Boy, 4, says angels sang to him while lifeless

It was the kind of nightmare every parent fears.

A wrongly diagnosed illness.

Another wrongly diagnosed illness.

Then a lifeless 4-year-old boy rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery for an appendix that had ruptured five days earlier.

When it was all over, Colton survived and recovered.

But that was just the beginning of the amazing saga.

Four months later, Colton began telling his parents things he could not have known.

"Mom, I have two sisters," he said. "You had a baby die in your tummy didn't you?"

Get the bestselling book by Colton called "Heaven is for Real."

Sonja, his Mom, was shocked. When she asked him who told him, he said, "she did Mommy, she said she died in your tummy." Todd and Sonja had never told their son about the miscarriage Sonja had before Colton was born.

Colton went on to tell his mom that she was a girl and, "she looked familiar and she started giving me hugs and she was glad to have someone in her family up there."

Asked by his Dad about his hospital experience, Colton said: "You know, Dad, the angels sang to me while I was there."

Colton said that while on the operating table he went to heaven and that he met his great-grandfather Pop. Colton says his grandfather didn't look like the man in the photo in his house, but instead looked like the man in the picture sent months later by his Grandmother, a young man without glasses.

Later he described Jesus, and he talked about Armageddon and how God told him his father would fight in the final battle. Although Todd was a pastor, he says he never talked detail like this with his preschool-aged son.

After years of stories and new details, Todd's friends and members of his church started asking him to write his stories down. They encouraged Todd to write a book, which wasn't something he wanted to do or had any idea how to do.

Now Colton's stories of Heaven are documented in a book titled "Heaven is for Real."

It's already a runaway bestseller with some 500,000 copies in print.

Special offers:

Get "Heaven is for Real" by Colton now

Get the video documentary "The Evidence for Heaven" and learn about other stories of near-death experiences

Get the adult story of a man sent back after dying – "God Sent Me Back."

Get the amazing story of a doctor who has witnessed miraculous healings in his practice – "Raising the Dead."