trevor j major

Thomas Nelson – the world’s biggest religious publishing house – now belongs to the secular publishing house, HarperCollins.[1] If you look at the spine of your Bible, there’s a good chance you’ll see the Nelson name. One of Nelson’s titles, Heaven is for Real, is on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list.

On amazon.com, Real is the top seller in their “Christian Theology” section. In fact, as of writing, 9 out of 20 books are about heaven.[2] One is a straight ahead attempt at saying what heaven is like. Two (from Rob Bell) suggest that everybody is going to heaven. The six remaining titles represent three allegedly true stories (in various formats) of people who went to heaven and came back again.

In some respects, these stories resemble the Near Death Experiences that people used to talk about in the heyday of the New Age movement. But these go beyond the typical NDE story: it’s not just a case of seeing the light, or Jesus opening His arms, but of spending time in heaven.

Trust Me, I Was There?

Heaven is for Real (2010)

• This is meant to be the true-life story of a 4 year old boy who went into surgery for an appendectomy and then, after surgery, had all sorts of amazing tales to tell about heaven.
• His accounts are compelling, so we are led to believe, because they reveal all sorts of information about heaven that a 4 year old couldn’t possibly know unless he had actually been there.

The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven (2010)

• This is a story of a 6 year old boy who went into a coma following a car accident.
• When he woke up two months later, he told his parents that the angels had taken him to the gates of heaven, and he talked to Jesus.
• He related events at the accident scene and in the hospital while he was in a coma – events, allegedly, that he could know nothing about unless he saw them in heaven.

90 Minutes in Heaven (2004)

• A Baptist preacher was in a serious car accident, declared dead at the scene, and allegedly spent 90 minutes in heaven.
• Another Baptist preacher was passing by, stopped to pray, and the guy miraculously came back to life.

Quick Response

1.    Is it possible to die, see heaven, and live to tell the tale?

• Absolutely. We know that Paradise is the next step for those who are found righteous in God’s sight (Luke 23:43). John the Apostle gives us a highly symbolic picture of heaven in the Book of Revelation. So we know that something incredible awaits us up there, and…
• Jesus showed His power over death by raising people like Lazarus (John 11), and the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7). The resurrection of Christ is the ultimate example of life after death (1 Cor. 15). But you will notice that neither Lazarus nor Jesus tell us anything about their experiences in heaven.
• Paul in 2 Cor. 12 talks about a man who “was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words,” although the apostle leaves it open as to whether this really happened or not. In the context of this passage, Paul is talking about prophetic visions, not a round trip visit to Paradise.

2.    That was back in the days of miracles. What about today?

• Even if the stories in the popular books were true, they shouldn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. We know there’s a heaven. Jesus told His disciples in John 14:2 that He was going to prepare many mansions. That promise is backed up by the Person and work of our resurrected Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That’s all we need to know.

• If these stories are trying to tell us something we don’t already know, then they fall under the warning of Gal. 1:8 – “Even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.”

3.    What we don’t get in any of these books is independent corroboration that what they say is true. In fact, there are claims in these books that are simply unbiblical.

4.    Here’s what we do know: “it is appointed for men to die once, and after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). That’s the sobering truth we need to hang our hat on.

Update: Interesting little post from Hunter Baker at Touchstone/Mere Comments.

In my favorite version of The King and I (the one with the shiny-headed Yul Brynner), the courtly children respond in disbelief to the very idea of frozen precipitation. The blustery king is disappointed. He has seen a picture of the Swiss Alps; of course there is such a thing as snow! Anna, the British teacher, is a little more forgiving. The children live in tropical Bangkok; they’ve never seen snow for themselves. “Never seen!” the king retorts, “If they believe only what they see, why do they have schoolroom?”
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“We three kings of Orient are…” Or were they? Now I hate to be a Grinch, but like a lot of our traditions, this song mixes fact with fiction. For a start, the three “kings” weren’t kings. And really, we don’t even know if there were three of them! At the same time, we can count on newspapers running the standard holiday story about some astronomer who’s identified the so-called “Star of Bethlehem” as a comet, supernova, alignment of the planets, or whatever fanciful theory is popular this year. But none of these natural explanations fits the Bible’s description of what really happened. Let’s see if we can sort some of this out. For background information, I recommend that you read the second chapter of Matthew.

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