Powerwise

What happens to people who have have never so much as heard of Christianity? Do the countless non-Christian cultures in unexplored regions of Earth all go to hell?

Splarnst

No, nothing happens to them; heaven and hell don't exist.

What do Christians say? It depends on which Christian you ask. Some believe all of those people will burn in hell, some believe they won't, and most will probably say they don't know.

Amaleq13

If you want this thread to remain in BC&H, the focus of the discussion should be scriptural support of whatever answer is put forth.

Joan of Bark

This is one of those awkward questions that leaves Christians waving their hands frantically while trying to think of an answer that makes God look loving and merciful while keeping the absoluteness of rites like baptism.

Ray Moscow

According to parts of the NT, yes, of course they go to hell.


That's what makes the Christian religion so loving -- proclaiming eternal torture for all unbelievers.

QuestionMark

I guess that Hell also includes Moses, who, according to the Jewish Bible, was the only human to speak directly to God.

Why in hell should Moses go to Hell for not believing in Jesus?

QM?

Ray Moscow

In the fundie church I was raised in, we weaseled around the question about "OT" figures being saved by arguing that different rules applied in the OT than were set up in the NT.

We failed to notice the near total lack of an afterlife in the OT.

Jedi Mind Trick

What I was taught by my fundementalist teachers was that every person regardless of geography, culture and time period in history comes to a point in life the teachers called "god consciousness."

This stage of life happens to all people everywhere except young children and the mentally handicapped, who go immediately to heaven when they die.

God consciousness is a point in life where you look around at your surroundings and come to the conclusion that something had to have started all of this stuff we call life and existence.

At this point the teachers said that a person can go "positive" or "negative" to the information provided by creation and the mind's grasp of it.

Negative means that the mind becomes closed to any more information about God. At this point God has no further obligation to the person. They go to hell if they remain negative.

Positive means that the person wants more information about what god consciousness has revealed to the mind. At this point, it was taught, God would move heaven and earth to get them to hear the gospel (the age specific message to man regarding God).

At this point (the point of hearing God's message) another choice to go positive or negative arises. If the person goes positive then they are saved and if they go negative they are damned.

So this means that if a person dies not hearing God's message it is only because they went negative at the point of God consciousness.

Pretty convoluted isn't it?

mopc

so, according to those fundie teachers of yours, all Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, Hindus, Eskimos, Mongolians, Japanese, Amazonian Indians were negative at the point of "God Consciousness" and thus will end up in hell?

Jedi Mind Trick

Yep, pretty much. :angel: