"Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die!"
When it comes to other people's experiences of God, we need to be careful as Christians. Can we show people grace and mercy even if we don't understand or find some things they say problematic or unscriptural to our own understanding of the Bible. It is easy for Christians and atheists to show contempt towards others prior to investigation or truly trying to understand where the other person is coming from. If this world needs heaven and more saints, this surely will not come from Christians being known as harsh critics and being judgmental. There is a difference between testing the spirits and grieving the Spirit.
When people have spiritual encounters or even paranormal experiences, should they not receive our love and effort to understand them, no matter how hard it is to understand what is really going on? It seems that since Satan counterfeits so many spiritual experiences, it is easier to discount all spiritual experiences outside our own limited ones. Can other people's life experiences reshape or even challenge some of our assumptions concerning the Bible? Even when other people's experiences sound wild, bizarre, or strange, we should neither mock or attack them. Should not our attitude be more of open and cautious rather than closed and obstinate.
When it comes to the strange, bizarre, and weird, they are all found in the Bible. One can not simply dismiss other people's testimony or experiences because they do not conform to what we think is either normal or safe. The truth is silence does not prove anything one way or another in the Bible. If there has to be a biblical precedent for everything someone does then Jesus would have never met those standards of his day much less any new thing God may be trying to demonstrate or show us in the present.
If Jesus taught us anything, it is we are to look at the fruit of people's experiences. Is it drawing someone closer or farther away from God? Does it produce a deeper love for God, God's Word, and God's people or does it hurt the body of Christ? Rather than critics simply resorting to "Where is that found in the Bible?", can we come from the other side "Is it contrary to God's Word?" Let's not confuse extra-biblical from unbiblical!
I have watched the movie and read the book, "Heaven is for Real" and I like many others, find the stories of a four year old both humbling and encouraging. I will share some of my favorite quotes from the book in the next post but I find it very belittling to take a few of the weakest or potential troubling parts of the book like people have wings or the Holy Spirit is 'kinda blue' and then mock the whole thing. What about all the inspiring and beautiful parts of the book or movie? From the critics perspective, it seems they are only there to find the bad and not the good. Is this how we would want others to treat us?
I have come to the place where I don't think the church can afford any more to simply rubber stamp every spiritual experience much less condemn anything they don't understand or can't neatly fit into Scripture as either deceptive, cultic, or from the Devil (even though there are these counterfeits, let's please not throw the baby out with the water, even if the water gets pretty murky and dirty at times).
There are many Christian people who have spiritual manifestations or events that happen in their life that are real and they must exercise discernment but that does not mean it's not real. We simply cannot write off all spiritually weird phenomena, ghost stories, near death experiences and the like as simply fictions, lies, and spiritual deception. It would be interesting to know the whole history of the church and document these strange experiences by people who are canonized as saints and are known for their orthodox theology.
In the end, there is something fundamentally wrong when sophisticated adult Christians are mocking the account of a four year old child. It's like "you can't believe children, they are too young to know what they are talking about!" One of the things Colton Burpo learned from his heavenly experience is "Jesus really, really loves children." Do we? It is a misunderstanding to equate Colton's heavenly experience or vision as he died and went to heaven and came back. He never died and to put him into that category is a mistake from the get go.
What I find are a few teachers of the Bible who criticize "Heaven is for Real" and say very confidently that the Scriptures are clear that nobody goes to heaven and comes back to tell about it no matter how many people claim otherwise (people who have near death experiences are called "NDE's"). If one drops all the reading in between the lines concerning Lazarus who should have given us a full report of his four day journey when he died and came back, what I see are two scriptures where this whole edifice typically rests upon. Two scriptures do not make up the clear testimony of Scripture and comes closer to looking like proof texting.
The two texts often quoted against the movie and book and all "NDE's" is Proverbs 30:4 and John 3:13. Both speak of nobody ascending to heaven or descending to heaven and earth except the Messiah Jesus (the only perfect man who came from heaven). Before I speak to these verses of Scripture, I want to say we need to distinguish between people who have visionary experiences of heaven like Colton Burpo and those who say they actually died and was in heaven until they were revived back to life. There are several people who have visionary experiences of heaven in the Bible from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Paul's third heaven vision, and John's grand vision of heaven in the book of Revelation. The Bible is simply silent on people actually dying, going somewhere (intermediate state) and then returning and talking about it. Just because it is not recorded in Scripture does not mean it never happened then or can't happen today.
The truth is these two texts taken literally mean that nobody ascends to heaven or descends to earth. Only God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and those with God in heaven (angels and the heavenly host) ascend or descend. Something the church and world needs to understand and often does not get is heaven is not something you go up to but something that comes to you! Heaven is both a present and future reality. Heaven comes to us because of Christ and because of Christ in us, heaven is in us. If there is one thing people need more of today are people living like citizens of heaven on earth rather than simply living a worldly life and waiting on heaven. The world is crying out for the sons and daughters of God to bring heaven to earth. The earth can no longer wait for God's children not to bring heaven to earth and if we really think about it, heaven can't wait either!
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