Pastor Steve’s Weekly Letter For Thursday, January 26, 2012

Heaven is for real, right? Absolutely! The reason for my confidence is that the Bible tells me so. What, then, are we to make of a recent book, Heaven is For Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, by Todd Burpo? Todd is a Nebraska pastor whose son, Colton, claims to have visited heaven while he was undergoing surgery for a ruptured appendix. Colton was four at the time. The reason I’m addressing this is because I’ve had a few people ask me about it.

Let me be blunt. This book is not a “must read,” and I have a big concern for those who read it. My aim here is not to review the book or to discuss whether or not Colton’s experience was legitimate. My aim is to encourage you to base your hope of heaven – and life on the new earth – in what Scripture says, not in a father’s description of his little boy’s experience. To be fair, I have not read every word of the book. Twice, I have read key sections of it and skimmed the rest. That’s why I will not argue with the details. Rather, my concern is with the idea that a book like this makes heaven more real for us. That’s what the book claims, at least implicitly.
A bigger fear is that some believers might base their doctrine of heaven on it. For example, are we to conclude that those who died in Christ will appear in a more youthful state based on what Colton observed during his visit to heaven?

This is where we must hold to the sufficiency of Scripture. We have a prophetic message which is “completely reliable” (NIV) or “something more sure” (ESV) because “prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:19, 21). I simply cannot see Scripture encouraging us to rely on a report like Colton’s for our understanding of heaven. The only person in Scripture to have this kind of experience was the Apostle Paul who described it in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4. He was not even sure if it was an “in-body” or “out-of-body” experience. What he knew was that it was not permissible to tell what he experienced. But what about the Apostle John? Ah yes, John had some incredible visions which are recorded in the book of Revelation. These were not as a result of death or a near-death experience. These were part of Spirit’s work in producing Scripture as described in 2 Peter 1:19-21. I understand the desire people have for the truth about heaven to touch their imaginations. I am arguing that the best way to do this is to meditate on deeply on Scripture. A book that grows out of such meditation is Heaven by Randy Alcorn. I take issue with a few details, but it is by far a better choice than Burpo’s book or Don Piper’s 90 Days in Heaven.

I’m looking forward to our worship service this Sunday, January 29. We’ll have a brief commissioning time for Erika Muether as she heads to Africa for six-months of missionary service. I will preach from Luke 17:1-10 on “Four Virtues Jesus Wants to See in His Followers.” I hope to see you as well at our Congregational Meeting on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. We will meet for about an hour and will talk about how our church is doing and where we are headed in 2012.

Turning now to family news, our son, Luke, committed on Monday night to play football at the University of North Dakota (UND). We're excited about this and believe that he made a good decision. Playing football will be a means to an end. First, it will fund his college. Even more importantly, it is a platform for living out and speaking the gospel. Luke will play tight end, and one of the starters who will be senior next year leads the FCA Bible study and hopes that Luke will take it over when he graduates. Bill Hamel, our EFCA president, emailed me Monday night to inform me that some long-time family friends from an EFCA church in Madison, WI also had a son commit to play at UND. It’s great that at least one other member of the recruiting class is a follower of Christ. Thank you for praying for us as we drove to UND last weekend for Luke’s official visit. We had good roads in both directions, just missing the storms which hit here and in Minneapolis. Thanks for reading. I’ll see you on Sunday!

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