Years of accountability
Summary
The age when individuals become responsible for their actions and eligible for baptism. Revelation commanded that children were not to be baptized until they had “arrived to the years of accountability.” JS’s Bible revision clarified the age of accountability to be eight years old. A September 1830 revelation explained that children could not sin or be tempted “until they begin to be accountable” to God. In November 1831, a JS revelation warned that “the sin be upon the head of the parents” if their children are not baptized and confirmed “when eight years old.” An 1836 revelation explained that if children died before reaching the age of accountability, they would be “saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven.”
Links
papers
- Articles and Covenants, circa April 1830, as Recorded in Coltrin, Diary [D&C 20]
- Articles and Covenants, circa April 1830, as Recorded in Gilbert, Notebook [D&C 20]
- Articles and Covenants, circa April 1830, as Recorded in Hyde and Smith, Notebook [D&C 20]
- Revelation, 1 November 1831–A [D&C 68]
- Revelation, September 1830–A, as Recorded in Hyde and Smith, Notebook [D&C 29]
- Revelations printed in Evening and Morning Star, January 1835–June 1836