When four-year-old Colton Burpo emerges from life-saving surgery with remarkable stories of his visit to heaven, his family doesn’t know what to believe. Heaven Is for Real details what Colton saw and his family’s journey towards accepting their young son had visited the afterlife.

Never in history, until now, have we been able to hear from so many people around the world who have been brought back from clinical death. Modern medical resuscitation and digital communication have revealed a goldmine of intriguing near-death experiences (NDEs) that show us the character of God. John Burke has spent the last three decades studying the commonalities of more than 1000 NDEs. His investigative journey started as a skeptical agnostic, when his own father was dying from cancer.

Jim was never a religious man. When it came to matters of God and faith, he was ambivalent. But as he lay in the hospital bed, clinically dead for more than 11 hours, his consciousness was transported to the wonders of Heaven and the horrors of hell. When he returned to this world, he brought back the missing piece his soul had been longing for.

God Is for Real addresses the questions: What is God like? Why are things the way they are in spite of who God is? If Todd's first book, Heaven Is for Real, was about the then and there of heaven, God Is for Real is about the here and now on earth: Why are there are so many hypocritical church people? Why do Christians make such a big deal about the cross? Why doesn't God seem to answer our biggest prayers?

A shattered leg, kidney stones, and a lump diagnosed as hyperplasia. Times were tough, money was scarce, and the bills and frustrations were piling up. It was into this kind of stressed out life that God sent Todd and Sonja Burpo the interruption of a life-threatening illness and emergency surgery for their almost four-year-old son Colton - an interruption that included his unforgettable journey to heaven. How did they cope?