Reprinted by Permission
This is the substance of an E-mail sent to a couple who had experienced a miscarriage earlier in 2012.
While we deeply sympathize with your sad loss and bear you up in our prayers, in fact this miscarriage is not a total loss, only a failure to attain full term and result in a little life coming into the world. Your baby will not come into the world; that is true. Your baby has taken a direct route, in the will and purpose of God, to reach heaven direct from your womb. Your baby is safe at Home with the Lord and will fulfil a service and role in God’s eternal Home and His eternal plan.
We understand Scripture to teach that, at the moment of conception or fertilization of the mother’s ovum, the life and being of the child commences. The ovum ceases to be “it” and becomes “him/her” by the implantation by God of the spirit and soul. This means your little unborn life had its God-given “being” in your womb and you should think of him/her in this way.
When the Son of God was conceived in Mary’s womb by the power of the overshadowing Holy Spirit, He was immediately, in His embryonic form, the Son of God. It would be nonsense to suppose that He only came into being as God’s Son some weeks after conception or at the first movement in the womb when the embryo became a fetus. From the moment of conception He was “that Holy thing” (Luke 1:35) and Scripture supports this and addresses Him as such. So it is with every human conception; the personality of the child commences from conception (Psa 139:13-16). The language of personality is used by Job when describing his embryonic state in the womb (Job 10:8-12). He is “me,” the ego or the distinct self. He describes his personal being, “me,” as being suited with a body: “Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh. Thou hast fenced me with bones and sinews.” That is, his being or his eternal spirit already given by God from conception, was distinct from his body, and the body is but the covering for the immortal and eternal part of his being – the spirit. Then when the body has grown weak, or ill and dies, what Paul calls “our earthly house of this tabernacle” is dissolved, the spirit moves out of the body to be with Christ awaiting its final eternal clothing of “our house which is from heaven” (2Cor 5:1-8). God gave the spirit at conception, and the spirit, at death, therefore “returns unto God Who gave it” (Eccl 12:7), indicating that God has the sovereign disposal of the spirits of all men at death. Note again in this Scripture, that it is God Who gave us a spirit in the first place. You may see the same feature also in the death of Rachel in Genesis 35:16-18.
This means that at the very moment of conception, when the ovum is fused with the seed of the man, from that very moment the spirit is given by God and the embryo becomes a living soul. It is determined also from that moment what the genetic features of the child will be – i.e., that he will have his mother’s nose, his grandfather’s aptitude with figures, and that he will have his father’s gift for oratory, etc. That is, the embryo has its own personality from the moment of conception, and nothing is added afterwards to distinguish its own peculiar traits and attributes.
God is called “the Father of spirits” (Heb 12:9) or “of our spirits,” because He is the Father Who gives the spirit at every conception in every mother’s womb – the spirit comes from Him alone and makes every person therefore His creation and responsible to Him. It is what differentiates human beings from the lower animal creation. The spirit makes a man a full and proper human being. It also emphasizes the evil of abortion – the deliberate termination of a life given by God through medical interference of a human pregnancy. From our Christian viewpoint, this is murder in the womb, and a great sin against God.
It is the same truth in the OT. In Numbers 16:22 God is addressed in prayer as, “O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh.” He is the God Who is responsible for giving the spirit to every man of woman born. Again, in Isaiah 42:5, speaking of God in His creatorial greatness, “He that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; He gives breath unto the people … and spirit to them that walk therein.” Also, “The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him” (Zech 12:1).
So your tiny baby, just lost from the womb, was God’s little life, and had his/her own spirit and being. While also inheriting a sinful nature (Rom 5:12), yet innocent of any culpable sin, this little life is secured by the blood of Christ for all eternity. This also means there will be more of the redeemed with Christ in Heaven than the lost who are in hell because every miscarriage throughout history has been a little spirit preserved by and for God.
May this be an encouragement and comfort to you both at this time.
