Cynthia L. Hallen, www.Mormonscholarstestify.org

First Questions

When I was nine years old, my brother Mike and I attended Sunday School at the Lutheran Service Center on Okinawa. Our teacher was an off-duty soldier who served as a layman, not as a professional pastor. One Sunday morning, he told us that unless people accept Jesus as their Savior, they can’t go to heaven. I asked, “What if someone does not have a chance to hear about Jesus?” The teacher said, “That is why we need to be missionaries.” I persisted with another question, “But what if there is an old man in China, and he dies before he gets to hear about Jesus?” The teacher did not know how to answer, so he just repeated his original assertion, “People can’t go to heaven if they don’t accept Jesus.” I did not receive a more definitive answer to my childhood questions until nine years later, when two missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught me about the Plan of Salvation.

When I was a senior in high school, Elder Clausen and Elder Knight taught me that the Lord is a God of mercy, who loves all of His children. He would not create a system that was fair to some people and unfair to others. The Lord authored a plan that enables everyone to hear the gospel message, whether on the earth during this life or in the spirit world after this life. The old man in China that I had worried about would have a chance to hear the fullness of the gospel, and he would be able to choose for himself whether or not to accept Christ as his Savior. I immediately knew the truth of this principle of non-discriminatory universal access to salvation. I also felt the spirit of truth as the missionaries explained that Temple ordinances would provide baptisms for the dead and would enable families to be sealed together in bonds of eternal love. Not just for the Chinese man and his family, but for me and our broken but beautiful family, recovering from divorce and other desolations.

Dr. Cynthia L. Hallen has a degree in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English from the University of Arizona. Her dissertation topic was “Philology as Rhetoric in Emily Dickinson’s Poems.” She is an Associate Professor of Linguistics & English Language at Brigham Young University.