If you go to Amazon and look at their best sellers list (as of the time of this publishing), you’ll find a book nicely titled, “Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back.”  I have not read the book but I did read the description and reviews.  The young boy in this story did not die but was having life threatening emergency surgery and while in the surgery he has visions from God.  He emerges from life-saving surgery with remarkable stories of his visit to heaven.  His accounts appear real and I believe God does speak to children and show them many things, especially in the last days Jesus said this will be done.  However, we cannot allow spectacular events such as these to be the basis of our belief and thinking.

The reason is because normally people will take this true life story and build a doctrine around it or pad their already false belief with it.  Heaven is real, the angels of God are real, God is real, and Heaven again is a real location in the…Heavens.  The reality is that no man has gone to heaven according to Jesus Christ (St. John 3 v13).  If this is true from the Lord Jesus’ mouth then we know that the young boy really did not go to heaven, but probably was given a good vision of it.  Now staying in line with the previous bible reference in St. John chapter 3; if no one has gone to heaven, what happens after you die?  What happens to people after they die?  Where are our loved ones, and our heroes?

The bible says that out of the dust was man taken and from dust the man is and to dust will the man return (Genesis 3 v19).  Man lives and dies, the fiction tale of man going to heaven comes to life because we really don’t want to admit someone is dead.  We then hang onto one of the original lies of this creation, which say ‘ye shall not surely die…’  The man is not really dead, but he has a new tabernacle in Heaven.  The bible does not support this.  The bible does support the air a man breathes is also known as the spirit of God and when the man dies; the man returns to the ground and the spirit returns to God (Job 27 v3).  The air he breathes goes back to God to give to another creature.

We would all like to believe that our loved ones are smiling down on us; I surely do after the great amount of loved ones I have lost.  Look at the nine eleven people who are ten years removed from the event (as of the time of this publishing); yet they are still mourning as if it were yesterday hoping one day to see their beloved family or friend again.  I know they feel they are being watched and protected by their lost member; but the reality of the Word of God is that they are sleeping the sleep of death and like us who are alive; they also are waiting on the return of our Lord Jesus the Christ.  What happens after you die; you lie like a man deep in sleep, you know nothing and you wait on the coming of the Lord to judge the quick (living) and the dead.

This may not have been the most comforting publishing but when you begin to really study the bible you realize everything in the bible is comforting, even when it is uncomfortable.  Grace and peace and many blessing from the Most High Jesus…Amen

Koko Ishe