‘This Has Huge Implications’: Lee Strobel and Jesus’ Resurrection

Lee Strobel is a skeptic by nature. With a law degree and a career in investigative journalism, he set out to disprove the merits of Christianity. In his research—all for the purpose of “rescuing” his wife from a local church—he discovered something unexpected.  

On this Easter episode, Lee tells us about his investigation into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and how those three truths are the source of ultimate hope.  

Lee Strobel is the bestselling author of books such as The Case for Christ, Is God Real?, and his newest book, Seeing the Supernatural. 

This episode of GPS is a re-air of episode 284 and features new insight Lee Strobel shared during his recent interview on the podcast Fearless with Cissie Graham Lynch. 

Connect with us through email at gps@billygraham.org or on Facebook at Billy Graham Radio.

If you’d like to know more about beginning a relationship with Jesus Christ, or deepening the faith you already have, visit FindPeacewithGod.net.

If you’d like to pray with someone, call our Billy Graham 24/7 Prayer Line at 855-255-7729. 

Transcript

Lee Strobel: 
[00:00:00] Well, you know, one day I was sleeping off a hangover on a Sunday morning. And she was getting ready to go to church. And, uh, she looked at me. She said why don’t you come to church with me today. And I thought, you know, I’m going to go and see if I could rescue her from this cult. 

Music Tag:
[00:00:14]

Jim Kirkland
[00:00:23] Lee Strobel’s plan to rescue his wife didn’t go quite the way he planned. God sent him on a journey to explore the credibility of Jesus. And although Lee thought that would distance him from God, it actually brought him right into a relationship with Jesus Christ. This is GPS: God. People. Stories. I’m Jim Kirkland. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:00:47] And I’m Phil Fleischman. As we get ready to celebrate Easter later this week, a lot of people will have the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on their minds. And Lee says that the resurrection was one of the biggest issues to work through as he tried to disprove Christianity. Billy Graham knew that the resurrection is central to the Christian faith. 

Billy Graham:
[00:01:07] Ladies and gentlemen, if I did not believe that Christ bodily rose from the grave, I would quit preaching. 

Jim Kirkland:
[00:01:13] You’ll hear Billy Graham talk more about the resurrection of Jesus Christ in a little bit here on this episode. Without the resurrection, Christianity would be a hopeless religion. But because of the resurrection, you can find true hope and peace when you have a relationship with Jesus. We can tell you more of this at FindPeacewithGod.net. That’s FindPeacewithGod.net. 

Audio tag:
[00:01:38]

Lee Strobel: 
[00:01:43] My parents, um, went to a, um, mainline, uh, denominational church. Um, my mom definitely had a, um, born again experience as a teenager. Um, I believe my father as a believer. But they were very private and personal about their faith. And they, uh, decided to leave it to me whatever decision I would make in terms of my own belief system. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:02:06] The decision Lee Strobel would eventually make was to believe that God doesn’t exist. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:02:12] And so, there were three steps that led me into atheism. The first one was in junior high school when I began asking the tough questions that young people ask. How can there be a loving God if there is so much pain in the world? How could a loving God send people to hell? ?And, uh, nobody was really willing to engage me on those issues. So, I concluded there are not good answers. And then, in high school taking a course in, uh, Biology and being taught that Darwinism explains the origin and diversity of life. I figured that puts God out of a job. And then in college taking a course on the historical Jesus taught by a skeptic that taught me you can’t trust the gospels. And so, that cemented me into my atheism. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:02:51] Lee attended two of the most respected colleges in the country. And then, he landed a job at one of the most respected newspapers in the country. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:02:59] My background is in journalism and law. So, I tend to be a skeptical person. It’s kind of woven into my DNA. Um, went to Yale Law School for a master’s in studies and law degree and Journalism School at the University of Missouri. And I was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. 

