The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Are those who die young always part of the elect?

Gerry,

I haven't anything to comment on the passage(s) you are eluding to, but it sure jogged my old brain enough to cause me to remember other similar passages, e.g., What about the days of Noah? Surely, there were infants and unborn existent when the flood waters came upon the earth and destroyed all of mankind except righteous Noah and his family. If there was an elect infant among them, I would have to conclude that it would have been spared and not destroyed with the ungodly. And then there is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Surely there were infants and unborn at the time God brought fire and brimstone as judgment upon that region and those cities. We know from the conversation Abraham had with the Lord concerning the impending judgment that not one righteous individual was left to suffer God's catastrophic wrath that day; they were all spared. I find it near impossible to imagine that God's promise to Abraham was ingenuous and/or false. For, if there was an elect individual among the inhabitants of those places that was not spared, as was Lot and his family, then God lied and that righteous individual was judged and condemned with the reprobate that day. Add to these two examples, all the women and children who were slaughtered in Canaan by the Israelites, at the direct command of God as judgment upon them, for they were all evil. And of course, I would be remiss if I did not also mention the Second Commandment, which lends itself to the view that some infants are elected by grace and some are not.

Exodus 20:4-6 "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God [am] a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments."

In His Grace,