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Heaven is for real

From summer 2012 - Heaven is for real

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A little boy's astounding story of his trip to heaven and back

Todd Burpo
Thomas Nelson
£6.50, pb, 156pp
ISBN 978 0 94994 615 8

We talk of heaven, but is it for real or is it just a nice idea? In 2003 Todd and Sonja's little boy (not quite four years old) almost died from a ruptured appendix. After his recovery, Colton began talking spontaneously about heaven – how the angels sang for him and how he had sat on Jesus' knee. Over th e next 18 months amidst childhood games and the rough and tumble of family life, his parents gradually pieced together a story of what Colton had seen and heard there. This book is an account of the child's glimpse of heaven.

You have to find your way through the setting of Mid-West American family life, but the record is, in John Piper's words, 'compelling and convincing' and remarkably true to what the Bible says about heaven. It will encourage those who doubt, and thrill those who believe. We read it with tears in our eyes. It would help us as Christian doctors to see our work in its wider context and it would help many patients who fear what lies beyond.

In the words of one commendation, 'If you're ready to go to heaven, this book will inspire you. If you're not ready for heaven allow a little child to lead you'.

Peter Pattisson is a retired GP in Hampshire.

Article written by Peter Pattisson

More from triple helix: summer 2012

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  • BMA resists move to go neutral on 'assisted dying
  • Christian doctors reprimanded for sharing faith
  • BMA backs pre-abortion counselling
  • Industrial action and the Christian doctor
  • Compassion: an antidote to NHS debt and distress
  • Medicine behind bars
  • In it for the long term?
  • Caught unawares
  • Encountering depression
  • Tolerance - society's 'supreme virtue'
  • Junior doctors in a new era
  • Foundations - a survival guide for junior doctors
  • Heaven is for real
  • Downs, the history of a disability
  • Hitting the rock
  • The Jesus scandals - why he shocked his contemporaries
  • Changed agents: nine years in Nepal
  • The primary care guide to mental health
  • Human dignity in bioethics and law
  • eutychus
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