2nd Kings 2:23-24

• "And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
• And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."

Did the Lord really love these little children so much that He had the man of God curse them in 'His Name,' and sent two bears out of the woods to tear them to pieces? Of course not. Again, this whole idea is founded upon sentimentality and worldly scholasticism. It is bankrupt of any semblance of scriptural continuity or harmony. It is a twisted man made doctrine where a good God sends bears to tear apart 'righteous' Children. The believer of the Word is left to ask, what nonsense is this?

Once again, Warren has not done his homework regarding the meaning of key words in the text. Are we to believe that these were toddlers in this passage? John Gill, in his Exposition of the Entire Bible, speaks of this passage:

there came forth little children out of the city; the word for "children" is used of persons of thirty or forty years of age; and though these are said to be "little", they were so well grown as to be able to go forth out of the city of themselves, without any to guide them, or to take care of them; and were of an age capable not only of taking notice of Elijah's baldness, but knew him to be a prophet, and were able to distinguish between good and evil; and, from a malignant spirit in them, mocked at him as such, and at the assumption of Elijah; which they had knowledge of, and to whom, taught by their idolatrous parents, they had an aversion: some Jewish writers say, they were called "Naarim", which we render "children", because shaken from the commandments, or had shaken off the yoke of the commands; and "little", because they were of little faith:

So these were not little children in the sense that Warren assumes, and therefore, it is his exegesis that is bankrupt, twisted nonsense. One more case of Warren's misapplication of Scripture to be added to what is becoming a long list.

Others have agreed it makes no sense, but honestly cannot understand what is written in Romans chapter 7 about Paul being alive without the law.

Romans 7:9

• "For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died."

He is not talking about when he was a baby, but before He became a Christian. He says he was alive without [choris], a Greek word which means 'apart' from the law. In other words, being separated where he had no understanding of the law. He doesn't mean He didn't have the law (he most certainly did), but that he was separated from it experientially. And when the command of God came, sin revived. In other words, he was then brought close to the law and sin came alive so that he now had knowledge of it and recognized it as sin. He died in that he is no more 'apart' from the law, but dead with Christ that the law and sin is made manifest or known to him. In other words, by the law he now sees, he now recognizes sin for sin. Read on:

Paul said that he was "without the law;" but Warren says that Paul "most certainly did [have the law]." Whom should we believe? Warren admits that Paul had no understanding of the law, but insists that he had the law nonetheless and was only separated from it experientially. He offers no proof for this. If Paul had no experience with the law, and he had no understanding of the law, then one wonders just exactly how it was that he is supposed to have "had" the law. Then, Warren injects an idea foreign to the text, dropping the exegetical ball completely, by asserting that the death spoken of here is "dead in Christ"! The believer's death in Christ is a death to sin and death to the law (and even death to self); but it is NOT the death of condemnation due to the commandment of the law! Let's read more of Warren's explanation...

Romans 7:12-13

• "Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
• Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful."

That by the commandment, he might 'recognize sin' as sinful, which he didn't do before, when he was alive 'apart from the law.' ..being deceived. Not that his sin wasn't sin before, but that he didn't KNOW it before, being 'apart from the law.' It is the law that 'shined the light' upon his sin, working death in Him, to his good! It all depends on how we understand being 'apart' from the law. If we define it as only the written law, then the passage I quoted before (Romans 1:18-20) makes no sense. Because there we understand that man is going to be judged by God's law, him having never read that law. You see the point here? He doesn't need to have read God's Word written in the Bible to be judged by God's Word. A more open and shut case, I cannot imagine. God's law extends beyond a baby or man having to physically hear it or read it. It's made known to us because we were created in the image of God, and though the unsaved no longer conform to that image, these are still truths they know instinctively through creation. They have inherent knowledge of good and evil, that there is now no excuse.

