Posted on 03/11/2011 10:08:14 AM PST by Dr. Scarpetta
Just two months shy of his fourth birthday, Colton Burpo, the son of an evangelical pastor in Imperial, Neb., was rushed into emergency surgery with a burst appendix.
He woke up with an astonishing story: He had died and gone to heaven, where he met his great-grandfather; the biblical figure Samson; John the Baptist; and Jesus, who had eyes that “were just sort of a sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle,” Colton, now 11 years old, recalled.
Colton's father, Todd, has turned the boy’s experience into a 163-page book, “Heaven Is for Real,” which has become a sleeper paperback hit of the winter, dominating best-seller lists and selling hundreds of thousands of copies.
Thomas Nelson, the book’s publisher, said it had broken company sales records.
The publisher, based in Nashville, began with an initial print run of 40,000 copies.
Since the book came out in November, it has gone back to press 22 times, with more than 1.5 million copies in print.
On the New York Times best-seller list for paperback nonfiction last Sunday, “Heaven Is for Real” was NO. 1.
The book remains in the top spot this coming Sunday.
Colton told his parents that he had met his younger sister in heaven, describing her as a dark-haired girl who resembled his older sister, Cassie.
When the Burpos questioned him, he asked his mother, “You had a baby die in your tummy, didn’t you?”
While his wife had suffered a miscarriage years before, Mr. Burpo said, they had not told Colton about it.
“There’s just no way he could have known,” Mr. Burpo said.
The Burpos said that Colton painstakingly described images that he said he saw in heaven — like the bloody wounds on Jesus’ palms — that he had not been shown before.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I believe Don Piper said the pastor prayed over his ‘dead body’ for an hour. The pastor was singing “What a Friend we have in Jesus,” and suddenly Don started singing with him.
And the reverse is true as well.
Well, I think you’re overreacting a mite. He’s just a boy who had a tremendous experience — and so did his parents. I was raised to beware false prophets, and take my poor mortal knowledge of Heaven from no other source but the Holy Bible.
Nevertheless, it seems a bit harsh if you are saying they are engaging in anything “deadly.” They may well be, but we are hardly in any position to say whether it’s prophetic, heavenly, diabolical, exploitative; we merely know it isn’t in the one Book that matters.
Preferring safe to sorry, I won’t be buying their book.
Reminds me of an email I received. If this has been posted here before, I apologize for the repeat:
The smell of rain
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery.
Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver couple’s new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature.
Still, the doctor’s soft words dropped like bombs.
“I don’t think she’s going to make it,’ he said, as kindly as he could.
‘There’s only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one’
Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Dana would likely face if she survived.
She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.
‘No! No!’ was all Diana could say.
She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four.
Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.
But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Dana’s underdeveloped nervous system was essentially “raw”, the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn’t even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love.
All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.
There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger.
But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there.
At last, when Dana turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time.
And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted.
Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life, she showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother’s lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother Dustin’s baseball team was practicing.
As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby, when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, ‘Do you smell that?’
Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, ‘Yes, it smells like rain.’
Dana closed her eyes and again asked, ‘Do you smell that?’
Once again, her mother replied, ‘Yes, I think we’re about to get wet. It smells like rain.’
Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, ‘No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest.’
Tears blurred Diana’s eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children.
Before the rains came, her daughter’s words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along.
During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.
Reminds me of an email I received. If this has been posted here before, I apologize for the repeat:
The smell of rain
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery.
Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver couple’s new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature.
Still, the doctor’s soft words dropped like bombs.
“I don’t think she’s going to make it,’ he said, as kindly as he could.
‘There’s only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one’
Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Dana would likely face if she survived.
She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.
‘No! No!’ was all Diana could say.
She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four.
Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.
But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Dana’s underdeveloped nervous system was essentially “raw”, the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn’t even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love.
All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.
There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger.
But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there.
At last, when Dana turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time.
And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted.
Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life, she showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother’s lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother Dustin’s baseball team was practicing.
As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby, when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, ‘Do you smell that?’
Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, ‘Yes, it smells like rain.’
Dana closed her eyes and again asked, ‘Do you smell that?’
Once again, her mother replied, ‘Yes, I think we’re about to get wet. It smells like rain.’
Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, ‘No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest.’
Tears blurred Diana’s eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children.
Before the rains came, her daughter’s words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along.
During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.
Whoops. Sorry for the double post. And, of course, it’s a long one.
So, I take it you were not present for each and every conversation between the boy and his parents?
Repentance is enabled by REVELATION.
Faith comes by hearing.
The Spirit of God gets to our hearts through all of our senses. He works most often through the word — by reading or hearing — but NOT exclusively.
Why, then, do you impose upon the boy the unreasonable, unbiblical, legalistic standard that his testimony is invalid unless it comes with an exhortation to repent, or a sermonette on the Four Spiritual Laws?
