01:15:34,155 --> 01:15:36,365 that we hear can just, like, I guess, 1387 01:15:36,365 --> 01:15:38,617 take us to another place. 1388 01:15:38,617 --> 01:15:42,496 Yeah, I mean, every artist has their own way 1389 01:15:42,496 --> 01:15:46,375 of kind of capturing that other place. 1390 01:15:46,375 --> 01:15:50,755 For me, I have really experimented 1391 01:15:50,755 --> 01:15:54,550 with trying to find a sound that is unfamiliar 1392 01:15:54,550 --> 01:15:56,594 but, at the same time, familiar. 1393 01:15:56,594 --> 01:16:00,264 And so I pulled this up for you, Mani, 1394 01:16:00,264 --> 01:16:01,932 'cause I want to do a little experiment 1395 01:16:01,932 --> 01:16:04,894 with you--experiment for you. 1396 01:16:04,894 --> 01:16:06,729 And listen to this track, 1397 01:16:06,729 --> 01:16:08,981 and I'm gonna play two different tracks, 1398 01:16:08,981 --> 01:16:11,108 and see if you know what this is. 1399 01:16:20,201 --> 01:16:23,370 Okay, so do you recognize that instrument? 1400 01:16:23,370 --> 01:16:26,040 Yeah, I think that's the oboe. 1401 01:16:26,040 --> 01:16:28,959 So an oboe--you know, if nobody's ever heard 1402 01:16:28,959 --> 01:16:31,295 an oboe before, they might go, "Wow, that's, like, incredible. 1403 01:16:31,295 --> 01:16:32,963 That's taking me to another world." 1404 01:16:32,963 --> 01:16:36,509 But for most of us, we know what sound that is. 1405 01:16:36,509 --> 01:16:39,053 And obviously, we can make a melody with that oboe 1406 01:16:39,053 --> 01:16:41,806 that can take us to another place. 1407 01:16:41,806 --> 01:16:43,974 So close your eyes for a minute 1408 01:16:43,974 --> 01:16:46,185 and listen to this sound. 1409 01:17:05,579 --> 01:17:07,206 Okay, what do you hear there? 1410 01:17:08,791 --> 01:17:11,544 Yeah, I have no idea what that is. 1411 01:17:11,544 --> 01:17:14,839 So part of what you're hearing is, 1412 01:17:14,839 --> 01:17:16,507 in the beginning, 1413 01:17:16,507 --> 01:17:19,844 it's actually samples of outer space. 1414 01:17:19,844 --> 01:17:24,557 So there's sounds coming from quasars, 1415 01:17:24,557 --> 01:17:26,392 and the Solar System, 1416 01:17:26,392 --> 01:17:28,602 and planets, and things like that 1417 01:17:28,602 --> 01:17:31,564 that, through equipment, can actually be translated 1418 01:17:31,564 --> 01:17:32,982 into sound. 1419 01:17:32,982 --> 01:17:34,316 So I have a few of these samples. 1420 01:17:34,316 --> 01:17:36,110 And when you hear these samples, you're like, 1421 01:17:36,110 --> 01:17:38,195 "Wow, that's an unfamiliar sound." 1422 01:17:38,195 --> 01:17:40,531 It's not, like, every day that we walk around, 1423 01:17:40,531 --> 01:17:42,616 we're hearing sounds of outer space, 1424 01:17:42,616 --> 01:17:44,159 and planets, and stuff. 1425 01:17:44,159 --> 01:17:45,995 So when you take a sound like that 1426 01:17:45,995 --> 01:17:49,874 and then incorporate other familiar tones and textures, 1427 01:17:49,874 --> 01:17:52,168 and combine them all, you come out 1428 01:17:52,168 --> 01:17:56,547 with something that's, in some ways, 1429 01:17:56,547 --> 01:18:01,218 just really moving, taking you to another place. 1430 01:18:01,218 --> 01:18:03,971 I think faith is--it's an interesting topic 1431 01:18:03,971 --> 01:18:06,056 because when I was an atheist, 1432 01:18:06,056 --> 01:18:08,183 I thought faith was believing something 1433 01:18:08,183 --> 01:18:09,476 even though you knew in your heart 1434 01:18:09,476 --> 01:18:10,853 it couldn't be true. 1435 01:18:10,853 --> 01:18:12,396 You know, I thought that's what faith was. 1436 01:18:12,396 --> 01:18:13,939 And then I came to learn 1437 01:18:13,939 --> 01:18:16,358 that Biblical faith is quite different, 1438 01:18:16,358 --> 01:18:17,610 and I think it's important for people 1439 01:18:17,610 --> 01:18:19,236 to understand that distinction. 1440 01:18:19,236 --> 01:18:22,865 Biblical faith is taking a step in the same direction 1441 01:18:22,865 --> 01:18:26,785 that the evidence is pointing, which is logical and rational. 1442 01:18:33,375 --> 01:18:36,086 Yuri Gagarin was the cosmonaut--Russian cosmonaut. 1443 01:18:36,086 --> 01:18:37,796 He was the first guy into space. 1444 01:18:37,796 --> 01:18:41,550 And he quipped, when he was up there, he said--or later, 1445 01:18:41,550 --> 01:18:43,636 I can't remember, but he said basically, 1446 01:18:43,636 --> 01:18:46,764 "I looked around, and I didn't see God." 1447 01:18:46,764 --> 01:18:50,226 And yet Buzz Aldrin, who was one of the Americans 1448 01:18:50,226 --> 01:18:53,020 who went to the Moon, who celebrated communion 1449 01:18:53,020 --> 01:18:57,816 on Christmas Eve in space, affirmed that God is real. 1450 01:18:58,609 --> 01:19:03,489 Sunday, July 20, 1969, around the world, 1451 01:19:03,489 --> 01:19:06,033 nearly a billion people watched this moment 1452 01:19:06,033 --> 01:19:09,828 on television as the first man from Earth prepared 1453 01:19:09,828 --> 01:19:11,705 to set foot upon the Moon. 1454 01:19:11,705 --> 01:19:14,541 That's one small step for man. 1455 01:19:17,044 --> 01:19:22,174 One giant leap for mankind. 