Do all Babies go to Heaven?

[blackdiamond]

I joined the forum to start a discussion on something that I have been thinking about off and on for a long time. I don't think the Bible of Spirit of Prophecy really deal with the question directly so I'm looking for some other perspectives.

I think we all want to believe that if our children die that they will be saved and go to heaven, but does this make sense?

In my view, a significant part of sin being eliminated forever is that everyone that is saved has experienced sin and personally made the choice to choose Christ. If babies are automatically saved then there will be a large group of people that did not have the opportunity to make this choice. This seems to be a form of predestination and also puts people in heaven that have not experienced sin personally. Maybe the 1,000 years is adequate to resolve this lack of personal experience?

Also, this becomes and issue about how old a child is before they must make a personal choice to be saved. Going the other direction, at what point is a baby too young to be saved? Does the baby have to be physically born to be saved? If not, is every fertilized egg saved or where is that line?

I realize this is a difficult topic that likely doesn't have a resolution while we're on earth, but I'm interested in your thoughts.

[phkrause]

Great questions and thoughts blackdiamond. First let me welcome you to CA. Let me say that for me I believe that babies who obviously can't make a choice for or against Jesus, and die before will be in heaven. As for those that are old enough to make that choice, but have never heard the good news, I think that will judged by how there lives are being lived.

[nuff sed]

Isn't here a statement in S.O.P. somewhere about some babies being 'as they never were'? NUff Sed

[Planey]

'Nuff Sed makes the most sense.

If all babies were saved, then the best thing you could do for your children would be to kill them immediately after they were born.

Maybe the worshipers of Moloch were on to something?

[scott.t]

So if a baby dies, and is treated as if they never were, then they do not have a soul? Why would abortion be wrong then?

Scott

[Restin]

I think on this, too, and just personally I believe we should try not to limit God and confine Him to human I.Q level, especially when even the ADAM and the antediluvians were a thousand times smarter than we are. So, I believe that God has this about infants worked out in his wisdom. Not for me to say, but God can put a baby in a new body to be born again if He wants to. I know that gets into complications of what if you only have one baby in your life that didn't make it.

Anyway, regardless of the difficulties for my little brain, God has it worked out some way that we will study when we reach heaven and study the books, which is what the millennium up there is for, SDA say. Meanwhile, I think of myself, in relation to God, as a little fish in a little pond, with its head stuck up out of the water, wondering if anything is out there beyond its pond.

BTW People who can follow Quantum Mechanics might read up on it, and discover that the world is far more than what we were taught in school about Newton's mechanistic laws, and that has some interesting ideas about life that are amazingly commensurate with the Bible.

[Ellen]

I am going to see what I can find about babies treated by God as if they had never been,

But my mom had a still-born baby and we expect the angels will bring that tiny one to be in my mom's arms as she joins the saved.

[Stan]

I expect that as well Ellen.

[nuff sed]

Babies do not have a soul..and neither do we. We ARE souls. Body+Breath= Living Soul.. No body or no breath,then no living soul. Looks like you'll have to go in a different direction when deciding on what happens to babies. There is allegedly a statement in SOP about angels putting the little ones in the arms of their mothers. NUFF SED

[immanuel]

Quote:

As the little infants come forth immortal from their dusty beds, they immediately wing their way to their mothers’ arms. They meet again nevermore to part. But many of the little ones have no mother there. We listen in vain for the rapturous song of triumph from the mother. The angels receive the motherless infants and conduct them to the tree of life.

2 Selected Messages p. 260

Ellen White also says this about her two sons who died in childhood (John Herber, died when 3 months old; Henry, died when 16 years old - she had two other sons, Edson and Willy, who outlived her)

Quote:

Both parents and the two remaining sons [Edson and Willy] felt the blow most keenly. But God comforted us in our bereavements, and with faith and courage we pressed forward in the work He had given us, in bright hope of meeting our children who had been torn from us by death, in that world where sickness and death will never come.

Life Sketches of Ellen White, p. 165

[phkrause]

Thanks for those passages of hope and of course "Faith," that EGW displayed.

[debbym]

my thought is that just because we have a strong emotion about something, does not mean we are expressing God's will or an eternal reality.

But we can hope, and may need to hope because of the pain and power of emotion to turn us upside down if we do not, because of how deep we feel.

we may not obtain all the answers now, and may not need to. i can trust the all powerful and all loving merciful and wise God to know every atom of His creation and every thought and every feeling, and line it all up perfectly, and getting it all right. we shall be satisfied, i am certain of it.

God will be found to be just and true in all of his ways, down to the tiniest infant who enters heaven undeveloped as a person. what a privilege to grow up from babyhood in heaven, along side parents who are growing up from a mere few decades too. In eternity 30 or 40 or 80 years will be as nothing.

[Narcah]

My thoughts, not inspired, but to me it makes sense...

We know that the Bible teaches that parents sanctify their children. Therefore, if the parents are heaven bound, then their dead infant will join them there. If they are hell bound, then their infant, who has never sinned, will be as if they have never been. We know that those who have sinned more will last longer in the lake of fire, so those who have never sinned will not suffer at all.

Again, my thoughts.

[blackdiamond]

I'm glad to see someone pulling quotes out of Spirit of Prophecy on this topic. It appears that the other half of the picture may be missing if there is indeed any statements indication that babies would be as they never were. I think Narcah might be thinking in the right direction.

It's such a difficult topic when you look at the various points in the beginning of life. Conception, in the womb (stillborn), and birth.

[nuff sed]

2SM260 Motherless cared for by angels in resurection day Nuff Sed