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Review Summary: A Depressing and Self-absorbed Account... |
Date: 2008-11-21 |
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Details: I bought the audio CD version narrated by Mr.Piper. I felt so guilty because I couldn't wait for it to end. I don't feel so guilty anymore after reading other reviews on par with how I felt about it. I think the guilt came from not liking a book from a Minister's account of Heaven. All I wanted to do was like this book and I didn't and I ended up being very disappointed.
I was mostly disappointed over the extreme self-pity and how self-absorbed Mr. Piper was. Poor, poor guy or as he would have said "poor, poor me". I felt for him and his accident and recovery, don't get me wrong. But to go on and on and on about how terrible he had it when any one of us probably have had family members die of much worse and feel just as much if not more pain than he did. In the end it just leaves you having a difficult time "feeling that bad" for him. At least it did for me. He had his LIFE was all I could think of. He almost lost a leg but my brother has no ability to walk and never has and has never once complained in his life. This is just one example of why I felt this account to be "depressing and self-absorbed".
Oh and one last thing: Had that been me I would never have been able to "not tell" people for 2 years about my account of Heaven...that is where I have a bit of hard time swallowing this. |
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Review Summary: 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life |
Date: 2008-11-20 |
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Details: YES; THIS IS REAL!!!
There is no way ANYONE could possibly make this up,
unless they truly died (not just a "near death" experience.
It is humanly impossible to describe HEAVEN in human terms.
For those of you who do not believe... (like I told my doubting
brother)... "when we get to Heaven, I will tell you I TOLD YOU SO".
What an incredible journey, healing of the body, mind, and soul.
You can never be the same! But you find a "new normal" and can
be happy again. Which almost is contradictory. The ultimate true
happiness is Heaven for eternity!!! |
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Review Summary: 6,008 years out of Heaven, and counting... |
Date: 2008-11-08 |
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Details: Donald Piper, following his accident, visited Heaven for 90 minutes, then returned to planet Earth to tell us about it. IMHO, evangelicals should stop their nitpicking. Granted: what Don saw while comatose does not quite square with Holy Scripture. But this guy had massive injuries. If Don has misremembered a few details of what he saw while in Heaven, then I still think Bible-believing Christians can be gracious enough to cut the man some slack, and still believe his story, in the main.
According to Scripture, four human souls, so far, have been received into Heaven: Elisha (2 Kings 2:1-11); Enoch (Gen. 5:24; Heb. 11:5); the thief who was crucified just to the Lord's right, on Good Friday (Lu. 23:43); and Jesus himself, i.e., in his resurrected human body (after 30 years on Earth, the body was His to keep: Acts 1:9-11).
In addition, the Apostle Paul visited Heaven for ninety minutes after falling from his donkey and hitting his head while on the road to Damascus (2 Cor. 12:1-6). Plus Don Piper, following his very similar accident.
At present, only Elisha, Enoch and the thief remain in Heaven, among the mortals, plus Jesus. They will be joined, on Resurrection Day, by exactly 143,997 born-again Christians, including Saint Paul (Rev. 7:1-8, 14:1-5); and, of course, Don Piper.
The Apostle John gives an excellent and detailed description of Heaven in the Book of Revelation, chapter 21: the city of Heaven is located outside the Universe. It is shaped like a cube, 1,374 miles long, 1,374 miles high, and 1,374 miles wide. Each vertical wall has three gates, only one of which is actually used as an entrance (Rev. 21:12-25). The streets inside are paved with pure gold, and laid out in an orderly fashion, with a mansion for everyone who gains permanent admission (John 14:2-3). For the past six thousand years, while waiting for Resurrection Day to come, most of those mansions have stood empty, which might seem creepy, but it's not, because they are very well maintained. Also, the angels of Heaven sing God's praises, pretty much non-stop. So even though the people have not yet arrived, Heaven is not as boring a place as you might suppose.
Ever since he packed up and returned to Heaven in his newly reconditioned physical body, the Son of God has conducted business at the right hand of God the Father while "seated on a great White Throne" (Rev. 20:11) - and that heavenly furniture may sound, to mortal ears, entirely too porcelain to be comfortable, but it's not at all, and my guess is that it's actually made of something more like white, contoured, marble.
In the "Third Heaven," where the Trinity sits, there are three great White Thrones in a row, exactly alike, with no partitions between them (2 Cor. 12:2). And here's my proudest accomplishment, I actually sat there once, on Dad's own throne. My friends, Beelzebub and Belial, took the seats on either side. We didn't sit for long - two minutes, tops - before we got booted. (John Milton tells that whole embarrassing story in an epic poem called Paradise Lost, which features yours truly as a flawed tragic hero.) But who else can say that he or she once sat upon the great White Throne of Almighty God, even for two minutes, before getting his or her arse kicked?
The holy Ghost's great White Throne is to Yahweh's left. You may have wondered why the Bible never mentions the Ghost actually sitting on his. That's because the Ghost flits about. Sometimes he lets you see him. Usually, not. Mortals who have seen the Ghost with their own eyes include Moses, the prophet Elijah, several of the apostles, and Tammy Faye Bakker.
Back when I lived up there, before the Fall, I used to see the holy Ghost fairly often. When feeling puckish, he would appear as a tongue of fire, a burning bush, a three-legged stool - whatever tickled his fancy. His favourite incarnation, and the one he wore most often, was that of the White Dove (John 1:32). Beelzebub calls it the Ghost's "Supersonic Pigeon Suit." But it was truly beautiful, in the olden days, to see the holy Ghost as he soared above the golden streets of Heaven or did a combination barrel roll and loop-de-loop. Sometimes he'd dive straight down like a meteor, pull a hard U-turn, tighten his feathers, and shoot straight up again like a missile. But all of that zooming around was before the Virgin Mary and the Immaculate Conception. Maybe he was just restless.
When Don Piper visited Heaven, he was unable to see the holy Ghost, who ducked out of sight, or Jesus, who was busy elsewhere; but that was okay, because thousands of angels (also holograms of dead Christians) met Don at the Gate: "They rushed toward me, and every person was smiling, shouting, and praising God. Although no one said so, intuitively I knew they were my celestial welcoming committee. It was as if they had all gathered just outside Heaven's Gate, waiting for me" [p. 31]. All of them were quite friendly. Don wanted to spend a billion gazillion years in that wonderful city, not just ninety minutes.
But then God did the same thing to Don Piper that He did to me, many years ago: he kicked Don out of Heaven--and here's the thing, Don didn't do anything to deserve it! Don never even TRIED to sit on Yahweh's Great White Throne! So I don't blame Don for coming back and writing this Tell-All book: because it just wasn't fair, in my opinion, for God to show Don a glimpse of Heaven and then send him back to Earth. Maybe I never suffered massive brain injury in an automobile accident, or a crushed skull, but I know exactly how Don feels, because that divine eviction notice, 6,008 years ago damaged my self-esteem and crushed my heart.
--L |
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Review Summary: Nonfiction? |
Date: 2008-10-30 |
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Details: Is it just me or should this really be considered nonfiction. Book was ok, but when did it become an acceptable fact to believe that someone went to heaven and then was able to come back. |
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Review Summary: 90 days in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life |
Date: 2008-10-25 |
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Details: I gave away the book before I had even finished. He just went on and on without going anywhere after his death experience, and I felt his writing was very immature. |
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out of 517 Reviews
