A good friend recently wrote me with a serious question: Where does it say in the Bible that younger children are safe from Hell up to a certain age? She, of course, is talking about the doctrine that many call “the age of accountability,” and because she’d never actually read anything about it in the Scripture herself, she was wondering if this teaching is actually in the Bible or just something she’d been told.

With a few updates, here is the basic answer I gave her, which I thought would be helpful for others as well.