Review of "Heaven is for Real" by Burpo (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.

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Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. Steve just said something from Star Trek.

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What'd you just say, Steve? Engage. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Jean, Jean -Luc, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

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By the way, if you pull up Justin Taylor's website, Between Two Worlds, you can find R .C. Sproul's interview of D .A.

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Carson when he was down at the Hebrews class, which I was taking in Orlando in January, the exegesis of Hebrews.

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Name dropper. And D .A. Carson says

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Jean. Jean. In front of R .C. Sproul, so I have it on tape. But he doesn't say

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Jean -Luc. He doesn't say Jean -Luc, he doesn't say genre, he says Jean. Jean. And I think he actually says the word trajectory as well.

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R .C. Sproul introduced him as I think something close to the finest

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New Testament theologian alive today. Really, he said that? He said that. Skip right over me.

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And that was interesting to sit there and listen to D .A. Carson, let's see, 10 feet away, name drop, geographic name drop.

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And so I saw his notes for Hebrews, which will be in the New Baker Commentary series once he gets that done, the

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Greek New Testament, which was basically falling apart, and his TNIV. Jean.

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Today on No Compromise Radio, we're gonna do part two on the Burpo book, the Burpo book that talks about heaven, heaven is for real.

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Now, I believe heaven is for real, but not because Colton Burpo went there.

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Steve, it's not gonna be fair for you to critique this book because how do you know it didn't happen?

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Were you there? Were you there? No, no I wasn't, but you know,

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I mean, just reading the end of Revelation, you know, the last few chapters of it, and I'm just like,

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I haven't heard anything yet that even remotely sounds like the glory of heaven and the perfection of it.

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I think you should write a book called The Glory of Heaven. I think it was written, yeah. All right, for those of you that weren't here last week listening,

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A, shame on you, B, let us catch you up to where we were, heaven is for real, a little boy's astounding story of his trip to heaven and back, published by Thomas Nelson, of all people.

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By the way, what's the penance for missing a NoCo broadcast? Penance, I'm not exactly sure.

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But I do know a NoCo a day keeps. The confusion away. And I know some people in the

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United States now, they're actually loco for NoCo. Wow, you've got all kinds of slogans, right?

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This book. No audience, but we've got slogans. That's exactly right, Christian slogans for the airwaves.

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I think the airwaves have finally gone out to Mars, and you know, if there's life on Mars, maybe they listen to NoCo. Well, all

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I know is we want the airwaves. That's right, that's right. So, Steve just about fell over.

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This four -year -old boy had some appendicitis, emergency surgery, supposedly went up to heaven, validates that by saying he saw

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Jesus in heaven, he saw his grandpa in heaven with the extra big wings. He could look down somehow to see his father praying in another room that nobody else would know that he was there.

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So this validates the truth claim that he went to heaven and he came back. Well, I have a question, you know, just on that alone.

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Where would we see a concept of someone in heaven being able to see, you know, other than God himself, being able to see things happening on Earth?

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Where would that be? Well, that's the great cloud of witnesses that are in the stadiums cheering us on.

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Steve, that's Hebrews chapter 11. Even a child who's four years old named Colton knows that. Is that what a great cloud of witnesses means?

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Uh -huh, they're up there cheering. Go, Steve, go. Is that right? Steve, it's good to be good. It's nice to be good. They're chanting that.

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They're chanting your name. Steve, this book,

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Heaven is for Real, is about as good for Christianity as John Lennon's song

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Heaven, Imagine, is. Imagine there's no heaven. Yeah. It's easy if you try. Imagine a four -year -old boy went to heaven.

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It's easy if you try because he's four, and if you somehow critique these people, then you're uncharitable, unkind, unloving, unchristian, and uncouth.

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I wish he would have done a variance on, you know, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a different take on the

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Oompa Loompas. That would have been. What if that one kid that ate too many candies that started to float up really high?

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Augustus. Is that who it was? Yeah. It was? Well, Augustus Gloob, oh, he's the one who drowned in the

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Chocolate River. I think it was Victoria, the one who floated. Are we digressing?

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Oompa Loompa. Okay. This book has hit the New York Times Best Sellers list. It's got an emotional aspect.