1456 01:19:22,174 --> 01:19:25,427 I believe that this nation should commit itself 1457 01:19:25,427 --> 01:19:29,139 to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, 1458 01:19:29,139 --> 01:19:31,392 of landing a man on the Moon 1459 01:19:31,392 --> 01:19:34,645 and returning him safely to the Earth. 1460 01:19:34,645 --> 01:19:38,190 And what that tells me is some people can see 1461 01:19:38,190 --> 01:19:40,651 the same evidence and come to different conclusions. 1462 01:19:40,651 --> 01:19:44,113 And you have to ask yourself, what's driving that? 1463 01:19:44,113 --> 01:19:45,823 What's driving that? 1464 01:19:45,823 --> 01:19:48,242 Do I have reasons not to believe? 1465 01:19:48,242 --> 01:19:51,036 Are there reasons I don't want to believe? 1466 01:19:51,036 --> 01:19:53,247 Are there things in my life I would have to give up 1467 01:19:53,247 --> 01:19:56,250 if I became a believer in God? 1468 01:19:56,250 --> 01:19:59,169 Are there certain moral things that I would have to give up 1469 01:19:59,169 --> 01:20:01,255 because they're immoral in God's sight, 1470 01:20:01,255 --> 01:20:03,007 and I want to keep doing them, 1471 01:20:03,007 --> 01:20:04,883 and so I would rather find reasons 1472 01:20:04,883 --> 01:20:07,469 not to believe than to believe? 1473 01:20:07,469 --> 01:20:09,930 So we have to try to filter out our motives 1474 01:20:09,930 --> 01:20:11,557 as much as we can, 1475 01:20:11,557 --> 01:20:16,687 and say, "I want to reach a verdict 1476 01:20:16,687 --> 01:20:19,565 "in the case for Heaven based on the evidence 1477 01:20:19,565 --> 01:20:21,650 "and not on my wishful thinking, 1478 01:20:21,650 --> 01:20:23,986 "or not on my preconceptions, 1479 01:20:23,986 --> 01:20:26,947 or not on my biases or prejudices." 1480 01:20:26,947 --> 01:20:29,700 I want to reach it based on, "What is the evidence? 1481 01:20:29,700 --> 01:20:32,077 "Is there sufficient evidence to tell me 1482 01:20:32,077 --> 01:20:34,747 that when I die I will continue to live on?" 1483 01:20:43,380 --> 01:20:46,467 Sometimes, this church is actually 1484 01:20:46,467 --> 01:20:49,386 what deters some folks from even finding that love. 1485 01:20:49,386 --> 01:20:50,763 because of their negative experience. 1486 01:20:50,763 --> 01:20:53,390 Right, right. 1487 01:20:53,390 --> 01:20:55,059 What do you say to those 1488 01:20:55,059 --> 01:20:57,269 that can't get this out of the way, 1489 01:20:57,269 --> 01:20:58,479 you know what I mean? 1490 01:20:58,479 --> 01:21:01,023 That's a real problem, I think. 1491 01:21:01,023 --> 01:21:04,735 You know, for me, I want to strip away things 1492 01:21:04,735 --> 01:21:07,529 that get in the way of finding the truth. 1493 01:21:07,529 --> 01:21:10,657 And if someone is hurt by a church, 1494 01:21:10,657 --> 01:21:12,159 or they're hurt by a relationship 1495 01:21:12,159 --> 01:21:13,994 with a Christian who betrays them, 1496 01:21:13,994 --> 01:21:17,081 or who uses them, or whatever, 1497 01:21:17,081 --> 01:21:19,124 that's a horrible thing, 1498 01:21:19,124 --> 01:21:21,293 and I can understand emotionally 1499 01:21:21,293 --> 01:21:25,130 how that makes a person less likely to seek after God. 1500 01:21:25,130 --> 01:21:26,965 But then I step back and say, "Wait a minute. 1501 01:21:26,965 --> 01:21:29,510 "That doesn't change the truth of Christianity. 1502 01:21:29,510 --> 01:21:33,097 That doesn't change whether it aligns with reality." 1503 01:21:33,097 --> 01:21:34,807 That's the real question. 1504 01:21:34,807 --> 01:21:38,352 Truth is that which corresponds to reality. 1505 01:22:10,551 --> 01:22:14,638 It was more than 40 years since I've been in this house. 1506 01:22:22,062 --> 01:22:24,690 Yeah, my whole writing career, my whole journalism career, 1507 01:22:24,690 --> 01:22:26,775 started here in the basement of my house. 1508 01:22:36,368 --> 01:22:38,996 Well, we were in the family room here, 1509 01:22:38,996 --> 01:22:41,665 and I had blatantly disobeyed my dad 1510 01:22:41,665 --> 01:22:44,293 by buying a motorcycle that he had forbidden me 1511 01:22:44,293 --> 01:22:46,336 from buying, and he found out, 1512 01:22:46,336 --> 01:22:48,505 and we had a huge blowout argument, 1513 01:22:48,505 --> 01:22:52,551 and he said words that I hope he didn't mean, 1514 01:22:52,551 --> 01:22:54,803 but told me that he didn't have enough love for me 1515 01:22:54,803 --> 01:22:56,763 to fill his little finger. 