The NXR Podcast - September 15, 2022


QUESTIONS - What Do Reformed Baptists Believe About Children Who Die In Infancy？

Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Jamie White Joseph Boot Gary DeMar Mary Adam Joel Webin Westminster Presbyterian Jesus Christ Tor Coffee David
DAILY TRUTH - Faithful Ministry Is Slow BONUS - Q&A from Truth Matters Conference ｜ Buffalo NY ｜ August 18-20, 2022

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

156.51

Word count

1,229

Sentence count

82

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the concept of moral innocence in infants and toddlers. Is it possible God regenerates some infants? Is it even possible for kids to go to heaven before they reach the age of accountability? And if so, what role does innocence play in God's plan for our lives?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
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00:00:21 Tor Coffee from Tor Coffee. Is it possible God regenerates some infants? Great question.
00:00:26 I'm Baptist, but don't totally buy Age of Accountability. Good. You shouldn't buy it.
00:00:32 But also trust God's mercy for kids. What do you think? Absolutely. I believe John the Baptist was
00:00:39 regenerate in the womb. He leapt in his mother's womb at the coming of Mary and Jesus in Mary's 0.57
00:00:46 womb. So that, I believe, would be an example. But more importantly than that, if you are 0.94
00:00:53 confessionally Baptist or confessionally Presbyterian on either side of the aisle,
00:00:58 meaning you're 1689 or Westminster, then by virtue of being confessional, you must believe
00:01:05 that there are occasions of regenerate infants. Because that's the position, the reformed position
00:01:12 when it comes to those children who tragically die in infancy. What happens to children who die
00:01:18 infancy. There's some theology that gets into the age of accountability. Again, there are multiple
00:01:25 wide spectrum. And so people have different sub points and nuances and things like that. So some
00:01:31 people feel misrepresented by this, but I'm just giving a generalization. There are some who hold
00:01:36 to an age of accountability and they believe that before a child gets to that age of accountability,
00:01:40 if they die in their youth as an infant or a toddler, a young child before reaching the age
00:01:45 accountability, they go to heaven. But if you press them on why, they say they go to heaven
00:01:50 because they're innocent, but not because they have a presence of the imputed righteousness of
00:01:59 Christ. As far as I can tell biblically, nobody gets into heaven from innocence. You need the
00:02:06 presence of righteousness and not just any righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ,
00:02:11 which comes through faith. And faith, as Bible-believing Christians, we believe that faith
00:02:18 follows regeneration. So God gives you, first, he causes you to become a new creature in Christ
00:02:22 Jesus and gives you a new heart. And then with that new heart, he gives you the gift of faith,
00:02:27 to trust in Jesus. And through faith in Jesus, you have union with him by the Holy Spirit,
00:02:32 and his righteousness is imputed to your account, which is why you can enjoy eternal covenant and
00:02:39 relationship and community with the triune God because you are righteous. You can stand before
00:02:44 a thrice holy God and not be consumed by our God who is a consuming fire because you are clothed
00:02:51 in the spotless righteous garments of Jesus Christ. Apart from that, innocence doesn't get you
00:02:57 to heaven. And furthermore, the Bible clearly teaches that people are not born innocent.
00:03:03 This idea that you're born innocent until you hit an age of accountability. And then once
00:03:06 that's that's really basic i mean if you really get to under the surface of that what you're
00:03:12 saying is that people are born morally guiltless before god but eventually at a certain point in
00:03:19 their life at a certain age whether it's two years old or three years old or four years old
00:03:23 or five years old at a certain age they then become guilty and once they become guilty the
00:03:30 only hope from for them at that point from that point on is they then must in order to to deal
00:03:36 with that guilt, they must receive through faith, the righteousness of Christ. But up until they
00:03:41 become guilty, they don't need the righteousness of Christ because they're innocent. Okay. What
00:03:49 do you do with the, the doctrine of total depravity? David said, in sin, did my mother
00:03:57 conceive me from conception, right? We, we believe that because of the curse of sin,
00:04:03 that Adam and all his posterity were born under sin, born with sinful natures, sinful hearts,
00:04:12 born in enmity toward God. So in order to embrace the age of accountability idea,
00:04:19 one, you would have to say that God will lower his standard from righteousness to mere innocence.
00:04:26 And then the heart, that's already impossible to biblically argue, but even more impossible,
00:04:31 you would have to argue that there is such a thing as moral innocence in young children or
00:04:35 infants or toddlers. Which to argue that, you would have to say that people are not actually
00:04:40 born into sin. People are not born totally depraved with the sin nature. You'd have to say
00:04:45 that that toddler who's throwing a fit is doing so innocently. And the only people who can hold
00:04:53 this position, I guess, are guys who never had a toddler. But that's a ridiculous position. 0.99
00:04:59 The alternative is people are born with a sin nature, that all people, all have fallen 0.95
00:05:05 short of the glory of God, and they don't fall once they reach a certain age at four
00:05:09 or five, but all from birth have fallen in Adam and have a sin nature, are not innocent.
00:05:17 They bear moral guilt before God, and therefore the only way to enter the kingdom of God,
00:05:24 John chapter 3, you must be born again. And God sovereignly causes people to be born again by
00:05:32 grace, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and gives to them the gifts of faith and repentance. So the
00:05:38 reformed position, whether you're 1689 Baptist or Westminster Presbyterian, is that regenerate
00:05:45 infants who die in infancy go to heaven. Regenerate infants who die in infancy go to heaven. And not
00:05:54 all infants who die in infancy are regenerate. Some have held that position that any child who
00:06:00 dies in infancy is regenerate, that we can count on God that he caused them to be born again,
00:06:07 to be regenerate. So some would say all children who die young were regenerate. And then some would
00:06:14 say for those who die in infancy, just like those who die in adulthood, God sovereignly saves some
00:06:22 and not others. And so, yeah, that would be my answer to that question. Big news. Really big
00:06:30 news. Our next Right Response Conference is in the works. We've got a number of things already
00:06:36 lined up and organized. This is what we've got so far. The whole conference, three days long
00:06:42 on post-millennialism and theonomy. And the speakers, Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot,
00:06:50 Gary DeMar, and of course, yours truly, Pastor Joel Webben.
00:06:53 We've got a great lineup.
00:06:55 We've got great topics.
00:06:56 If you want to find out dates and location and registration and anything else, go and
00:07:03 visit our website, rightresponseconference.com, rightresponseconference.com.
00:07:10 Big news, really big news.
00:07:13 Our next Right Response Conference is in the works.
00:07:16 We've got a number of things already lined up and organized.
00:07:19 This is what we've got so far.
00:07:21 The whole conference, three days long on post-millennialism and theonomy.
00:07:26 And the speakers, Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Gary DeMar, and of course, yours truly,
00:07:34 Pastor Joel Webin.
00:07:35 We've got a great lineup.
00:07:37 We've got great topics.
00:07:38 If you want to find out dates and location and registration and anything else, go and
00:07:44 visit our website.
00:07:45 right response conference.com right response conference.com