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We're very glad that Colton lived, and we are very glad that he is alive now. I watched the interview,

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I think it was on Fox News, and you could just see poor Colton now, 10 or 11 years old, with a sister named

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Cassie and a younger brother named Colby, getting fed this information by his father, Todd, who is a

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Wesleyan pastor, and of course, you know, when you're a volunteer fireman, you're a good old boy living in the country, in Imperial Nebraska, I just think you have more credibility, but would it be fair to say that,

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Steve, do you think this guy, the pastor Todd, is a charismatic? I think that would be fair to say.

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What would you, how would you describe Wesleyanism? How would you? Wesleyanism?

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Well, I don't even know if he's a good Wesleyan or not. You know, Charles Wesley was the brother of John, who pretty much was the leader of Methodists, and Wesleyanism is a derivative of that, and did you know

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John Wesley didn't even do altar calls? Well, I'm not surprised, because he was smarter than that, and Finney came later.

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So he would be an Arminian, he would be not into predestination or anything like that, and I think

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Methodists and Catholics and Wesleyans can easily go into this mystic realm and this charismatic realm, and I think that's probably what's happened, but let's talk a little bit more about the book.

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Go ahead. Can I just say, you know, briefly, I would say that the antidote to this, and you and I talk about this, we haven't talked about it on NoCode lately, the antidote to things like this is preaching through the

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Bible verse by verse, because when you do that, when you systematically work through, and instead of doing topical sermons, you would never come up with something like this, and you would never accept something like this, because you'd just think, well, wait a minute,

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I can't just make up stuff, I have to preach the Bible, I have to go with what the Bible says, I have to write about what the

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Bible says, and you would never do anything like this. Topical schmopical. Yeah, exactly. You know, why read Heaven is for Real when

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I read 23 Minutes in Hell and 90 Minutes in Heaven? Those are better books, that's what gives me my theology.

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Some of the things in 90 Minutes in Heaven and 23 Minutes in Hell contradict what this says, and so therefore, I've gotta go with what's good.

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Yeah, I read a Roman Catholic book once, it was called 60 Minutes in Purgatory, and it was just like, ah, all through all the pages, just screaming.

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If my parents only had enough money to give to the Pope and for the St. Paddy's Cathedral, they could've gotten out.

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Now, 2 Corinthians chapter 12, we read this last time, but I wanna read it for those new No Compromise listeners today, and this is for part two.

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Paul gets snatched up to heaven, he gets raptured to heaven, he, 14 years before he writes 2

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Corinthians, goes there, and he says that he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter, and then he got a thorn in the flesh, which was probably some messenger energized by Satan to humble him so he would not be conceited.

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And so there's no reason to go to heaven, because we have everything we need to know from Revelation 21 and 22.

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Hey, by the way, Steve, this reminds me. Do you think the reason why people like to write books like this is because the scripture is surprisingly, regarding data and volume, surprisingly, scant.

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Yeah, it's scant, it's fairly silent. It seems like there's more description of hell than there would be of heaven.

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Well, and I think that's true. I mean, we don't have a whole lot of data about heaven. What we do know is that hell is an absolutely miserable place, and if the objective of salvation is to be forgiven of our sins so that we don't go to hell, then heaven, we don't need to know much about heaven, and we have all that we need to know about it, though.

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And just even, just thinking about the description you've given, and then I read in Revelation 21 where it just talks about he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city,

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Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

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It had a great high wall with 12 gates, and at the gates, 12 angels, and on the, and you just go on and on in this description of the beauty and the glory and the majesty of heaven.

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Well, I mean, this is Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem, but the walls, you know, built of jasper and pure gold, clear as glass, and you just go on and on.

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You go, that's rich, that's deep, that's something to anticipate, not talking about, you know, people with wings and things that the

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Bible never talks about. Steve, when I watched the Fox TV interview with the

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Burpo boy, Colton, and his dad was sitting there feeding him information, you could see Colton look over like, did

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I give the right answer, dad? Maybe he was just frightened with all the cameras, I'm not sure, but he said something about relatives that he had, and I don't know if he said it about his deceased sister that was miscarried, who was miscarried, but he talked about how people had bodies in heaven.