1516 01:22:56,763 --> 01:23:00,517 And I remember hearing that, and I had no response. 1517 01:23:00,517 --> 01:23:02,144 What do you say to that? 1518 01:23:02,144 --> 01:23:05,189 And so there was silence for a moment, 1519 01:23:05,189 --> 01:23:08,567 and then I just turned and walked out. 1520 01:23:08,567 --> 01:23:11,028 And that was it. 1521 01:23:14,239 --> 01:23:16,950 I never intended to go home. 1522 01:23:16,950 --> 01:23:20,787 Although I remember when he died, 1523 01:23:20,787 --> 01:23:22,539 I was at the wake, 1524 01:23:22,539 --> 01:23:25,334 and a guy came up to me--two guys actually, 1525 01:23:25,334 --> 01:23:26,585 and said, "Are you Lee?" 1526 01:23:26,585 --> 01:23:28,128 And I said, "Yeah." 1527 01:23:28,128 --> 01:23:30,756 And they said, "Oh, man, can I shake your hand? 1528 01:23:30,756 --> 01:23:32,841 "Your dad never stopped talking about you. 1529 01:23:32,841 --> 01:23:34,635 "He was so proud of you. 1530 01:23:34,635 --> 01:23:36,720 "And when you'd have a byline on the front page 1531 01:23:36,720 --> 01:23:38,931 "of the 'Chicago Tribune,' he was so proud. 1532 01:23:38,931 --> 01:23:40,474 He'd show us the article." 1533 01:23:40,474 --> 01:23:44,811 And I was just shocked by that 1534 01:23:44,811 --> 01:23:47,481 because it was nothing he ever expressed to me. 1535 01:23:52,110 --> 01:23:53,862 We never reconciled, really. 1536 01:23:53,862 --> 01:23:55,489 We never talked about that incident. 1537 01:23:55,489 --> 01:23:59,201 We never processed it. We never resolved it. 1538 01:23:59,201 --> 01:24:02,454 And I remember interviewing a scholar about Heaven, 1539 01:24:02,454 --> 01:24:04,456 and he said, you know, "When you get to Heaven--" 1540 01:24:04,456 --> 01:24:06,375 I said, "I believe my father is in Heaven." 1541 01:24:06,375 --> 01:24:10,379 And he said, "That first hour that you get to Heaven, 1542 01:24:10,379 --> 01:24:12,381 "you're both gonna be totally motivated 1543 01:24:12,381 --> 01:24:15,008 "to reconcile fully and completely, 1544 01:24:15,008 --> 01:24:18,178 "and you'll be able to spend eternity in Heaven in the kind 1545 01:24:18,178 --> 01:24:19,805 "of father-son relationship 1546 01:24:19,805 --> 01:24:22,307 that you never really had in this world." 1547 01:24:32,234 --> 01:24:35,821 Just that feeling of being here in this environment, 1548 01:24:35,821 --> 01:24:39,866 where my entire journalism career had its scene 1549 01:24:39,866 --> 01:24:43,453 and began, I mean, the nostalgia 1550 01:24:43,453 --> 01:24:45,247 just kind of wells up inside you. 1551 01:24:45,247 --> 01:24:48,959 It's a great feeling to be home. 1552 01:24:59,094 --> 01:25:03,265 Oh, man, I think I'd say, 1553 01:25:03,265 --> 01:25:06,351 "Keep seeking. The truth is out there." 1554 01:25:39,843 --> 01:25:42,721 Jesus, unlike anybody else in history, 1555 01:25:42,721 --> 01:25:46,641 has the credentials to tell us the truth about the afterlife. 1556 01:25:46,641 --> 01:25:48,810 When you explain the resurrection, 1557 01:25:48,810 --> 01:25:52,022 you tend to talk about these four things. 1558 01:25:52,022 --> 01:25:55,442 Yeah, the four areas are, number one, his execution, 1559 01:25:55,442 --> 01:25:58,362 number two, the early reports that he rose from the dead, 1560 01:25:58,362 --> 01:26:00,280 number three, the empty tomb, 1561 01:26:00,280 --> 01:26:03,450 and number four, the eyewitnesses. 1562 01:26:03,450 --> 01:26:05,577 So the first E is for execution, 1563 01:26:05,577 --> 01:26:08,914 that Jesus was truly dead after being crucified. 1564 01:26:08,914 --> 01:26:11,416 And the evidence for this is very powerful. 1565 01:26:11,416 --> 01:26:15,170 We have no evidence anywhere of anyone ever surviving 1566 01:26:15,170 --> 01:26:17,714 a full Roman crucifixion. 1567 01:26:17,714 --> 01:26:23,095 Even the scientific, peer-reviewed, 1568 01:26:23,095 --> 01:26:26,890 secular Journal of the American Medical Association 1569 01:26:26,890 --> 01:26:29,601 conducted an investigation into the death of Jesus, 1570 01:26:29,601 --> 01:26:33,105 and their conclusion was, "Clearly, the weight 1571 01:26:33,105 --> 01:26:35,899 "of the historical and medical evidence indicates 1572 01:26:35,899 --> 01:26:38,402 "that Jesus was dead even before the wound 1573 01:26:38,402 --> 01:26:40,654 to his side was inflicted." 1574 01:26:40,654 --> 01:26:42,948 The second E stands for the word "early." 1575 01:26:42,948 --> 01:26:46,159 We have early reports that Jesus rose from the dead. 1576 01:26:46,159 --> 01:26:48,370 In other words, reports that can be dated back 1577 01:26:48,370 --> 01:26:50,539 very close to the events themselves. 1578 01:26:50,539 --> 01:26:52,207 I used to think, like a lot of skeptics, 1579 01:26:52,207 --> 01:26:54,167 that the resurrection was a legend. 