The author admitted that the story of going to heaven was not
true, and the publisher will stop selling the book and related items.
That's the news story today. The 2010 book is The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, the
author Kevin Malarkey and his son Alex Malarkey and the publisher
Tyndale House. The following post is from 2011 and it is about a
different book but the same Christian literature genre:
Why bring back this post again and again? It's not the most important failure in the Christian church today but this type of nonsense is part of the fabric of the contemporary church and helps to keep it from learning its own faith. Why look to church history? Why try to understand doctrine that requires labor and perseverance to understand when such evidence as is in this book tells you that you are on the right track? Heaven Is For Real is a litmus tests of sorts. If you fell for this story there is something seriously wrong. Run back to it if you want; it's an easy road and there will always be another storyline or prophesy teaching to keep you intellectually sedated. These are hard words and most readers are probably gone already but not you. Why? Maybe it's because there has always been a nagging suspicion that something just wasn't right?
The church in America is primed for books like this for it is part of the culture and the culture is anti-intellectual, narcissistic and obscurantist as to any consequences to ignoring American history and most importantly church history. This is why we have Barack Obamas and Joe Bidens. This is why we have Benny Hinns and Joel Osteens.
What this book and movie will do is keep many of its Christian readers and viewers in the doldrums with no real wind for their sails, and this with a tempest of all tempests looming on the horizon. It will make them think that they are tacking a right course. We are in need of a safe harbor and these types of books, and they are many, are shoals and reefs amidst the pounding waves. Let me reiterate, if you missed this easy one.....what else have you missed!
Heaven Is For Real......The Book Is Not.......May of 2011
Well, I'm way behind on this one. A few days ago I heard about the new book sensation, Heaven Is for Real. I picked it up and read it in little more than an afternoon then went to the New York Times Best Seller list and in some sort of Freudian Slip I went to fiction and started scrolling backwards. Well, I was back into February and no Heaven Is For Real. Then it dawned on me...non-fiction, for I had trouble even putting the book into that category. Indeed, according to what I then read, it had been Number 1 for 12 weeks and has only slipped to Number 2 this past week. What can I say? It's sad that this is what Christians read, what they so easily fall for, what they are totally unprepared to discern.
For those not familiar with this book, as I wasn't until three days ago, a pastor's son has an out-of-body experience on the surgery table and is taken to heaven. This loving father is certainly sincere but he also erred in discernment of what happened. There are two ways to address this, the first being to list the ways that the book is not Scriptural but I think that it's more important here to address this genre of Christian literature. You're probably not too happy right about now, if you have read this far, but if you can read on a little bit further I'd like to give you some things to at least think about.
You wouldn't want this story to be true! If it was legitimate, then maybe the hundreds of similar stories that came before it could be legitimate also and even if only a portion of them were legitimate you would then be living a Christian existence where personal testimony, experiences, imagination, the paranormal and even chicanery would rule. You would have given up our bulwark of strength in the reasoning mind that God gave us and of reading God's Word under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and this for a mess of pottage. You would have given up order and precision for the chaos of emotive evidence. When I was about 16 years old, a man came up to my friend and I at a shopping center and showed us some very nice watches.... supposedly they were inventory that he was trying to get rid of...right! Well I bought one and it worked perfectly for about the same number of weeks that Heaven Is For Real was Number 1 on the best sellers list. The book will be gone soon, possibly they will make a movie of it, but then another incredible story will come along.
I have another thought to ask you to consider; I submit to you that, on a scale of excitability, all the thrills that you may have had reading this story do not compare with even the shortest verse in God's Word....."Jesus wept." (John 11:35) I'll even go further than that...even if you could take the trip that this little boy supposedly went on, the excitement of thoroughly understanding even one of the great Doctrines of Grace as they relate to our own salvation, of a lost sinner deserving of condemnation but pardoned through absolutely nothing in or of ourselves, of God's choosing us in spite us and keeping us despite our many frailties, then it would make that trip even less than trivial, to be discarded for the real joy of seeing Jesus through the eyes of faith according to His Word!
Friends, this is not a discerning age for the world or the church and America is at the precipice in no small measure because of it. Maybe you think that it is a discerning age and we are just fine. J. I. Packer once commented, to the best of my memory anyway, that the term giants often used to describe the Puritans was inaccurate for they were normal men, it was only that we are in a church age of Pygmies that we see them as giants.
Please do not take my statements to where I never would take them, that being that there is nothing valuable being done in the church today for there is. One need go no further than missionaries of the true gospel, than servants who give and give and give with no concern for their own well being, than pastors who literally wear out dealing with the challenges of this age, than the faith shown by you and multitudes of others in living in a world that mocks its Creator and rejects its Savior, but we are also called to handle the Word of God correctly.
A glass can only hold so much liquid, our time can only be portioned out on so many things and this age is a candy store of diversions, a haberdashery of excuses to wear and a fitness club to make us think that we are healthy. The book of Jeremiah tells us to ask for the old paths, where the good way is... (Jeremiah 6:16.) Even the wonderful authors of today mine the works of those who came before us. One has to mine gold or at least pan for it. It doesn't usually wind on Best Seller lists.