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Now, let's talk about that for a second. There is a body in heaven right now, a glorified body, and that body is the incarnate

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Christ Jesus, right? Yeah, it belongs to the Lord, right. And we know that there will be nail piercings in his hands and in his feet and one in his side, and in the fullness of Jesus Christ, there dwells the bodily form of God, as it were, in the fullness of, you know, the

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Godhead dwells in bodily form in Christ Jesus. So what would you do if someone said, I went to heaven, I saw other people with bodies, and I came back to tell you about it, would you believe them?

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No, because we haven't gone through the resurrection yet, so how would it be possible that they would have a body? So don't you think if God were to snatch somebody up to heaven like he did

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Paul, they'd at least have good theology of the end times? Yeah, and I think what they say would not contradict the

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Bible. That would be pretty key, wouldn't it? 1 Thessalonians makes it clear. When we die, our spirits now go, if we're

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Christians, based on Christ's perfect atoning work, our spirits go to be with God, and then we are waiting for the resurrection of our bodies, and we comfort other people, like Paul comforted the church of Thessalonica in 1

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Thessalonians 4, that one day the dead in Christ shall rise first, and there's going to be a great uniting soul and body in heaven.

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It won't be the same kind of body, but there'll be a continuity, there'll be the identity, you'll recognize people. I think it was an old

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Vance Havner, Steve, or somebody said, you know, when asked the question, will you recognize people in heaven?

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And the answer was something like, well, I think you're gonna be, if you recognize people on earth, then when you're in heaven,

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I think you're gonna be smarter than you were on earth, so I think you'll probably recognize people in heaven too. I thought that was a pretty good answer.

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But there's going to be no, there are no bodies in heaven right now, and Grandpa doesn't have some angel morph wings that are really big.

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Well, and you know what? Here's the thing. I mean, is Grandpa, you know, I don't know if he describes this or not, but is

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Grandpa gonna be like 73, you know, or our baby? These are things that we don't really know, but I mean,

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I seriously, I doubt that it's going to be frozen in a particular time where we would understand, you know, oh, that's

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Grandpa. We might recognize him as Grandpa, but I don't think he's gonna look like, you know, in other words, if I saw Grandpa, I'd think, oh yeah,

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I saw Grandpa only he was 30, you know, or whatever, it's gonna be different.

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It's not gonna be the way he describes it in this book. Well, and when I read Revelation chapter 21, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

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And he will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their

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God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.

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And when I think of heaven, Steve, I know you do the same thing. Heaven is the place where God is going to be. That's right.

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And certainly we will be cognizant of our family there who are born again and, you know, other

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Christians at our home church that are there, et cetera, but we're gonna be focused on the God of the universe.

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Yeah, the central focus is gonna be Christ and nobody's gonna, you know, you're not gonna be looking around for Aunt Lucy or whatever,

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I mean, this is, you're gonna be focused. And you know what, here, this just came to me. Is Bob Marley here?

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Did you really get saved from his deathbed? I just had this word. Listen, if you went to heaven and you saw the perfections of heaven and then you had to come back to earth,

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I mean, I don't wanna say you would go insane because obviously Paul didn't go insane, but I think it would be a tremendous burden.

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I think there would be a longing to escape the bonds of earth that you would, and so you would have that sense of, like Paul, to die is gain, you know, and I don't think you'd be writing a book going, well, you know, here's what

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I saw in heaven. You'd be like, well, first of all, you wouldn't be able to write it, but secondly, it would just be incomparable compared to this life and it would be insufferable to be on this planet,

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I would think. Chali said this, and by the way, you're listening to No Compromise Radio. We're trying to tell you do not spend any money, not one thin dime on that heaven is for real book because you've got a book in your hot little hands called the

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Bible and you can know that heaven is for real and Birpo offers us no extra information that is credible or biblical about heaven, so why bother?

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The word is sufficient. God uses frail people like you to evangelize and you don't need a Birpo book for evangelism.

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Would you spend the gasoline to go to the library to borrow the book? If you're already there. Chali said, if I want to disprove

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Colton's experience on the grounds of logic or consistency, I might point in a couple of different directions. In the first place,

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Colton is a toddler who speaks like an adult. His verbatim quotes sound nothing like a four -year -old and I think

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I can say this with some authority as a father of a four -year -old. I'd also like to point to the fact that dad routinely remembers circumstantial detail that there's very little chance he would remember six or seven years after the fact, something that at the very least tells me that he is filling in details where he feels he needs to, end quote,

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Tim Chalies. Ouch, I don't know if that's charitable. When Chalies says, if you need to find security in the testimony of a toddler instead of the

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Bible, quote, well, I feel sorry for you, end quote, you know you're in trouble. You're in deep trouble.