1580 01:26:54,167 --> 01:26:56,503 And I knew it took time for legend to develop 1581 01:26:56,503 --> 01:26:59,631 in the ancient world, so I figured 100, 150 years 1582 01:26:59,631 --> 01:27:02,217 after the death of Jesus, stories were invented, 1583 01:27:02,217 --> 01:27:04,761 mythologies were spun, and that's where the idea 1584 01:27:04,761 --> 01:27:06,596 of the resurrection came from. 1585 01:27:06,596 --> 01:27:08,723 But we have report of the resurrection 1586 01:27:08,723 --> 01:27:10,475 of Jesus Christ, 1587 01:27:10,475 --> 01:27:13,645 including named eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses, 1588 01:27:13,645 --> 01:27:15,856 that has been dated back by scholars 1589 01:27:15,856 --> 01:27:19,025 to within months of his execution. 1590 01:27:19,025 --> 01:27:22,154 That is like a news flash from ancient history. 1591 01:27:22,154 --> 01:27:23,655 So I don't think you can write it off 1592 01:27:23,655 --> 01:27:25,407 as just being a legend. 1593 01:27:25,407 --> 01:27:27,534 The third E stands for "empty." 1594 01:27:27,534 --> 01:27:29,453 We have an empty tomb. 1595 01:27:29,453 --> 01:27:32,038 And the strongest evidence for this is 1596 01:27:32,038 --> 01:27:33,748 that even the opponents of Jesus 1597 01:27:33,748 --> 01:27:36,168 implicitly admitted the tomb was empty. 1598 01:27:36,168 --> 01:27:38,044 There was nobody in the first century 1599 01:27:38,044 --> 01:27:40,464 claiming that, "No, no, no, the body is still there." 1600 01:27:40,464 --> 01:27:42,799 Even the opponents of Jesus said, 1601 01:27:42,799 --> 01:27:45,135 "Oh, well, the disciples stole the body." 1602 01:27:45,135 --> 01:27:47,095 They were conceding the tomb is empty. 1603 01:27:47,095 --> 01:27:49,306 They're trying to explain how it got empty. 1604 01:27:49,306 --> 01:27:51,516 And yet the disciples didn't have the motive, 1605 01:27:51,516 --> 01:27:55,520 the means, or the opportunity to steal the body. 1606 01:27:55,520 --> 01:27:59,024 And then finally, the fourth E stands for "eyewitnesses." 1607 01:27:59,024 --> 01:28:02,986 As I said, most of what we know from ancient history 1608 01:28:02,986 --> 01:28:06,448 are facts based on one or maybe two sources. 1609 01:28:06,448 --> 01:28:09,034 And yet, for the conviction of the disciples 1610 01:28:09,034 --> 01:28:11,036 that they encountered the resurrected Jesus, 1611 01:28:11,036 --> 01:28:14,289 we have no fewer than nine ancient sources 1612 01:28:14,289 --> 01:28:17,417 inside and outside the New Testament, 1613 01:28:17,417 --> 01:28:20,712 confirming and corroborating the conviction of the disciples 1614 01:28:20,712 --> 01:28:23,089 that they encountered the risen Christ. 1615 01:28:43,777 --> 01:28:47,072 You know, Luis Palau was not only my hero, 1616 01:28:47,072 --> 01:28:49,741 but he was my friend. 1617 01:28:49,741 --> 01:28:51,743 He was one of the greatest evangelists 1618 01:28:51,743 --> 01:28:53,286 of all time. 1619 01:28:53,286 --> 01:28:58,291 He shared his faith with a billion people. 1620 01:28:58,291 --> 01:29:01,002 He was very winsome, he was very warm, 1621 01:29:01,002 --> 01:29:02,921 and he spoke all over the world, 1622 01:29:02,921 --> 01:29:05,840 radio shows, and books, and so forth. 1623 01:29:05,840 --> 01:29:08,468 But he knew he was dying. 1624 01:29:08,468 --> 01:29:10,720 He had stage IV cancer 1625 01:29:10,720 --> 01:29:13,098 and only had a short time to live. 1626 01:29:13,098 --> 01:29:16,726 And I thought, you know, if I'm investigating Heaven, 1627 01:29:16,726 --> 01:29:18,812 wouldn't it be good to talk to someone 1628 01:29:18,812 --> 01:29:20,897 who's about ready to go there? 1629 01:29:44,838 --> 01:29:47,591 That's what drew me to Oregon, 1630 01:29:47,591 --> 01:29:52,804 to encounter, one last time, Luis Palau. 1631 01:29:52,804 --> 01:29:55,056 It turned out to be the last major interview 1632 01:29:55,056 --> 01:29:58,101 of his life before he died. 1633 01:30:07,152 --> 01:30:08,862 Tell me about the moment 1634 01:30:08,862 --> 01:30:10,822 where you heard that Luis passed. 1635 01:30:10,822 --> 01:30:12,949 Where were you? 1636 01:30:12,949 --> 01:30:18,496 I was at home in Houston and got the news 1637 01:30:18,496 --> 01:30:20,707 through his family that he has passed. 1638 01:30:20,707 --> 01:30:23,543 And you know, I was happy for him 1639 01:30:23,543 --> 01:30:26,129 because he was anxious to go. 1640 01:30:26,129 --> 01:30:28,340 I mean, he said--he told me in the interview, 1641 01:30:28,340 --> 01:30:30,300 he said, "I'm ready." 1642 01:30:30,300 --> 01:30:32,510 And I said, "Are you afraid of death?" 