Posted on 04/29/2014 2:55:24 PM PDT by NYer
Washington, DC (LiveActionNews) — Heaven is for Real is a new movie based on a book by pastor and father Todd Burpo. Burpo wrote the book after his 4-year-old son Colton had a near-death experience that lead to a heavenly encounter. After Colton recovered, he began telling his parents remarkable stories, like meeting the sister he never knew in heaven. Although Colton had no knowledge of his mom’s miscarriage, he told his parents he met a girl who told him she died in his mother’s tummy. The bestselling book and film have inspired countless people, giving them hope that heaven is a real place.
The subject of heaven has come up a number of times as I’ve worked in the pro-life movement. The two questions that I’ve heard asked by post-abortive moms and moms considering abortion are: 1) Do aborted babies go to heaven? and 2) If aborted babies will go right to heaven, why is it wrong to abort them?
Let’s start with the first question. Do aborted babies go to heaven? Pastor Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill church has a great article titled “What happens to babies when they die.” In the article, Mark addresses the pain his family has faced through his wife’s miscarriage. He says the eternal fate of unborn children and infants is a mystery that has always haunted the church. He shares quotes from respected Bible teachers who believe that unborn children and infants go straight to heaven after death because they’ve not made decisions about following God or performed good or evil acts. Driscoll shares a quote from former Bible teacher Charles Spurgeon: “I cannot conceive it possible of him [Jesus] as the loving and tender one, that when he shall sit to judge all nations, he should put the little ones on the left hand, and should banish them for ever from his presence.”
Pastor John Piper, an outspoken pro-life minister and adoptive father, wrote an article on infants’ eternal future. He believes that babies, like all humans, are brought into the world with a sinful nature because of the original sin of Adam and Eve. However, he believes that God has a way to cover their sin even before they are born. Piper wrote: “The way I see it is that God ordains, for his own wise purposes, that at the judgment day all the children who died in infancy will be covered by the blood of Jesus. And they will come to faith, either in heaven immediately or later in the resurrection. And God will not condemn them because he wants to manifest openly and publicly that he does not condemn those who did not have the mental capacities to put their faith in him.”
Question #2: If aborted babies will go right to heaven, why is it wrong to abort them? I had a woman ask me this in front of an abortion clinic once. Some women fear bringing their unborn babies into a world of chaos and confusion. They have emotional issues or financial problems, and they don’t think they can afford another child. Some people who believe in heaven justify their choice to abort because they think their baby will be in a “better place.”
Randy Alcorn is the founder and director of Eternal Perspectives Ministry. He is also the author of the book Why Pro-Life and Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Questions. In a video interview, Alcorn directly answers the question of whether aborted children are better off because they’ll go straight to heaven. Alcorn has sadly been asked this question by two pastors, who asked him, “Why are you trying to do all this stuff to prevent abortions? ‘Children are better off dying’, they said. ‘They’re going to be in Heaven forever.’” Alcorn was deeply bothered by that question and shares his honest thoughts on the subject here.
Regardless of what you believe, the possibility of an afterlife is a thought worth pondering. As for me, I believe that children go into the arms of a loving and gracious heavenly Father, although I know that aborting them is not an acceptable way to get them there faster. If it isn’t right to take the life of a born child outside the womb, it shouldn’t be right to do the same for one inside the womb.
I am convinced that heaven is a glorious place. It’s comforting to know their is a home for every child who passes from this world to the next.
LifeNews Note: Christinia Martin writes for Live Action News. Martin has been a pro-life voice for eight years. Her work began after her mother confessed she paid a doctor to abort her, but walked out before he could. Knowing she was saved from death, she wanted to fight for others.
Everyone is born with the stain of Adam and Eve’s Original Sin on their soul.
The only good thing that comes out of abortions is that heaven is growing by leaps and bounds.
Colton said there were lots of babies in heaven, including a sister he didn’t know he had. Next question is what will happen to the mother’s that have the abortion or those doing the abortion?
The answer is NO, they do not.
If you are recoiling in disgust and red-faced rage at this point, I would urge you to humble yourself and receive instruction, as this is a nuanced yet incredibly important bit of theology – and a lesson in logic. When you’re done reading it, I guarantee you will have learned something. If you are Catholic, you will see how shallow and inadequate your catechesis has been, and if you are Protestant you will see how much you are missing.
1. The Church teaches and has taught from day one that baptism is essential for salvation. This comes straight from Our Lord Himself:
He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.
Mark 16:16
This is repeated throughout the four Gospels and in the epistles. Baptism, baptism, baptism. Go forth and BAPTIZE. Don’t just talk. BAPTIZE everyone you possibly can. With water. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. In fact, baptism is so non-negotiably essential that ANYONE can baptize – even a non-Christian. As long as the baptism is with water, and the form is correct, meaning in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit), then an atheist could baptize. A musloid could baptize. A Jew could baptize. A Hindu could baptize.
