Tag Archives: baby died

Do Babies Go to Heaven? (Part 4)

claire grave

When my second daughter Claire died, I wanted to know that I would see her someday when I died. My wife Amy also had two ectopic pregnancies. We have three babies who died before breathing the oxygen of this earth. So I started asking myself two different questions and studied the Bible to find the answers to these two questions:

Do babies go to heaven when they die before they accept Jesus Christ as their savior?

If babies go to heaven, then what do their bodies look like?

When I try to answer these questions, I am not teaching something dogmatically. I know that much of what I am talking about is a mystery. No one passage explicitly states that babies go to heaven, but I am trying to piece together a few Scriptures which seem to present a case that children belong in heaven.

Question #1: Is Claire in heaven? I didn’t want to just feel like Claire was in heaven with Jesus because that is what seems right in my heart. I wanted to know for sure. Claire is not in heaven because she was innocent. She was conceived a sinner. She was born a sinner and died a sinner, even though she never committed a sin:

 “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5).

This might be a shocking statement to make, because when we look at babies, they seem so innocent. Yet, the Bible teaches us that the presence of any sin is enough to separate us from God. Claire was a sinner since conception. That creates a problem for those who believe that infants are conceived saved, then remain saved until they reach a certain age, at which point they become lost. Scripture teaches us that we are conceived lost and remain lost until we become saved.

Scripture doesn’t teach the moral innocence of children. Claire was saved not because she was innocent. She entered heaven in the same way that we do: she was received in the name of Christ. Claire’s salvation comes only through Christ’s work:

 “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and man, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

 Unless Claire is born again, she cannot enter God’s kingdom:

 “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

The question now arises: How could Claire be born again without consciously choosing Jesus Christ as her savior? She never breathed a breath of oxygen. She never talked. Scripture opens the door to the answer to this question through its teaching that God has a special love for children. Jesus taught us that we need to become like a child to enter God’s kingdom. Jesus also made an effort of embracing children when His disciples wanted to push them away from Him for more important matters:

“Some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, ‘Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these’” (Mt. 19:13-14).

I believe that Claire is in heaven because Jesus implies that HEAVEN is FILLED with CHILDREN. Jesus makes very clear that the kingdom of heaven belongs to children. Jesus even used children as examples of faith:

“He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, ‘Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’” (Mt. 18:2-4).

There is even a passage in Ezekiel where God expresses His anger toward the killing of children and refers to them as “My children”:

“You slaughtered My children and offered them up to idols by causing them to pass through the fire” (Ezekiel 16:21).

I believe that Claire is in heaven because God seems to have a SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP with CHILDREN. God has assigned angels to little ones here on this earth to watch over them:

“See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:10).

Clearly, this is a special treatment, suggesting there may be other acts of special treatment, including salvation apart from the normal process of confession and repentance.

I believe that Claire is in heaven because God treasures children so much that He ASSIGNS ANGELS to them. Once a human is born, it appears that there is an angelic presence in their life. Thinking through this logically, I believe that this angel would remain with this child until death if he or she accepts Jesus Christ as Savior, or the child is old enough to reject Jesus Christ and then does so. It appears that the angel is assigned to the child until a child reaches an age where he or she understands that he or she is a sinner and can comprehend what that means. It doesn’t mean that they understand everything about the Bible and Christianity, but they understand that they are a sinner in need of a savior. When does this age happen? As a daddy and also as a pastor (a daddy pastor), I have been able to interact with many young children, and it appears that there is a general age when this happens. At the earliest, a typical child will reach this age around age four, and at the latest, around age eight. Generally speaking, from age four to eight a child will reach that age of knowledge that he or she is a sinner. Up until that time an angel is assigned to this child and if the child was to die without accepting Jesus as the leader and forgiver of their sins, I believe that the angel would take them to heaven because God’s grace would extend out to them. This would be just like what happened with Lazarus when he died. An angel took him to heaven (Luke 16:22).

Assigning angels to children is definitely a special treatment. It appears that this special treatment could include salvation apart from the normal process of confession and repentance. I think this would include unborn babies and adults who have mental disabilities that prohibit them from comprehending the full message of Jesus Christ. Therefore, I wait in expectation that we will see Claire again someday when we get to heaven because of this verse.

