Do Children Who Die Go to Heaven?

This is an often asked question among all people, especially those who are not Christians.  I can't give any other answer that is worthy of being relied upon except the answer in scripture.  But before that, if you know the character of the Lord through Jesus Christ His Son (Hebrews 1:1-3, John 17:3), then you know the Lord, and you know this answer before we even begin.

But Jesus said "Let the little children alone,and do not stop them coming to me; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of Heaven belongs."

Matthew 19:14

As parents, we love our children fiercely and do everything within our power to protect them. As Christians, we know that God created each one of us as unique individuals, and according to the Bible, has a plan for each of our lives.

Psalm 139:13-17 (David is speaking to God)

"It was you who created my inmost self, and put me together in my mother’s womb; for all these mysteries I thank you; for the wonder of myself, for the wonder of your works. You know me through and through, from having watched my bones take shape when I was being formed in secret, knitted together in the limbo of the womb. You have scrutinized my every action, all were recorded in your book, my days listed and determined, even before the first of them occurred. God, how hard it is to grasp your thoughts! How impossible to count them!

God makes it clear that He is in control and makes no mistakes. He is the powerful one, not us.

Job 40:6-9 (God is speaking to Job)

God gave Job His answer from the heart of the tempest. He said: "Brace yourself like a fighter, now it is my turn to ask questions and yours to inform me. Do you really want to reverse my Judgment, and put me in the wrong to put yourself in the right? Has your arm the strength of God’s, can your voice thunder as loud?"

When the life of a child is taken, parents not only want to know why, but they also want to know where the child has gone. Many questions will not be answered until we meet the Lord face to face. In the meantime, He has given us His Word with some answers, as well as comforts. I’ve provided some scriptures that offer hope that children (who have died before the age where they might reason between right and wrong) are waiting for us in Heaven. 

The following are scripture that support evidence of a "Book of Life". These scripture indicate that all names are written in the "Book of Life", blotted out when we sin, and reconciled for life when Jesus Christ sacrificed His life for us, and we confess that we are sinners and believe Jesus is our one and only Savior.

 

Exo 32:33 And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.

The encouragement in this verse is that all names are written in the "book" of life when we are born. Those who willfully sin against God then find their names blotted out of the book. It is clear that young children may not willfully commit sin, as their minds are unable to reason yet what is right and what is wrong.

Deu 9:14 Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven: and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they.

Deu 29:20 The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.

Psa 69:27 Add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy righteousness.

Psa 69:28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.

Rom 7:7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

Rom 7:8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.

Rom 7:9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

Rom 7:10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.

Rom 7:11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.

In the above verses, Paul points out that he was alive (verse 9) before he knew about his sin. When he realized that he had coveted, "when the commandment came", sin was made alive in him and spiritually he died. This is in keeping with the other scriptures which indicate we are born with spiritual life (names written in the Book of Life). We lose that life when "sin comes", or we are aware of our sins. We regain that life again only through accepting Jesus Christ’ blood as payment for our sins.

 

Rev 3:5 He that overcomes, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.

Rev 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 

Rev 21:27 And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defiles, neither whatsoever works abomination, or makes a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Rev 20:12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

All of the above verses support the views that there is a Book of Life, that all names of every living person are written in this book at birth, that the names are then blotted out when they willfully understand what is right and wrong and chooses to commit sin. They may then be written again in the Book of Life by accepting the blood of the Lamb as payment for their sin. While there is some room for discussion regarding what is the age of accountability (if there is one), when one is old enough to understand right from wrong, etc., the basic premise above seems well supported from the scriptures.

In these verses Christ is speaking to His followers:

Luk 10:20 Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.

Phi 4:3 And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.

Heb 12:23 To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,

2 Sam. 12:23 But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

In this last verse, David had been fasting in the hopes of seeing his sick infant son healed by the Lord. When he was told by his servant that his child was dead, David arose, washed himself, and ate. The servants were surprised by his behavior. He responded in verse 23 that knowing his child was now dead, there was no more reason to fast. He knew he could not bring the child back to life. He then states that "I shall go to him". This means that David knew he would see his child when he died. David in no way believed he was going to the place of the wicked dead, and did not believe his infant son was their either. 

These verses indicate that sin is what causes death.

Eze 18:4 Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Rom 5:21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

These verses indicates that when we sin, we are dead in Christ, but if we except God’s gift of Jesus Christ, we can have eternal life.

1Jo 5:11 And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

1Jo 5:12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

1Jo 5:13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

 

A Message of Hope : In These Last Days

http://www.blueletterbible.org/

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Why Does God’s Creation Include Death and Suffering?

This is actually an excerpt from chapter 26 of The New Answers Book.  I will share the first part of this chapter on the origin/cause of death and suffering here, and you can follow the link here or at the bottom to read the rest of the chapter.  If you have ever wondered, the Bible has the answer!

by Dr. Tommy Mitchell

Why do bad things happen? Through the ages, human beings have sought to reconcile their understanding of an all-powerful, loving God with the seemingly endless suffering around them.
One prominent example of this struggle is the media mogul Ted Turner. Having lost his faith after his sister died of a painful disease, Turner claimed, “I was taught that God was love and God was powerful, and I couldn’t understand how someone so innocent should be made or allowed to suffer so.”1

Is God responsible for human suffering? Is God cruel, capricious, and vindictive, or is He too weak to prevent suffering? If God truly is sovereign, how can He let someone He loves suffer?

