Infant Salvation (Part 4)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2 verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

The Question of Where Babies Go When They Die

My name is Mike Abendroth, and we are working through the idea, concept, the difficulty, where do babies go if they die? And so it would also imply the mentally incapable. What about them? Where do they go?

And so we're trying to tackle this subject today on No Compromise Radio. And it's tough to tackle because it's an emotional issue and it hits close to home. And we love our kids so much. And I think that's a God-given love for children that he gives to parents and others and siblings.

So if you have not listened to the first three shows, the last three Thursdays, I suggest that you do because you're gonna just jump in here with me today and then say, well, what's going on? I don't quite get it.

We were looking at the church history and how church history has dealt with this. Then we looked at some verses like 2 Samuel 12 for some hope that children who die, at least some of them, will go to heaven.

And then we are looking now at some verses that don't apply, Matthew 18 and Matthew 19, that can't be used. And people are so, I don't know, emotionally devastated when they lose a child that maybe they go to some of these verses and just hope against hope.

We wanna remember that. Whatever the scripture's meaning is, that's the scripture. So if you take a wrong meaning, then you don't have the Bible anymore. You just have your own torqued view of what the text says in your mind.

Some would use Matthew 21, 16 to say children go to heaven. And again, if you haven't been keeping up with No Compromise Radio, then you're backsliding. Matthew 21, 16 is the key verse, but I'll back up two verses.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. Speaking of Jesus healing these. And when the chief priest and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.

And they said to him, do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, yes, have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise. And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

Two Greek words, one is for child, one is for a nursing baby. And we have Spurgeon commenting, does not that text seem to say that in heaven there should be perfect praise rendered to God by multitudes of cherubs who are here on earth?

Your little ones fondled in your bosom and then snatched away to heaven. Well, I hope it's true, but I don't think I would use that verse for that context. Now, there are some questions that come up in light of our discussion.

And again, I'm making the excuse for like the third time now I wish you would have listened to the other shows and maybe you have. So Kurt Daniel has some questions that spiral out of this conversation, out of this dialogue, out of this relevant, authentic community that we're experiencing.

It's not too full of relevant community though, is it? Because I'm talking and you're listening, but you could talk back. You can talk back to the radio if you like. You could write WVNE2 as well. I'd probably get the nasty letters sent to them, but I did the show a while ago with the people who are saying they don't like the screechy music.

You know, who likes the screechy music on NoCo? Not the saints. Who likes the banter back and forth with Pastor Steve and Mike on Tuesday? Not the saints. Who likes, you know, unprepared ad-lib stuff?

Not the saints. And so then someone on Twitter, I wish I had it, I wish I could let you see it, said something about who's gonna win the NFL championship in the 2014 -15 season. Not the saints. Oh man.

So we can only go on what the Bible teaches. How do you know the mind of God unless he's revealed his will? And so we know lots about God and his character and his nature and his attributes, and we are going to trust him with our children, even with their eternal souls.

We also know from a few weeks ago that Adam's first sin was imputed to every single person who's ever been born, with one exception, and that is the righteous one, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so by federal representation, all babies are sinful.

All babies have sin credited their account. All babies, if they were given the opportunity to stand in the garden as a adult or as babies would fall. Every one of them would fall. And so we have to be careful because if we're not, then we turn grace into works.

We turn salvation into justification by youth, justification by death, justification by miscarriage. And so we have to be very careful. And again, even saying those words, even being there with my wife after we had one of those circumstances and then she's got to get the DNC and all these things, it is just gut-wrenching.

So in my mind, I often think about this topic like I would with my father and with other people in my life who have died, who I didn't know it at the time because I wasn't regenerate, but looking back, I wonder if they're in heaven because their lives weren't exemplary.

For instance, with grandma Evie Kim's grandmother who raised her, I don't have any doubt that she's in heaven. Why? Because I just saw a pattern of her life that reflected a Christian life in scripture when the Holy Spirit indwells a person, this is how they act.