1643 01:30:32,510 --> 01:30:34,137 He said, "No, I'm not. 1644 01:30:34,137 --> 01:30:35,972 "I know to be absent from the body 1645 01:30:35,972 --> 01:30:37,557 is to be present with the Lord." 1646 01:30:37,557 --> 01:30:39,684 Is it still hard for you to see a friend go like that? 1647 01:30:39,684 --> 01:30:41,770 Oh, yeah, absolutely, because there's a loss. 1648 01:30:41,770 --> 01:30:43,605 There's a loss of contact. 1649 01:30:43,605 --> 01:30:45,190 There's a loss of relationship. 1650 01:30:45,190 --> 01:30:49,444 You know that he's leaving behind a wife and children. 1651 01:30:49,444 --> 01:30:51,363 And there's a sadness to it. 1652 01:30:51,363 --> 01:30:54,491 I mean, even Jesus wept when Lazarus died... 1653 01:30:54,491 --> 01:30:56,242 Yeah. 1654 01:30:56,242 --> 01:30:57,994 Even though he knew he was gonna raise him from the dead. 1655 01:30:57,994 --> 01:30:59,579 So it's appropriate 1656 01:30:59,579 --> 01:31:01,998 to mourn when a friend dies. 1657 01:31:01,998 --> 01:31:03,500 And he wasn't just a friend to me. 1658 01:31:03,500 --> 01:31:04,501 He was a hero to me. 1659 01:31:06,419 --> 01:31:07,712 Yeah, yeah. 1660 01:31:09,255 --> 01:31:10,799 Yeah, yeah. 1661 01:31:34,739 --> 01:31:36,116 Yeah. 1662 01:31:40,662 --> 01:31:42,163 Yeah. 1663 01:31:47,919 --> 01:31:49,796 Right, right. 1664 01:31:54,134 --> 01:31:59,806 Yeah, you know, he told me about attacks 1665 01:31:59,806 --> 01:32:02,100 he believed were from Satan in those final days, 1666 01:32:02,100 --> 01:32:04,853 where, you know, Satan would whisper into his ear, 1667 01:32:04,853 --> 01:32:06,646 you know, "You've told thousands of people, 1668 01:32:06,646 --> 01:32:09,107 "millions of people, a billion people about Jesus, 1669 01:32:09,107 --> 01:32:10,900 "but you're not going to Heaven. 1670 01:32:10,900 --> 01:32:13,528 "You're gonna be one of those that God's gonna say, 1671 01:32:13,528 --> 01:32:15,989 'Depart from me. I didn't know you.'" 1672 01:32:15,989 --> 01:32:18,158 And--which, of course, is crazy, 1673 01:32:18,158 --> 01:32:21,327 but it was--you know, as he said to me at one point, 1674 01:32:21,327 --> 01:32:23,580 he said, "Satan is very good at what he does." 1675 01:32:23,580 --> 01:32:25,331 And the Puritans wrote about this, 1676 01:32:25,331 --> 01:32:29,461 that at the end, sometimes, there's these words from Satan 1677 01:32:29,461 --> 01:32:31,796 to make you feel uncertain 1678 01:32:31,796 --> 01:32:34,424 and to make you question your salvation, so forth. 1679 01:32:34,424 --> 01:32:37,427 And even Luis Palau felt that. 1680 01:32:40,513 --> 01:32:41,890 Yes. 1681 01:32:45,977 --> 01:32:47,187 Uh-huh. 1682 01:33:23,890 --> 01:33:25,099 Wow. 1683 01:33:26,643 --> 01:33:28,144 Wow. 1684 01:33:44,160 --> 01:33:45,995 Even if we are confident 1685 01:33:45,995 --> 01:33:47,497 that we're gonna spend eternity with God, 1686 01:33:47,497 --> 01:33:50,041 the process of dying is not appealing. 1687 01:33:50,041 --> 01:33:51,751 Yeah. 1688 01:33:51,751 --> 01:33:53,378 In other words, nobody wants to go through that. 1689 01:33:53,378 --> 01:33:54,420 And yes, there's gonna be loss, 1690 01:33:54,420 --> 01:33:55,713 and we're not gonna be-- 1691 01:33:55,713 --> 01:33:57,090 Luis said, "I'm not gonna be able 1692 01:33:57,090 --> 01:33:58,883 to pick up the phone and call Pat," his wife, 1693 01:33:58,883 --> 01:34:00,385 "or call my kids." 1694 01:34:00,385 --> 01:34:02,011 You know, he mourned that loss. 1695 01:34:02,011 --> 01:34:03,304 Yeah. 1696 01:34:03,304 --> 01:34:04,556 But at the same time, 1697 01:34:04,556 --> 01:34:06,432 the idea of not just being embraced 1698 01:34:06,432 --> 01:34:08,226 by Jesus in Heaven, 1699 01:34:08,226 --> 01:34:10,228 but to meet Wesley, and Moody... 1700 01:34:10,228 --> 01:34:11,938 Yeah. 1701 01:34:11,938 --> 01:34:13,898 And Spurgeon, and all these heroes of the faith, 1702 01:34:13,898 --> 01:34:16,025 and to see his father, 1703 01:34:16,025 --> 01:34:18,778 and to have a relationship with him... 1704 01:34:18,778 --> 01:34:20,697 - Yeah. - He didn't get in this world. 1705 01:34:20,697 --> 01:34:23,449 Because we live in a sin-stained world, 1706 01:34:23,449 --> 01:34:27,078 his dad died at an age where Luis was too young 1707 01:34:27,078 --> 01:34:30,331 to really have a full--or relationship with him. 1708 01:34:30,331 --> 01:34:31,916 He will have that in Heaven. 1709 01:34:31,916 --> 01:34:34,544 And I think, deep down, 1710 01:34:34,544 --> 01:34:37,881 Luis has thirsted for that his whole life. 1711 01:35:35,521 --> 01:35:38,775 And even as your father was a poor example, 1712 01:35:38,775 --> 01:35:41,694 and your mother left your family, 1713 01:35:41,694 --> 01:35:43,863 you come to the living Father. 1714 01:35:43,863 --> 01:35:45,990 He is the ideal Father. 1715 01:35:45,990 --> 01:35:47,951 And Jesus says, "Young man, 1716 01:35:47,951 --> 01:35:50,453 "you've got to make your own decision. 