Are My Septuplets in Heaven?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Pastor John, today we address a heavy question.

00:00:10.440 | Sometimes we do that on the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:00:12.940 | And this time it comes from North Carolina

00:00:15.440 | and from a couple who has been recently in the news

00:00:18.040 | for their personal tragedy,

00:00:20.060 | a tragedy that they wrote into us about as well.

00:00:23.540 | Lindsay, the wife, asks this.

00:00:26.340 | Pastor John, we recently lost septuplets at 21 weeks

00:00:30.560 | of gestation.

00:00:32.260 | What does the Bible teach about the eternal destiny

00:00:35.220 | of seven unborn children and of infants who die?

00:00:39.120 | Moreover, what does the Bible teach about reuniting

00:00:41.960 | with our children and family members in heaven?

00:00:45.040 | - Well, I am very sorry, Lindsay, for your loss.

00:00:49.320 | I can only relate a little bit

00:00:53.560 | because of the loss of our granddaughter,

00:00:56.020 | stillborn, dying in the last week of her nine-month life.

00:01:00.100 | But I know that's not really very much empathy

00:01:03.340 | because you lost seven and you're the mother.

00:01:06.100 | You carried them and I'm only a grandfather who watched.

00:01:11.100 | So my empathy is inadequate and I only mention it

00:01:16.220 | to say that Jesus' empathy is not inadequate.

00:01:20.580 | And his understanding is unsearchable and very profound.

00:01:25.700 | I pray that you found it so.

00:01:27.300 | So I'll tell you what I believe about your question

00:01:32.580 | and you will need to be a good Berean,

00:01:35.580 | like it says in Acts 17, where they went away

00:01:37.980 | and read their Bibles to test and see if these things

00:01:40.840 | were so because they're pretty controversial.

00:01:44.100 | And a lot of people don't see it the way I see it.

00:01:46.560 | A lot of people do.

00:01:47.780 | My own view is that even though I believe in original sin

00:01:54.140 | and guilt, that all children are conceived

00:01:58.060 | with a nature corrupted by union in Adam's fall into sin,

00:02:03.060 | Romans 5, 12 following, and even though I believe

00:02:09.820 | in unconditional election so that God chose

00:02:13.900 | who would be eternally saved from the creation

00:02:16.460 | before the creation of the world,

00:02:18.900 | and even though I believe that faith in Jesus

00:02:23.900 | as the one and only Redeemer is the only way anyone

00:02:28.180 | will be able to stand before God in eternity,

00:02:30.820 | even though I believe all those crucial biblical things,

00:02:33.980 | nevertheless, I also believe that all infants

00:02:37.900 | who die will be saved and spend eternity with God

00:02:42.860 | in true, full, personal joy.

00:02:47.500 | And the reason I say true, full, personal

00:02:52.000 | is that I believe this also means God will make them mature.

00:02:57.000 | They won't be irrational little tiny babies forever.

00:03:03.440 | They'll grow up in some way.

00:03:05.640 | God will transform them in some way,

00:03:07.860 | and I don't know how, don't even speculate about it,

00:03:10.800 | to make their joy true and full and personal

00:03:15.800 | as they know God.

00:03:18.740 | They won't be non-rational infants for all eternity.

00:03:23.560 | Those are my beliefs.

00:03:25.520 | Now, why?

00:03:27.280 | You can believe anything you want, right?

00:03:29.760 | So is there any Bible underneath that?

00:03:32.120 | Do we have any warrant, any biblical foundation

00:03:34.760 | for such hope?

00:03:37.280 | And I'll give you my pointers and then my basic argument.

00:03:42.280 | My pointers are that in Luke 1:15,

00:03:46.800 | John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit

00:03:48.640 | from his mother's womb.

00:03:50.380 | And in Luke's theology, condemned unsaved people

00:03:54.000 | aren't filled with the Holy Spirit.

00:03:55.600 | So there's a pointer that a child,

00:03:59.640 | even in the womb, can be saved.

00:04:04.640 | Psalm 22.10, David says, "On you was I cast from my birth,

00:04:09.940 | "from my mother's womb you have been my God."

00:04:15.800 | Now, those two illustrations are simply meant

00:04:20.400 | to open the door to the fact that God sees some infants

00:04:25.080 | as already in union with himself in salvation

00:04:28.580 | or either on the way, definitely, to salvation.

00:04:33.580 | I think it would be a huge mistake

00:04:36.040 | to draw implications from this

00:04:39.220 | that would assume any given baby is born again.

00:04:43.640 | I don't believe in baptismal regeneration.

00:04:46.720 | I don't believe in baptizing babies at all.

00:04:49.320 | And I certainly don't believe in it

00:04:50.800 | on the basis of any assumption

00:04:52.680 | that because they're born to Christians,

00:04:54.300 | they're born of God.

00:04:55.440 | That seems to fly right in the face of Romans 9.8.

00:04:59.840 | So why in the world then do I believe

00:05:02.040 | that all infants are saved who die in infancy?

00:05:07.040 | And the argument goes like this.

00:05:08.960 | First, without evidence of God's truth,

00:05:13.140 | we would not be condemned for not believing that truth.

00:05:18.140 | That's a principle that I'm gonna get from scripture

00:05:21.640 | from two texts, but just nail it down as the first premise.

00:05:25.520 | Without evidence of God's truth,

00:05:27.960 | that is, if we don't have that evidence,

00:05:30.140 | then we will not be condemned for not believing that truth,

00:05:33.680 | which we didn't know to be the case.

00:05:37.120 | Second, infants lack that evidence

00:05:40.400 | because they lack the physical capacity to construe it.

00:05:43.540 | This is different from saying that all of us

00:05:45.980 | without the Holy Spirit are unable to see the truth.