(*The notable and particularly relevant caveat to this is if the baptizer says the right words, but consciously means something completely different by the words “Father”, “Son” and “Holy Ghost”. I’m talking about the cult of Mormonism here. Did you know that Mormons teach and believe that God the Father is one of many “gods” who came from another planet and just happens to be the “god” of this particular planet, and that “God the Son” was once a non-divine mortal man, and that satan was his brother, and that the man they call “Jesus” at some point achieved divinity and was made the god of this world? Further, Mormons teach that when they die that they will also become gods and be given their own “celestial kingdoms” to rule. Mormons also teach that the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost are two completely separate and distinct beings.
... Oh, and for the record, Obama is not baptized either. One of the huge selling points of Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity “church” is the fact that he DOES NOT baptize muslims. Thus, muslims who are engaging in the war tactic of KITHMAN, that is pretending to be non-muslim while infiltrating a culture for stealth jihad, flock to Wright’s “church” because they can pose as Christians while avoiding the sacrament of Baptism. If you don’t believe me, just call Trinity and ask them yourself. Their number is (773) 962-5650. Be polite.
2. What is heaven? Heaven is nothing less than indwelling INSIDE the Trinity, contemplating the Trinity for all eternity. This is hard to understand from the “outside”, but we know that this is the case from the words of Our Lord Himself:
That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.
John 17:21
This is called “the Beatific Vision”, which could perhaps be simplistically stated as “seeing and contemplating God from the inside.”
3. Who DESERVES the Beatific Vision as a mere corollary to their existence? Nobody. Not even the Angels. The Angels had to choose to serve God even before the creation of the world. They were created by God, and then shown the plan of Salvation History before the Big Bang (Let There Be Light). Those who chose to serve God were granted the Beatific Vision. Those who chose not to serve God, specifically the Second Person, the Divine Man, Whom they resented as being “beneath them”, were cast out of heaven, never having seen the Beatific Vision, and never to see it. Satan and demons are real.
Even the Blessed Virgin Mary doesn’t DESERVE the Beatific Vision merely as a corollary to her existence. She says so in her Magnificat:
And Mary said: My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. Because He hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because He that is mighty, hath done great things to me;and holy is His name. And His mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear Him.
Luke 1:46-50
Given these realities, does an unborn baby DESERVE the Beatific Vision? The answer is obviously “no”. This is the crux of the entire question, and the poison heresy of Modernism, which has infused nearly everything today, is why people simply cannot grasp this point. The heresy of Modernism, which is the driving force of the post-Conciliar Church, says that religion is man’s quest for God – that modern man is doing God a favor by creating out of the mind of man various and sundry ways of “encountering” God. This is a lie. Religion – True Religion, of which there is only one – is God’s quest for man. God is the actor, and His actions and interactions with humanity are real, concrete events that are in no way dependent upon or merited by us. Oh, God most assuredly loves religion – the religion which comes from Him and is His: the Catholic Church.
If you fall for the Modernist heresy, man is the supreme being and “god” is the subordinated, dependent subject. Therefore, any “worship” experience MUST be centered around the people, and specifically how the people FEEL, because the first movement is the movement of the people. If nobody FEELS anything, then nothing happened. Therefore, with the human person being elevated to the position of primacy, suddenly “god” is dependent upon us and “owes” us heaven so that He can exist. Do you see how subtle and utterly satanic Modernism is?
4. But an unborn baby (Or even a born and yet unbaptized baby) has committed no personal sin. So where do they go? The answer is, they go to a “place” (for lack of a better word) called Limbo, specifically The Limbo of the Innocents. There is another Limbo called the Limbo of the Fathers which was filled with the righteous people who died on earth before Christ opened the gates of heaven on Calvary. The Limbo of the Fathers no longer exists – Christ emptied it while He was in the tomb. This event is called “The Harrowing of Hell”.
At this point many are screaming, “BUT THAT ISN’T IN THE BIBLE!”
Oh, yes it is. If you bother to READ IT. And again, from the lips of Our Lord, no less:
And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell.
Luke 16:22
Abraham’s Bosom is NOT the Beatific Vision. When Our Lord spoke these words, the Gates of Heaven were yet closed because He had not yet opened them. Abraham’s Bosom was the Limbo of the Fathers.
The proof for the Limbo of the Innocents actually comes from the very first scripture I quoted above:
He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.
