The salvation of babies who die (Part 4)

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John MacArthur, Jr.*

And the sixth precious thought is in verse 16: “You determined my destiny”--you planned my life--“thine eyes have seen my unformed substance”--you saw me in your sovereign view before I was ever formed. And in your book, everything about me was written down, the days that were ordained for me when as yet there wasn’t one of them.

Now, these are precious thoughts. God knows everything about me even before I can talk. God is in complete control of my life. God will never lose sight of me no matter what goes on; I can never be lost to God. There is no circumstance that can in any way limit his knowledge. The reason He knows me so well is He is my personal Creator who has planned carefully my destiny. Those are precious thoughts. It’s not as if lives are being conceived willy-nilly and God is not involved. This is not just true of David; David is speaking for every man. He is speaking of intimate association between God and each human creation. God is intimately involved in every little life, every life. It’s not just a chain of procreative acts that He inaugurated; He is there in every single conception. These are precious thoughts because this indicates to us how precious every life is. Every life is so precious that God knows it all, plans it all, guards and protects it all, never loses sight of anything…and they must matter to him. They must matter to him.

We could conclude from that alone that since God is by nature a Savior and since God is not willing that any should perish but all should come to repentance and since God would have all men to be saved, there’s every reason to believe, just from that alone, that a caring God who created that life to begin with, who superintends and guards that life, who knows intimately everything about that life--should that life perish physically in its infancy, there would be every reason from that Psalm alone to trust the grace of God, who is by nature a Savior, in behalf of that life.

Let me show you a couple of other passages--and we’re just starting to build the foundation here. In Job, chapter 3, verse 16 and 17, again, I don’t like the NAS translation of this as well as I like the New King James so those of you who have the New King James version have a leg up on the translation. I’m going to read the New King James; it’s a better representation I think here. Job is in some serious despair. How do we know that? Verse 1, Job 3: “Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth”--Pretty serious despair. Job said, “Let the day perish on which I was to be born and the night which said ‘a boy is conceived!’ May that day be darkness.”

“I wish I’d never been born” this suffering is so profound. Never been born. In verses 16 and 17, this is what he says: “Why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, like infants who never saw light? Why didn’t I die in my mother’s womb? “There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.” What’s he saying? He’s saying, “I’d be better off if I miscarried. I would be better off if I were stillborn, so I wouldn’t have to face a troubling life--that I would enter immediately into, what? “Rest.” “Rest.” Job understood that dying as an infant would bring one to rest and one would escape the pain of suffering. He certainly didn’t believe that infants that die go to hell and some eternal torment, but rather had the confidence that they enter into rest.

In Ecclesiastes also, in chapter 6--you don’t have to turn to it; you can just jot it down--in Ecclesiastes 6:3-5, Solomon laments. He laments that a stillborn child is better off than a person who lives a thousand years twice and doesn’t enjoy the right things. He says, “What’s the point of living two thousand years if you don’t ever enjoy true goodness? You’d be better off a stillborn child.”

In both of these cases, you have by implication the idea that being stillborn takes you to a place of rest, that being stillborn is preferable to a life of wickedness, a life of unfulfillment. Now, those are some implicit references. Next week we’re going to look at some explicit references that I think support the fact, not just implicitly but explicitly, that children who die go to heaven.
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*[All rights reserved - John MacArthur Jr.]
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