Based on the incredible true story about a tenacious nurse who helped people that had reached the end of their lives come to terms with God and heaven, was assigned an unexpected patient. From the creators of A Box of Faith and Before All Others comes the inspirational story of unconditional love.
Adapted from the real Burpo's bestselling 2010 book, Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, the movie retells the story of his then three-year-old son, Colton, who after a near-death experience began sharing details of his visit to Heaven.
As the kind nurse with a big compassionate heart, Julie Van Lith leads an all-star Arizona cast and carries this entire movie on her shoulders to its poignant conclusion.
A years long investigation revealed a hospital employee — Orville Lynn Majors — was injecting patients with heart-stopping drugs. Majors, dubbed the "Angel of Death," was convicted of murdering six patients and was sentenced to 360 years in prison in 1999. Majors died in prison Sept. 24, 2017.
Puah and Shifrah were the midwives who defied Pharoah's orders that all male Hebrews be killed at birth. Pharoah does not punish the women for their defiance, and in fact, they seem to be rewarded by God for their actions.
Just like The Amityville Horror, Heaven Is for Real is said to be based on a true story. Unlike the Amityville horror however, this "true story" is not actually a complete fabrication. (The Amityville Horror story was exposed as a hoax long ago.)
Inside the Colton Burpo Story
As stated, Colton Burpo claims to have visited heaven during a near-death experience nearly two decades ago. At the time, the nearly-4-year-old had a burst appendix and almost died as a result of the sudden illness. That's when he believes he met Jesus and experienced the afterlife.
Plot. Four-year-old Colton Burpo is the son of Todd Burpo, pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, Nebraska. Colton says he experienced Heaven during an emergency surgery after having acute appendicitis.
Emmanuel Segatashya was a pagan farm boy with no schooling and no religious education. He was raised a "dirt-poor" peasant, and had hardly left his farm before his visitation and subsequent agreement with Jesus to tell his messages. The very first message that Segatashya clearly understood was a request.
Heaven is a place of peace, love, community, and worship, where God is surrounded by a heavenly court and other heavenly beings. Biblical authors imagined the earth as a flat place with Sheol below (the realm of the dead) and a dome over the earth that separates it from the heavens or sky above.
Kramarik is a self-taught painter and says that Jesus spoke to her when she was four years old, encouraging her to draw and paint her visions. She began to draw at the age of four, was painting at six, and began to write poetry at seven. At the age of 8 years old, Akiane painted Jesus.
For many scholars, Revelation 1:14-15 offers a clue that Jesus's skin was a darker hue and that his hair was woolly in texture. The hairs of his head, it says, "were white as white wool, white as snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace.”
In pastor Todd Burpo's book, he recounts that his son Colton saw Lucifer in Heaven. He said that Satan was not yet stuck in Hell and that there was a war in Heaven where all the angels (including Todd) would need to fight.
In fact, the Bible indicates we will know each other more fully than we do now. The Apostle Paul declared, "Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). It's true that our appearance will change, because God will give us new bodies, similar to Jesus' resurrection body.
The Bible does not say in any part that it is only the 144,000 that will go to heaven. The revelation to John supports Matthew 8:11, which says that many will come from every corner of the earth to sit with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The number 144,000 that were sealed or chosen are not pre-chosen.
You enter heaven by forgiveness and through the righteousness that Jesus gives you. You do not enter into heaven by the Christian life. It's always true that where faith is birthed, works will follow, but salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
WE LEARN in the New Testament that Jesus ate fish from the Sea of Galilee, and, after the resurrection, that he even cooked fish and bread over coals for himself and his disciples (John 21.9). “We certainly know that Jesus ate clean unpolluted fish almost every day of his life,” Colbert concludes.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
Jesus' name in Hebrew was “Yeshua” which translates to English as Joshua.
There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called tall and handsome in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus' appearance in the Old or New Testaments.
Genesis 18:1-3 explained that God appeared to Abraham as a man, and in Ezekiel 1:26-28, it's a similar scenario: “And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above ...
John 20:12 is the twelfth verse of the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Mary Magdalene is peering into the empty tomb of Jesus and sees two angels.
Our old, physical body will be left behind; our new, spiritual body will be “raised up.” The Scripture reveals that our resurrection body will be a spiritual body perfectly suited to be with the Lord forever in Heaven. The apostle Paul agreed with Jesus' words and timing according to 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18 (ESV).
The Bible says that in heaven Christ “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). The Bible gives us a hint of what we will be like in its account of Jesus' transfiguration. (You can read it in Luke 9:28-36.)