There And Back Again?

The "I've been to heaven and back" book phenomena continues to grow. There is yet another one which has hit the New York Times bestseller list. Now we can read about Mary C. Neal's trip to heaven in her book "To Heaven And Back." Evangelicals love this stuff! The books by Don Piper and Todd Burpo have numerous spin-offs. I recently saw a big, colorful Heaven Is For Real For Kids in a local Barnes and Noble. If I were cynical I'd conclude that all these daily thoughts, calendars, journals, kids and women's editions were crass attempts to make more money off evangelical's lack of discernment. But I'm not cynical so I'd never conclude that. Personally, I'd like to see a Mixed Martial Arts edition of one of these trip to heaven books. That's a growing market after all. Now, just watch some enterprising young fella at Multnomah or Zondervan steal this idea.

Tim Challies, who has written well about the dangers of this nonsense, has a fresh post on Miss Neal's foray into the wacky world of Christian publishing.

The most recent heaven tourist is Mary C. Neal. Much like Todd Burpo, who is responsible for taking his son’s adventures to print, Neal only decided to write about her experiences many years after the fact, after all those other “I went to heaven” books began to sell in the hundreds of thousands. But that’s definitely just coincidence. She initially self-published her book To Heaven and Back, but once it started generating buzz (i.e. selling lots and lots of copies), Waterbrook Multnomah stooped down and scraped it off the bottom of a shoe somewhere, and promptly re-issued it. With the extra marketing nudge, it has now made its debut on the New York Times list of bestsellers. I gave it a skim—I just couldn’t bear to read it all the way—and found that it is much the same as the others. In fact, it may be worse than the others in that it contains even less Christian theology, less gospel and far more New Age, sub-Christian nonsense. That a publisher of Christian books would even consider taking this to print is appalling.

Challies goes on to explain well why these sorts of stories are dangerous for Christians to ingest.

I do not believe that Don Piper or Colton Burpo or Mary Neal or Bill Wiese visited the afterlife. They can tell me all the stories they want, and then can tell those stories in a sincere tone, but I do not believe them (even when they send me very angry and condescending emails that accuse me of character assassination). I am not necessarily saying that these people are liars—just that I am under no obligation to believe another person’s experience. Here’s why:

In the first place, we have no reason to believe or expect that God will work in this way—that he will call one of us to the afterlife and then send us back to our old bodies. The Bible says that it is for man to die once and then to experience the resurrection. There are many experiences we can have in a near-death state I am sure—dream-like experiences that may even seem real—but the Bible gives us no reason to believe that a person will truly die, truly experience the afterlife, and then return. Those who have a biblical understanding of life and death and heaven and hell will know that for a person to die and visit heaven, to experience sinlessness and the presence of Jesus Christ—for that person it would be the very height of cruelty to then demand that they return to earth. None of these books are at all consistent with a robust theology of heaven and hell, of the work of Jesus Christ, of the existence of indwelling sin. On the surface they may seem compelling, but in reality they raise far more questions than the few they may appear to answer.

In the second place, the very idea of God calling a person to heaven and back and then having that person share his experience in order to bolster our faith is the exact opposite of what the Lord desires for us. We have no reason to look to another person’s experience of heaven in order to prove that heaven is real or hell is real. The Bible promises blessings on those who do not see and yet believe. Our hope is not to be in the story of a minister or toddler or doctor or anyone else who insists they have been to heaven; our hope is to be in Jesus Christ as God has graciously revealed him to us in the Bible. Faith is believing that what God says in his Word is true and without error. You dishonor God if you choose to believe what the Bible says only when you receive some kind of outside verification. You dishonor God if you need this kind of outside verification.

A question remains: How do I respond to a Christian who has read these books and who finds great joy or comfort in them? You point that person to what is true. You will need to be careful with tone and timing, but ultimately, it will be a blessing for any Christian to direct his faith to the worthy object of faith. Faith will be strengthened by reading the Bible and believing it. Faith will be weakened by reading the Bible and believing it only after reading 90 Minutes in Heaven. You can serve any Christian by directing him to the Bible and helping him to see that we are called to believe God on the basis of what he says in his Word, not on the basis of another person’s experience. 90 Minutes in Heaven and Heaven Is For Real and all the rest are not books that beautify the doctrine of heaven, but books that attack the doctrine of Scripture. The Bible insists that it is enough, that it is sufficient, that we have no need for further special revelation from God; these books insist that it is not.

Read the entire post HERE.

There and back again?

What is it about evangelicals that seems to crave fads? These days we seem to be into stories about people's trips to heaven (or Hell) and back. It seems like a pretty good arrangement: Someone goes to heaven for a bit, they write a book, we buy gazillions of them, we feel good, they get rich. The newest title along these line is Heaven Is For Real. How do we know it's for real? Because a four year old little boy went there and told his dad who got to work writing a book about the whole thing. Apparently this thing is the hottest ticket since Don Piper told us about his 90 minutes in Heaven. Tim Challies reviews Heaven Is For Real HERE. I'm pointing this out because it speaks to our tendency to desire something more exciting than or supplemental to God's Word. This desire inevitably leads to error and worse. A few years ago I wrote a post entitled "The Triumph of the Sensational OR Did Don Piper Go to Heaven?"

I am letting you know up front that this post is going to make some of you mad. You will accuse me of being judgmental, critical, skeptical, etc. And, to a certain extent, you would be right. However, as someone called to be in service to the truth I believe I have to speak out when the church is confronted by error from within.

I received an email today from Lifeway, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. It reads in part:

We are currently scheduling Don for June and July of 2009! Allow this wonderful brother to share with your church on a Sunday or a revival service. He offers real hope and biblical solutions to a searching world!!

