Please can someone help me with all these relating to bible quotations.

Question number 28)

If someone never hears the gospel, can they still go to heaven?
Posted on March 9, 2012 by 500 Questions

If God condemns them, then He is unfair (because they never heard the gospel), but if God saves them, then evangelism is unnecessary. What’s a god to do?

The opening joke…

A missionary travels to a remote village to spread the gospel. He talks with everyone there about Jesus, telling them that if they do not accept Jesus into their hearts, they will burn in hell for all eternity. Before the missionary leaves, the tribal elder asks, “What if we had never heard about Jesus? Would we still burn in hell?” The missionary replies, “No, I suppose you would go to heaven for all eternity,” to which the elder replies “Then why the hell did you tell us about him!?”

This joke makes an important point: if God doesn’t condemn the ignorant, then why evangelize?

There are even a few Bible verses that suggest the ignorant will not be held accountable for their sins…

If I had not come and spoken to them [the world], they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.
~ John 15:22

The Law brings about wrath, but where there is no Law, there also is no violation.
~ Romans 4:15

If the ignorant are excused from sin and wrath, then the first rule of Christianity should be “Don’t talk about Christianity,” because it only brings condemnation.

In fact, we might even question why Jesus came at all since, according to John 15:22 and Acts 17:30, God overlooked our ignorance and didn’t hold us accountable until Jesus came.

Well that doesn’t make sense, so we’ll say the opposite…

There are other verses that seem to suggest that the ignorant will be punished…

All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law…
~ Romans 2:12

He will punish those who do not know God… they will be punished with everlasting destruction…
~ 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9

But if God condemns those who sin apart from the law and don’t know God, then He is unfair, because these people have never heard the gospel (more on this later).

There are even verses that hint that judgement will vary according to our knowledge:

But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.
~ Luke 12:48

My brothers and sisters, not many of you should be teachers… we who teach will be judged more strictly than others.
~ James 3:1

But if less knowledge means less punishment, then we’re back to the first rule of Christianity — don’t talk about Christianity!

We should probably just stop here and admit the Bible contradicts itself on this issue. But fundamentalists insist there are no contradictions, and that we should look for the larger Biblical themes to facilitate a more accurate understanding of these verses.

So how do most Christians answer this question?

Not every Christian will agree, but in researching this question, I found that the consensus view is that the ignorant are guilty of sin and are still in need of salvation.

I believe the reason this conclusion is reached is because salvation and evangelism are two overriding themes in the New Testament. If the ignorant are innocent, then evangelism is pointless. Ergo, the ignorant must be made guilty in order for these themes to matter.

But how can a man be guilty if he’s never heard the gospel?

How to make an ignorant man guilty



Many Christians will answer that the ignorant are innocent until they break one of God’s “natural laws.”

Natural laws are a subset of God’s Law (the Bible), and God has made these natural laws instinctive by writing them on our hearts. These natural laws speak to us as our conscience — that little Jiminy Cricket voice inside our head that says “Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t kill, and don’t touch yourself.”

For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them…
~ Romans 2:14-15

The only problem is, we all break these natural laws.

…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…
~ Romans 3:23

We don’t break them because God has set the bar too high, or because God failed to create us with enough willpower, we break them of our own free volition… because we’re dicks. And as it turns out, being a dick just once is enough to get you cast into hell forever. Yikes!

Natural law is also great for God’s reputation. Good-guy-God gives us all a get-out-of-hell-free pass, but we reject it when we break one of His natural laws. So it’s not God’s fault we ignored our inner Jiminy, we should’ve known better!

If this consensus view is the truth, then I have few problems with it…

Problem #1: God has created different tests with different standards

Problem #1 hails back to my previous post; if God has created different tests with different standards, then He has given some of us better odds of becoming saved.

For example, one man might be born under God’s Law, to Christian parents in a Christian culture. When he violates one of God’s Laws, his Christian culture tells him of the dire consequences and provides him with a way out. He may sin 100,000 times in his life, but he can still get into heaven.

But a man born under natural law is ignorant of all this. When he breaks one of God’s natural laws, he is never informed of the consequences or how to repent. What’s worse, if forgiveness only comes though Jesus, then redemption may never be an option. He is allowed ZERO sins!

No one comes to the Father except through me.
~ John 14:6

These are two very different tests; one is fairly easy, the other is nearly impossible.

Problem #2: God did not write all His laws on our hearts

It would’ve been just as easy for God to write His entire message (or at least the most important bits) on our hearts as half a message. Why give us a conscience and make us feel guilty, but not tell us we’re in danger of hell and we need to repent through God’s son Jesus? Why must the answer be delivered by an external source?

