Heaven Is For Real is based on the true story of a young boy who had a near death experience during an emergency surgery. He managed to pull through and his memories of his out-of-body experience were so amazing that his father, Nebraska pastor Todd Burpo, knew he had to share the story. With writer Lynn Vince, he penned the 2010 book Heaven Is for Real, which immediately became a New York Times bestseller.
Todd and his wife Sonja took Colton, just two months short of his fourth birthday, to the doctor to treat an upset stomach, and to their surprise, the doctor informed them that their son needed an emergency appendectomy. Shocked, the parents watched as their son was taken away for the impromptu procedure. After the surgery, Colton surprised his father by saying: “Dad, do you know I almost died?” Todd didn’t take his son seriously at first, but when Colton began speaking about people he’d never met, he started to listen.
In an interview with The Christian Broadcasting Network, Colton talked about his heavenly experience: “Jesus and some angels came and flew me up to Heaven.” He said he’d sat in Jesus’ lap and Jesus told him to be good. When asked by Fox News about meeting Jesus, Colton said, “You know you have a best friend? And you love to be around them? Jesus is a lot like that, because you want to be with him and you don’t want to leave.” Colton revealed that he’d seen people in Heaven whom he’d never met, including his great-grandfather who’d died 30 years earlier and his miscarried sister.
When asked by Fox News how old people appear, he answered, “Well, if you leave Earth as an old man or old woman, then you appear in heaven in your young body, like late 20s, early 30s, but if a kid died young or they were miscarried, they actually do age in Heaven until they get to that age.”
When Colton told his mother he had two sisters, she asked what he meant and he said “Mommy, you had a baby die in your tummy,” she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She’d never told Colton about the daughter who had miscarried. He told his parents his sister had met him at the gates of Heaven and was thrilled he was there. She also talked about the rest of the family, whom she seemed to know.
Colton described details about Heaven, the rainbow horse that only Jesus could ride, about how God and his chair were “really big” and how the Holy Spirit “shoots down power” from heaven to help people. He described Jesus, saying he had brown hair and “hair on his face,” and revealed his eyes “are so pretty!” When asked what Jesus wore, he said Jesus wore a gold crown on his head, was dressed in white with a purple sash, and that Jesus was the only one in Heaven wearing purple.
Colton kept describing Jesus as having red markers, and when his father asked where these “markers” were, Colton pointed to each palm and the tops of both of his feet, exactly where the nails would have been when Jesus was nailed to the cross.
He also described what his parents were doing in another part of the hospital during his surgery, tell his father, “You were in a little room by yourself praying, and Mommy was in a different room and she waspraying and talking on the phone.”
Todd Burpo eventually turned his son’s story into a book that instantly topped the bestseller charts, debuting at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list just three weeks after its November 2010 release.