A World of Misery and Death

Each day brings new tragedy. A small child is diagnosed with leukemia and undergoes extensive medical treatment only to die in his mother’s arms. A newlywed couple is killed by a drunk driver as they leave for their honeymoon. A faithful missionary family is attacked and killed by the very people they were ministering to. Thousands are killed in a terrorist attack. Hundreds drown in a tsunami, while scores of others are buried in an earthquake.

How are these things possible if God really loves and cares for us? Is He a God of suffering?
Man’s usual response to tragedy is to blame God, as Charles Darwin did after the death of his beloved daughter Annie.

“Annie’s cruel death destroyed Charles’s tatters of beliefs in a moral, just universe. Later he would say that this period chimed the final death-knell for his Christianity . . . . Charles now took his stand as an unbeliever.”2

Is this the proper response? A correct view of history, found in the Bible, provides the answer.

Was God’s Creation Really “Very Good”?

In the beginning, about 6,000 years ago, God created the universe and everything in it in six actual days. At the end of His creative acts on the sixth day, God “saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

To have been very good, God’s creation must have been without blemish, defect, disease, suffering, or death. There was no “survival of the fittest.” Animals did not prey on each other, and the first two humans, Adam and Eve, did not kill animals for food. The original creation was a beautiful place, full of life and joy in the presence of the Creator.

Both humans and animals were vegetarians at the time of creation. In Genesis 1:29–30 the Lord said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food.”

This passage shows clearly that in God’s very good creation, animals did not eat each other (and thus, there was no animal death), as God gave Adam, Eve, and the animals only plants to eat. (It was was not until after the worldwide Flood of Noah’s Day—1,600 years later—that man was allowed to eat meat, according to Genesis 9:3.)

Because eating a plant can kill it, some people claim that death was part of the original creation. The Bible makes a distinction, though, between plants and animals. This distinction is expressed in the Hebrew word nephesh, which describes an aspect of life attributed only to animals and humans. Nephesh can be translated “breathing creature” or “living creature” (see Genesis 1:20–21, (24)). Plants do not possess this nephesh quality and so cannot die in the scriptural sense.

The original creation was very good. According to Moses in Deuteronomy 32:4, “His work is perfect.” Obviously, things are not like this any longer.

Why Do We Die Now?

If there was no animal or human death when God finished His creation and pronounced it very good, why do we die now? We see death all around us today. Something must have happened to change creation—that something was sin.

With the rebellious actions of one man, death entered God’s creation.

God placed Adam and Eve in a perfect paradise. As their Creator, He had authority over them. In His authority, God gave Adam a rule: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17).

Sometime after God declared His completed creation “very good” at the end of the sixth day, one of God’s angels, Lucifer, led a rebellion against their Creator.3 Lucifer then took on the form of a serpent and tempted Eve to eat the fruit God had forbidden. Both Adam and Eve ate it. Their actions resulted in the punishment that God had warned them about. God is holy and cannot tolerate sin in His presence. The just Creator righteously kept His promise that punishment would follow their disobedience. With the rebellious actions of one man, death entered God’s creation.

Ashamed and afraid, Adam and Eve tried to escape the consequences of their sin by making coverings of fig leaves. But by themselves, they could not cover what they had done. They needed something else to provide a covering. According to the writer of Hebrews, “Without shedding of blood, there is no remission [of sin]” (9:22). A blood sacrifice was necessary to cover their guilt before God.

To illustrate the horrible consequences of sin, God killed an animal and made coats of skin to cover Adam and Eve. We are not told what type of animal was killed, but perhaps it was something like a lamb to symbolize Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who would shed His own blood to take away our sins.

Genesis 3 also reveals that the ground was cursed. Thorns and thistles were now part of the world. Animals were cursed, the serpent more than the rest. The world was no longer perfect but sin-cursed. Suffering and death now abounded in that once-perfect creation.

What Does All This Have to Do with Me?

If it was Adam’s decision to disobey God that brought sin into the world, why do we all have to suffer punishment?

After Adam and Eve sinned and were banished from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:20–24), they began to have children. Each child inherited Adam’s sinful nature, and each child rebelled against his or her Creator. Every human is a descendant of Adam and Eve, born with the same problem: a sinful nature.

If we are honest with ourselves, we will realize that Adam is a fair representative for all of us. If a perfect person in a perfect place decided to disobey God’s rules, none of us would have done better. The Apostle Paul writes, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

The sad things that happen around us and to us are reminders that sin has consequences and that the world needs a Savior.

As children of Adam, we all inherit Adam’s sin nature. We have all, at some point, disobeyed a command from the Creator, so we all deserve to die and suffer eternal punishment in hell. We must understand that not one of us is innocent before God. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Not one of us is worthy to stand before the Creator of the universe because we would each bring a sinful, rebellious nature into His presence.

