The salvation of babies who die (Part 2)

l
John MacArthur, Jr.*

There was a study some years ago that I read called “Mental Reactions to Paranatal Death” and it chronicled the parental reaction to the loss of a baby around the time of birth. 60 percent of the parents surveyed were angry. 50 percent of the men felt guilt--90 percent of the women felt guilt about the death of that child. 75 percent were irritable. 65 to 75 percent of the parents lost their appetite, 80 to 90 percent lost their sleep, and 95 to 100 percent of them felt a profound and deep sadness. It’s important to understand that there are some amazing impacts of this on the life of parents. So, when you look at it in the broad scale, millions upon millions of these little ones dying, or you look at the individual level and you see the sorrow and sadness that it brings into the life of a family, either perspective cries out for an answer!

[Think of] the agonizing mother in Afghanistan where 150 babies out of a thousand die, or at least that’s the figures that are reported and it’s likely double that, or the poor hungry mother in Angola where it is reported that 200 out of a thousand die and it’s likely double that, to you here in our congregation who lost a little one along the way. There needs to be an answer. There needs to be an answer from God--there needs to be an answer from God’s Word to this troubling reality of infant death. If you start adding up the years, you start adding up the millions, you start adding up the billions, the question “Where are they?” becomes a very compelling question.

And you can add to that the very, I suppose, somewhat strange biblical indication that God himself acknowledges, even authorizes the death of some infants. For example, in Isaiah 13:16, when God called for judgment on Babylon, He said, “Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes.” When God called for Assyria to make a war of judgment on Israel, He said in Hosea 13:16, “Their little ones will be dashed to pieces”--the same statement. The same was said of Assyria’s war on Egypt in Nahum chapter 3, and verse 10. Amazingly, Psalm 137:8 and 9 says, “Oh daughter of Babylon, you devastated one, how blessed will be the one who repays you with the recompense with which you have repaid us! How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rocks!” Blessed will be a nation who punishes Babylon, even including the death of little ones. What happens to these little ones, the death of which God authorizes in a sense, in fulfilling his judgment purposes.

I suppose it would also be fair to say that when a birth is successful, this is because God has allowed that to happen. We can say what David said in Psalm 22, verse 9, “Yet thou art he who didst bring me forth from the womb: thou didst make me trust when upon my mother’s breast; upon thee I was cast from birth. Thou hast been my God from my mother’s womb!” David acknowledged that life came from God and when that life survived the womb and the birth and actually began to live, it was a life that God had allowed to live. No death occurs apart from the purpose of God. No life occurs apart from the purpose of God.

Now remember, in the original creation, there was no death, and man, according to Genesis 1:26 to 28, was given the power to procreate; that is, to produce life in a deathless world. That was God’s original intent, that Adam and Eve would be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and they would literally produce life in a deathless world so that no life conceived would ever die.

However, when Adam and Eve sinned, death came on all, and death comes to all, and it comes to many in infancy and childhood. I suppose it would be an educated guess to say that perhaps half of the people ever conceived die before they reach any level of maturity. And again I ask the question, “How does God deal with them?” Is the answer comforting? Is the answer encouraging? Is the answer hopeful? Or is it discouraging? Do they go instantly to heaven? Why did I say that? I’m not the first one to try to deal with this, but there are a lot of people who aren’t dealing with it today.

I was on a panel at a conference, a large conference, with three other pastors and it was a question and answer panel and I was sitting up there with these other very fine pastors whom I love and respect. And one of the questions came from the audience was, “What happens to babies that die?” They went down the first three and the answer in each case was “I don’t know,” which isn’t very comforting. It puts me in a terrible spot because when they came to me, I said, “They go to heaven. They go to heaven.” And I tried to give a brief explanation of why I believe that’s true.

But I thought as I’ve looked back on that so many times, how can you be a pastor and not get an answer to that question? Because you’re dealing with people constantly who go through this! Even C. S. Lewis agreed with me. Now, he didn’t know it. C.S. Lewis, in his wonderful book The Last Battle, wrote about a terrible train accident: one of those terrible disasters that killed all the children in a family. That surfaced the question, “What about those children?” as any disaster does. This is what he wrote: “And as God spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion”--remember, he pictures God as a lion, Aslan. He said, “As God spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion. But the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them, and for us this is the end of all stories and we can say most truly that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world had only been the cover of the title page. Now at last they were beginning chapter one of the great story, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before!” That’s the inimitable C. S. Lewis saying that they were ushered into the real story.
---
*[All rights reserved - John MacArthur Jr.]
l