Some Christians say that if any man seeks God, God will reveal the truth to him. But if God is capable of delivering truth, why send missionaries? Why not reveal the entire truth to anyone who seeks Him? Not only would this preserve the original message, but it would validate that it actually was coming from God, and not just another false religion being disseminated by men.

Problem #3: How can we obey God’s natural laws when we’re not sure what they are?

If God has written a subset of His laws on our hearts, what exactly are they?

According to Romans 2:14-15, God’s laws are an instinctive part of our conscience that accuse us when we do wrong. So if we were going make a list of God’s natural laws, we might start by looking for “instinctive” morals that most humans seem to share. Also, violating these morals should result in feelings of guilt.

So let’s imagine we’ve performed such a study and found several behaviors that are universally seen as immoral, things like:

Murder
Rape
Injuring others
Lying
Cheating
Stealing
Torture
Infidelity
Slavery
and Downloading music illegally
If we went on to publish this list as “God’s Official List of Natural Laws,” we might encounter a few objections.

The first objection might be that God’s intervention is unnecessary, because all these behaviors have observable negative consequences (such as anger, sadness, mistrust, inequality, conflict, and RIAA lawsuits). They are therefore deemed “wrong” because of their negative consequences, not because of any universally declared divine law.

A second objection might be that God’s Law sometimes contradicts His natural laws.

For example…

Natural law tells us that killing healthy babies is always wrong, but God’s Law says it’s sometimes necessary (Gen. 7:21, Exodus 12:12, Psalm 137:9).
Natural law tells us that owning and beating slaves is wrong, but God’s Law provides us with a how-to manual (Exodus 21).
Natural law tells us it’s wrong to steal and rape, but God’s Law says He may send men to steal from you and rape you if you disobey Him (Zechariah 14:2).
Natural law also tells us it’s wrong for a man to rape a young woman, but God’s Law says it’s fine, so long as the girl is forced to marry her rapist and he tips her dad a few bucks (Duet. 22:28-29).
How can natural law also be God’s Law when the two sometimes conflict?

A final objection might be that our conscience and guilt are unreliable guideposts, and sometimes mislead us.

For example, the independent consciences of many early cultures led them to believe the sun was a god. Did God write this message on the hearts of the Aztecs, Incas, Egyptians, Greeks, Hindus, Persians, West Africans, Celtics and others?

And what of guilt? A starving anorexic girl may feel guilty after eating a sandwich, but is she right? Is God using guilt to condemn her?

We can’t always trust that man’s conscience and guilt are driven by God when they often mislead us.

To sum up…

If we’re going to assert that God finds the ignorant guilty, then we must also accept that:
1) God seems to make salvation easier for some than others,
2) God could’ve written His message on all our hearts, but didn’t,
3) God chose the same unverifiable method to deliver His message as all other false religions,
4) God sometimes contradicts His natural laws with His other laws, and
5) God instructs and judges us using an unreliable system of conscience and guilt.

The Naturalist View

Naturalists will claim that such contradictions and logical paradoxes exist because Christianity is man-made. But the Naturalist must still explain why some morals seem instinctive, and why ignoring these morals can result in feelings of guilt.



As mentioned above, many morals seem to be based on our observation of negative consequences. Other values may have been bred into us through natural selection.

I think the reason we feel guilty when we do something “wrong” is because we know we shouldn’t have done it, but we did it anyway, and our minds must wrestle with this contradiction. We can either make excuses, or admit we’re weak and lack self-control; we regret our actions and we’ve let ourselves down. We may also dread the possibility of being ostracized by our family, friends and society.

But it’s equally important to recognize that our guilt depends greatly on what we’ve been taught. Change the teaching and we can feel good about doing bad, and bad about doing good. (And why would God design such a malleable conscience?)

Conclusion

When answering this question, many Christians will conclude by saying something like “We just have to trust that God is fair and just,” because there really is no good answer. No matter how many of the ignorant ultimately end up in heaven, there is always a problem.

If we say that fewer “unreached” than “reached” enter heaven, then God is unfair for having given the unreached a more difficult test.
If we say the exact same percentage of both enter heaven, then salvation and evangelism are unimportant, and the Bible is wrong for stressing them.
If we say that more unreached enter heaven, then God is unfair for giving the the reached the more difficult test. Also, evangelism of the unreached only results in fewer people entering heaven.
And finally, if we say that everyone goes to heaven, then the Bible should just say “Good news everyone! We’re all getting in!”
Unfortunately, like many Christian debates, this one ends up being backed into an “untestable corner.” The Christian can always claim that an unknown extra-Biblical explanation exists, perhaps in the spirit world. The skeptic can only point out that no evidence exists for that world, and that these contradictions and illogical scenarios are evidence that the story is man-made.
— with Brandon Imhotep and Pitit Neg Ahier.