Jim Kirkland:
[00:03:13] By the time Lee began working at the Tribune, he was married to his high school sweetheart. Her name is Leslie. She wasn’t a dyed in the wool atheist like Lee, but she wasn’t a follower of Jesus either. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:03:27] She, uh, kind of always believed in God. Didn’t quite understand how Jesus fit in the picture. It was just kind of a puzzle like a jigsaw puzzle that wasn’t put together yet. And, uh, it was through a friendship with a Christian nurse who we met, um, who became her best friend who shared Jesus with her and brought her to church. Over time, she heard the gospel and understood that Jesus is, uh, the unique Son of God. That it’s through Him that we can, uh, be forgiven of our sins and adopted into His family. 

Jim Kirkland: 
[00:04:00] That happened when Lee and Leslie were in their mid-twenties. Lee says it led to the most stressful and difficult period of their marriage. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:04:09] We’re at odds on things we never used to be at odds about. How to raise our children. How to spend our weekends. How to spend our money. She wanted to give money to the church. I thought that was, you know, I might as well just flush it down a toilet. Um, she-she, um, wanted to go to church on weekends. I wanted to, you know, go out drinking on Saturday night and, uh, sleep off my hangover on Sunday morning. Um, she wanted to help train the children in faith. And-and I didn’t want them to become Christians because then I thought they would think less of their dad who is not a Christian. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:04:42] There’s one incident, in particular, that’s a good example of the turmoil Lee was experiencing because of Leslie’s new faith. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:04:49] When she first told me that she had become a Christian, I was so mad I went out … she had planted a beautiful flower garden in our backyard. I was cutting the lawn. And I just mowed down her whole flower garden just in frustration over the whole situation. So, there was a lot of, uh, a lot of angst, uh, over those two years when we were spiritually mismatched.  

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:05:09] At first, Lee thought about divorce, but he loved Leslie. And he couldn’t deny the positive changes he was seeing in her. He says there was a push and pull going on. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:05:19] You know, the positive changes in her values and character attracted me toward the faith. At the same time, uh, it made me angry. And it made me angry because it-it was as if she was holding up a mirror. And I was seeing in the contrast between my life, which was corroded with sin and corruption, um, I was seeing the contrast between that and this increasingly holy life that Leslie was leading. And it made me face things about myself that I didn’t want to face. So, it wasn’t that she was, uh, judging me or shaming me. Her merely living an increasingly faithful life to Jesus accentuated the ugliness of my own life and the immorality of my own behavior. And it made me angry. I didn’t want to … I didn’t want to acknowledge any of that. 

Jim Kirkland: 
[00:06:08] So how did Lee get from that place of resenting Leslie for her faith in Jesus to becoming he himself a follower of Jesus Christ? 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:06:18] Well, you know, one day I was sleeping off a hangover on a Sunday morning, and she was getting ready to go to church. And, uh, she looked at me and said why don’t you come to church with me today? And I thought, you know, I’m going to go and see if I could rescue her from this cult. So, um, I said I’m going to bring my reporter’s notebook from the Chicago Tribune because I said I’m going to – I’m going to try to find a scandal. That way I can, you know, expose this church for the fraud that it is. 

