Boy's vision of heaven a hit film

When doctors told preacher Todd Burpo his four-year-old son was going to die from a burst appendix, he railed against God for taking him to heaven too soon.

What he did not expect was that little Colton would not only survive his near-death experience on the operating table, but would come back full of stories of the angels and rainbows he had seen while unconscious.

He told his parents that while visiting heaven he met John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary, and sat at Jesus's knee.

His extraordinary claims have now been turned into a film, Heaven is for Real, which has become a huge word-of-mouth hit across the US and is due to open in the UK next week.

It was only when the boy described in detail watching his father as he shouted in despair at God in a hotel anteroom, something he could not have known about, that Burpo began to believe he was dealing with more than a boy's drug-induced hallucinations.

Colton went on to recognise a photo of a great-grandfather he'd never met, and talked about a sister he said told him she had "died in their mother's tummy".

The family had never discussed the baby his mother Sonja lost to a miscarriage a year before Colton's birth, or told him about his father's rant against God as he lay on the operating table.

These details helped to convince them that Colton's claims were true, and Burpo wrote a book about the experiences.

Also called Heaven is for Real, it became an unlikely bestseller, spending three years at the top of the charts. Now, 10 years after Colton's brush with death, it has been made into a film, starring Greg Kinnear as Burpo.

It opened at Easter weekend and took in $22.5-million in its first three days and easily overshadowed Transcendence starring Johnny Depp, which had been expected to dominate the box office.

Not surprisingly, the film appears to have struck a particular chord in the Bible belt in middle America, where it has played to rapturous and often tearful crowds who seem to view Colton's claims as gospel.

But critics warned against taking too literally the boy's childlike visions of riding a rainbow-coloured horse in heaven while being serenaded by angels singing Jesus Loves You.

He described Jesus as having "brown hair, a brown beard, a very bright smile and his eyes were just beautiful sea blue".

In her review of the book, Susan Jacoby, who billed herself as "The xSpirited Atheist" on her blog for the Washington Post, said: "Only in America could a book like this be classified as non-fiction.

"At age four, an inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality is charming. But among American adults, widespread identification with the mind of a preschooler is scary."

Even some members of Burpo's own Baptist congregation in their home town of Imperial, Nebraska, were initially wary of his claims, something he found upsetting.

But the family has got used to dealing with scepticism, and continues to deny that anyone coached Colton to come up with his extraordinary story.

Burpo told the Huffington Post: "Colton knew things that no four-year-old could have known, things no Sunday School teacher would have taught him. This is not a Christian film with a whitewashed easy story where everything turns out fine and life is easy. This is our real life. It's not fiction at all. This is real and I want people to know that and be given hope."

Colton, now a 14-year-old would-be musician, continues to believe he died and went briefly to heaven while surgeons fought for his life, and uses his experiences to comfort children suffering from terminal illnesses.

He said he is a big fan of the film, although its makers haven't captured the glories he has seen.

"Heaven is just so much better than that," he said. - © The Daily Telegraph