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I mean, again, again and again, we just get back to this because this is the, it's not just the central issue with this book, it's a central issue for most of the evangelical world.

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We're always looking for something better than the Bible. The Bible's not enough, the Bible's boring. The Bible's dull, the

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Bible doesn't tell me what I want to know. What's your response to that, Pastor? My response is on page 57, quote, has to have

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Jesus in his heart and has to know Jesus or he can't get into heaven, end quote. That was just a random thing.

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This is the same reason why people don't want to read their Bibles and have some mystical experience, a charismatic experience, because the

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Bible's old, boring, and we think we know what's in there. We don't really realize the power that's contained in reading how the

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Spirit of God powerfully works in those who believe. And so when I read things like this, don't you think he'd actually go to heaven, he'd come back as a

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Calvinist because this whole insane asking Jesus in your heart stuff is not found anywhere in the Bible?

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Yeah, yeah, like you said before, you know, you'd think he'd at least come back with good theology and what does it mean to have

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Jesus in your heart? Does he not take up residence in the rest of you, too? Is it just? Did you know page 101,

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Burpo said when he saw heaven that God is in the biggest chair of all in heaven and Jesus has a chair on the right side and Gabriel has a chair on the left side by the rivers of Babylon.

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I mean, there are no words. I mean, it, you know. Oh, this is radio, you better think of something.

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Well, I mean, for this book to be a bestseller, I mean, I guess what's next?

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You know, is the evangelical world gonna rediscover the Book of Mormon, you know, Dianetics by L.

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Ron Hubbard? I mean, what other kind of nonsense are we willing to swallow? Well, you mark our words, we're not prophets nor son of prophets, but there'll be another book just like this, the 23 minutes in hell, the 90 minutes in heaven.

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This is just in the long line of scripture's not sufficient and we're super immature and we need a crutch like this and we'll believe anything because we're exactly what the world thinks of us as evangelical

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Christians, stupid, naive, and if I was an unbeliever and saw people think, you know what, heaven's real because some guy went there and came back,

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I would just think, you know, Nietzsche is right. Right, I mean, this is,

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I mean, if the kid wasn't four years old, I'd say, well, this is, you know, this is what mind -altering drugs can do to you.

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I mean, this just kind of. This is what happens when you have no oxygen and you're going to have your appendix burst and you're in surgery and you have a bunch of chemicals put in your mind like Versed.

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I could go for some Versed right now so I wouldn't have to remember such a book. Well, the good news is for the

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Catholic friends of Todd, there's a reference to his son seeing the Virgin Mary. Now I think the Virgin Mary will be there, but the sad news is,

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Mary didn't stay, sad news for the Catholics, Mary didn't stay a virgin, but that was good news for Joseph.

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Very good, because as I've said on many occasions, if he did, all those churches that are named after Mary should really be named after Joseph.

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Actually, it'd be a sin for Mary to then bear Jesus and then after she recovered according to Old Testament law and according to Old Testament mosaic restriction, if she didn't regularly be with Joseph, then that would be sin and she'd no longer be the sinless fourth person of the quadrangle.

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Yeah, so which would you rather have, perpetual virginity or sinlessness, you know, and for the

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Catholic, they're stuck between. But here's a question, how would, what was he, four? Is that what we're saying?

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Yes, Colton was four. How would he know who the Virgin Mary, I mean, did she have a name tag on? You know, did

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Mary have a name tag or was there just such an aura that it was unmistakable, or had he seen her image in a pancake or?

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This is New England, Steve, so that would be an auror. It's an auror.

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Auror. I like the auror genre. See, the problem is, you know, you can go see auror movies and, you know, auror.

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Auror wheat thins. Yeah. Well, here's what I would say, Steve, and I think you're gonna agree with me. At the

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Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John, whether that Transfiguration Mount was Hermon or Tabor, whichever one you'd like,

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I think the Protestants claim Hermon and the Roman Catholics claim Tabor.