Who made you judge over him?
Have Jesus repeated excoriations of the myopia of the Pharisees and Saducees so failed to register with you that you so readily imitate them rather than Christ?
You appeal to the gospel; well and good. And what is the gospel (literally: “good news”) but the joyous declaration to fallen man that relationship — actual, personal knowledge of, encounter by, and experience with the Living God — has been made available through the finished work of Jesus at Calvary?
The curtain of the temple was torn in two. Who was behind it? And is He there still? NO! He’s out in plain view, for all with “eyes to see, and ears to hear.” And do you think this biblical phrase refers only to spiritual eyes and ears? It does not, for I tell you in all sobriety that Our LORD, Jesus has appeared in Person to MANY to bring to the uttermost ends of the Earth the knowledge of Him. Heathen men and women have SEEN Him with their own physical eyes, and heard Him with their own physical ears.
Recall that Jesus is “The Last Adam,” and consider that part and parcel of his function under that title is to reconcile us to God with the result that we can NOW have relationship to God in the same fullness that the First Adam enjoyed; and I do mean NOW.
Or do you think that Our Father, having given up His only Son to save us, would subsequently withhold Himself from us?
That is not the testimony of scripture.
Paul, in the book of Romans makes this clear when he writes, “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall He not with him also freely give us all things?”
What — aside from sin — is excluded from “all things”?
Surely “all” means ALL, and within the scope of all are sons and daughters who prophesy, young men who — like this boy — see visions, and old men who dream dreams.
Why does Paul — not once, but repeatedly — exhort The Church to prophesy saying, “...covet spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy” (I Cor. 14:1), and again “I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied...” (I Cor. 14:5), and yet again, “...covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues,” and also even again, “Quench not The Spirit. Despise not prophesying.” (I Thess. 5:19 & 20)?
Why these repeated exhortations unless he expected that these things be continually manifest in The Church?
The Scriptural record is complete in its testimony that “all things” truly and most excellently means “all things.” Therefore, abandon this joyless cynicism, and pursue the full knowledge and experience of the stature of the whole man, even Christ.
I declare to you with all the force and power with which I am endowed by The Spirit of the Living God, and do in His matchless NAME proclaim to you, that the greatness and glory of The LORD, and of His Kingdom, and the variety of its manifestations among men exceed the furthest extents of your wildest possible imaginations.
THEREFORE, DO NOT DEIGN TO LIMIT YHVH!!
I think I will get both these books. Thank you for posting this! People are sometimes so sceptical about things Holy Spirit can do and does...He really is not bound by the preconceptions or laws folks try to use to hold Him back.
Quix,
I would very much like to believe his story, and in fact I'm not claiming that I disbelieve.
However I have a 4 year old, and she will go on and on about make believe friends and places.
And once it has come out of her mouth, she will remember it and repeat it as if it were real - you cannot trip her up.
The only way I know for sure that she's making things up is that she uses things she has just heard or seen in her stories.
For instance, we were sitting next to some women discussing something that happened with one of their kids, and then the next thing you know a few minutes later, she starts talking about how her "friend" just had something similar happen to her.
Sometimes conversations with her can get quite fascinating, as she blends together reality and fantasy and her own brand of 4 year old logic.
For instance, my daughter's friend's name is "Gomestas BenGracias", from Mexico. It is a mouthful for a 4 year old who doesn't speak Spanish, but she has never wavered in the pronunciation. And she ALWAYS mentions that she's from Mexico, whenever she says the name.
Now right before this all started, one of her schoolmates (who she didn't know) was moving to Mexico and gave a speech in front of her class. I'm guessing that she spoke a little in Spanish, saying something like "como estas, bien gracias" - and from there my daughter had a new imaginary best friend.
You’re very welcome...
I understand that kids do that at those ages.
Please Read the book.
Then tell me you think that this kid did that 0.00001% worth.
I took issue with a specific point. Please keep your bombast to yourself. Do not ever reply to me again.
My grandkids love the Wiggles’ song about Ol’ Dan Tucker.
ABSOLUTELY INDEED.
Kid lost me on the Jesus with blue eyes thing.
You are welcome to have
0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000%
confidence
in my assessment skills;
in my discernment;
in my perceptiveness . . .
all without reading the book.
Please read the book and then tell me of your skepticism. Either way, it will tell me a lot about you.
Very, very nice...We can’t ever give up hope.
My grandson was born with problems, and he’s doing very well.
The fact that you've avoided answering my simple question tells me a lot about you.
FRegards,
We all pay our price and the consequences thereof.
Time will tell.
Then it will be too late to have been in on helping God with all HE might have done through you had you sought Him to show you the truth of such matters.
A TYPE II ERROR can be as deadly as a TYPE I ERROR.
Scripture has provided for such things in Acts 2 and I Cor 12-14.
Ignore Scripture on such scores at your own peril.
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