1717 01:35:50,453 --> 01:35:53,790 "You cannot have a thirdhand faith. 1718 01:35:53,790 --> 01:35:56,793 "You cannot inherit your faith from your folks 1719 01:35:56,793 --> 01:35:58,211 "or your grandparents. 1720 01:35:58,211 --> 01:36:01,422 God has no grandchildren." 1721 01:36:01,422 --> 01:36:05,176 Jesus Christ is relevant today to the Soviet Union. 1722 01:36:08,763 --> 01:36:10,640 As far as the east is from the west... 1723 01:36:13,142 --> 01:36:15,103 So far he removes our transgressions. 1724 01:36:17,605 --> 01:36:19,857 You will never forget this night. 1725 01:36:22,652 --> 01:36:24,112 I know I'll never forget it. 1726 01:36:29,951 --> 01:36:35,331 ♪ No hay lugar más alto ♪ 1727 01:36:54,934 --> 01:36:59,731 I am sure because now I have children of my own 1728 01:36:59,731 --> 01:37:03,651 that for Mom and Dad to see the direction I was going, 1729 01:37:03,651 --> 01:37:08,322 to see my love of partying, 1730 01:37:08,322 --> 01:37:10,825 and--even though I was a respectful kid, 1731 01:37:10,825 --> 01:37:14,746 I think they knew I was moving in the wrong direction. 1732 01:37:14,746 --> 01:37:18,458 A lot of times, people will say things to me like, 1733 01:37:18,458 --> 01:37:21,878 "I know why you were such a rebellious kid, 1734 01:37:21,878 --> 01:37:24,630 "because your dad was heavy-handed 1735 01:37:24,630 --> 01:37:26,466 "or, you know, he was shoving his religion 1736 01:37:26,466 --> 01:37:27,675 down your throat." 1737 01:37:27,675 --> 01:37:29,510 And I've always really resisted that 1738 01:37:29,510 --> 01:37:31,429 because that's not the fact in my case. 1739 01:37:37,185 --> 01:37:39,896 This place, this cemetery, 1740 01:37:39,896 --> 01:37:43,483 is kind of representative of one of those places, 1741 01:37:43,483 --> 01:37:46,778 probably everybody has something like this in life. 1742 01:37:46,778 --> 01:37:49,530 It sort of represents some of the worst parts, 1743 01:37:49,530 --> 01:37:52,158 most foolish parts of my life. 1744 01:37:52,158 --> 01:37:55,119 And now, you know, to have Dad buried here, 1745 01:37:55,119 --> 01:37:56,788 my grandparents buried here, 1746 01:37:56,788 --> 01:37:59,290 it's just a place of great reflection, 1747 01:37:59,290 --> 01:38:02,710 and it represents the gratitude of my heart 1748 01:38:02,710 --> 01:38:05,171 for the love of my parents. 1749 01:38:16,557 --> 01:38:18,810 Humanly speaking, 1750 01:38:18,810 --> 01:38:21,562 I would want one more day, one more week. 1751 01:38:21,562 --> 01:38:23,689 I would want more time. 1752 01:38:23,689 --> 01:38:27,401 So when we say it was an untimely death, 1753 01:38:27,401 --> 01:38:30,613 not in God's economy, it wasn't. 1754 01:38:30,613 --> 01:38:34,283 To me, Luis lived 86 years. 1755 01:38:34,283 --> 01:38:37,954 We were married for 60. That's not enough. 1756 01:38:43,000 --> 01:38:45,920 I am teaching myself to say he died. 1757 01:38:45,920 --> 01:38:49,632 He didn't pass. He isn't lost. 1758 01:38:49,632 --> 01:38:53,594 Because it's reality. 1759 01:38:53,594 --> 01:38:56,013 You know, the other words--lost? 1760 01:38:56,013 --> 01:38:58,391 He's not lost. I know where he is. 1761 01:39:22,874 --> 01:39:24,542 Do you remember the moment when you first saw her, 1762 01:39:24,542 --> 01:39:26,002 first, like, actually talked to her? 1763 01:39:26,002 --> 01:39:28,087 Yeah, We were outside the train station in Chicago. 1764 01:39:28,087 --> 01:39:31,716 I was with a friend of mine, and she was with a guy 1765 01:39:31,716 --> 01:39:35,094 from my neighborhood who she had met at a dance. 1766 01:39:35,094 --> 01:39:37,889 And he saw me and recognized me. 1767 01:39:37,889 --> 01:39:39,515 "Hey, Lee," and "Yeah," 1768 01:39:39,515 --> 01:39:40,850 and we came over, and we were talking, 1769 01:39:40,850 --> 01:39:42,351 and he introduced me to this girl. 1770 01:39:42,351 --> 01:39:44,270 And I thought, 1771 01:39:44,270 --> 01:39:46,898 "Wow, I'll have to find out how to contact her." 1772 01:39:46,898 --> 01:39:48,357 And... 1773 01:39:48,357 --> 01:39:50,318 Did you know at 14 she would be the one? 1774 01:39:50,318 --> 01:39:51,694 She went home and told her mom, 1775 01:39:51,694 --> 01:39:53,362 "I met the boy I'm gonna marry." 1776 01:39:53,362 --> 01:39:55,865 Her mom was kind of condescending. 1777 01:39:55,865 --> 01:39:57,366 "Oh, sure, you did," you know. 1778 01:39:57,366 --> 01:39:59,911 And so I think, just to prove her wrong, 1779 01:39:59,911 --> 01:40:02,371 she married me. 1780 01:40:02,371 --> 01:40:04,248 This is the no-champagne wedding. 1781 01:40:04,248 --> 01:40:05,583 That was the no-champagne wedding. 1782 01:40:05,583 --> 01:40:07,168 Yep, that's right. 