Christian author Lee Strobel has been on a mission to uncover evidence for the afterlife following a health crisis 10 years ago that left him on the edge of death.
And his investigative mission exposed some shocking cases that convinced him of the veracity of near-death experiences and evidence of heaven and hell.
“I almost died 10 years ago. My wife found me unconscious. She called an ambulance. I remember waking up in the emergency room and looking up at the physician,” Strobel told CBN’s Faithwire. “He looked down at me, and he said, ‘You’re one step away from a coma, two steps away from dying.'”
He continued, “And so I lingered between life and death there for quite a while. I had a rare condition called hyponatremia, which is a severe drop in my blood-sodium level.”
“The Case For Christ” author decided to embark on a journey to find evidence that “supports the idea that there is an afterlife.” He shares his investigative voyage in the new feature film “The Case For Heaven,” headed to theaters April 4-6 via Fathom Events (the film is based on a book, as well).
“As a Christian, I believe what the Bible teaches about the afterlife, but at the same time, I’ve got this skeptical gear,” he said. “My background is in journalism and law, so I tend to question things.”
That journey left Strobel astonished, particularly over the well-documented and researched data on near-death experiences.
“I was completely surprised by the evidence for near-death experiences. I was a skeptic about it,” he said. “I thought maybe it was just a lack of oxygen to the brain that causes hallucinations or something like that. And what I discovered is there have been more than 900 scholarly studies on near-death experiences published in scientific and medical journals over the last 50 years.”
Strobel said he is fully aware of the fraudulent stories that have been told, so he focused his attention on claims he believed had “corroboration,” using his legal and journalistic background to discern.
“I wanted cases where people saw things or heard things that they could not have seen or heard had they not had an authentic out-of-body experience,” he said.
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The author shared his favorite example about a woman named Maria who died inside a hospital before being revived. Her claims afterward are nothing short of fascinating.
“She described later, ‘I was conscious the whole time. I was watching the resuscitation efforts that they were doing on my body. My spirit was kind of floating there in the hospital room, and then my spirit floated out of the hospital,'” Strobel recounted. “And when she was revived, and her spirit returned to her body, she said, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s a man’s tennis shoe on the roof of the hospital and its dark blue, it’s left-footed, there’s some wear over the little toe, and there’s shoelaces tucked under the heel.'”
These seemingly strange proclamations were investigated, and, sure enough, Maria’s description of the mysterious shoe on the roof was spot-on, despite the fact she reportedly never physically saw the area.
“In my book and the film, we document these cases,” Strobel said. “And I think it’s extraordinary.”
To find out more and to get tickets for “The Case For Heaven,” click here. The documentary film is slated for a limited release, in theatres April 4-6.
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