"I did not die. I did not go to Heaven... Please forgive the brevity, but because of my limitations I have to keep this short…. I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention...."(And yes, as was always there in plain sight, the boy and his father's name is: Malarkey.)
ADDED: From the OED entry for "malarkey":
Etymology: Origin unknown.From the OED entry for "malacia":
A surname Mullarkey , of Irish origin, exists, but no connection is known between any person of that name and this word. Another suggested etymology is from modern Greek μαλακός soft, or its derivative μαλακία , in fig. use (see malacia n.).
Etymology: In sense 1 < classical Latin malacia a disorder of the stomach, especially as experienced by pregnant women (glossed by Oxf. Lat. Dict. as ‘sickness, nausea’ but interpreted by earlier authors as denoting a craving for unusual or unnatural foods) < ancient Greek μαλακία softness, homosexual desire, sickness < μαλακός soft (see malaco- comb. form) + -ία -ia suffix1.Whoa!
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The deal with faith is that or is different than knowing. Efforts to scientifically or even anecdotally price or disprove life after deathe are interesting, but miss the point, at least as far as faith is concerned. Hope in the unseen.
Well, now he'll never see Heaven. His afterlife will be full of devils with pitchforks. Hope that teaches him a lesson!
I thought so for some reason. I saw this book on Amazon and avoided it. Too hokey and if your 6 yr old had a sincere NDE, is rushing it into print really the right thing to do?
The exploitation of children.
Millstone... neck...
"If anyone causes one of these little ones--those who believe in me--to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."
"it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."
Like bin Laden.
The Greek verb, from memory, is scandalizare, well, that is the Latin but am pretty sure it is just an import from the Greek... the OED will be useful but I don't think 'exploitation' fits. Not to say that exploitation is probably not misplaced in this case.
Well, now he's telling the truth, so all is forgiven. Kids tell their parents what they, the parents, want to hear. Maybe the parents wanted to hear that their child had gone to heaven and, also, that they want their child to tell the truth. It took the kid a few days to figure out the math......I don't put telling a lie about going to heaven in the same class as encouraging a child to discharge a firearm into the head of one of the parent's enemies.
Now let's not get all bogged down in little details like whether he was telling the "truth" or not because it really reveals a larger truth. Or something. Shut up, h8ers!!
No serious Christian should have been taken in. Heaven is not a place you visit for awhile.
He just wasn't as good a person as Colton Burpo, who still says he went to heaven and came back - and they made a movie about his trip.
http://heavenisforreal.net/
I'm sure he's not lying, either.
But he and his enabler father made a pile of money over this charade, so he ended up in heaven after all. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
I am glad he told the truth.
Trey
This kid and his asshole daddy make a fortune on this drivel (Yes, I know, his mother says he hasn't profited from the book. Believe that, too, suckers.) and now he says the Bible is infallible... Jesus Christ on a stick...
I feel sorry for the guy, personally. He did something all six-year-olds do -- make up a fabulous story -- only to have his father foolishly believe it and tell the world.
Heaven is not a place you visit for awhile.
Suppose you wanted to leave, just for argument's sake, what's to stop you? Are the Pearly Gates a one-way portal like the turnstiles in Grand Central Station? Is Heaven surrounded by barbed wire and armed angelic guards? (Most earthly paradises are escape-proof as well, so why should the Celestial one be any different?) Are we doomed be prisoners for eternity?
That Heaven Is For Real flick stars Greg Kinnear!? ... Jesus Christ on a stick...
So how about the Muslim heaven? Is that for real?
This episode of Galileo features a similar plot device. The detectives have to unravel a boy's supernatural claims--which his father has a good deal invested in--to get to the underlying physical truth.
@Quaestor: You ask "Suppose you wanted to leave [Heaven], just for argument's sake, what's to stop you?" I wish I were competent to answer that question, but no one is; not even Pope Francis.
My best guess is that Heaven is not part of our universe, so you can no more travel from there to here than you can travel from here to there -- except, of course, by God's will.
Stephen Vincent Benet wrote a short story called "Doc Mellhorn And The Pearly Gates", in which the doctor chooses to go to Hell rather then to Heaven, because there's no work for him in Heaven (no one's ever sick, etc.). Being a lawyer myself, I see his point -- but I've been told to go to Hell often enough that I'd refuse to do so out of plain orneryness.
I am not a robot.
I just finished watching Heaven Is For Real. It's not a slouch. It's well crafted, well-acted, effective, and distributed by Sony. It's also intensive-care mind-rot.
Think of it as "Triumph des Willens" for churchies.
This reminds us that the religious spirit and the lying spirit are one and the same demon in deliverance ministries reports.
I can never figure out why people are quick to believe a person who says "I was lying."
I mean, you now have two statements, "A" and "A is a lie". Obviously both cannot be true, so obviously this person is a liar.
But once you've established that, why is it much more plausible to believe the first statement is the lie rather than the second?
It's illogical. Must be one of those quirky instincts of H. sapiens that I, as an alien, will never fully understand.
Carl Pham makes a good point. When we are cross-examining a witness, and confront him/her with a prior inconsistent statement, we typically say something like "Were you lying then, or are you lying now?" We don't really care (if we are lawyers): the point is, liar, liar, pants on fire!
However, in this instance, it's easy to understand why someone would have a motive to lie about having made a visit to Heaven, but it's more difficult to imagine why he would lie about NOT having visited Heaven.
Suppose you wanted to leave, just for argument's sake, what's to stop you?
Whether or not the "pearly gates" are one way, death is. Returning the dead to life is something that only happens through divine intervention. So if you could leave Heaven, you'd just be wandering around other parts of the afterlife, I guess.
Of course, many Christians simply define "heaven" as being in the presence of God, and "hell" as not being so. So it isn't really a location so much as a state of being.
It's disturbing that he doesn't seem to understand that the Bible was written by (or at least through) men as well just like his book.
He's being set up for yet another letdown.
Shout louder! Surely Jehovah is God! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.
If you follow the Bible, you know you don't go to heaven when you die, if that's where you are going. You go to heaven 'bye and bye' meaning you rest in peace until resurrection day. Then Christ decides who goes and who doesn't. BTW, it's a new heaven and a new earth created at that time for God's chosen people to enjoy.
All this sneaking up to Valhalla ahead of time is non-Christian.
Steven, great paraphrase of 1 Kings 18:27. Except it was Baal they were shouting for. Elijah said "Maybe he is relieving himself, Shout louder."
At least he doesn't have temporal lobe epilepsy.
The larger scandal is that a "Christian" publishing house actually put out this un-biblical claptrap. Where are their editors? Where is their discernment? The entire "Christian" pop culture industry (including its lame counterpart, contemporary Christian music) has become a scandal and embarrassment, and I say this as a devout evangelical Christian.
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