As mentioned, Five Minutes to Heaven is partly based on fact. Little and the Griffins both existed and the murder of James Griffin did happen. The modern-day meeting between Little and Joe Griffin, however, is a fictional device. The movie is well made and conveys some powerful sentiments.
Filming took place on location in Belfast, Dundonald, Lurgan, Glenarm and Newtownards for four weeks from May to June 2008.
Plot. Four-year-old Colton Burpo is the son of Todd Burpo, pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, Nebraska. Colton says he experienced Heaven during an emergency surgery after having acute appendicitis.
Some of Heaven Sent was filmed at Caerphilly Castle.
Adapted from the real Burpo's bestselling 2010 book, Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, the movie retells the story of his then three-year-old son, Colton, who after a near-death experience began sharing details of his visit to Heaven.
Knowing that it was a true story made it even better. As I read the book I felt as if I were watching the story unfold. The language used was very descriptive and touching. At times it brought tears to my eyes and at other times made me laugh out loud.
For many scholars, Revelation 1:14-15 offers a clue that Jesus's skin was a darker hue and that his hair was woolly in texture. The hairs of his head, it says, "were white as white wool, white as snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace.”
Emmanuel Segatashya was a pagan farm boy with no schooling and no religious education. He was raised a "dirt-poor" peasant, and had hardly left his farm before his visitation and subsequent agreement with Jesus to tell his messages. The very first message that Segatashya clearly understood was a request.
DYSP Bijoy Kuruvilla, the investigating officer finds that the murderer is a CI named Peter Kurishinkal and arrests him. Peter Kurishinkal is a widowed brain-over-brawn cop, who lives with his mother Mariyam and son Sebin.
The film is based on a memoir by Christy Beam, a Texas mother whose daughter, Annabel, suffered from a rare, incurable digestive disorder. After she fell into the hollow trunk of a tree on their property, something unbelievable happened. Tests revealed Annabel's rare and incurable disease was gone.
Heaven was shot in Montepulciano, (Siena, Tuscany), (Turin, Piedmont) and Bottrop (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany) among other places.
In Christianity, heaven is traditionally the location of the throne of God and the angels of God, and in most forms of Christianity it is the abode of the righteous dead in the afterlife.
When the narrative ends, Colton is fully recovered and eleven years old now. He still talks about heaven and his time there, but has not been back, he says, since he was three years old. Heaven is for Real is a powerful story of faith and healing.
Meet the real-life family behind 'Miracles from Heaven'
Annabel suffered a long time before being diagnosed with pseudo-obstruction motility disorder, a rare and incurable syndrome that makes it impossible for the body to process food efficiently.
Based on true stories, films such as “Heaven Is for Real” and “90 Minutes in Heaven” take up this task. Ostensibly following on their heels is the Jennifer Garner-starring “Miracles From Heaven,” based on an amazing — and weird — true story.
As Kevin turned the car it collided with another vehicle, and the boy's skull became completely detached from his spinal cord. But Alex did not die — and that's the central fact behind a long-running controversy that has now led to a lawsuit. Two months after the crash, Alex emerged from a coma as a quadriplegic.
Inside the Colton Burpo Story
As stated, Colton Burpo claims to have visited heaven during a near-death experience nearly two decades ago. At the time, the nearly-4-year-old had a burst appendix and almost died as a result of the sudden illness. That's when he believes he met Jesus and experienced the afterlife.
A boy who said he went to heaven and came back to earth now admits he made up the entire story. Alex Malarkey, the boy who inspired the best-selling book, “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven,” admitted in a recent letter to the book's publisher he lied about going to heaven and visiting with angels.
God will give us new bodies in heaven -- bodies that will be similar to Christ's body after His resurrection. The Bible says that Christ, "by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (Philippians 3:21).
According to Dr. Mortimer, heaven lay within the sun as a vast globe, “at least 500,000 miles in diameter.”