Can someone tell me what happened to the people not exposed to Jesus?

[al_liberal]

People were living all over the world at the time of Christ. What about the people living elsewhere? The ones that had no way to have ever known about him at the time? My world history tells me that as the Europeans conquered the world they sent missionaries to teach Christianity to the savages. Did God not care about them before Christ?

[Drale]

1. Who knows

I've read papers that say that Jesus traveled the world learning about different religions before he appears in the bible as an adult and that would explain why he disappears for 22 years.

[arcane1]

2. They were set on fire for all eternity because god loves them n/t

[newfie11]

3. maybe God came on a different way to them.

A way they would understand. Just a guess as I don't know the answer.

[provis99]

4. they go to hell.

Christianity is quite clear about that.

[Angry Dragon]

5. nothing

[Ian David]

6. Jesus supposedly went to Hell and rescued the "Noble Savages" who WOULD have accepted Jesus...

... if they'd been told about him before they died, or the ones that were good people.

It's great marketing if you want to convert people around the time of Jesus to Christianity without making them think they'd never see their Pagan or Jewish grandparents again.

[geckosfeet]

7. And just think of all the wretched heathens that were born, live and died before jesus was born.

There is just no end to the lack of religiosity of the pre-jesus barbarians.

Fools and jesters all.

[RandomThoughts]

8. First you are thinking in temporal context.

Many of the same teachings were in many cultures, some did better, some worse, but you can see the better teachings of love in many societies even back in the BC.

Look to your own culture, you will find the same teachings of love and kindness, and treating all in society better wherever you are. Because it is in many peoples hearts. Also why I think it is spiritual, not about blood lines.

Although there are teachings around Jesus, that explain how that was a completion of taking back the world by all being able to find the better spirit of God through an intermediary.

In teachings there is the concept of freeing the saints of old from hell, if you see that as a removal of temporal limitation, then you can see how someone in the BC, can still find the same intermediary, even if they see it in a different way.

I think people see the wonders of God's creation in everything, a leaf, a tree, a park, a friend, a smile, and on and on. It is possible to see the beuaty of God in everything, since in my belief, he is part of all his creation.



Bonnie Raitt - I Can't Make You Love Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW9Cu6GYqxo

Bonnie Raitt - Nick of Time
http://www.123video.nl/playvideos.asp?MovieID=407128



Kutless - Strong Tower
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOxeyj7itJE

[aquart]

9. This is shaping up to be quite a night for flaming ignorance.

Your world history book sucks, btw.

1. South American natives tended to have healed collar bone fractures after the Spanish Conquest. They get that type of wound from being kicked while kneeling. Nice missionaries. We don't have a lot of South American history because Bishop Landa burned their writings. Nice fire. He couldn't understand why the people wept.

2. Your "Christian" religion doesn't have an original bone in it. All of it, names, dates, ceremonies, stolen wholesale from other religions.

3. All those people were fine, praying to Rama, Buddha, Thor, Zeus, Vishnu, and a million other deities we barely know the names of. You should try looking them up sometime.

[pocoloco]

11. LOL

Thanks for nipping it in the bud!!

[al_liberal]

12. I already knew about those deities.

My question was aimed toward the christians that think everyone that has not accepted jesus is going to hell. But thanks for your input.

[al_liberal]

13. I wasn't asking the question as a believer.

I was hoping someone out there could enlighten me as to the fate of all of these souls. Does that make me a part of the flaming ignorance? Is it wrong to ask a question on the boards? I see that I only have 101 posts to your 1000+ so you are clearly superior to me in every way. Maybe I'll start a new religion dedicated to you.

[On the Road]

16. It Has Been a Troubling Question Throughout Christian History

There have been many debates held, and entire books written on the subject.

The official Catholic position, IIRC, is that in addition to heaven and hell, there is a waiting area (purgatory) in which souls of people who lived before Jesus were kept. Between Jesus's death and resurrection, he visited and preached to them in purgatory. Those who believed were saved and went to heaven; those who rejected him were sent to hell. Purgatory and Jesus' descent are not in the Bible, of course, and the theory is a bit convenient, but it does have a certain fairmindedness.

Calvinists, on the other hand, believe that everyone is condemned to hell from birth because of original sin. Unless someone has accepted Jesus, they are toast. Moreover, Calvinists believe in predestination, so they also believe that God selects certain people for heaven via irresistible grace, and there's pretty much nothing anyone else can do. In a legal or pedantic sense, all of the individual points are based on parts of the Bible. But overall, it offends peoples' sense of fairness and free will, and Calvinism is practiced in only a few parts of the Protestant world now, such as the Dutch Reformed and Orthodox Presbyterian churches.

Mainstream evangelical churches, of which the Baptist denominations are the largest, are a mixed bag. There is a widespread belief that infants who die go to heaven, but this is belief is held less out of any statements in the Bible and more out of moral rejection of the alternatives. Opinions differ on whether adults who die, never having heard of Jesus, go to heaven, hell, or are judged individually by God.

Michael Wood, who wrote "The Hidden Bible" and "Breaking the Romans Code," self-published books which sometimes appears in internet ads on DU, has some interesting observations. He believes that the phrase ‘aionios', translated as 'eternal' in English bibles, really means long-lasting but finite. So hell is a temporary punishment for sins committed in this life. He also discusses a passage in one of Paul's letters which he argues persuasively that Paul thought all of creation would eventually be reconciled to God. This is a minority view, but it can be argued seriously from the documents.

