Exodus 12:29
Exodus 12:29-33
Now it came about at midnight that the LORD struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of cattle. Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no home where there was not someone dead. Then he called for Moses and Aaron at night and said, “Rise up, get out from among my people, both you and the sons of Israel; and go, worship the LORD, as you have said. Take both your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and go, and bless me also.” The Egyptians urged the people, to send them out of the land in haste, for they said, “We will all be dead.”
Question: If Arminians can live with God’s unilateral destruction of the Egyptian firstborn babies, without any voluntary sin on their part, then why would Arminians balk if God should involuntarily harden Pharaoh’s heart?
Answer: First of all, Arminians typically don’t believe that “babies” go to Hell, and that’s why the babies analogy doesn’t work. Second, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but only after he first hardened his own heart.
A similar example is that of King Jeroboam and his sick baby:
1st Kings 14:6-13: “When Ahijah heard the sound of her feet coming in the doorway, he said, ‘Come in, wife of Jeroboam, why do you pretend to be another woman? For I am sent to you with a harsh message. Go, say to Jeroboam, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel, ‘Because I exalted you from among the people and made you leader over My people Israel, and tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you--yet you have not been like My servant David, who kept My commandments and who followed Me with all his heart, to do only that which was right in My sight; you also have done more evil than all who were before you, and have gone and made for yourself other gods and molten images to provoke Me to anger, and have cast Me behind your back-- therefore behold, I am bringing calamity on the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam every male person, both bond and free in Israel, and I will make a clean sweep of the house of Jeroboam, as one sweeps away dung until it is all gone. Anyone belonging to Jeroboam who dies in the city the dogs will eat. And he who dies in the field the birds of the heavens will eat; for the LORD has spoken it.’ Now you, arise, go to your house. When your feet enter the city the child will die. All Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he alone of Jeroboam’s family will come to the grave, because in him something good was found toward the LORD God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam.’”’”
So God’s unilateral destruction of Jeroboam’s baby, without any sin on its part, did not necessarily condemn the baby, but rather, God found something good in it, and in fact, the only good thing in the entire family of Jeroboam.
