90 Minutes in Heaven (by Don Piper, with the help of Cecil Murphy) gets my thumbs up as another GREAT book.
My Dad originally bought it to read on his own…then I suggested we read it together. When he told me he was still on the first chapter, I picked it up and ended up reading it by myself. It’s a book that you won’t want to put down. Don Piper does an extraordinary job in captivating you right from the start. No, it’s not fiction either.
As you can probably discern from the title of the book and my instantaneous love for it, it details Don Piper’s journey from car accident to heaven, and back to earth again. Suprisingly, however…and different from similar books (such as 23 Minutes in Hell), only two of the eighteen chapters specifically talk about his time spent in heaven. In fact, although Piper claims to have seen the pearly gate, he does not talk about walking through it or seeing/meeting Jesus. This seemed to be an immediate bummer to me; as I progressed through the book, however, it became evident that the importance of what heaven was specifically like was dwarfed by the importance of the events occuring before and after Piper’s accident. The author doesn’t use his time in heaven as bait for the reader, but rather, as a starting point for what seemed to be an endless stream of miracles from God. I had preconceptions that his injuries would be small and insignificant–but with an etraneous amount of pain for the author, God orchestrated one of the most startling recoveries that I have read about or seen in the newspaper. Simply the fact that Don Piper is still alive is in itself is a miracle.
The front left corner of his sedan was crushed by a semi truck, smashing the dashboard against Don’s left leg and decimating his arm, both of which had to rebuilt out of pre-existing bone in his body. But today, he can walk. The steering wheel crushed his chest cavity–yet he recieved little or no damage at all to his vital organs. He was mentally sound after the accident…there were no head injuries or brain trauma. This was due to the intense prayer of a wayfaring Baptist minister who had been stopped in traffic near the accident. Doctors were shocked when Don came back to life 90 minutes after being pronounced dead; they thought he would have bled to death, if he had still been alive.
Mr. Piper’s time in heaven is so extraordinary it was difficult for him to put it to words. It is just as difficult for me to describe. He did not see a light at the end of a tunnel, he simply appeared there…the music he heard was unworldly. In the days following his accident he prayed God would take him back…but God said no. That’s how incredible it was.
Don is serving a greater purpose. The immaculate pain that he felt after leaving heaven is now being used to soothe the pain of other patients. His time in heaven and his account of the accident comforts those who are dying and who otherwise would have left this world as non-believers. It may sound biased, but I trust his account without a doubt. He is an honest man who has experienced the extremes of joy and pain.
I highly reccomend this book to anybody who is skeptical about miracles and of the reality that is heaven. At the very least , this book has greatly increased my beliefs about the power of prayer, and the existence of miracles for me.
It can be purchased for less than $10 from Amazon.com
Official book web site
Your comments and questions are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.
