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  • 2015-01-14 (xsd:date)
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  • The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven (en)
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  • In July 2010 a book titled The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven: A True Story, about the purported near-death experience of Alex Malarkey (who was six years old at the time), was published by Tindale House Publishers. The book detailed the aftermath of a 2004 automobile accident which left Malarkey permanently injured and his subsequent claim that he had visited Heaven, and met and talked with Jesus, following the crash. Malarkey's account was one of several books in a genre dubbed heaven tourism and is often mistaken for a similar work titled Heaven Is for Real. The latter book involved a different child named Colton Burpo, who was four years old at the time of his purported visit to Heaven. On 13 January 2015, Alex Malarkey (not, as many believed, Colton Burpo) sent an open letter to Christian publishers recanting his claims and confessing that he fabricated the story about visiting Heaven in order to gain attention: Malarkey himself was not the first involved party to object to the book's continued circulation. In April 2014, his mother Beth Malarkey voiced a number of concerns about the story on her personal blog. The elder Malarkey stated (among numerous grievances) that Alex was urged by a pastor not to recant his story and was not the primary recipient of the story's royalties despite an ongoing need for expensive care due to injuries sustained in the crash. Malarkey concluded: In the end, Malarkey's book turned out to be something of an eponymous work. (en)
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