[Ottofire]

Something that was featured on the show Wretched the other day...

Have a blessed day Otto

[Ottofire]

Great way of messing up the title, Otto...

Oh well...

[Campion]

This view is held by Anglicans and Episcopalians and some reformed groups. The Roman Catholic Church essentially teaches the same thing, that the removal of sin depends on the sacrament of infant baptism; without infant baptism--without baptism--no child can be saved ... So the answer of the sacramentalists is the baptized babies are saved and the unbaptized babies aren't.

This is untrue, and is the usual strawman misrepresentation of Catholicism you can expect from MacArthur.

Baptized babies are saved, period.

The condition of unbaptized babies is a matter of theological speculation, because the Deposit of Faith does not settle the matter definitively. The Catechism says:

1261 As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them," allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.

[epow]

Do you have the second part of the sermon which John referred to several times? If you do please post it.

[Taggart_D]

ping

[topcat54]

If you survey reformed Calvinistic literature over 450 years since Calvin, you'll find that the vast majority of all the writers believe that all infants who die are taken to heaven.

Unlike the sentimentalism of Pastor MacArthur, the Reformed confessions teach only that which can be deduced from Scripture, namely:

Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who works when, and where, and how He pleases: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word. (Westminster Confession of Faith, X:3)

Since we are to judge of the will of God from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace in which they, together with the parents, are comprehended, godly parents have no reason to doubt of the election and salvation of their children whom it pleaseth God to call out of this life in their infancy (Canons of Dordt, I:17).

Salvation depends on God's sovereign election; not age, “accountability,” race, or social status. The children of believers enjoy a special place in God's household because they are “holy” (1 Cor. 7:14). “I will be a God to you and to you children after you.”

It is presumptuous of God's sovereign good pleasure to suggest to an unbeliever that their child who has died is in heaven. That is the worst form of playing God.