LORD JESUS, I COME TO YOU TODAY A SINNER.  I BELIEVE YOU DIED FOR ME AND YOU ROSE AGAIN.  I ASK THAT YOU COME INTO MY HEART AND GIVE ME A NEW HEART OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.  FORGIVE ME ALL MY SINS.  I RENOUNCE SATAN AND EVERY WORKS OF DARKNESS IN MY LIFE, AND I RECEIVE THE GIFT OF ETERNAL LIFE, TODAY. THANK YOU JESUS FOR SAVING ME, AMEN.

Do not say to yourself, "Jesus is the Savior of the world, wouldn't it be nice if it were so?" No it was so, because he himself said it was so.

Mary said of Jesus in Psalms that her son was born to her without blemish, brought into the world fair and reddish; because he was given back to her reddish.
After Jesus died, he descended among the dead.  He descended into Hell. Parishioners say it is "to be among the dead," but this does not mean that he went into the fiery flames where the damned and condemned are 

infurnaced, separated from God for all eternity.

Jesus announced the Gospel all those three years, day and night, for this was he sent by the Father to do. He had compassion on the multitudes, those who were sheep without shepherds.  When he died, he went unto hell to announce the Gospel to all those sons of Adam and Eve.  

Did those who died before Christ's birth, make acts of contrition? We would hope so.  Abel who died at the hands of Cain, who died because of justice, he could not have gone to heaven because Jesus had not come into the world to condone for the sins of the world yet. Or Moses himself who lost patience once in a while, but was certainly a just man, and talked with God the way a man talks with his friend.  Because of his impatience he wasn't allowed to step foot into the Holy Land.  They were in what we could call Limbo, it wasn't fiery hell but just the gates of heaven were not yet open. But for the three years on earth Jesus preached, and he told those he came before in this "nether-worldly" underworld, to leave, for he had paid the price for them.

Was there an afterlife before Christ's birth? Surely, but its vague.  In Samuel Ch.28 V.5-20, Saul finds and summons a woman "of a familiar spirit," because God was not answering him, nor by dreams nor by prophets.  Saul gets the to woman to summon Samuel from the dead, and he tells Saul that soon God will deliver him into the hand of the Philistines. and soon, "shalt thou and they sons be with me."  He's in some nether-worldly place, similar to what the Romans believed was Hades.

 
No one can be an adopted son or daughter of the Father, we were all formed by him.