Alex Malarky said he visited heaven.
He didn't.
Malarky, who said he died and went to heaven after a bus crash when he was 6 years old, took back his statement this week, according to NPR’s Bill Chappell. The book written about his experiences was also pulled from the shelves by the publisher, Tyndale House.
Malarky wrote a statement on Pulpit and Pen where he admitted his lie, in which he even said he never read the Bible.
“I did not die. I did not go to Heaven,” Malarky wrote. “I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible."
Malarky isn’t the first person who said he went to heaven. Others have too. And although we can’t say for sure if these people really went there, here are five who say they have seen heaven and lived to tell about the experience.
Colton Burpo
You may have already heard of Colton Burpo, who has one of the most popular stories of 2014 about reaching heaven. His story was detailed in the 2014 hit film “Heaven Is For Real,” which showed Burpo's struggle with sickness, battle with life and death and experience in heaven, which I wrote about in April of last year.
While there, he said he spoke to Jesus and learned about his sister — who died before he could meet her. Burpo, now 14, still tells his story, and still believes he went to heaven.
Crystal McVea
McVea died for nine minutes in 2009 due to complications with pancreatitis. When she woke up, she wasn’t on Earth any longer — she was in heaven.
In an interview with The Blaze, McVea said she was greeted by two angels. She also noticed God standing by her.
“What I saw and felt was just this beautiful, radiant, glowing light. That’s the only word I can even think to describe it,” she told The Blaze. “But I was very aware that I was in front of the presence of the one true God. I’m a Christian. I believe it was the presence of the father, and the son and the Holy Spirit.”
McVea said God asked her whether she wanted to stay in heaven or go back to Earth to be a mother. She chose to stay in heaven. But when she came close to heaven’s gate, she said God showed her a little girl playing, which was Heavenly Father’s way of telling her she needed to go back to raise her family.
Don Piper
Don Piper died for 90 minutes after a head-on collision back in 2008, according to an interview he gave to Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly. He said he went to heaven, where he was greeted by family and friends outside the gates. He didn’t see God or Jesus, but he spent time with his family members, who, he said, hadn’t aged. Piper said he went towards the gates of heaven before he suddenly woke up.
“This is a very remarkable, unique situation,” Piper told O’Reilly. “I saw things there that I wouldn't have expected to see if I was having a dream. I saw people there that I didn't expect to see. There were a lot of things about my experience that convince me in no uncertain terms that that is reality and this is fleeting. This is passing. I can't wait to go back there. I didn't want to come back here.”
Eben Alexander
Eben Alexander is a Harvard neurosurgeon, and he was always skeptical of God. But in 2012 a near-death experience apparently sent him into heaven. According to The Huffington Post, Alexander was surrounded by butterflies and was told by a woman that he had nothing to fear while he was in heaven. He also saw a number of transparent beings, like birds, soaring above him.
“Again, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that the joy of these creatures, as they soared along, was such that they had to make this noise — that if the joy didn’t come out of them this way then they would simply not otherwise be able to contain it,” Alexander said, according to HuffPost.
Brian Miller
Miller suffered a major heart attack and went unconscious for 45 minutes. When he woke up, he told his wife that he had seen late family members and been to heaven, according to an interview Miller gave to Fox News.
Miller said when he went to heaven, he saw “the light and just kept walking towards it.” Then, he found a path with flowers on the side, where a man and woman greeted him, he said. The two people grabbed him by the arms and told him he had to go back down to earth.
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