Heaven is for Real for Kids: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back:. Sometimes things just come together and we look at them and realize it is time to reflect. This has happened to me. I was in the Orlando airport biding my time about a year ago while I waited for my granddaughter’s flight to depart. We strolled into the bookstore and I picked up this children’s book and read it in its entirety. Then I started hearing on the news about a neurosurgeon’s coma experience in a book named Proof of Heaven. Lastly I saw that the books Heaven is for Real will become a movie to show in theaters beginning on April 16, 2014. Having experienced my own anesthesia issues and out-of-body experience at Broward General Hospital in Florida many decades ago, and my mother having visiting heaven while temporarily dead when I was but thirteen, I knew it was time to contrast the books to my experience and knowledge.
HEAVEN IS FOR REAL: In Heaven is for Real, the 168-page paperback version written by Todd Burpo as a more fully developed book on the experiences of his son Colton when he was just under four years of age. Colton, whose dad is a pastor in Nebraska and a fireman, travels to heaven and back during an emergency surgery. No one believed Colton initially. He began to talk about people he could never have known, and people listened. The experience was relayed by Colton to others slowly over time.
In his experience with heaven, Colton met his fetus sister who was miscarried, now grown in heaven. He did not know of her existence ever in his mother’s womb. He also talked about his grandfather who had long since been dead, for 34 years. To Colton, heaven is real; it was to my mother also as she experienced heaven and the famous tunnel of light when she died during emergency surgery from which she recovered. Her mother was a passive atheist; mom knew my grandmother was wrong and would go to heaven.
In the eyes of a child, Colton saw the immensity of God and his chair and the power of God which he shared with us by shooting power from heaven to earth. Colton met and knows that Jesus loves children. He met Samson and John the Baptist. An interesting quote is Jesus had blue eyes, ” sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle.” Colton says, “Nobody is old and nobody wears glasses.” Good. He also saw the stigmata. Colton also believes in “a coming last battle.” Yikes! When I read this in the airport, I was alarmed.
THE MOVIE: The screenwriter for the movie will be Christopher Parker, who will take the story from the children’s book with its simple images and the paperback words to the big screen. I understand that the cast will be Kelly Reilly as Sonja, the mom, and Greg Kinnear as dad. Colton is one of four children (one miscarried). Joe Roth (Oz the Great and Powerful) and T.D. Jakes will produce it and Randall Wallace will be charged with directing this story for Columbia Pictures. A new young and inexperienced actor, Connor Corum, will play young Colton.
PROOF OF HEAVEN: Neurosurgeon Dr. Eban Alexander experienced a 7-day coma. During his coma, he traveled with a female guide to the afterlife, a place with “giant butterflies and angelic like creatures who streaked across the sky.” God was an inky presence of “emanating love.” This is a man of science and the son of a man of science who did not believe in near-death afterlife experiences, but he had one! He taught at Harvard; he understands the science of our brains, and his. He believed in science and not bona fide heavenly near-death experiences, although he was a Christian believer of sorts. He envied true believers for their faith, but stuck to science skepticism then; not now.
In 2007 Dr. Alexander changed forevermore. The neocortex portion of his brain was essentially in power failure while he experienced a 7-day coma. He currently believes scientifically in the fact that our awareness and consciousness does follow our passing away. Dr. Alexander suffered extraordinary bacterial meningitis that is far more common in infants than adults, which led to E. coli impacting his cerebrospinal fluid. Basically the E. coli was eating his brain. His higher order brain functions were “totally offline.”
He believes life is in chapters, and the stages of life on earth are some of the chapters. For him the next chapter was positive, his coma experience. Scientifically he should not have had consciousness as his cortex was shut down totally versus in part as he believed the brain to be in nearly all near-death encounters. His book shares much about the science that his intellect confronted. He says that seeing and hearing became indivisible and of which he became or felt a part. His passage was guided by a young deep blue-eyed woman on the wing of a huge butterfly, surrounded by millions more. Everything was beyond brilliancy in vivid color, language was silent but he understood he would be going back, and she was an embodiment of some highest love known. Learning and answers were instant. He traveled through an inky dazzling core which was God’s home.
Physics explains an undivided universe where all things and events are interlaced. Dr. Alexander sought to find the reality and science of his experience of great love, forever love, cherished love, without fear. He sees science and spirit emerging in a new reality of equal measure and value and truth.
SOME THOUGHTS: Colton talked about looking down upon his body during the appendix operation. I did this too and my surgery was for the same thing.
Colton saw his father in the waiting room, praying. I did not see my family.
Colton went to heaven; I went to the ceiling in a corner of the operating room after feeling the first cut into my body. I felt no more, but I heard and saw the events within that operating room. When I was being wheeled out of the operating room, I slipped somehow back into my body and slept. I was furious when I finally did awake from lingering anesthesia in a recovery room. I am still incensed that my anesthesia went awry.
Colton’s dad is a Wesleyan pastor. I graduated from a Wesleyan college.
Colton saw clouds in heaven; Dr. Alexander visited clouds and rose higher.
Colton saw winged creatures (angels); Dr. Alexander saw “flocks of transparent”, joyful and winged creatures who chanted on high. My mother saw angels and traveled a tunnel of immense light.
Colton and Dr. Alexander both believe deeply in God from their afterlife experiences. Me too. The act of dying may scare me, but death is a phenomenal door to the universe, to heaven, and to deeper faith. My mother believed in reincarnation; as do I. I wonder if this is part of our journey, another chapter.
I want to read more, and I am excited about the 2014 movie. Hope you are too.
NOTE: The publisher of Colton’s story, is offering a free eBook on Heaven Changes Everything.