Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: bnr-fos!bmers58!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Translation (and still "Re: I Corinthians 7:1") Message-ID: Date: 24 Nov 89 03:32:24 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 83 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article bunker!garys@decvax.uucp (Gary M. Samuelson) writes: >Babies don't need to be saved. "Take heed that ye despise not one of these >little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always >behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. (Mt 18:10)" You cannot prove that babies do not need to be saved with this passage. If you believe that this passage is referring to all babies, since this passage says that their angels ALWAYS behold the face of God, and since ALWAYS has no end, then no person would ever die unsaved. Since the Scriptures declare that, in the end, there will be more unsaved people than saved people, we know that this cannot be a correct interpretation. This passage, like all other passages, must be taken in context. A few verses earlier Jesus defines which little children He is referring to. He uses the phrase "these little children which believe in me". The verse you quote is saying that a baby who believes in Him will never lose his salvation. It is not, however, saying that all little children believe in Him. A search through the rest of the Bible reveals that there are no Scriptures whatsoever which declare that babies need not be saved. There are, on the other hand, plenty of Scriptures that declare babies to be just as sinful as anyone else. Romans 3:23 says "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;". The word "all" is very significant here. If you are correct then babies are not included in the term "all". This would leave us with the conclusion that babies are not people. I think we would agree that this is an obviously incorrect conclusion, yet it is what your position mandates. Psalm 51:5 says "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.". This Scripture is telling me that God considered me to be a sinner already at the moment in which I was conceived. This occurred when I was younger than what most people would refer to as a baby. Since I know that I was saved much later than that, I know that I must, therefore, have been unsaved as a baby. I would like to draw your attention to a passage in Genesis which is too long to quote here. I shall recount the story and trust that this approach will suffice. It is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The evening before God estroyed both of these cities He told Abraham what He planned to do. Abraham, knowing that his nephew Lot lived there, began to plead for the preservation of those cities. The end result of this pleading was that God promised that He would not destroy them if there were only ten righteous people in them. We know that God did destroy those cities after forcing Lot, his wife, and their two daughters to leave. If babies do not need to be saved then there could not have been more than ten babies in those two rather large cities. This is so improbable that it defies acceptance. Another equivalent passage that demonstrates the same truth is that of the flood. The Scriptures are very clear that all those whom God viewed as righteous, i.e. all those who were saved, were on the arc. The only occupants of the arc were Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives. None of them were babies as they were all married. If your conclusion that babies do not need to be saved is true then there must have been no babies alive anywhere at that time. This, too, is so improbable that it defies acceptance. You have tried to make a bit of a mockery regarding my very Scriptural claim that we ought not lean on our own understanding. Your statement that babies do not need to be saved, however, helps me illustrate what I mean by that statement. You have taken one Scripture, perhaps you have a couple more, which you then apply your earthly intelligence to and come up with a conclusion. My approach is to always doubt every conclusion that I come up with until I am sure that there are no contradictory statements to it in the entire Bible. This often involves my not holding a firm position on an issue for a very long time. I keep all sorts of scenarios in mind as I read through the Bible and slowly eliminate the ones which the verses which I encounter disprove. Eventually, perhaps after a year or more, I am left with the single scenario that fits all of Scripture. Even though my Scriptural recall is far inferior to what I would like it to be, I then fervently proclaim what I have discovered by leaning solely on the Scriptures because I know that I have not encountered even one verse that disproves it. Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014 856 Grenon Avenue Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 6G3