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If you, they were there and they recognized Moses and Elijah and so God revealed them, to them, that that was

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Moses and Elijah. Now, they could have made a deduction. There's two people there, two entities, must be

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Moses and the prophets, you know, the law and the prophets. It could be Moses and Elijah, but I think God, in his wisdom, revealed who those people were in their glorified, maybe they had bodies or maybe they just were given an appearance of bodies because Moses' body is still on Mount Nebo.

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Right. So God let them see, so that's how I would answer that. Okay, so, and that's how he knew it was

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Mary? So this kid goes there and he gets, you know what, God's like, this is

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Mary, you know, say hi to her. What's the kids for Colton? You know, Colton, this is Mary.

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Hi, how do you do, Mary? Yeah, I mean, is that, is that what was gonna, this is Father Abraham, many sons had

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Father Abraham. I mean, is this kind of like, you know, God giving him a little tour of heaven?

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It was and there was lots of animals there, Steve. And I know you're against animals, but there was lots of animals there. Well, you know, now that actually adds a little bit of credibility to the story, as long as there were no cats.

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90 Minutes in Heaven, Don Piper, would you recommend that book? You know, only in the no -code tradition of good kindling.

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Now see, if 90 Minutes in Heaven sells over 500 ,000 copies, and this guy, basically

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Don Piper, a Baptist pastor who recalls the story of how he was almost killed in a truck accident, and then he says, you know, he gets to go to experience heaven.

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I see and I feel the visceral response of, now we have a four -year -old that went. Steve, a four -year -old went.

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I know, and it sold more copies, right? So I'm trying to think what could be, you know, if I wanted to go heretical, you know, what could

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I, how could I turn this into, maybe I could combine a Tom Clancy novel with, you know, so some spy dies and sees heaven.

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I'm still working it through, you know. You know, how could I kind of top this and maybe sell six million books?

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Well, when people describe heaven in such a man -centered way, in such an anthropocentric way, and they don't describe it

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God -centeredly, then we know it's not heaven. You're going to be in awe of seeing,

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I don't think you're going to see Jesus, Gabriel, and the Father. That's right. I believe you're going to see

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Jesus, the incarnate God, and you're going to be blown away, either standing because you have

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Christ's righteousness or falling on your face because you want to in worship. But if somebody describes heaven in a

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God -centered way, then I say, why bother? Because we have scripture. If they say in a man -centered way,

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I say, why bother? Because it's not true. Well, that's a great point. I mean, how long was he there, allegedly, Colton?

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A few hours, I would imagine, right? Tops, or a few minutes, or whatever it was. I mean, let's say he wasn't there for 90 minutes.

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Maybe it was only 60 minutes. However long he was there, do you think that if the glory of Christ was on full display, that you would get so kind of, well, okay,

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I've had enough of the glory of Christ. Let me see what else is here. You know, no way. Listen to John Piper.

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We're going to be transfixed on Christ forever, let alone one hour or whatever. Not Don Piper, but John Piper.

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If you could have heaven with no sickness, with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict with any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven if Christ were not there?

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Absolutely not. I mean, that is, you know, why are we going? You know, to die is gained.

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Why? Because I get to be with Christ. If I love him, if I have been transformed by him, and I eagerly await his return, look, if I die,

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I don't want to be anywhere else, be transfixed by anything else. This kind of sounds like some Bob Larson book or something.

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Maybe Todd Colton's going to be the new Bob Larson. Yeah, yeah. Stop eating those burritos late at night, and you'll be okay.

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We are happy that the boy is alive, we are happy that the surgery went well, but we're not happy people are listening to these people and buying their books.

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Save yourself the money. If you want to go rent the book at the library, fine. The bad news is it'll probably take you six months because it's on hold already, too many other people reading it.

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Well, and the way the gas is going up, you know, you'll have expended so much money, it's kind of a waste of money anyway, but I mean, just think about this, if they sold

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X million copies of that, what's coming up next? You know, something worse. Mary Baxter, Divine Revelation of Hell, or maybe

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Jesse Duplantis' Heaven Book. Worse, worse, worse, it just gets worse all the time.

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Mike Abendroth, Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio, write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com, and then you can read

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Revelation 21 and 22 to find out the real heaven. Amen. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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