Dear Pastor Todd: Hi there and greetings in the strong name of Jesus! Please visit Don's web site(http://www.donpiperministries.com/) and order the amazing book "90 Minutes In Heaven". It is a New York Times best seller with over 3,000,000 in print! The book has brought hope and healing to countless lives! Don has been Recommended by Life Way Christian Resources and Family Christian Bookstores. His book is also carried at Walmart. He has spoken at many evangelical churches from around the world and has been endorsed by Bill and Gloria Gaither; the late Dr. James Kennedy of the Coral Ridge Ministries among many others. Prayerfully consider having Don come share in your church on a Sunday or in a revival se rvice. Don Piper is now scheduling for the 2009 calendar year! Your church will never be the same! Contact me personally for more details!

Now, to my question: “Did Don Piper go to heaven?”

I doubt it. Let me rephrase that: I SERIOUSLY doubt it. I am a skeptic. Perhaps I’m a little jaded but I do not believe that Don Piper spent one minute in heaven much less ninety. How can I say that? Simple. I find the entire notion that God took Mr. Piper to heaven and then sent him back so he could tell us that heaven is really there to be unbiblical and utter nonsense. Does everyone whose heart stops beating get sent off to the place of eternal bliss or damnation only to be yanked back the moment that doctors are able to get their hearts going again? Is clinical death the equivalent of dead-as-a-doornail death? Hebrews 9:27 says, “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment…”

Piper has said, "I like to say that I came back by popular demand. People prayed me back from the gates of heaven. People prayed me back from death's door. I'm here because people asked God for me to be here." Is this biblical? Can we “pray people back” from heaven? Does it matter if we get something like that wrong? Can we afford to be sloppy about our theology of heaven, death, prayer, etc.? Besides all of that, there is an eternity of difference between coming back from the “gates of heaven” and returning from “death’s door.” And this gets to the heart of my problem with Don Piper’s story. I have no doubt he was knock, knock, knockin’ on death’s door. But for biblical reasons I do not believe he was called back from the courts of heaven.

Let me back up just a moment. DON Piper, not to be confused with JOHN Piper (someone worth reading), is the author of the bestseller “90 Minutes In Heaven.” The book has sold about 5 gazillion copies. It has also proven to be an impressive marketing tool having produced a number of spin-off products. There is also the ubiquitous devotional book based upon “90 Minutes” for those who are apparently bored with the Bible. I am still waiting for the “90 Minutes Shofar” to accompany the “Prayer of Jabez Prayer Shawl.”

One of the things that trouble me about the whole 90 Minutes in Heaven phenomenon is that it reveals contemporary evangelical’s boredom with the Bible. Simply put, the Word of God seems to be insufficient for Christians today. I have been told by wonderful people that “90 Minutes in Heaven” helped comfort them after the loss of a loved one. I want to tread carefully here. But when did the Bible stop being a sufficient means to comfort us with the blessed hope of heaven?

This is a far cry from biblical commentaries and books of theology and doctrinal instruction that simply seek to expound upon the Bible’s teaching. What Piper’s book, and others like it, seeks to do is supplement what the Bible says with something more exciting. After all, who wants to read about Jesus’ promise to prepare for us a home when a contemporary writer can tell us what it looks like because he’s been there? Contemporary Christianity’s infatuation with the sensational has led to innumerable errors and outright heresy. History is pockmarked with would-be messiahs, prophets, and teachers who enrich themselves selling stories of their dreams, magical cures, and flights of fancy.

I can hear the protests. “Todd, isn’t it worth it if one person comes to know Christ because of Don Piper’s book?” I will answer that question thusly: People will not come to know Christ because they read “90 Minutes in Heaven.” Period. The means God uses to bring men and women to faith is the Word of God. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17; cf. 10:8-14).

Jesus spoke to this issue. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus recounts the story of the rich man and Lazarus. You will remember that both men die. The rich man goes to hell and Lazarus is welcomed into the arms of heaven. Not wanting his five brothers to die and go to hell, the rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to warn them. “Surely,” the rich man reasoned, “if they see someone back from the dead they will believe.” It certainly makes sense. But Abraham’s response is almost shocking: “They have Moses and the Prophets [the Scriptures]; let them hear them…If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:19-31).

That’s right. The Word of God is more powerful than the testimony of someone returning from the dead.

I do not know anything about Don Piper. I do not know whether or not he actually believes he went to heaven for 90 minutes. His sincerity or lack thereof makes little difference to me. What matters to me is that hundreds of thousands of Christians seem to need a fanciful tale to offer them comfort or spiritual sustenance. What matters to me is that many Christians have spent more time reading pages from Don Piper’s books than God’s Book.

Now, to those who would say, “Who are you to question his spiritual experience?” I simply say, “I am, I suppose, his brother in Christ.” If a brother in Christ will not question his experience in light of God’s Word then who will? If I claim that God has given me the power to raise the dead or heal all forms of cancer then I would hope that a brother or sister would want some sort of confirmation. I hope that more would be expected from me than just, “Trust me. It’s all there in my book. And by the way, who are you to question me?”

Read the Bible my friends. Live within its pages. Also, read good books by Bible-saturated men and women. Spurgeon said of John Bunyan, “Prick him anywhere and he bleeds ‘bibline.’” Read The Pilgrim’s Progress and you will know what Spurgeon meant. The “Christian” publishing industry is going to continue to churn out fluff, even garbage and businesses like Lifeway Christian Book Stores will be waiting in the wings to sell it.