NEW YORK — A best-selling account of a 6-year-old boy’s journey to heaven and back has been pulled after the boy retracted his story.

Spokesman Todd Starowitz of Tyndale House, a leading Christian publisher, confirmed that Alex Malarkey’s “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven: A Remarkable Account of Miracles, Angels, and Life Beyond This World” was being withdrawn. Malarkey acknowledged in an open letter he was lying, saying he had been seeking attention. He also regretted “people had profited from lies.”

“I did not die. I did not go to heaven,” he wrote. “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 Boy Who Came Back From Heaven” was first published in 2010 and told of a 2004 auto accident which left Malarkey in a coma. According to the book, co-written by Alex’s father, Kevin Malarkey, he had visions of angels and of meeting Jesus. In 2014, Tyndale reissued “The Boy,” which on the cover includes the billing “A True Story.”

The facts of “The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven” have long been disputed in the Christian community, which has challenged reports of divine visions in Malarkey’s book and other best-sellers such as Todd Burpo’s “Heaven is for Real.”