I don't Believe the "Heaven is for Real" story

[Memaw]

The BOOK Heaven is for Real has lots of Catholic stuff, like the Virgin Mary and Saint Michael the Archangel. That gives high cred for a non-Catholic, says I.
The MOVIE was anti-Christian, and definitely anti-Catholic, with all the Catholic stuff cut out by the producer, one of those Oprah-friendly preachers, T.D. Jakes. It’s a travesty.

I read the book and I don’t recall any “Catholic stuff” in it and Mary was only mentioned in the very end when someone asked if he saw Mary and the father only said, Oh she was there. Now what does that tell ya. God Bless, Memaw

 

[Luvz2travel]

i think it just backs up my theory that heaven is personal and it will be what you make it. i wondered when i read the kids book " where is everyone else" all the kid saw was jesus and his dead relatives and a sister he didnt know about. i personally dont think we will be with former family members . for example if i was married happily and my wife died young and later i remarried , who would i live with in heaven, or would i be moved to mormon heaven. just kidding .besides i dont think there will be any sex in heaven, this is a human trait and there will be no need for procreation .

I take the artists view since I come from a family of artists. I agree heavin will look like what we want it too. If you imagine tons of angels with wings and clouds everywhere that’s probably what you will get. Everyone is different and sees things in a different way. Ask 10 people to draw the same tree or whatever and 10 people will come up with 10 complete different drawings for example. I also speculate that you can make heavin what you want as well. In my case I hope for a nice forest with a cabin in the mountains with a lake near by or a beach…both would be heavin to me.

 

[Memaw]

I take the artists view since I come from a family of artists. I agree heavin will look like what we want it too. If you imagine tons of angels with wings and clouds everywhere that’s probably what you will get. Everyone is different and sees things in a different way. Ask 10 people to draw the same tree or whatever and 10 people will come up with 10 complete different drawings for example. I also speculate that you can make heavin what you want as well. In my case I hope for a nice forest with a cabin in the mountains with a lake near by or a beach…both would be heavin to me.

What Heaven “looks” like isn’t up to us. It is what it is because of God. I think we will all be in for a ‘surprise’ that will last an Eternity. God Bless, Memaw

 

[Luvz2travel]

What Heaven “looks” like isn’t up to us. It is what it is because of God. I think we will all be in for a ‘surprise’ that will last an Eternity. God Bless, Memaw

How do you know do you have personal experience with it? Visionaries who have been valided by the vatican have reported different things and even the bible doesn’t spell it out specifically. I’m just speculating anyway.

 

[Petergee]

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The gospel accounts contradict each other in several places, as you know.

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No they don’t. Every single one of the supposed “contradictions” has at least one perfectly rational explanation.

 

[RGCheek]

Wow.

Anything else that the OP doesn’t believe in that he wants to start a thread about?

I don’t believe in Yeti, lotteries, Planet X, the Loch Ness monster, Big Foot or the wholesomeness of politicians but I don’t go around starting threads about what I don’t believe in.

I kinda suspect you (the OPer) may have a small part of you that does believe in this story and you are seeking confirmation to assure you of your disbelief,

 

[Memaw]

How do you know do you have personal experience with it? Visionaries who have been valided by the vatican have reported different things and even the bible doesn’t spell it out specifically. I’m just speculating anyway.

The Bible tells us that it hasn’t even entered into the mind of man what God has in store for him. God Bless, Memaw

 

[RGCheek]

The Bible tells us that it hasn’t even entered into the mind of man what God has in store for him. God Bless, Memaw

In context that would be it hadn’t entered the mind of man UPTO THE TIME OF THAT WRITING, which was how many thousands of years ago?

I seem to recall that passage, but cant find it.

Can you help me with the book and verse that comes from?

 

[Memaw]

In context that would be it hadn’t entered the mind of man UPTO THE TIME OF THAT WRITING, which was how many thousands of years ago?

I seem to recall that passage, but cant find it.

Can you help me with the book and verse that comes from?

1Cor. 2,9
.The TRUTHS of God are unchangeable. What He said then is just as true today !! God Bless, Memaw

 

[RGCheek]

1Cor. 2,9
.The TRUTHS of God are unchangeable. What He said then is just as true today !! God Bless, Memaw

That it hadn’t entered the mind of man up to that time is still just as true today…for that time it had not yet happened is still true.

 

[Luvz2travel]

I still think heaven will look different to everyone. We are all different as GOD made us and we can never see things the same way. If we did then we would loose our individuality and I don’t see that happening but this is all conjecture anyway.

 

[KjetilK]

I am very skeptical of these kind og books, and I can tell you that I am pretty sure it is fake. Atle Ottesen Søvik, a Norwegian Lutheran theologian,* reviewed Heaven is for Real (the book), and tore it apart, showing that it was full of inconsistencies, and that it flatly contradicted Scripture. Here is a Norwegian article in which his review and views are presented (in another publication). Among the problems with the book is that many of the depictions in the book are very consistent with childish perceptions of Heaven, but not with Scripture. Colton Burpo (the kid in question) says that everybody has wings in heaven, that Jesus wears a crown with a pink diamond, and that the Holy Sprit is blue.

He furthermore states that he saw into the future, and saw the end times. In the vision in question, he is still a child, and sees his father fighting Satan with bow and arrow. There is just one big, big problem with that. The ‘visions’ happened in 2003, when Colton was 4 years old, and the book was published in 2010, when he was 11, and he is now 15. He is now longer a child, and the end times (with dad fighting the Devil) has not yet happened. And what’s worse is that he was hardly a child, or at the end of his years as a child, when the book was published!

The books was falsified when it went into print! I’m not saying that it didn’t ‘happen.’ It was probably a fever dream, combined with his images of Heaven (and his father’s ‘creative touch’).

• Søvik is an Academic Dean, associate Professor, and a post doctoral student at the Norwegian School of Theology (MF). His (first) doctorate, from 2009, was The Problem of Evil and the Power of God, published through Studies in Systematic Theology (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill 2011). It is good, but as everything else from Brill, it is extremely overpriced.