Mark 16:16
Read that VERY carefully. Note that the second phrase does NOT tie non-baptism to condemnation. Condemnation (hell) is for those who reject Christ, but the baptismal state is left open. Note that in the first phrase that baptism is only tied to the Beatific Vision. What does this tell us? It tells us first that a person MUST be baptized in order to reach the Beatific Vision. It also tells us that those who die unbaptized and yet without any personal sin (which can only mean babies, both pre-born and born, and children who have not reached the age of reason, and therefore cannot be guilty of personal sin) DO NOT GO TO THE HELL OF THE DAMNED.
Makes sense, huh? But you have to start from the true premise that NOBODY deserves the Beatific Vision.
So, the “place” these innocent yet unbaptized babies and children go is the Limbo of the Innocents. The Limbo of the Innocents is a “place” wherein these souls experience MAXIMUM NATURAL HAPPINESS, but do not experience the SUPERNATURAL happiness of the Beatific Vision.
Let’s think about this. Maximum natural happiness. Guys, you have never, ever experienced anything even close to maximum natural happiness. In fact, if you were given the gift of five seconds of maximum natural happiness, I’ll bet that you would swear up and down that you had just seen heaven and that there is no way that there could be anything better. You would be wrong. Heaven, the Beatific Vision, is so far above Limbo that Limbo is considered to be at the edge of hell by comparison, but not just by comparison, but it is IN FACT within the domain of hell simply because it is outside the Beatific Vision. But it is still better than anything you have ever experienced.
5. Now, we have to answer the question, “Why can’t unbaptized babies go straight to heaven?”
It is a great question, with a great answer. On the surface it sounds “unfair” that a baby, especially a baby that was murdered in cold blood by its own mother, couldn’t go straight to heaven, especially when we consider the fact that the mother could sacramentally confess her sin and die in a state of grace and achieve the Beatific Vision herself.
Boo! Not fair, the critics say.
Again, let’s think this through. WHAT IF all aborted babies went straight to heaven? How would the logical truth table from that false premise play out? The woman who sent the email at the top of this essay has already showed you.
If all aborted babies are GUARANTEED heaven, but a born person who lives to the age of reason runs the risk of living a life wherein they reject Christ and end up in hell, wouldn’t it be an act of charity and mercy for every mother everywhere to abort every child they conceive so that the child will absolutely, positively spend all of eternity enjoying the Beatific Vision?
Let’s put a context to it. Let’s say a poor woman who lives in an urban slum gets pregnant. She looks around and sees a terrible environment. She knows that her child will be raised fatherless. She knows that the odds of her child escaping the grasp of the gangs and the Marxist overlords are very slim. What should she do? If all aborted babies go to heaven, then the young mother should kill the child in utero, thus guaranteeing her child heaven and sparing it the risk of life in this world and thus the high risk of being lost to hell. In fact, it would be selfish and uncharitable for her NOT to abort the child….
Do you see what happens when we try to form a logical truth table off of a false premise? We easily end up with abortion as a charitable act of mercy. And satan SQUEALS with delight.
6. Now the question must be answered, “Why SHOULD the young mother allow her child to be born even with the high risk of the child eventually being lost to hell?”
The answer comes from Lesson Number One in the Catechism:
Q: Why did God make you?
A: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.
Every person is made by God with the desired end of the Beatific Vision. Every. Single. Person. Period.
Religion, namely the Catholic Church, is the conduit through which God is desperately chasing after every person in order to make *possible* this unfathomable result. If the mother aborts the baby, the baby can never see the Beatific Vision, which is what God created the child for, and nothing less. In order to achieve the Beatific Vision, a person must be born and baptized, and die in a state of grace. Because remember, NOBODY deserves the Beatific Vision. Nobody.
No matter how long the odds seem, that baby is born with the Beatific Vision within grasp. Human beings CAN NEVER deprive a child of that chance, and that is precisely what abortion does.
And Jesus beholding, said to them: With men this is impossible: but with God all things are possible.
Matthew 19:26
7. What about miscarriages?
True miscarriages and stillbirths are God’s will, and remember, those babies, like the aborted babies, are granted maximum natural happiness in the Limbo of the Innocents. We must trust God in these matters. It is possible that God in His omniscience and Divine Providence allows miscarriages and stillbirths in order to bring about the best possible outcome for the child. This is a very difficult idea to face, but again, it comes straight from Our Lord Himself:
The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of Him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man shall be betrayed: it were better for him, if that man had not been born.
Matthew 26:24
It would have been better for Judas Iscariot to have been miscarried because then he would have the maximum natural happiness of the Limbo of the Innocents. Instead, Judas betrayed Our Lord, doubted His mercy and never sought forgiveness and instead committed suicide, thus choosing the hell of the damned for all eternity.
But remember, ONLY GOD can make that call. No man can ever, ever play God and induce miscarriage, which is to say MURDER a pre-born child.
