Alex Malarkey in 2009. Photo by John Kuntz/The Plain Dealer/Landov
The best-selling book
that documents a 6-year-old’s journey to heaven and back during the two
months he spent in a coma is being pulled from shelves after the boy,
who is now 17, recanted his story.
Alex Malarkey, the co-author of The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven
with his father, Kevin Malarkey, was in a car crash in 2004 that left
him paralyzed. The memoir, published in 2010 as part of the popular
“heavenly tourism genre,” detailed his accounts of talking to Jesus
Christ and meeting with the devil. Since its publication, the book has
sold more than one million copies, according to the Washington Post.
But on Tuesday, Pulpit and Pen
published a letter from Alex Malarkey, entitled “An Open Letter to
Lifeway and Other Sellers, Buyers, and Marketers of Heaven Tourism, by
the Boy Who Did Not Come Back From Heaven.” Lifeway is a chain of
religious book retailers.
“Please
forgive the brevity, but because of my limitations I have to keep this
short. I did not die. I did not go to Heaven,” Malarkey writes, calling,
well, malarkey on himself. “I said I went to heaven because I thought
it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had
never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to.
They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only
source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible.”
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