Jim Kirkland: 
[00:06:42] The pastor preached a message he called Basic Christianity. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:06:45] And it was the first time – here I was almost 30 years old living in Chicago. It was the first time I ever understood the gospel. And I walked out that day saying number one, I didn’t believe it. I was still a skeptic. But number two, I realized if this is true this has huge implications for my life. So, that’s when I decided to take my legal training and journalism training and investigate it. Because I knew that if Jesus had lived, he had left behind evidence of that. And I knew just as you can investigate the writings of Josephus, or Suetonius, or Tacitus, or any other ancient writer, you could take those same investigative techniques and apply them to the gospels to try to determine is it telling us the truth. Are they reporting what really happened? And so, um, that’s when I launched this investigation thinking that I could disprove Christianity in a weekend. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:07:35] Lee’s investigation ended up taking a lot longer than one weekend. It took almost two years before he determined that he couldn’t disprove Christianity or the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:07:46] Yeah, it really is a cumulative case. It wasn’t a single thing that did it. But it was over time as I began to look in really four areas. The first was the execution of Jesus. And was He really dead? You have to have a dead body before you can have a resurrection. So, I didn’t know if He was dead. And, um, you know, as I researched that I found that, um, even the atheist New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann says it’s indisputable that Jesus was dead, uh, through crucifixion. Even the Journal of the American Medical Association, uh, did the analysis in a peer reviewed article of the historical evidence and medical evidence and concludes that Jesus was dead even before the wound to His side was inflicted. Uh, we’ve got five ancient sources outside the Bible confirming His death. So, clearly He was killed by crucifixion. Then the second thing was I thought this was a legend that He was resurrected. And I knew it took time for legends to develop in the ancient world. Um, but we have a report of the resurrection, um, saying that Jesus died for our sins. He was buried; He rose on the third day. And then, it mentions specific names of eyewitnesses to whom He appeared. That’s been dated back by scholars to within months of His death. So, it-it comes virtually immediately after the death of Jesus. It’s like a newsflash from ancient history. Much too early to write it off as a legend. So the third thing was the empty tomb. Um, even the opponents of Jesus implicitly admitted the tomb was empty. Uh, the question is how did it get empty? Um, and then, the fourth area where the eyewitnesses. You know, most of what we know from ancient history we know from one or two sources. And yet, for the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus, we’ve got nine ancient sources in inside and outside the New Testament confirming and corroborating his, uh, the conviction of the disciples that Jesus had appeared to them. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:09:45] Finally, it all amounted to what Lee calls an avalanche of historical data in support of Christianity. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:09:52] When you put it all together, it was just the scales just kind of ultimately shifted. And I said, you know, um, I would be turning my back on the evidence if I were to continue to maintain my atheism. Um, the most logical step I could take would be a step in the same direction the evidence it pointing by putting my trust in Christ. Yes, it’s a step of faith. But you know, if I were to maintain my atheism, I would be swimming upstream against a current of evidence flowing the other direction. That’s not logical. That’s not rational. When we take a step in the same direction the evidence is pointing, that makes sense to do. And that’s what I ended up doing on November the 8th of 1981. 

Jim Kirkland: 
[00:10:36] November 8th, 1981. It’s a memorable day for Lee and for his wife Leslie. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:10:43] Oh, well, she was, um, overjoyed. She burst into tears and threw her arms around my neck and was crying and, uh, said, you know, I almost gave up on you a thousand times. Um, but you know, early on in this process, this spiritual mentor that she had, Linda, gave her a verse and said pray this verse for Lee. It’s Ezekiel 36:26. And it says moreover I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And, uh, so, this whole two years that I’m on this spiritual investigation what I never knew was that Leslie, behind the scenes, every day was praying that verse for me. That God would crack open my hard heart. That He would, uh-uh, draw me into His kingdom. And, um, you know, she was faithful. She prayed, uh, every single day. And, uh, then she saw starting on November the 8th of 1981 how God began to answer that prayer. Because as I say, all my values, and morality, and character began to change. 

Jim Kirkland:
[00:11:50] And those changes were dramatic. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:11:53] So much so that our daughter, Allison, who was five years old when I came to faith and had only known for the first five years of her life a dad who was absent, angry, coming home drunk, um, that was her entire experience. But starting on that day that I put my trust in Christ, she started to watch. There’s something different with dad. There’s something changing with dad. There’s something new with dad. And, uh, she observed my behavior, my language, my life for about, I guess, five or six months. And then one day, she came up to Leslie and said, Mommy, I want God to do for me what He's done for daddy. And that’s the day she gave her life to Christ. And then, my son. Same thing. You know, my son saw the difference God was making in his mom, his dad, and his sister. He came to faith at a young age too. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:12:46] Lee got out of the newspaper business a few years after giving his life to Christ. And he’s been in full-time ministry work ever since. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:12:53] God really rescued our family. We were on a course for certain destruction had we stayed on the track we were on. God rescued our family. He changed my son, my daughter, my wife, and me. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:13:05] Lee Strobel began his quest to disprove the claims of Jesus Christ on January 20th, 1980. He surrendered his life to that same Jesus on November 8th, 1981. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:13:17] Ultimately, you can research this stuff forever. But I realized after a year and nine months you’ve got the evidence you need to reach a conclusion. And so, I just sort of reviewed all of the evidence and-and it-it sort of formed a portrait. It was like the puzzle pieces came together and formed a portrait of Jesus the unique Son of God. And uh, that was just too compelling for me to turn my back on. 