8. Why have I never heard anything about any of this up until now?
First, if you are Catholic and under the age of 60 or so, it is because the Church has been infiltrated by Marxist-homosexualists tasked with destroying the Church from the inside. Their father, satan, wants to convince as many people as possible that abortion is “morally neutral” or “contingent on the circumstances”. Beyond that, satan actually does want people to believe that aborted babies go to heaven so that eventually he can convince people that abortion can be a MORAL GOOD (like the woman above). Satan gets two things out of this.
A.) He maximizes the number of people who murder their own children and then DO NOT REPENT, thus dying in mortal sin and going to hell.
B.) The second thing satan achieves is keeping as many human beings from achieving that which he himself rejected and RAGES against: The Beatific Vision. Satan is willing to compromise and cut his losses. He’ll take the baby going to the Limbo of the Innocents, never seeing the Beatific Vision PLUS the damnation of the unrepentant mother AND the damnation of the apostate priests, nuns and clergy who told the woman that her abortion wasn’t a sin because “the baby is in heaven.” Why? Because NONE of those people is in heaven, and that is what satan wants.
Well Colton also said the Holy Spirit is bluish, and that heaven is a fortress protected by angels carrying swords and arrows so Satan couldn’t sneak in also.
If they are among the elect...just like all humans who grow to adults.
With that logic, every believer should welcome abortion. The Scriptures do not support this view, however. Only the elect of any age will be raised and granted the home with Christ. Killing someone early does not raise, nor lower, their likelihood of being among the elect.
Why is it wrong to murder anyone? I cannot understand why some people do not understand abortion is murder. It is that simple.
The movie was great. When you watch it, please keep in mind that it is told through the eyes of a very precocious 4 year old to faithful Christians and produced by faithful Christians. There are parts that are a bit "smaltzy" but it is really well done. The best part for me was that there were no villains, just good people trying to do the best they could in very difficult and trying circumstances.
That would be your own definition.
Scripture teaches the opposite. All are born into sin.
With all due respect, this is nonsense. The thief on the cross was not "baptized". John the Baptist was not baptized. Moses was not baptized, nor David, nor Isaiah. Are we to understand that all of these folks are excluded from heaven?
We are all theologians on some level, for we all have "...a system of religious beliefs or ideas..."
That said, scripturally we are conceived in sin, and later born into sin as well.
Psalm 51:5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
We are conceived into condemnation. We are by nature, objects of God's Wrath.
John 3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
While your proposition that an unborn babe cannot sin is possibly true, it makes no matter, for we were all in Adam when he sinned, thus we all sinned. We die, because we are in Adam, sinners. Even before the law was given, people died.
Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
That said, however, the condition of death of believer's children may be different. 2 Samuel 12:23, Acts 16:31. Many suppose that underage children are covered by a covenant relationship of the Parent with God (aka Bar Mitzvah), others suppose ALL children are covered by a special dispensation of God. Problem is, we don't know for sure. I hold the first, but reject the second, on logical grounds and scriptural understanding, but one can't be dogmatically sure either way.
Apparently She is not familiar with the “Baptism of desire”
bookmarked
Possibly. A more common interpretation is that we must maintain a simple faith in Jesus Christ, accepting his promises as true, just as a child believes a Parent.
I don’t think the Catholic catechism teaches about Limbo anymore.
Jesus never said to the thief that he would be in heaven, but rather “paradise”. After Jesus rose from the dead he said “I have not yet ascended to the father” which indicates the “paradise” he was in that day is not one and the same as heaven.
Are the mothers that have abortions any different from adulterers or fornicators or thieves or gossips?
Are they any less deserving of and able to receive God's grace.
Is God's grace available to all? Is his grace sufficient for all?
Definitely hard questions.
But we can’t deny that this world is steeped in sin. We live with the consequences of sin every day. A mother’s womb does not protect one from sin. Age does not protect one from sin. I think what Jesus meant when he said “The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” He was referring to childlike faith, those who trust like a child that He cares for them and died for them.
I believe that little babies can have faith through baptism. I believe that the unborn, even, can have faith through our prayers. It is faith that saves, nothing else. Aborting a little baby is never an excuse to send them to a better place. What a heinous excuse. And for those who think there is an age of reason where faith becomes valid, who are we to judge a God who raises people from the dead and sent his Son for us what He can and cannot work in a little infant’s heart? No where in the Bible does it say that there is an age where faith is “valid”.
As the Psalm says “I was sinful from the time my mother conceived me”. Romans tells us “The wages of sin is death”.
God only made 2 people, Adam and Even, the rest of us were conceived in sin (Psalm 51:5) and born of natural descent (John 1:13). If God made you, he made you sinful, which is logically untenable. The notion that "God made me this way" is the source of much error today.
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