exmormon

They go to Spirit Prison and wait for a Mormon to get proxy-baptized for them, of course.

Darklighter

LOL. I love some of your comments. But this is one of the issues that pushed me over the edge. Even though my fundie brand had a "merciful" solution to this issue. Although upon closer examination it negated the whole point of organized Christianity. Basiclly they reasoned that "god can read their hearts and therefore knows whether or not they would have accepted the gospel." Ok, peachy. The problem is that this reasoning is often applied to those who had troubled upbringings or other issues, "he would've been a good christian if it wern't for x, y, and z. God knows he had a good heart." In other words, we ALL have issues, so if god can read my heart, what's the point of servitude?

Not sure if I explained myself very well, but anyway, it seems to me that there's no logical resolution to the issue raised in the OP.

aa5874

The Christians will have to answer the question as to what might happen to those who had never heard of Christianity, but it appeared that Christians lived a life of hell, up to the 4th century, and they were not saved by Jesus but by a politician named Constantine.

bornagainathiest

To keep the the answer w/in the bible as asked by the mod...

Romans 8:29-30 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

The explaination that I got was that all the people who are born and die before hearing about Jesus are souls that God knew in advance would reject him. So he put their little souls in places they would never hear about him. And when they die, they go to hell. Which was followed by something like, God is so great, there is no way that we can understand everything he does, but he loves everyone and is all torn up about having to send all those people to the hot, burny place.

GakuseiDon

Arguably he did know, in a way:

1 Corinthians 10:1-4 Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.

Add that at least one early Christian writer thought that it was Jesus who walked in the garden with Adam, and you have everyone covered. So there you go.

Dirge

http://flyinabove.bloghi.com/2006/06...istianity.html
UNIVERSALISM--THE PREVAILING DOCTRINE OF THE FIRST 500 YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY - On The Eagle's Wings

Robert Byers

As I understand it. Jews or anyone had to be justified to go to heaven before christ.
Job was not Jewish or people before Abraham but it seems they were justified by some belief/action method. Otherwise before or after everyone else was not predestined to be saved. This does not mean God chooses for them to go to hell but that he does not make a extra loving effort to stop thier evil designs against God and his will.
The bible is clear we go to hell because we are and do evil. God just gives a chance for us to not go. He doesn't send us to hell but rather we were already going.

Another point about all peoples is that since we come into existence at conception and a women will conceive countless times before a live birth and all children who die as such go to heaven then we must conclude the majority of mankind from any age and people will go to heaven. Only a minority of folks leave their mothers bodies alive and ideed it seems a mority of these will not go to heaven. Unless conversion some chaps on these forumns.
Robert Byers

Matt Stone

Isn't it interesting, though, that all this revelatory material, being inherently unknowable by Man, is broken down and explained by a seemingly endless torrent of mind-numbingly confusing pseudo-scientific explanations of the processes by which a soul can be "whatever-ified" in order to be holy enough to get into the big white fluffy palace?

The Xtians refute science at every turn, but they failingly attempt to employ it in their own defense time and time again...

The water's circling the drain, and it's taking their bedtime stories with it.

storytime

This is overlooked -- Jesus said "those who are well need not a physician." And, "I am not sent to the righteous but to the sinners[transgressors of law].

Those Jews who were righteous before the days of Christ were saved in their obedience to their laws. And they kept [obeyed] their laws by faith. What about non Jewish people?

Jesus said, "I am sent to none but the lost sheep in the house of Israel" - sons of Jacob. Jesus kept his gospel within the confines of his 12 named tribes. He worshiped a tribal god who claimed one specific people called Israel.

What about the rest of the world? Jesus said, "it is not meant that the childrens[of Israel] bread be given to dogs".

If people want to follow Jesus then they should convert to Judaism, which was the "way", "the truth" and "the life" of Jesus. There were other truths of course in other people and their own traditions, but Jesus did not teach anything outside his own Jewish doctrine in its laws and prophet sayings. "Salvation is of the Jews".

Joan of Bark

I agree with your analysis, storytime. Jesus was only preaching to Jews, something today's Christians -- or the scribe who added the last twelve chapters to Mark -- can't see.

But God invented everything! -- including Hell. And God invented us, with all our faults. So He can hardly buck responsibility by claiming he has nothing to do with us going there.