And they act in a manner worthy of their calling, Ephesians chapter four. So when someone doesn't, someone you don't think is saved, I still say to myself sometimes that when my father asked for communion on his deathbed, even though it was by the liberal Lutheran denomination, maybe my father was looking at those elements, trusting in who God is.

And I'm just gonna have to trust the Lord with my father's soul. There's nothing I can do anyway. Whatever God does, he does rightly. Nobody earns heaven. Nobody deserves heaven. We talked about this before.

And again, I don't want to be too abrupt now, especially if you're grieving a loss recently of a baby, but babies don't deserve heaven. No one does. Not one person deserves heaven. That's why grace is so spectacular.

That's why grace is so great. That's why it's amazing to me that you can have babies go to heaven. Let's just say I'm right. Let's say David's son went to heaven. That's pretty amazing. That's an amazing thing.

So anyway, there's some questions here. Number one, if all dying infants are saved, why are abortion and infanticide wrong? And so the question that Kurt Daniel asks, it's actually Kurt Daniel. So I don't say Kurt Daniels.

And you have to be careful because remember when it was Keith Richards and then he went to Keith Richard, then he went back to Keith Richards. So you have to be careful. Where do you put the apostrophe, the possessive apostrophe?

I guess the convoluted logic would be, well, if you then abort a child, you're just sending the baby to heaven. So let's applaud Pharaoh. Let's applaud Herod. I was just reading my kids the other, my kids, I was reading to my kids the other day.

See, I'm getting tired and sloppy. The Exodus account and the babies that were going to get killed and Moses gets put in a little basket. Of course, he wasn't called Moses quite yet. And so you got Pharaoh killing these boys and then you've got Herod killing the boys.

Well, maybe they were just doing those kids a favor. Now, is that proper thinking? Is that good rationale? Don't we have in scripture elsewhere that God thinks murder is sinful? That if you go back to Pharaoh and Herod and you think of do not murder.

I know with Pharaoh, it was before Mosaic law, of course, but still, when you kill someone who is innocent in society, that is going to cost you or should cost you your life. There's another question that spirals out of this conversation are this monologue.

What Babies Will Be Like in Heaven

If they die as infants, what will they be like in heaven? So if baby dies, goes to heaven. One day they'll get their new body. Well, what age will they be? Well, we don't even know what age we'll be. Right now I'm 53.

I don't know, will I, if I die today, I just took some, I'm going to South Africa soon and I had to take some oral live typhoid and you put it in the fridge so you don't kill off the typhoid so then you can eat it.

What if, and I took that pill today thinking I could die today. Today is the day I could die. Typhoid down the hatch. Typhoid Mary, typhoid Mike. So if I die today, what body age will I receive at the resurrection?

See, I don't know. So we don't know with children either. I don't think they're going to be babies. I think the way I tell kids when they ask me the question, I think we'll all look about the age that Adam was.

Now he was chronologically one second old, but he looked like he was 20, 30 years old, whatever the age was. Prime of life? No, I don't think adolescent. I don't think, I think it'd be full grown. Well, what about those who are pre-trib?

And I think I'm going to have to do a show sooner or later on premill and where I fall in the premillennial scale, closer to probably historical premill, with some nuances. How do you have a future for Israel and then have one people of God and I don't know, I don't know.

I'm exegetical, that's why. See, I don't go for systems, I go for exegesis. Actually, on a side note, that is a good way to think about life theologically because or think about theological life. It's easy to just say, this is a system.

This is the romantic amillennial system. This is the romantic, I don't know, whatever system, but it's best to do the exegetical legwork with key passages. So is Israel, is there a future for Israel? Well, I think you have to go through Romans 9, 6, Romans 11 and Galatians 6, 16.

You just can't say, oh yeah, there's no future for Israel or yeah, there is, you've got to do the legwork. Okay, back to the topic at hand. If you believe in a rapture, a pre-trib rapture or post-trib for that matter, you would say, Mike, where are you?

