While the Burpos were on a trip to Colorado, Colton had a stomach ache. His parents took him to a doctor who diagnosed flu. When they returned to their Imperial, Nebraska home, he still wasn’t feeling well and saw another doctor who discounted the notion that Colton had appendicitis. Two days later, Todd and Sonja Burpo rushed their son to another medical center. Colton was taken into surgery for an emergency appendectomy. His surgeon estimated the boy's appendix had ruptured five days before the operation.
Colton’s Illness and Surgeries and his NDE
While the boy was in the first surgery, his parents prayed in separate rooms. They believed he was not going to survive and blamed themselves for allowing the situation to happen, although they relied on the misdiagnosis of two medical doctors. Colton’s recovery was arduous and there was a second surgery. Some of his behavior and what he said didn’t make sense until they family drove past the hospital four months after the surgeries. His father jokingly asked Colton if he wanted to return to the hospital. The boy was serious when he told Todd that angels sang to him while he was there.
Colton’s NDE
The boy said that he met his great-grandfather Pop when he went to heaven while he was on the operating table. The man died thirty years before Colton’s NDE. Pop didn’t look like the man in his family’s photograph. Later, Colton’s grandmother sent a photograph of Pop when he was a young man. This was the Pop the boy saw.
One day, Colton told Sonja that he had two sisters and one died when she was a baby in her tummy. He said that she looked familiar, hugged him and was happy to have seen him in heaven. Sonja had a miscarriage before Colton was born. The family didn’t tell him about it.
He described Jesus, talked about Armageddon and said that God told him Todd would fight in the final battle. Todd was a minister, but never talked in detail about the Armageddon with Colton.
Colton’s NDE Becomes News Item
After hearing details about his son’s NDE, Todd's friends and church members encouraged him to write a book. He said that he would do so if an opportunity came to him, then prayed about this. A publisher called him shortly after his prayer. Colton's NDE has been published in a book, Heaven is for Real, and there are talks of a movie based on his NDE. Sonja said they’re seeing that Colton’s NDE has touched many lives.
Colton’s NDE: Similarities to Other Peoples’ Experiences
In 2008, I gave a talk about NDEs to an audience at a senior citizen’s center. I took a course in adult psychology that should have been titled gerontology psychology because the professor was an activist for senior citizen’s rights. We studied the stages of dying, but didn’t study NDEs because nothing had yet been published about the phenomenon.
We researched the work of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the pioneer in dying, death and transition. Dr. Raymond Moody is the pioneer in NDEs, a term which he coined. His work was published after I graduated. Moody listed the characteristics of NDEs and cautioned that not all events are experienced by all people. Some of the experiences are adhere to parapsychology’s survival theory, the belief that a part of the human survives the death of the physical body. Most of the research has been done on people who were pronounced clinically dead. People can have NDEs without dying.
In 1918, novelist Ernest Hemingway had a brief NDE during WW I, when he was an ambulance driver. He was hit by shrapnel while fighting on the banks of the Piave River, near Fossalta, Italy. He said he died when an Austrian trench mortar bomb exploded. He felt something come out of his body, fly around and return to his body, so he was no longer dead.
Colton and others shared these characteristics on Moody’s list: pleasant feelings and absence of pain, meeting deceased loved ones, spiritual and/or religious people, more concern with spiritual, religious and/or philosophical issues and death is no longer feared. Colton’s experience was pleasant and there was no pain during his NDE. He met his deceased great-grandfather and a sister who was miscarried. Angels sang to him. He encountered Jesus and talked with God. He spoke of the Armageddon. He said that he saw heaven and that it was real.
International Association for Near-Death Studies Researches NDEs
IANDS was founded in 1978 and is the first global organization devoted to the study of NDEs, similar experiences and their relationship to human consciousness. After Moody published his book about NDEs, other researchers began to contact him with questions and for his help in designing their studies. Experients, members of the clergy and the public contacted him with questions and offers to give talks about NDEs. John Audette suggested that Moody lead forming an international organization that would bring researchers, experients and the public together to pursue their interest in the subject. Audette stated he believed NDEs present an extraordinary and potent tool in enlarging people’s understanding of death and what happens after it. He believed that the scientific study of NDEs, by independent researchers had vast power to unify religions and cultures through universal insights they provide. Colton Burpo’s NDE will enhance current research.
Articles Related to Colton Burpo’s NDE
Readers who found this article interesting might like:
- Characteristics and Example of NDEs: Near Death Experiences Are Universal and Have Common Features
- Near Death Experience and Survival Theory: NDEs and Some Parapsychological/Psychic Phenomena Are Intertwined
- Near Death Experience and Survival Theory: NDEs and Some Parapsychological/Psychic Phenomena Are Intertwined
Sources:
“ 4-Year-Old Boy has Near-Death Experience, Gives Parents Details of Great Grandfather and His Mother’s Miscarried Daughter From Years Before,” Brent Lambert, Close Encounters Of The Giant Kind, November 19, 2010, Accessed on April 5, 2011.
“ After Near-Death Experience, Boy Says ‘Heaven is Rea l’", no author given, KDVR-TV, February 11, 2011, Accessed on April 5, 2011.
Life After Life, Moody, Raymond A., Jr., M.D. (MockingbirdBooks, 1975)
On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, (Routledge, 1973)
“Welcome to IANDS,” no author given, International Association for Near-Death Studies, 2011, Accessed on April 5, 2011.
Jill Stefko - I'd rather deal with the paranormal than human abnormal - having dealt extensively with both.
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