What About People Who Never Heard the Gospel?

To the average person, sending people who never heard the gospel to eternal torment in hell is horribly unfair. How could God be so cruel as to condemn those who never even heard of him or Jesus Christ? The fact is that we all have eternity in our hearts.

The Apostle Paul explained it well in his letter to the Christians in Rome. In the first chapter, he wrote that the evidence of God, who can't be seen, is visible in what he created. But people decided to suppress this knowledge in their ungodliness. They worshipped created things rather than the creator. So the Lord honoured their choice by letting them choose eternity apart from him and all his goodness.

Paul also spoke to Greek philosophers at Athens. In Acts chapter seventeen, he explained how God planned where people would go and the countries they'd form so that they could search and find him. He also cut those ethnic groups a break, being able to judge the motives of the heart, so that those who sought him could be justified.

Furthermore, God worked through the Israelites to be a light to the gentiles. All through Hebrews chapter eleven, we're told how by faith the saints of old were justified. They believed God and it was counted to them as righteousness. They all looked forward to a saviour who would rescue them from sin. That person was Jesus Christ. We now are justified by trusting in him and what he accomplished on the cross.

I hope to answer this and many more questions with scripture quotes and references in my next book. You Think You're Going to Heaven? gives a warning which everybody needs to read. Like running a diagnostic program on the computer, examining our lives by the Bible is the only reliable way to learn if we are living up to God's standards. Eternity is a long time to suffer because we trusted our own pet notions rather than God's word.