I wish I knew. I just read the Blessed Hope by Ladd and it's hard to stay pre-trib after reading Ladd's book. See, that's the problem with these good authors because the last teacher you have, you believe what they say, right?

So then I probably better work through it. But anyway, if in fact there's pre-trib or post-trib, what happens to the babies that are in the mother's womb at the rapture? So let's just say, I mean, see where this goes.

Let's say the mother is saved, where do the babies go? Well, that one would be, in my mind, you'd think, okay, the baby would go up to heaven too, right? But what if you've got a mother that's not a Christian and the Lord returns?

Let's just indulge you for a second, post-tribulation. People are in the tribulation, they've got a baby and they're not saved. And okay, now what? Lord returns. What about the baby? Aren't you glad you don't have a radio?

Oh man. All right, let's keep talking about this issue, about babies that die. And do they go to heaven or not? How are they saved? Because initially, it wouldn't take a scholar to say, well, they don't believe.

And everywhere you look, it's believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, right? So where's their faith? Election by sovereign grace, but there's no faith. By the way, there's lots of people who would say, God looks down the quarters of time, sees your faith, it's a foreseen faith, then therefore God picks you.

Well, what do we do now with babies? What do we do with them? Spurgeon wrote, it is saved because it is elect. He's talking about dying infants as a class. In the compass of election in the Lamb's book of life, we believe there shall be found written millions of souls who are only shown on earth, then stretch their wings for heaven.

And so Spurgeon is going to use the doctrine of election to unlock the code of infant salvation. So let's just say Arminianism is right. So God looks down the quarters of time and what would he see in an infant?

No, he wouldn't see anything. So their basis of salvation would be wrong, right? Wrong, right? But don't the kids need to believe? So the just shall live by faith. J. Oliver Buswell said that dying infants are giving adult consciousness just before dying, so then they can receive the work of Christ through the non-meritorious instrument of faith.

A .H. Strong said right after the death of children, they're going to be given the gift of faith when they see Christ. So the same time they're looking at Christ, they've got faith, they see and they believe.

The scriptures do teach the just shall live by faith, but with that topic of faith, it's always talking about those who are able to believe. We're not talking about infants. So most scholars would believe in this topic of faith and in this topic of infant salvation, that regeneration is more important than faith.

So we do know, theologically, that regeneration precedes faith, see 1 John 5. One. So the spirit of God could give regeneration without faith and you'd still be saved. So if one is more important, one is primary, one is initial, then if that one's given, then that would work.

See how they're arguing that? I mean, do I know? I don't know. But if you think about the golden chain of redemption and election and Christ dying for you and the sovereignty of God and all that stuff, will not the judge of all the earth do right?

That's where we have to end it. And so if you say, Mike, you have to tell me what you believe. Now I would say, this is what the Bible says and this is what I believe and sometimes they perfectly match up and sometimes maybe not so much.

Spurgeon said, many of you are parents who have children in heaven. Is it not a desirable thing that you should go there too? And yet have I not in these galleys and in this area some, perhaps many who have no hope hereafter?

Now here's what Spurgeon's saying and I'm saying it to you if you're listening today. You're concerned about your baby going to heaven, your baby goes to heaven and you're not regenerate, then what? Spurgeon goes on.

Mother, unconverted mother from the battlements of heaven, your child beckons you to paradise. Father ungodly, impenitent father, the little eyes that once looked joyously on you look down upon you now and the lips which had scarcely learned to call you father ere they were sealed by the silence of death may be heard as a still small voice saying to you this morning, father, must we be forever divided by the great gulf which no man can pass?

If you wilt, think of these matters. Perhaps the heart will begin to move and the eyes may begin to flow and then may the Holy Spirit put before thine eyes the cross of the Savior. If thou wilt turn thine eye to him, thou shall live.

So you don't want your baby to go to heaven and then you don't, so you need to look to the Lord Jesus Christ with faith in him and believe because you are able, you can rationalize, right? I don't mean you're able in and of yourself, it's a gift of God, that is what faith is, but my point is where children cannot understand their left hand from their right hand, you can and you can realize that you're a sinner and you've broken the rules of God, his holy laws.

