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The Age of Accountability
There is a doctrine commonly taught today stating that a baby is innocent of sin until a certain age, meaning that if that baby dies before reaching that age then he or she will go to Heaven. Of course, we'd like to believe this because it makes us feel better about any dearly loved child we may have lost. Plus, if we are going to believe that our salvation is based on something we have to do in order to complete it, then of course we need to come up with an answer for the question, "What if someone dies before they are old enough to make that decision?" Most churches in our day have created the "Age of Accountability" doctrine to answer that. However, this doctrine doesn't square with the Bible. Sure, our logic will tell us, "Babies don't know any better," but we have to place our logic aside and let God's Word be our source of truth, even when we don't like what it has to say.
First of all, the Bible does not teach that babies are innocent of sin. Actually, it teaches the opposite:
"The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear." (Psalm 58:3-4)
This is ugly language but these are God's words. When we look at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah we read that, with the exception of Lot's family, there was none righteous in those cities. This means they were all unrighteous and the unrighteous do not enter into Heaven:
"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?..." (1 Corinthians 6:9)
This means that everyone that died in the destruction of those cities, including the babies, will not end up in Heaven.
Likewise, God destroyed the entire world with a flood and the only people who were spared were Noah and his family. The babies in the world were destroyed along with everyone else and there is no indication that they went to Heaven.
Consider this: if all babies that die end up in Heaven, then it must follow that all babies are saved. It must also follow that we can lose our salvation because not all adults are saved. This contradicts the Bible's teaching that we cannot lose our salvation.
It is only when we understand that God does all the work of saving someone and that we have no control over it whatsoever that we can easily understand that a person's age is irrelevant when it comes to salvation. Remember, God saved John when he was born:
"For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb." (Luke 1:15
God can save someone the moment they are born or the moment before they die. God can save the greatest genius in the world and He can save someone is mentally incapable of forming a thought. This is all possible because God's decision about who He elected had nothing to do with anything those individuals did or didn't do, could or couldn't do. God is not respecter of persons:
"Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34)
In other words, no one person is any more likely to have been chosen than another.
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