Salvation of Children

Joseph Smith Portrait

In conversation with the Prophet Joseph Smith once in Nauvoo, the subject of children in the resurrection was broached. I believe it was in Sister Leonora Cannon Taylor’s house. She had just lost one of her children, and I had also lost one previously. The Prophet wanted to comfort us, and he told us that we should receive those children in the morning of the resurrection just as we laid them down, in purity and innocence, and we should nourish and care for them as their mothers. He said that children would be raised in the resurrection just as they were laid down, and that they would obtain all the intelligence necessary to occupy thrones, principalities and powers. The idea that I got from what he said was that the children would grow and develop in the Millennium, and that the mothers would have the pleasure of training and caring for them, which they had been deprived of in this life.

Joseph Smith  |  History of the Church, 4:556.

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“as damnable a doctrine as was ever taught among the children of men, for little children are not tainted with sin.”

Joseph Fielding Smith  |  Doctrines of Salvation, Volume Two, ed. Bruce R. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1955), 2:49;

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“the act of reducing any created being into nothing. . . . It requires the infinite power of God to effect it.”

Charles Buck  |  “Annihilation,” in A Theological Dictionary, Woodward’s New Edition.

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“Among the strongest warnings and the severest penalties in the revelations are those relating to little children.”

Boyd K. Packer  |  Ensign, May 2002, p. 8

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Joseph Smith Portrait

“If it were possible that little children could sin,” spoke the angel, the Atonement covers the sin (Mosiah 3:16; emphasis added). Since the Atonement cancels out original sin, and because children cannot sin, infant baptism is unnecessary. In fact, the Prophet additionally taught, “The doctrine of baptizing children, or sprinkling them, or they must welter in hell, is a doctrine not true, not supported in Holy Writ, and is not consistent with the character of God. All children are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and the moment that children leave this world, they are taken to the bosom of Abraham.”

Joseph Smith  |  History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. B. H. Roberts, 2nd ed. rev. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1908), 4:554

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