1783 01:40:07,168 --> 01:40:08,669 We were so young when we got married, 1784 01:40:08,669 --> 01:40:09,921 they had champagne glasses, 1785 01:40:09,921 --> 01:40:11,380 but we couldn't drink champagne, 1786 01:40:11,380 --> 01:40:13,090 'cause we were too young, so they were filled with milk. 1787 01:40:15,343 --> 01:40:19,722 What does Leslie mean to you, personally, as Lee, the guy? 1788 01:40:19,722 --> 01:40:21,015 - Yeah. - Not the author, not the dad. 1789 01:40:21,015 --> 01:40:22,350 - Yeah. - Just Lee. 1790 01:40:22,350 --> 01:40:25,394 You know, we're best of friends. 1791 01:40:25,394 --> 01:40:28,314 You know, meeting as young as we did, 1792 01:40:28,314 --> 01:40:31,067 at 14, kind of growing up together in that way, 1793 01:40:31,067 --> 01:40:33,152 through those tumultuous high school years, 1794 01:40:33,152 --> 01:40:37,448 and then college, we just bonded very strongly. 1795 01:40:37,448 --> 01:40:40,117 And she's just my best friend. 1796 01:40:40,117 --> 01:40:42,662 I can't imagine life without her. 1797 01:40:42,662 --> 01:40:45,414 I can't imagine where I would be 1798 01:40:45,414 --> 01:40:47,833 if God hadn't brought her into my life. 1799 01:40:50,670 --> 01:40:56,133 You know, I don't remember, at any moment, 1800 01:40:56,133 --> 01:40:58,427 feeling like I was ready to give up. 1801 01:40:58,427 --> 01:41:03,307 I remember worrying that he would walk out, 1802 01:41:03,307 --> 01:41:07,812 that he would say he'd had enough. 1803 01:41:07,812 --> 01:41:09,522 I was also convinced 1804 01:41:09,522 --> 01:41:12,525 it was gonna be a deathbed conversion. 1805 01:41:12,525 --> 01:41:14,610 I didn't imagine him ever accepting Christ 1806 01:41:14,610 --> 01:41:17,280 until maybe on his deathbed. 1807 01:41:20,491 --> 01:41:23,369 Oftentimes, I could sense God saying, 1808 01:41:23,369 --> 01:41:25,913 "Remember, you have the truth. 1809 01:41:25,913 --> 01:41:28,249 "He doesn't. He doesn't know. 1810 01:41:28,249 --> 01:41:31,043 "You're expecting him to act in a way 1811 01:41:31,043 --> 01:41:32,670 "he's incapable of acting. 1812 01:41:32,670 --> 01:41:35,131 "Hold your anger. Hold your tongue. 1813 01:41:35,131 --> 01:41:37,133 "Do what's right. Be patient. 1814 01:41:37,133 --> 01:41:39,593 I'm bigger than both of you." 1815 01:41:45,349 --> 01:41:48,394 I'm unaware of ever having reached anyone for the Lord. 1816 01:41:48,394 --> 01:41:52,189 I see myself as a link in the chain--other than Lee. 1817 01:42:21,177 --> 01:42:27,058 ♪ Let me wipe your tears away ♪ 1818 01:42:27,058 --> 01:42:29,226 If we accept what the near-death experiences 1819 01:42:29,226 --> 01:42:31,270 tell us about life reviews, 1820 01:42:31,270 --> 01:42:33,481 people talk about how they almost feel like 1821 01:42:33,481 --> 01:42:36,525 they're judging themselves, and that from Jesus, 1822 01:42:36,525 --> 01:42:38,152 they're getting a sense of mercy, 1823 01:42:38,152 --> 01:42:40,529 forgiveness, grace, and love. 1824 01:42:40,529 --> 01:42:43,574 And so from that perspective, I think it's not gonna be 1825 01:42:43,574 --> 01:42:45,576 as daunting of an experience 1826 01:42:45,576 --> 01:42:47,912 as maybe I otherwise thought it would be. 1827 01:42:47,912 --> 01:42:49,872 ♪ Wipe your tears ♪ 1828 01:42:49,872 --> 01:42:51,749 Yeah, I remember getting the job 1829 01:42:51,749 --> 01:42:53,626 at the "Chicago Tribune" and wanting 1830 01:42:53,626 --> 01:42:56,879 to have that front-page byline the first time, 1831 01:42:56,879 --> 01:42:59,965 knowing my dad would open it and see it. 1832 01:42:59,965 --> 01:43:01,759 "That's Lee!" 1833 01:43:01,759 --> 01:43:04,512 And just show him that I've accomplished something, 1834 01:43:04,512 --> 01:43:06,722 I've become somebody. 1835 01:43:10,226 --> 01:43:13,771 I think of the split second that our lives intersected 1836 01:43:13,771 --> 01:43:16,607 on a street corner in downtown Chicago. 1837 01:43:16,607 --> 01:43:19,235 There's no way, humanly speaking, 1838 01:43:19,235 --> 01:43:20,820 that we ever would have met. 1839 01:43:20,820 --> 01:43:22,196 It was the beginning 1840 01:43:22,196 --> 01:43:24,240 of this incredible relationship. 1841 01:43:26,951 --> 01:43:30,871 She tolerated me during those years of rebellion 1842 01:43:30,871 --> 01:43:34,208 'cause I was angry and lashing out many times. 1843 01:43:34,208 --> 01:43:36,419 But she persevered. She prayed. 1844 01:43:36,419 --> 01:43:40,673 She prayed for me every day for two years. 1845 01:43:40,673 --> 01:43:43,426 My daughter, Alison-- when she was a toddler, 1846 01:43:43,426 --> 01:43:45,845 if she was alone in the living room, 1847 01:43:45,845 --> 01:43:47,972 playing with some blocks, some toys, or whatever, 1848 01:43:47,972 --> 01:43:50,015 and she would hear me come home from work 1849 01:43:50,015 --> 01:43:52,810 through the front door, her natural reaction was just 1850 01:43:52,810 --> 01:43:54,728 to gather her toys, and go in her room, 1851 01:43:54,728 --> 01:43:56,355 and shut the door. 1852 01:43:56,355 --> 01:43:58,149 "Was he gonna be drunk again? 