15. How came the blood of Israel sprinkled among all nations? 16. What promises are made to scattered Israel? 17. Quote the several passages from the Bible which predict the gathering of Israel. 18. Quote the passages from the Book of Mormon. 19. What progress has been made in the preparatory work of the ten tribes? (Note 4.) 20. What progress has been made in the preparatory work? 21. What prophecies are the Saints minutely fulfilling in gathering together in the mountains? (Note 5.) 22. How do we know that the Latter-day Saints are of Israel? (Note 6.) 23. For what object are the Saints gathering from Babylon? {377} SECTION VIII. 1. Salvation for the Dead.--The appearing of Elijah the prophet, in the Kirtland Temple on the 3rd of April, 1836, was the introduction of another great work connected with the redemption of the human race. That work is Salvation for the dead, the keys of which were given to the Prophet Joseph Smith by Elijah, on the occasion of the appearing mentioned above. That event was an epoch in the history of this great dispensation. It began a revolution in the theology of the Christian world. Up to that time--1836--it was universally believed by orthodox Christians that the souls of men who died without conversion to the Christian religion, were everlastingly lost. It was believed that the application of the gospel of Jesus Christ was limited to this life; and those who failed, through whatever cause, to obtain the benefits of the means of salvation it affords, are forever barred from such benefits. "If the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall lie;" [180] and they argued from this that in whatever state a man died so he remained. If he died in a state of justification his salvation was assured; but if not, then justification and consequently salvation was forever beyond his hope. 2. This sectarian doctrine which does so much violence to the justice of God--since it closes the door of salvation against so many thousands of God's children through no other circumstances than that they never so much as heard of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and therefore could not either believe or obey it-arose, first, through a misconception of the doctrine of eternal punishment with which the wicked are threatened in the scriptures; and, second, through a very narrow conception of the sure mercies of God.