Recommended: A 24/7 Internet radio ministry at www.refnet.fm
Why bring back this post again and again? It's not the most important failure in the Christian church today but this type of nonsense is part of the fabric of the contemporary church and helps to keep it from learning its own faith. Why look to church history? Why try to understand doctrine that requires labor and perseverance to understand when such evidence as is in this book tells you that you are on the right track? Heaven Is For Real is a litmus tests of sorts. If you fell for this story there is something seriously wrong. Run back to it if you want; it's an easy road and there will always be another storyline or prophesy teaching to keep you intellectually sedated. These are hard words and most readers are probably gone already but not you. Why? Maybe it's because there has always been a nagging suspicion that something just wasn't right?
The church in America is primed for books like this for it is part of the culture and the culture is anti-intellectual, narcissistic and obscurantist as to any consequences to ignoring American history and most importantly church history. This is why we have Barack Obamas and Joe Bidens. This is why we have Benny Hinns and Joel Osteens.
What this book and movie will do is keep many of its Christian readers and viewers in the doldrums with no real wind for their sails, and this with a tempest of all tempests looming on the horizon. It will make them think that they are tacking a right course. We are in need of a safe harbor and these types of books, and they are many, are shoals and reefs amidst the pounding waves. Let me reiterate, if you missed this easy one.....what else have you missed!
Heaven Is For Real......The Book Is Not.......May of 2011
Well, I'm way behind on this one. A few days ago I heard about the new book sensation, Heaven Is for Real. I picked it up and read it in little more than an afternoon then went to the New York Times Best Seller list and in some sort of Freudian Slip I went to fiction and started scrolling backwards. Well, I was back into February and no Heaven Is For Real. Then it dawned on me...non-fiction, for I had trouble even putting the book into that category. Indeed, according to what I then read, it had been Number 1 for 12 weeks and has only slipped to Number 2 this past week. What can I say? It's sad that this is what Christians read, what they so easily fall for, what they are totally unprepared to discern.
For those not familiar with this book, as I wasn't until three days ago, a pastor's son has an out-of-body experience on the surgery table and is taken to heaven. This loving father is certainly sincere but he also erred in discernment of what happened. There are two ways to address this, the first being to list the ways that the book is not Scriptural but I think that it's more important here to address this genre of Christian literature. You're probably not too happy right about now, if you have read this far, but if you can read on a little bit further I'd like to give you some things to at least think about.
You wouldn't want this story to be true! If it was legitimate, then maybe the hundreds of similar stories that came before it could be legitimate also and even if only a portion of them were legitimate you would then be living a Christian existence where personal testimony, experiences, imagination, the paranormal and even chicanery would rule. You would have given up our bulwark of strength in the reasoning mind that God gave us and of reading God's Word under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and this for a mess of pottage. You would have given up order and precision for the chaos of emotive evidence. When I was about 16 years old, a man came up to my friend and I at a shopping center and showed us some very nice watches.... supposedly they were inventory that he was trying to get rid of...right! Well I bought one and it worked perfectly for about the same number of weeks that Heaven Is For Real was Number 1 on the best sellers list. The book will be gone soon, possibly they will make a movie of it, but then another incredible story will come along.
I have another thought to ask you to consider; I submit to you that, on a scale of excitability, all the thrills that you may have had reading this story do not compare with even the shortest verse in God's Word....."Jesus wept." (John 11:35) I'll even go further than that...even if you could take the trip that this little boy supposedly went on, the excitement of thoroughly understanding even one of the great Doctrines of Grace as they relate to our own salvation, of a lost sinner deserving of condemnation but pardoned through absolutely nothing in or of ourselves, of God's choosing us in spite us and keeping us despite our many frailties, then it would make that trip even less than trivial, to be discarded for the real joy of seeing Jesus through the eyes of faith according to His Word!
Friends, this is not a discerning age for the world or the church and America is at the precipice in no small measure because of it. Maybe you think that it is a discerning age and we are just fine. J. I. Packer once commented, to the best of my memory anyway, that the term giants often used to describe the Puritans was inaccurate for they were normal men, it was only that we are in a church age of Pygmies that we see them as giants.
Please do not take my statements to where I never would take them, that being that there is nothing valuable being done in the church today for there is. One need go no further than missionaries of the true gospel, than servants who give and give and give with no concern for their own well being, than pastors who literally wear out dealing with the challenges of this age, than the faith shown by you and multitudes of others in living in a world that mocks its Creator and rejects its Savior, but we are also called to handle the Word of God correctly.
A glass can only hold so much liquid, our time can only be portioned out on so many things and this age is a candy store of diversions, a haberdashery of excuses to wear and a fitness club to make us think that we are healthy. The book of Jeremiah tells us to ask for the old paths, where the good way is... (Jeremiah 6:16.) Even the wonderful authors of today mine the works of those who came before us. One has to mine gold or at least pan for it. It doesn't usually wind on Best Seller lists.
Recommended: A 24/7 Internet radio ministry at www.refnet.fm