 Jesus quoted Psalm 8:2 when He said:

            “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise.”

Infants unconsciously praise God. We all know that infants cannot sing yet. But God uses them to give worship to Himself. The inclusion of infants is significant because they would not be conscious of giving praise. It would have to be something instinctive. I believe that Claire is in heaven because INFANTS WORSHIP GOD. When I think about the millions of infants who have been aborted, I picture a heavenly choir made up of these children. These aborted children were given life in heaven by God and in return these children praise their Creator.

The most common biblical argument used to support infant salvation is David’s statement about his infant son who died:

            “I will go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23).

 It’s possible that David was saying either that he would die and go to the grave (joining his son in death) or that he would die, and join his son in heaven. I personally think David, in his agony, was consoling himself with the belief that he would one day join his dead infant son in heaven. I believe that Claire is in heaven because of DAVID’S STATEMENT about a REUNION with his DEAD SON in HEAVEN.

Because of these passages, I believe that God in His mercy and His special love for children covers them with Jesus Christ’s blood. But why doesn’t God tell us directly in Scripture that children go to heaven when they die? I believe there is one main reason for this. It might take away from us a sense of urgency to see our children come to faith in Christ.

Take note that before each of these statements in bold, I said, “I believe.” I do not know without any doubt that my three other children are in heaven. I cannot state with absolute certainty that all babies go to heaven. Instead, I believe. I believe because I have faith in a God who “works for the good of those who love Him” (Romans 8:28). I believe because I have faith that someday my convictions will be confirmed when I see my three other children in heaven. I can almost imagine meeting them face to face. What an incredible day that will be!

girls eggs

I wonder what they look like now? Were they all three girls? Will they look like our three girls now? How tall are they? Are they now adults, or will they forever look like children? Next week I will be answering the second question: What kind of body do babies receive when they get to heaven?

The Year After Our Baby Died (Part 2)

A Lesson in Surrendering to God

On March 26, 2006, our second daughter Claire, died. The article “The Day Our Baby Died” is part one in this series and explains the events surrounding the hours and days following our personal tragedy. This article will focus on the next year of our lives and some of the obstacles we had to overcome in our struggle to heal the wounds that had found their way into our hearts.

3 year old lily

3 year old Lily “reading” her Bible

One week had passed since Amy (my wife) had given birth to our precious and yet lifeless baby we named Claire. It was Sunday morning. Instead of spending the morning in the emergency room, I would be preaching. For me, it was a welcome break from reality. For the last several days, my mind constantly drifted to the death of our baby girl. My mind kept picturing the events of that day. But now I was preaching, and I could focus on delivering God’s message to my congregation. But, in the middle of my sermon, one of the nurses in our congregation opened up the back door to the worship center and interrupted me. That had never happened to me before. I was in a little shock as the nurse was trying to communicate to me that my wife needed to be rushed to the hospital as soon as possible because she had just fainted in the nursery. I just stood there in utter disbelief. “What else could go wrong, Lord?” I whispered to myself. I was in such disbelief that I asked the nurse if it was absolutely necessary to go to the hospital immediately. She shouted, “You need to get her to the emergency room right now!” I stepped down from the stage and rushed to my wife and helped her out to the parking lot into a friend’s vehicle who would drive us to the local hospital.

Once we arrived, we rushed Amy into the emergency room. Within minutes the doctor decided that she needed to have an emergency D&C (Dilation & Cutterage). Apparently, some placenta was left in her uterus after giving birth. Her womb would not heal until the placenta would leave her body. The surgery took longer than expected. The doctor had a difficult time cutting away at the placenta. During the post operation meeting, the doctor kept telling me that Amy had lost a lot of blood. He was extremely concerned about how much blood she had lost. But as far as the doctor was concerned, he had gotten all of the unwanted tissue from Amy’s womb. She needed rest so that the physical healing would run its course and she could go home that same day. But little did we know that she would not be going home that day. She had lost too much blood, and her body would respond in a devastating manner.

