Rev. Piper's description of "heaven" is brief and early in the book. If you want afterlife details, there are few to be found here. The problems are many with this book, but let me affirm Piper's ministry to persons confined to the fixator--a torturous contraption they use to try to save severely broken limbs. Piper presents several opportunities that he had to encourage and inform those who have to wear that thing. I commend him for that. I broke my neck and wore a halo for months. More than once I've had the opportunity to share my experience with someone having to wear that thing screwed into your skull. Not fun.

The biggest problem with this book is biblical. I don't have enough space here to show you this (that's why I'm writing a book about it: Heaven for Skeptics, due out late 2008), but biblical heaven isn't defined as an afterlife destination in the Bible. For example, Matthew's Gospel uses the word "heaven" (ouranos) seventy-seven times in sixty-eight verses, and not one of them has anything to do with where you go when you die. Instead, most of them have to do with a relational reality that is both present and coming in Jesus.

Jesus only spoke of the afterlife three brief times, yet modern evangelical Christianity plays the fear and death card up front, as if it's what Jesus talked about all the time, as if the whole point of Christianity is where you go when you die. Jesus rarely mentioned death and the afterlife. He spoke constantly about having Life real, rich, abundant, and eternal. He talked about what the kingdom of heaven is like, where it is, what you can do with it now, and how to enter it an live. Death, for example is mentioned by Jesus only only a couple of times (as defeated) in John's Gospel, but Life is front and center: nearly fifty times.

I have no doubt that Piper had a real experience that changed him forever. My concern is that he's merged his experience with his own theological ideology and agenda, focusing on death and the afterlife via his testimony. Is death and the afterlife the point of Christianity biblically? No. It's not. So it disturbs me when preachers do that. Threats and emotional manipulation by fear-based and death-focused tactics is neither biblical nor Christian. The scriptures don't say we go to heaven when we die. They say that the kingdom of heaven is coming to us when Jesus comes on resurrection day: "Thy kingdom come . . ."

Most of this book describes not Piper's "90 minutes in heaven" but pain, depression, recovery, and his present mission to tell his story. He had help writing it, but it doesn't show. It's rather wandering and repetitious. The good news, however, is that it's a quick read. It's a compelling story, admittedly. And while I don't recommend it for biblical and theological reasons, I wish Piper God's speed in his recovery and ministry.