I was asked by someone about Christianity and in particular, what happens to someone who may be living in a remote area, or a deserted island, and they never heard the Gospel. Would he/she be condemned?
God is not unfair nor limited as we think in our finite thinking and understanding. Scattered throughout the word we see him making his will known by prophets and angels, talking donkeys even enemies.
Thank you for this <3 Something that has always bothered me religiously, but I know that God would make a way for those people to hear the gospel.
So... consider this:
Instead of being beyond the geographic bounds of the witness of Christians (or the Bible), consider whether someone may be separated in time:
All thought provoking posts.
John 3:16 KJV
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.
Humbly, I am assuming that He means the entire World and because (I know) Almighty Father resides outside of space and time, his Love lives both outside of, and independent of, any of our human four dimensional constraints. As He is eternal, so is His Love.
Further thoughts:
Matthew 7:13-14 KJV
“13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”.
How narrow is the way?:
John 14:6 KJV
“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
Redemption and Salvation for those who haven’t heard the Word.
This must be something most every Christian soul has pondered at some point. As a child, I remember asking about the salvation of various native and ethnic populations when at Sunday school. Also, what of the billions of souls that have lived and died in ignorance of His word before His birth, and then after the Resurrection while the Gospels slowly spread over the face of the earth?
All people (or most people) have a yearning for Truth and answers to the eternal questions of who am I, why am I here and where am I going? As such they will often and naturally seek and cling to whatever spiritual traditions or explanations that are close at hand. In the context of redemption and salvation for geographically remote and isolated peoples, and perhaps much less hypothetically, those who are currently denied access to the Word of God for social-political reasons, is there a way to know Christ and the Father to attain the Truth and the Way other than through the blessings of His printed or directly spoken Word?”
What may be God’s plan for the billions of good souls who were/are inadvertently, or even purposely, kept from the Word of God and the opportunity of a personal relationship with our Lord through his Holy Scripture?
Isaiah 55: 8-9 KJV
“8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
God’s ways are not our ways.
Perhaps this will need to satisfy my soul as an answer for now:
I must have Faith that “God has a plan for us all”.
Thank you all again for the thought provoking posts.
Blessings.