Note that repentance, baptism, and faith are the conditions on which salvation in the kingdom of God is obtained. God commands all men to repent, to be baptized and to have perfect faith in Christ. It is not optional in any case. He who will not repent, believe and be baptized “must be damned.”
The doctrine of repentance is an essential part of the Gospel. It occupies the second place in the Articles of Faith of the Church: (1) Faith; (2) Repentance; (3) Baptism: (4) Laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Ghost.
But repentance is not only a doctrine. It is the main manifestation of the new life of those who have been “born again” and thereby became citizens of the kingdom of God. All are commanded to repent, and genuine repentance brings forgiveness. (Mos. 26:31; D. and C. 64:10-14)
Baptism. This is another condition of salvation. Together with repentance it is the “gate” to the kingdom. (v. 41: Ex. 13:21 and 14:22) he says: “Our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto”—literally, “into,” Moses, that is, into the Mosaic dispensation—“in the cloud and in the sea.”
This was a baptism of the entire Hebrew nation, symbolically cleansing them from all impurities clinging to them after the captivity in Egypt, and obligating them to follow Moses as their leader, appointed by God, to the land of Promise. It was a complete immersion in the waters of the sea and the cloud. And we note that the very means by which Israel was saved became the means of destruction of their God-defying pursuers.
Perfect Faith. This is another condition of salvation. The Apostle Paul (Habakkuk 2:4: “The just shall live by his faith,” explains what faith is: “The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The word “substance” means that which “stands under,” or, the underlying reality of things. It is that which sustains the qualities by which matter becomes perceptible to us. For instance. Here is an object. We examine it. We find that it has a certain weight, and a peculiar color; that it is impervious to the action of most acids; that it amalgamates readily with mercury, and that, for practical purposes, it forms valuable alloys with silver, or copper, etc., etc. We call it gold. Another object, with a different combination of qualities, we call silver; another, copper, etc., etc. That which sustains these qualities is the “substance.”
What substance is in the material world, faith is in the spiritual world. It is the very foundation of the qualities—love, humility, peace, joy, benevolence, etc., etc.—which are the essential characteristics of the Christian character.
St. Paul, further, explains that “through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things that are seen were not made of things which do appear;” for, no matter what scientists may assert, the beginning of things, origins, being outside our sphere of experience or observation, can be known only through faith. Only through faith do we comprehend that the universe of which we are a part is the Divine ideas which received form in the material creation. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and many others are mentioned as examples of what mortals can accomplish, if they have the power that comes from faith in God.
It is important to remember that “faith” means not only the conviction in the mind, but also that which is believed, the Gospel, the creed, which, in the mind of the Apostle, is a long step in advance of the Mosaic law. See Gal. 3, it is not maintained that a Christian is without works of righteousness, but that it is the Gospel and not the law of Moses that has “saved” him, and made him capable of living a righteous life.
A Scientific View. Dr. Arthur H. Compton of the University of Chicago, a Noble prize winner in physics in 1927, was quoted in a dispatch dated Dec. 26, 1933, as having said in a Christmas interview, that faith in God may be a thoroughly scientific attitude, even if we are unable to establish the correctness of our belief. Science, he said, further, as reported, can have no quarrel with a religion which postulates a God to whom men are as children, “not that science shows such a relationship ... but the evidence for an intelligent Power working in the world which science offers does make such postulate plausible.”