00:05:48.900 | That's true, and we're still guilty for it.

00:05:51.940 | The difference is that our inability is moral

00:05:54.820 | and the infant's inability is physical.

00:05:58.060 | We're blind because we hate the meaning we construe

00:06:01.620 | from God's revelation.

00:06:02.940 | Infants are blind because they can't even construe it

00:06:06.700 | since their physical brains are not yet designed to do it.

00:06:11.080 | The conclusion that no infant will be condemned

00:06:15.580 | for not believing God's truth,

00:06:18.880 | that's the conclusion that I draw.

00:06:21.660 | Where do I get those premises and that argument?

00:06:24.800 | First, from John 9, 41, where Jesus is teaching

00:06:29.800 | and he's asked if he thought the Jewish leaders were blind,

00:06:35.960 | and he says, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt,

00:06:39.920 | "but now you say, 'We see,' so your guilt remains."

00:06:43.720 | So that first sentence,

00:06:44.640 | "If you were blind, you would have no guilt,"

00:06:46.600 | seems to enunciate a principle

00:06:50.600 | that in the absence of seeing that is real and physical,

00:06:55.600 | you would be exempted from the responsibility of seeing

00:07:04.040 | if you're blind in the physical sense.

00:07:07.920 | God would not bring a person into final judgment

00:07:10.520 | for not believing what he had no natural capacity

00:07:14.180 | or physical capacity to see.

00:07:16.600 | That's the principle Jesus seems to state.

00:07:18.920 | Now, I think Paul states it even more clearly

00:07:21.960 | in Romans 1, 20.

00:07:23.560 | He's dealing with people who have not heard the gospel.

00:07:26.640 | They have no access to the gospel.

00:07:28.480 | Will they be judged?

00:07:31.760 | And here's the way he argues.

00:07:33.920 | He says, "Well, they have access

00:07:36.920 | "to revelation of God in nature,

00:07:40.300 | "and if they didn't, then they'd have an excuse

00:07:44.340 | "at the judgment."

00:07:45.180 | So here's the text, Romans 1, 20.

00:07:47.040 | "Since the creation of the world,

00:07:48.680 | "God's invisible attributes,

00:07:50.480 | "his eternal power and divine nature,

00:07:52.920 | "have been clearly seen being understood

00:07:55.560 | "through what has been made.

00:07:57.880 | "So therefore, they are without excuse."

00:08:02.280 | The reason they're without excuse,

00:08:05.080 | even though they haven't heard the gospel,

00:08:06.920 | is that they will only be held accountable

00:08:09.320 | for the truth they have evidence for,

00:08:11.720 | namely the truth in nature.

00:08:13.920 | So there's the principle again.

00:08:15.880 | We are accountable, we are responsible.

00:08:19.140 | We can be punished for not believing truth

00:08:23.120 | for which we have sufficient evidence.

00:08:26.600 | And my point is that now children

00:08:30.480 | do not have access to any of that evidence

00:08:35.440 | concerning the truth of God.

00:08:38.920 | And it's important to stress that I'm not saying

00:08:41.920 | infants are saved because they're innocent or sinless.

00:08:45.440 | I affirm that they will be saved

00:08:48.880 | in the same way we will be,

00:08:51.240 | namely through the atoning work of Christ alone.

00:08:54.160 | And how God will do that, I would only be guessing.

00:08:58.480 | And if it helps, sometimes guesses help,

00:09:01.920 | it seems to me that the most natural guess

00:09:05.000 | would be that babies who die in infancy

00:09:07.660 | will grow up or be immediately grown up in the kingdom

00:09:12.660 | and will, by God's grace, be given the gift of faith

00:09:18.840 | as soon as they have the capacity physically for it

00:09:23.040 | so that they will be a believer all the way.

00:09:26.880 | Justification will be by faith alone, just like ours.

00:09:31.840 | So that's my conviction of why they're all saved.

00:09:36.840 | That's the biblical foundation for the principles behind it.

00:09:41.680 | And with regard to the last little bit of the question

00:09:44.280 | about connections in heaven, let me just close like this.

00:09:48.920 | At my granddaughter's funeral,

00:09:50.620 | I was given the chance to just give a granddad's perspective

00:09:56.760 | and I said, "I believe Felicity and her great-grandfather,"

00:10:01.760 | that's my dad, "I believe Felicity and her great-grandfather

00:10:08.440 | met each other last Sunday in the presence of Christ."

00:10:13.160 | And my father said, perhaps, "Hello, Felicity.

00:10:18.280 | I'm your great-grandfather, Piper.

00:10:21.240 | Come, there's somebody I want you to meet.

00:10:24.640 | His name is Jesus.

00:10:26.360 | He's the reason you're here.

00:10:28.360 | You don't need to be afraid.

00:10:30.960 | Your Savior has led you all the way.

00:10:33.800 | And Jesus does all things well."

00:10:37.260 | - Amen, he does all things well.

00:10:41.080 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:10:42.680 | And this reminds me about the time not long ago

00:10:45.720 | when I asked Randy Alcorn about the curious fact

00:10:48.560 | that the Bible tells us there will be children

00:10:51.400 | in the new earth.

00:10:52.920 | Why would there be children in the new earth?

00:10:55.520 | He explained what this could all very well mean

00:10:57.840 | for children who died young and for their hurting parents.

00:11:01.960 | See episode number 363 in this podcast series

00:11:05.000 | to hear more on that question from Randy Alcorn.

00:11:08.720 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:11:10.000 | We'll be back tomorrow.

00:11:11.160 | (upbeat music)

00:11:13.740 | (upbeat music)

00:11:16.320 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Are My Septuplets in Heaven?

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