“Listen to the words of Christ,” not to errant church councils and edicts. Little children are not capable of committing sin; that is, that which they do wrong is not accounted to them as sin, for their faults and transgressions are taken from them by Christ; “little children are alive in Christ.” In his great sacrifice the Savior paid for, or covered up (the meaning of the word kippur in Hebrew), all their transgressions, until they arrive at the age of accountability. “Children are not accountable before me until they are eight years old” (JST, Genesis 17:11; see also D&C 20:71; 68:25), and at that age they become responsible for their own conduct. “He that supposeth that little children need baptism is in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity,” and “he that saith that little children need baptism denieth the mercies of Christ, and setteth at naught the atonement of him and the power of his redemption” (see also Moses 6:53–55).
The Prophet Joseph Smith declared: “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.”11
Another argument attached to the preachment against infant baptism was the issue of circumcision, a rite or ceremony performed at eight days, foreshadowing the rite of baptism at eight years (JST, Genesis 17:11). The great covenant between God and his people had been on the earth from the beginning (see “Why Does God Have a Covenant People?” in commentary at 3 Nephi 5:21–26); it had been renewed in the days of Abraham, and because of his extraordinary faithfulness in adherence to the conditions of the covenant, it has often been named in his honor: the Abrahamic covenant. A sign or token of the covenant for two thousand years, from Abraham to Christ, was the practice of circumcision. Each male would receive a sacred and symbolic cutting around (literally, circum-cision) of his male organ, the portal of the seeds (the “continuation of the seeds” being an eternal part of the covenant; see D&C 132:19). With the coming of Jesus Christ, the covenant would of course continue, but that sign of the covenant was no longer needed and was discontinued (Genesis 17:13, footnote a); as Mormon quoted Christ’s words, “the law of circumcision is done away in me.” See also Doctrine and Covenants 74:2–7, where the Lord explains that the ancient Jewish tradition, perpetuated by some modern Christians, that little children are congenital sinners and unholy and therefore need immediate circumcision or baptism, is false.