1853 01:43:58,149 --> 01:44:00,609 "Was he gonna be yelling, and screaming, 1854 01:44:00,609 --> 01:44:02,445 "and kicking holes in the wall? 1855 01:44:02,445 --> 01:44:06,824 At least it was nice and quiet in here." 1856 01:44:06,824 --> 01:44:09,827 It was four or five months after I became a Christian, 1857 01:44:09,827 --> 01:44:13,289 and Alison had begun to see changes in me, 1858 01:44:13,289 --> 01:44:15,291 and so one Sunday morning, 1859 01:44:15,291 --> 01:44:17,376 she came up to Leslie, and she said, 1860 01:44:17,376 --> 01:44:22,006 "I want God to do for me what he's done for Daddy." 1861 01:44:22,006 --> 01:44:24,675 God changes everything. 1862 01:44:41,400 --> 01:44:44,111 So I asked Luis, I said, "Luis, if you could send 1863 01:44:44,111 --> 01:44:46,280 "a text message back from Heaven, 1864 01:44:46,280 --> 01:44:49,783 what do you think it would say?" 1865 01:44:49,783 --> 01:44:51,660 And he thought for a second, and then he said, 1866 01:44:51,660 --> 01:44:54,663 "I think I'd say, 'Go for it.'" 1867 01:44:56,874 --> 01:44:58,918 If we believe that Heaven is true, 1868 01:44:58,918 --> 01:45:00,419 that it's real, 1869 01:45:00,419 --> 01:45:02,338 that should affect our everyday lives, 1870 01:45:02,338 --> 01:45:04,590 our attitudes, our perspective, 1871 01:45:04,590 --> 01:45:07,301 the way we treat people, the way we spend our money, 1872 01:45:07,301 --> 01:45:08,969 the way we spend our time. 1873 01:45:08,969 --> 01:45:11,347 It should ripple through every aspect 1874 01:45:11,347 --> 01:45:13,390 of our lives. 1875 01:45:13,390 --> 01:45:15,434 At some point, we realize 1876 01:45:15,434 --> 01:45:18,354 that when we close our eyes in this world, 1877 01:45:18,354 --> 01:45:20,648 that isn't the end of our existence, 1878 01:45:20,648 --> 01:45:23,609 but there's another chapter to come. 1879 01:45:54,390 --> 01:45:58,185 ♪ Where did you go ♪ 1880 01:45:58,185 --> 01:46:02,147 ♪ Where I could not follow? ♪ 1881 01:46:02,147 --> 01:46:06,318 ♪ A place to call home ♪ 1882 01:46:06,318 --> 01:46:10,072 ♪ Where time can't be borrowed ♪ 1883 01:46:10,072 --> 01:46:14,368 ♪ I'm waiting for a sign ♪ 1884 01:46:14,368 --> 01:46:18,330 ♪ I'm waiting for you ♪ 1885 01:46:18,330 --> 01:46:22,376 ♪ Now we're worlds apart ♪ 1886 01:46:22,376 --> 01:46:26,714 ♪ But how could that be? ♪ 1887 01:46:26,714 --> 01:46:30,342 ♪ It was never fair for me to say goodbye ♪ 1888 01:46:30,342 --> 01:46:34,305 ♪ When I never said hello ♪ 1889 01:46:34,305 --> 01:46:37,850 ♪ I'm waiting for you ♪ 1890 01:46:37,850 --> 01:46:42,104 ♪ I hope that I'll meet you someday ♪ 1891 01:46:42,104 --> 01:46:45,357 ♪ There's something inside me that speaks to me ♪ 1892 01:46:45,357 --> 01:46:49,820 ♪ Comforts me, guides me, and shows me the way ♪ 1893 01:46:49,820 --> 01:46:53,991 ♪ While I'm caught between Heaven and Hell ♪ 1894 01:46:58,954 --> 01:47:02,875 ♪ I lie awake ♪ 1895 01:47:02,875 --> 01:47:07,254 ♪ In dark, lonely nights ♪ 1896 01:47:07,254 --> 01:47:10,382 ♪ All these memories that could have been ♪ 1897 01:47:10,382 --> 01:47:14,762 ♪ These pictures, they keep me awake ♪ 1898 01:47:14,762 --> 01:47:18,849 ♪ I'm waiting for a sign ♪ 1899 01:47:18,849 --> 01:47:22,353 ♪ I'm waiting for you ♪ 1900 01:47:22,353 --> 01:47:26,607 ♪ I hope that I'll meet you someday ♪ 1901 01:47:26,607 --> 01:47:29,568 ♪ There's something inside me that speaks to me ♪ 1902 01:47:29,568 --> 01:47:34,239 ♪ Comforts me, guides me, and shows me the way ♪ 1903 01:47:34,239 --> 01:47:38,577 ♪ While I'm caught between Heaven and Hell ♪ 1904 01:47:38,577 --> 01:47:42,623 ♪ I hope that I'll meet you someday ♪ 1905 01:47:42,623 --> 01:47:45,959 ♪ There's something inside me that speaks to me ♪ 1906 01:47:45,959 --> 01:47:50,297 ♪ Comforts me, guides me, and shows me the way ♪ 1907 01:47:50,297 --> 01:47:54,677 ♪ While I'm caught between Heaven and Hell ♪ 1908 01:49:01,326 --> 01:49:07,624 ♪ You, I hope that I'll meet you someday ♪ 1909 01:49:07,624 --> 01:49:10,794 ♪ There's something inside me that speaks to me ♪ 1910 01:49:10,794 --> 01:49:15,299 ♪ Comforts me, guides me, and shows me the way ♪ 1911 01:49:15,299 --> 01:49:19,845 ♪ While I'm caught between Heaven and Hell ♪ 1912 01:49:19,845 --> 01:49:23,724 ♪ I hope that I'll meet you someday ♪ 1913 01:49:23,724 --> 01:49:27,102 ♪ There's something inside me that speaks to me ♪ 1914 01:49:27,102 --> 01:49:31,523 ♪ Comforts me, guides me, and shows me the way ♪ 1915 01:49:31,523 --> 01:49:35,611 ♪ While I'm caught between Heaven and Hell ♪