In the beginning, God sustained His creation in its perfect state. The account of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness provides a glimpse of how things might have been in the original creation. The garments of the Israelites did not wear out, nor did their feet swell for the forty years they camped in the desert (Deuteronomy 8:4). God is omnipotent and perfectly capable of sustaining and protecting His creation.

When Adam sinned, however, the Lord cursed the universe. In essence there was a change, and along with that change God began to uphold the creation in a cursed state. Suffering and death entered into His creation. The whole universe now suffers from the effects of sin (Romans 8:22).

The sad things (e.g., the death of a loved one, tsunamis that kill thousands, hurricanes that leave many dead or homeless, etc.) that happen around us and to us are reminders that sin has consequences and that the world needs a Savior.

God took pleasure in all of His creation (Revelation 4:11), but He loved people most of all. He uses the deterioration of the created universe to show us the consequences of our sin. If we did not experience the consequences of our rebellion against the Creator, we would never understand that we need salvation from our sin, and we would never receive His offer of mercy for our sin.
Most people easily recognize that there is a problem in the world. We need to realize that there is One who has overcome this problem of death and suffering—Jesus Christ.

Read the rest of this article at - https://answersingenesis.org/suffering/why-does-gods-creation-include-death-and-suffering/?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=featured-slider&utm_campaign=why-does-gods-creation-include-death-and-suffering

 

Why Would God Allow Suffering?

Why Would God Allow Suffering -The Problem of Evil - William Lane Craig

http://www.bethinking.org/suffering/i...

William Lane Craigs Website:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/P...

The audio clip was used with permission by www.reasonablefaith.org

Revelation: The Fuel Project Guide (Part 4 - The Throne Room & The Scroll)

In this part, we start exploring the Book of Revelation itself and go with John as he is transported into the throne room of heaven. We learn there that God has written his judgment of the earth on a sealed scroll which only Jesus is fit to open and proclaim.

Watch more at The Fuel Project

John Piper on forgiveness

Sermon from March 15, 2008 - This John Piper clip scared the hell out of me, made me fall to my knees, and get my relationship with God back on track. Thank You, Holy Spirit, for using Dr. Piper to show me my sin.

The full sermon can be found here:
http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-l...

What does Salvation mean? What are you saved from? Why would anyone need to be saved?

Chris White answers these questions and more in the following video.  The issue of Justice as it relates to God is one of the most ignored in terms of theological philosophy today.  Perfect justice must be a characteristic of a perfect God.  So what does that mean to you and me?  Listen on...
 

Get a Free Christianity 101 DVD http://chriswhiteministries.com/?page... it is a free data disk with 8 gigs of discipleship material, It includes teaching, sermons, audio books, answers to common questions, video, pdf's and a LOT more.

This is an updated version from a previous video I made. I made some changes to make it more theologically correct. Thanks to Arron Adkins for the editing.

Feel free to download this video and use it on your channels or any other way you see fit.

New Family Code to protect traditional family, religious values – key lawmaker - In Russia!

I'm amazed to see this, but we see Russia, the "Evil Empire" according to the Bush's, passing laws to ensure Biblical moral family values, while our government believes that what's best for our future is to promote gay marriages and un-Biblical values, that is an immoral governmental legislation.  I'm not saying that either government is moral, but it's quite embarrassing for me, an American who loved my country, to say that Russia does, on an executive level, support Biblical moral values more than my own country. 

It's more important to be obedient to God and His guidance than it is to fit into a degraded and immoral culture.

The head of the lower house committee for family issues has described a new set of legislative amendments protecting the values shared by basic religions, and inspiring young people to choose marriage over cohabitation.

MP Yelena Mizulina of the center-left Fair Russia party said that she opposed the complete rewriting of family laws, but urged changes in the existing ones so that a new Family Code matched modern reality.

The amendments will include a law protecting children against unwanted information. Mizulina said that when the current Family Code was adopted in 1995 lawmakers could not foresee shifts in information, in particular the development of the internet. Nevertheless, she said, the virtual world must live by the law, just like the real world.

Other possible changes could include outlining priorities in favor of traditional families and traditional family values. These include the concepts that have been supporting the Russian nation for over a thousand years – the union between a man and a woman, several children in a family, families uniting several generations and the deep connection between these generations.

Read the full article at - http://rt.com/politics/russia-family-code-traditions-764/

If you do not see yourself as bad then you can't see God as very good

Good stuff on how we should think on our Christian faith...

Watch the full sermon: http://jesus.to/IiwmC3
Find out more about our Malachi sermon series: http://marshill.com/malachi

If you are a Christian, God is not punishing you. Jesus was already punished in your place. But God disciplines the children whom he loves.

This clip is excerpted from the sermon "How Have You Loved Us?" the first part of our sermon series, Malachi: Living for a Legacy, preached by Pastor Mark Driscoll out of Malachi 1:1--5 at Mars Hill Downtown Bellevue and released on November 24, 2013.

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Why do the good suffer?