We have not told many people this, but eight years have given us time to work through some of the issues of these events. Most people just hear the details of how we lost a baby, and they hurt for us, but one of the reasons I want to write about it now is to show you the physical, emotional, and spiritual strength of my wife Amy. The night after the surgery, there were moments when I was worried that my wife was going to die. I am not overstating this. She was afraid that she was going to die also. She truly thought that she was going to fall asleep and not wake up. Even the hospital staff told us they had a team on standby just for her and if she felt like she was fading, that we should alert them immediately.  We both had a terrible feeling that this nightmare was just going to get worse before it got better. Knowing how she felt, I stayed awake the entire night, sitting beside her bed, watching her blood pressure to make sure that it was steadily increasing. But it wasn’t. Several different times, it dropped down to about 50 over 25. Those of you who understand those numbers realize that is deathly low. That night, my wife and I could feel “the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23:4). But we were comforted by the fact that God was with us.  I read her some Psalms. We could feel God’s overwhelming presence whispering to us that we would get through this night. And we did. But it was the longest night of our lives.

Day by day my wife recovered. But something still didn’t seem right. After visiting a new doctor, the doctor discovered that her uterus had sealed shut with scar tissue. The doctor then proceeded to give us some devastating news. She said, “I am sorry to inform you that many women who have what you have are not able to conceive and have any children.” My heart sank below my stomach. As if that news wasn’t crushing enough, the doctor also told us that she discovered through some of the testing that Amy only had one working fallopian tube. We walked out of that doctor’s office with more emotional pain than we could comprehend at the time.  Not only did we lose our baby but we would likely not have another.  It felt like an invisible weight was sitting on top of us. The doctor tried to give us some hope by stating that she could perform another surgery to try and “fix things,” but I felt like so much damage had already been done that the odds of us having another child were slim to none. We took her advice and scheduled another surgery.

We knew that this was going to be a hard year for us. We just didn’t know that it would be this difficult.  In the church I was pastoring at the time, my wife was one of nine different women in our church that year that was pregnant. We were the only ones who did not get to welcome our child into the world. It was a church of a couple hundred people, a family type of church where everyone knew everyone and often knew everything about everyone.

A few months after losing Claire, the words “Why me?” started to settle into my mind. Out of the nine couples in our church, why were we the ones who lost the baby? Why did God allow this to happen to me? I wondered why He would take away a baby from us that would be brought up in a Christian family with parents who would love their children, and yet He would give many babies to families that neglect and even abuse their children. It didn’t make sense to me, and I have to admit that I dealt with bitterness every time I thought about those two words, “Why me?” It didn’t seem fair to me that God would put our little family through this. We could not find the answer, and that made me secretly angry at God. I was never really mad at anyone else. I would never dare to share with other people that I was upset at God, but I secretly viewed God as Someone who…

 

…was punishing me for something I had done in the past.

 

…didn’t care enough to give us another baby.

 

…was too busy to listen to us and grant us our request.

 

I knew that all of these statements were not true theologically, but it seemed that I was powerless to keep them from overwhelming my thoughts. And then one day it hit me like a ton of bricks: I NEED TO SURRENDER MY WILL TO GOD! There is often a mystery as to why God allows certain things to happen. I do not know why God allowed baby Claire to die, but I do believe that God did not directly kill little baby Claire. God knew that we needed to work through our issues so that we could have complete reconciliation with Him after this tragedy struck us so severely. Allow me to explain why and how I needed to surrender my will to God.

I started to surrender my will to God by asking myself the right questions. When I started to ask myself the right questions, healing started to take place in my heart. Instead of asking, “Why me?” which was filled with a bitter spirit towards God, I started to ask:

 

“Why not me?” and “If not me, who then?”

 

When I looked at the other eight pregnant couples in our church, I realized that I would have never wanted them to go through what we went through. If I was given the opportunity to trade places with them and if Claire would live, but then one of the other babies needed to die, I just couldn’t even allow my mind to venture down that philosophical path of transferring tragedies. Somehow, realizing that I would never want someone else to go through what I went through with losing Claire helped me surrender my will to God and it helped my heart heal from the pain of losing a daughter. I comforted myself with the thought that maybe, just maybe, our character was strong enough for God to choose to take us down this path of suffering.

