What happens to those who don’t believe or never had the chance?

Since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is just shy of a couple of centuries old (extremely young compared with the Catholic tradition and even the Protestant reformation, and certainly young when compared with Jewish, Islamic, and eastern traditions), it is a significant question to wonder what we believe happened to the millions of people who predated it, living during what we refer to as the ‘apostasy’, or the period of time that the earth did not have the benefit of living Prophets and Apostles.

But the other Christian traditions must struggle with the question as well – what about the millions who lived on un-evangelized continents, or in remote areas that still remain untouched by Christian doctrine?

The Christian Churches and their adherents have effectively a wide variety of stances on the question. The professed members of any given church don’t even necessarily agree with their own church’s statements of faith on the matter.

Some of the more conservative congregations hold to a very literal interpretation of the Bible – which seems to be very clear on the idea that if you do not accept Jesus Christ through baptism, you are damned. If you accept the bible to be the Word of God, you must logically accept this harsh but apparently definitive answer.

Other more moderate congregations find that hard to reconcile with the testimony (both personal and biblical) that God loves all of his children and is fair to them. So they rely on the idea that we are judged on works, on our intentions, on our hearts… all of which have biblical support.

The most progressive congregations adopt a pluralistic view – rejecting outright the idea that baptism is a requirement and instead acknowledging Christianity as one of several possible paths. This idea is attractively packaged as educated, tolerant, and forward-thinking. In my opinion it also manages to entirely (and conveniently) skirt the question. It is academic cowardice and has all of the substance of a lecture from Barney the Purple Dinosaur.

The doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reconciles the first two… and wholly rejects the third.

God is a loving father, has prepared a way for all of his children, regardless of the circumstances and age in which they were born, to accept the Gospel and receive its blessings. In order to do so, they do have to confess that Jesus is the Christ, and they do have to do baptism. It deals with the question of those who died without baptism by allowing them a posthumous baptism. The concept was not invented by us – it is actually mentioned in passing in Corinthians in the New Testament – but it was magnified and clarified by modern revelation.

In addition to the doctrine of vicarious baptism or baptism by proxy, the scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints handles graciously and thoroughly the entire subject of the state of the sinner’s soul. In one of my favorite passages, the wayward son of one of the Prophets in the Book of Mormon struggles with the question, and his father lovingly addresses the topic at length. It is treated from every angle by Prophets from the Book of Mormon and the Latter-Day (modern) church. And… in a mind-blowing show of unity… it is not in the form of a debate or discussion but instead several men explaining the exact same, clear truth in a consistent but multiply-perspective manner. They discuss the nature of repentance, the process of mortality, the infinite reach of the atonement, the function of the resurrection, and every other pertinent subject in a seamless, logical, comforting manner that meets the exacting demands of the most conservative interpretation of all other scripture.

The doctrines are worth your time to read, and that in their original text. Not only do they bridge the questions and provide a fulfilling, honest answer without compromising past scripture, they are also comforting and peaceful.

And instead of a church that has to meet the seemingly differing needs in a message according to whether the recipient is dealing with the death of a loved one or trying to get free of their own sins while yet alive, one answer works for both. It seems to me that only something that is absolutely true can be equally applicable in different situations that have seemingly contradicting ends.