Personally, I think most of the authors of the Bible didn't really have this question uppermost in their minds when it was written. That's what oppression and a survival instinct will do to you. There were friends and enemies, and the enemies were against not only you, but your God, and were therefore evil. The weaknesses to this approach became obvious as the world became larger, more stable, and more secular. But unless something is crystal clear in the Bible, it's bound to result different opinions.

[rug]

19. If you do not say the right words your collar bone will be fractured.

[okasha]

20. What writings?

The Inka did not have a writing system.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

10. I can give you my S Baptist church upbringing version

It goes something like this...

Before the time of Christ, there was no Jesus requirement. This was never explained in any great detail to me as a child, so I ended up assuming that before JC's time, the generally good people went to heaven, bad ones to hell.

During the time of Jesus, the 33 years he walked a corner of the earth, his grace was available to all. If you were in "deepest, darkest Africa" (a favorite nonchalantly-racist way to generalize heathen areas that hadn't been exposed to Jesus), then you received the grace of Jesus if you accepted him. Having never heard of Jesus, you might worship a stick or a rock or a pagan idol, but your acceptance of the grace that was apparently offered through this other god gets you in the door, and it was actually Jesus all along. Nice and tidy.

Oh, and this was a fairly liberal church as far as Baptist churches go, and my dad was the preacher. I'm 42 now, and my views now are radically different than what I described above, but that's how I grew up.

[okasha]

14. Two things, depending on when and where a person lived.

Medieval theology held that during the time between Jesus' burial and his resurrection, he "descended into hell" where he conducted a massive jailbreak and took all the righteous dead of whatever faith back to heaven with him. They weren't in hell proper in any case, but in Limbo, which is depicted as quite a pleasant place, distinguished from heaven only by the absence of God.

Most modern theologies hold that a good person who has no knowledge of Jesus, or a good person of a non-Christian faith, goes to heaven. There's also a counterpart to this in modern Muslim thinking. Muhammad acknowledged both Moses and Jesus as Messengers like himself. Liberal Islamic clerics have stated that had Muhammad known about Buddha, for example, or Native American prophets, he would have acknowledged those as well.

It's only the fundies who insist on hellfire for everyone but themselves--and very few besides fundies who still use the hellfire imagery.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

23. Also, Romans 2:12, Paul's opinion concerning "righteous pagans"

a passage that the Calvinists and other hardliners ignore.

[okasha]

25. Thanks for the additional cite.

Good to see you.:hi:

[Curmudgeoness]

32. Catholic theology believed in limbo, and still may.

When I was young, they still preached the concept of limbo. I may be getting old, but in the terms of religious belief, it has not been that long ago when they were trying to indoctrinate me. I was not raised in what would be considered a fundamentalist church, so the heaven and hell has been changed very recently. Does it bother anyone else that religions that have been around for centuries keep changing their teachings to suit what is acceptable to the congregations?

[okasha]

15. I forgot to mention the universalists,

who hold that everyone goes to heaven. This view was first articulated by Origen in the early 3rd century and is the position of most if not all liberal theologians today.

[dimbear]

17. A better question is the fate of those who lived after, and did or didn't hear.

The forerunners are in doubt, the latecomers are clear. If you hear of Christ and reject Him, you go to Hell. If you don't hear of Him, your highest and best hope is Limbo.

As mentioned above, the Book is crystal clear on this. The question is whether you believe the Bible or not.

Hold on tight.

Far far more people have lived and died since 1CE than ever lived before that fateful time.

This is why missionaries are in such a high stakes game. They endanger the souls of others. You would expect that to give them food for thought.

[laconicsax]

18. They're dead, just like all the rest. n/t

[LeftishBrit]

21. As an unbeliever, I think they just die and live on only in people's memories, the same as everyone

According to some forms of Christian doctrine, good people with no opportunity for knowing Jesus go to Limbo, where they are cut off from Heaven but not tormented.

Harsher doctrines place them in Hell. Others place everyone ultimately in Heaven, or admit that no one knows.

Of course, most such peoples have/had their own religious faiths, which would give different viewpoints about the afterlife.

[ZombieHorde]

22. They were able to masturbate in peace. nt

[onager]

24. "Exposed to Jesus" is an unpleasant mental image.

Almost as bad as saying Jesus "wants to have a relationship with me." And if he does, I'm getting a restraining order.

[okasha]

26. Actually, it sounds rather like

it involves the measles.

[struggle4progress]

27. It's a pointless question. The useful questions are questions about our present circumstances

and how we respond to our present circumstances

[TransitJohn]

28. Their bodies decomposed and the molecules were recycled.

Also, if you are Christian, you believe that their souls are burning in hellfire for eternity for the sin of not being in the right place at the right time (feel the love).

[Curmudgeoness]

29. I was taught that they went to hell.

And people always ask me why I am an atheist. One reason is these early lessons.

You get me to wonder about another question: What happened to all the people who died before Jesus was even born? Hmmm, the only way to heaven is through accepting Jesus as your personal savior. No Jesus, no heaven???

[okasha]

31. See post 14.

n/t

[frogmarch]

30. Years ago I asked a

Christian neighbor who was bent on witnessing to me similar questions.

She said that everyone from Jesus's time who didn't come to know Jesus personally and become a believer, including those who had never heard of him or his teachings, went to hell. Everyone before Jesus's time did too. She said they'll all be joined in hell by people today who've never heard of Jesus and his teachings, not to mention people who reject him.

Seems harsh to send people to hell if they've never even heard of Jesus, but I guess that's how the wafer crumbles.

[Curmudgeoness]

33. Hell must be a very crowded place, huh? nt