Even though I was trying to heal by asking the right questions, the words of the doctor still rang in my ears from the first moment I heard them. “I am sorry to inform you that many women who have what you have are not able to conceive and have any children.” The possibility of a future without any more children devastated our hearts. That was in God’s control, and it seemed like He was not sure if He wanted us to have any more children. This was the hardest reality to accept. We had one daughter at the time. The big question was: “Will she be an only child or will God someday open up Amy’s womb again so that she can have more children to love?”

We can realize a complete surrender towards God for the tragedies that happen in our life when…

 

…we relieve ourselves from a desperate desire to change the past.

 

…we accept the present.

 

…we are open to an unknown future.

 

I surrendered my will to God by relieving myself from a desperate desire to change the past. Claire is gone and we will never be with her this side of heaven. There is nothing we can do to change that. She is in heaven. We had to deal with that fact. So many people never experience true healing because they are stuck in the past. Their minds journey to the past and remain there for long periods of time, as if it is possible to live there. You must say goodbye to the past and turn it over to God. It is history. His-story. This life we are living is in reality God’s story and what is in the past is already written and cannot be changed. There is no edited version that happens in God’s story. It was not a mistake. It was purposed. This is where our Christian faith comes in. Our belief that God is sovereign in the good times and bad times allows us to release that which we cannot change. And this same God who is in control of everything says that He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). In the words of one of the most popular animated movies today, “Let it go…”  The singer constantly repeats those three simple words. In the same way, during times of healing, we have to constantly and consistently continue to believe that God has our best interests in mind and that someday He will work it all for His good (Romans 8:28).

I also surrendered my will to God by accepting the present. Instead of sulking about not being pregnant with another child, we accepted the fact that we had only one child: a healthy, beautiful girl. We decided to pour our lives into her, appreciating every moment because we acknowledged that Lily might be our only child…ever. We stopped doing the math, thinking, “Okay, if we get pregnant right now, how many years will there be in between the two kids?” We thanked God for the gift He gave us in Lily. We realized that He didn’t have to give us this child. Some couples never have the opportunity to experience the joy of having even one child. We were fortunate enough to have one child. This helped us realize what a gift every child is and we believe we have appreciated our children more because of that.

I finally surrendered my will to God by being open to an unknown future. This took me a couple years. This was the hardest area in my life to surrender to God. I wanted my wife to get pregnant again so badly that it was one of the predominate thoughts I would have throughout the day. The desire to have another child in the future would consume my thoughts. The words we would learn over the next year of our lives were, “just wait.” Most humans are not good at waiting. We want to be able to fix things immediately when they go wrong. I was forced to wait and it was not up to me. When people go through tragedies, God always whispers into their ears, “just wait.” When someone is told that they have cancer, they have to “just wait” on an unknown future. Will the cancer victim live 20 more days, 20 more months, or 20 more years? “Just waiting” is one of the hardest things a human has to do. When someone is told, “I want a divorce,” they have to “just wait” on an unknown future. Will my spouse change his mind and return to me? How long will I feel this aching knot in my stomach? How will my children be affected by this? All of these questions are thrown under the umbrella of the unknown. We despise not knowing. And when we spend too much of our lives under the umbrella of the unknown, we can develop a bitter spirit towards God because our lives are not turning out the way that we wanted them to turn out.

The road to giving God control over one’s future is not always easily traveled. When we were trying to get pregnant, every month seemed to be a straining and stressful time. Every month that would go by without seeing a positive pregnancy test was an added burden to us.

August, 2006…           not pregnant.

September, 2006…     not pregnant.

October, 2006…         not pregnant.

November, 2006…     not pregnant.

December, 2006…      not pregnant.

January, 2007…          not pregnant.

February, 2007…        not pregnant.

March, 2007…            not pregnant.

April, 2007…               not pregnant.

May, 2007…                not pregnant.

June, 2007…               not pregnant.

July, 2007…                pregnant!

 

YES! We became pregnant one year and several months after losing Claire. But instead of being filled with unspeakable joy and excitement about this new little one, Amy was once again rushed to the emergency room because she started to experience pain in her abdomen. We were indeed pregnant again, but it was an ectopic pregnancy, which means the baby was growing in her fallopian tube and would not survive. That was not good news. Amy had only one good fallopian tube and it would now likely be removed. We were devastated. Surely God was closing the door for us to have any more children. Would Lily be our only child?

 

Click here to continue with part 3.