Music tag:
[00:13:42] 

Jim Kirkland: 
[00:14:06] As you look at Lee Strobel’s journey to Jesus, it becomes evident that God was using Lee’s skeptical nature to capture his heart. Lee thought he was planning a mission to rescue his wife. But in reality, God had a rescue mission of His own in mind. And that is what Easter is all about … the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All part of God’s rescue mission to save us. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:14:31] So, are you ready to be rescued? To accept the truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? If you are, or you’d just like to learn more about Him, we can help. Visit us at this website: FindPeacewithGod.net. And if you’re already a follower of Christ, that site also has a lot of resources to help you grow deeper in your faith. The address again is FindPeacewithGod.net. 

Audio tag:
[00:14:58]

Billy Graham:
[00:15:07] Ladies and gentlemen, if I did not believe that Christ bodily rose from the grave, I would quit preaching. 

Announcer:
[00:15:12] Billy Graham … 

Billy Graham: 
[00:15:14] For centuries, the Old Testament prophets looked down through the corridors of time and predicted that Christ would rise again. They predicted every event in His life. And Jesus fulfilled every event according to prophecy. We have the documented testimony of those who were eyewitnesses to His resurrection. Peter, a partaker of Christ’s resurrection, said and we are witnesses of all things which He did in Jerusalem. Him God raised up the third day and showed Him openly. Some of the greatest lawyers and jurists of history have become convinced that the proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the greatest attested facts of history. However, if I had none of these proofs, I still would know that Christ lives because He lives in my heart. He lives at the right hand of God, the Father, at this moment, but He also lives in the lives of those who have been transformed by His grace. Do you know Him? You can receive Him right now into your heart by faith. And He can transform your life. 

Jim Kirkland: 
[00:16:16] You can listen to the rest of that message at our website. To get there just go to Billygraham.org and search for this message title Proof of the Resurrection. Or if you’d like, just go to our show notes and click on the link there. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:16:29] Our guest on this episode of GPS is Lee Strobel. He’s written several books about the truth of Jesus Christ that He lived, that He died, and that He rose from the dead. Now, the one that’s probably most well-known is the Case for Christ. Lee has also written a new book. It’s titled Seeing the Supernatural. He talked about it recently on the podcast Fearless with Cissie Graham Lynch. And he shared why it’s important for Christians to engage in discussions about the supernatural. 

Lee Strobel: 
[00:17:00] There’s a lot of interest in the supernatural these days. And I see that as a bridge. Can we use that as a bridge as Christians to get into conversations with people about what they believe. And maybe bridge that into a conversation about the gospel. I hope so. I hope that it opens up people who are curious about things. You know, people these days, my goodness, just see stuff on ancient aliens and all kinds of stuff, UFOs, and psychics. Could we use that as a bridge to have a conversation about the real supernatural realm and what it is we believe? Because this is what the Bible teaches us about the supernatural realm. And use that as a way to get into a gospel conversation. And, um, I just encourage anyone, you know, the Bible teaches that there is a realm beyond what we can see and touch. We ought to be familiar with it. I hope this book helps people understand that, yeah, there is evidence that the Bible is telling us the truth about that. So, let’s understand a little bit more about this realm and how it is that it points us toward the God of Scripture. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:18:00] We appreciate Lee Strobels sharing his insight and his story with us on this episode of GPS, especially at this time of year. And we appreciate your listening. With Easter Sunday right around the corner, there are a lot of people who will be going to church for the first time, actually, maybe the only time this year. If you know someone like that, we encourage you to share this episode with them. It might answer questions they have about the death and resurrection of Jesus, and it might even open the door to having a gospel conversation with them. 

Jim Kirkland: 
[00:18:30] And if you’ve enjoyed this episode of GPS, we would love to know. Leave us a comment on YouTube or Spotify or review on Apple Podcasts. I’m Jim Kirkland. 

Phil Fleischman: 
[00:18:41] And I’m Phil Fleischman. GPS, God. People. Stories. It’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Always good news. 

Music tag:
[00:18:52]

End of transcript