Podcast listener Laura writes in to ask this, Pastor John, how do you respond to the craze

over books like Heaven is for real, a little boy's astounding story of his trip to Heaven

and Back?

I have heard from many people both who do and do not profess to be believers how much

they love these books.

I am a natural skeptic.

How do you address this?

If books go beyond scripture, I doubt what they say about Heaven.

In other words, I'm skeptical.

And since doubted claims are a little use for living our lives, I don't bother to read

these books.

Since I have my Bible, which already tells me what I can know for sure about Heaven and

everything in those books, I do not know for sure.

I don't credit them with infallibility and therefore it's all guesswork and I don't

find guesswork about Heaven helpful, therefore I don't read the books.

Now my skepticism is increased because I tried reading one of these books one time and immediately

I saw a mistake.

We at Desiring God.

We wrote to the author.

He had said, how can you say that when you got to Heaven, there was no mention of death

or anything like that brought to memory, something like that.

And I wrote and I said, according to Revelation, the centerpiece of the songs that we will

...