You have broken in thought, word and deed, omission, commission. There's only one hope for you. You either have to pay for your sins or your hope is that Jesus paid for them and you'll never know if he paid for them or not unless you look to the risen Savior with faith and then you would know.

September 29th, 1861, Spurgeon preached a sermon called Infant Salvation and so if you're listening today and you'd like to read more about this or study it more, pull up Infant Salvation, Charles Spurgeon, C .H. Spurgeon and he went after some critics of his view that is all infants that die go to heaven and he chastened them saying, quote, wickedly, lyingly and slanderously said of Calvinists that we believe that some little children perish and so that was the knock on a Calvinist.

Oh, you think babies are damned, right? And so he said that was wicked, they were lying, they were slanderous. Spurgeon taught Jesus Christ's death covered whatever sin the child had, that is original sin and that without limitation, without exception, those babies went to heaven and when you go back to this topic of election, well, if babies are in heaven, you know they're elect because all the elect make it.

Not one is lost and so pastorally and I've been in the room before with a couple and the baby's on life support and we have to disconnect everything and then the nursing staff tenderly and kindly gives us the little baby and then the baby's just going to expire in our arms and I've been in those rooms and so this is not an academic exercise for me.

I long for those babies to go to heaven. I want them to go to heaven and in my mind, a thousand things swirl around. I want to love the couple. I don't want to tell a couple something that's true that's not, right?

If someone is a blasphemer on his deathbed and then struck dead, no time to repent and they're just wicked, perverted, Revelation 22 kind of person that's outside of the gates of heaven. I don't want to tell the family like these liars do at funerals.

Oh, they're in heaven. These people are in heaven. How do we know they're in heaven? It's salvation by death, it's salvation by baptism. I don't want to do that. So I feel the tension but I also want to comfort the family.

I also want the baby to be in heaven but see, I'm not the Lord and so I think to myself, Adam sin imputed, nobody deserves it. Federal head, Jesus, could Jesus's death be enough to cover the sins of an infant?

Well, yeah, of course. Of course, isn't that wonderful? Isn't that good? Isn't that great? Do I think to myself, well, if I love babies, isn't that given to me by God? Jesus loved babies. Jesus loved children but then I think to myself, my theology is preaching to me.

It's like left shoulder, right shoulder, where it's, what does the Bible say? And then what do I want? What do I feel? And I think to myself, all right, the God of the universe is going to do right. Grace is grace.

It's sovereign grace. It's free grace. Genesis 18, and we can trust in the Lord. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he'll make your path straight.

My view is, if I had to pick a view, is babies go to heaven when they die. How do I know that? Well, by inference, that's all. My heart sure wants it to be true. And I will say this with all candid honesty.

If I get to heaven and people that I want to be in heaven aren't there, including some infants or all infants, I will still fall on my face and say, worthy is the lamb that was slain because grace is grace.

And if I get to heaven and all infants are there, then I'll be praising God that he could devise such a great plan that for those who couldn't believe because of their infancy, their immaturity mentally, that God could regenerate children and bypass faith.

Oh, what a savior. Oh, what a friend. And I'll praise him for that too. This is not an academic discussion only because lives are real and children, you know, I don't want to bury any of my children. They're all going to get buried one day, I know, but I don't want to bury them.

It's just seems like they should be burying me, but we're not sovereign and sin affects the universe and death is an enemy. So my name is Mike Abendroth, it's nocompromiseradio .com. Don't forget to pull up Infant Salvation by Charles Spurgeon.

I think that will be helpful. And you can write me at infoatnocompromiseradio .com. You can also go to Israel with us, February 17th, next year, 2015. You want to get your deposits in soon because the bus will fill up, hopefully, and you can also catch us at World View Weekend, tune in radio, iTunes, Facebook, and other places.

We appreciate you listening. Maybe you want to write the station and tell them you've been benefited by No Compromise Radio.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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