Paul was without the law before he had an accountable understanding of the law. He was alive in the sense that the death sentence of condemnation that comes from knowledgeably breaking the law was not yet hanging over him. Warren assumes that sin can occur prior to knowledge of the law (or, knowledge of good and evil); but he has not established that as true--and thus, he begs the question. Though Paul speaks of sin working in him before his knowlege of the law, he does not speak of it as condemning sin, but rather, he is speaking of his sinful nature and tendencies. The text affirms that sin cannot work death except by the commandment when understood. It is only when the commandment came that Paul died, though the reason for his sin--his sinful nature--was working in him all along. The law here is not limited to the written Mosaic Law, but does include the law written on the hearts of all men; however, since Paul was raised and trained as a Jew, we cannot forget that his parents would have exposed him to the writen law even from infancy. Paul's first understanding of the law written on his heart would have had the written Mosaic Law as its ready expression. A more open and shut case, I cannot imagine.

As for whether God will, or will not Save a particular child, I trust God will bring to faith all for whom He has died, and who He has chosen to bring to faith. He is able to do so, and who those are, is not our business. It's His Sovereign right to decide, not ours! And being God, He may in fact choose to Save some (or maybe even many) children who die in infancy. But it's His call, not our humanistic sense or sensibilities. God knows what we do not know. A child who will be wicked and unsaved as an adult, was wicked and unsaved as a child. Because you cannot go from a Saved child, to an unsaved adult. You cannot lose eternal Life, else it's not eternal! Therefore, if you were Saved as a child, you will still be Saved as an adult. Likewise, if you are never going to be Saved as an adult, you could not have been Saved as a child. That would be confusion and tortuous of scripture. So if this person who will never be Saved as an adult, had died as a child, he died unsaved!

We are not speaking of "humanistic sense or sensibilities" here, but the justice of sending babies and small children to hell who have never committed any sin of their own. What justice is there in sending an embryo to hell, so that his first conscious thought (indeed, his only thought throughout eternity) will be, "What did I do to deserve this?" as he awakes in hell--having never known life on earth or sin or righteousness or the law or anything else?

Jeremiah 7

31"They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, and it did not come into My mind.

Jeremiah 32

35"They built the high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had not commanded them nor had it entered My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.

Psalm 106

37They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons, 38And shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with the blood.

These wicked idolators were burning their children to death in the name of "Molech." God said that they had "shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters," and that this "abomination" never even entered His mind, much less did He command such a thing! It is strange indeed Warren and his camp think that this same God would take the souls of these sacrificed children, who have just been burned in the fire, and throw them into an even greater fire (hell). The baby-burning crowd has no answer for this. Justice is a foreign concept to them. They know nothing of God's justice, because they are stuck on His sovereignty. They are ignorant of the fact that neither cancels out the other.


Many are so focused on God's sovereignty that they lose sight of the fact that God's justice works hand-in-hand with His sovereignty. His justice is not "swallowed up" by His sovereignty so that justice takes on the meaning of mere divine arbitrariness, as if it were true that God can do anything and it would automatically be just merely because He does it. Such absurdity is where many Calvinists have landed. God certainly does have an elect, whom He has chosen before the foundation of the world--but how does He accomplish this electing? Does God drag unrepentant, God-hating sinners into heaven against their will? Of course not. But wait--what if God "ran out of time" with one of His elect, and the God-hating sinner died before God had time to bring the man to repentance and genuine faith? What then? Could not God drag the man to heaven against his will, merely because He is God and anything that He does is just? Does such a scene sound crazy? It is very similar to the way that many look at the situation of children who die before the age of accountability. God never runs out of time. He always perfectly accomplishes what He sets out to accomplish. If it is in God's plan that a certain accountable man will be saved, then God will bring that man to genuine faith sometime before he dies. In the very same way, if it is not in God's plan that a certain person be saved, then God (who never runs out of time) will allow that person to come to an accountable understanding, so that they have time within their life to knowingly sin against the God whose eternal power and Godhead are revealed to every man (Rom. 1). This satisfies the requirements of justice. Just as God does not drag God-hating sinners into heaven, He also does not throw babies who are innocent of personal sin into hell. He does not need to, as He is in control of the length of every man's life.
To be continued...