Brief Answer:
Not being God, I don’t know. But, I can trust him.
Detailed Answer:
I am not certain how God will handle this, but there are a number of possibilities:
- Some argue these people can be saved by Christ’s sacrifice if they seek God, even if though they don’t know the name of Jesus (like Old Testament saints who lived long before Jesus was born).
- Maybe a more biblically consistent view is God will get true seekers the truth about Christ so they can be saved (Acts 10: Cornelius; Acts 8:26-40 Philip and the Ethiopian, and I have heard about an endless flow of modern examples).
- It could be that God has so ordered the world so those who never hear the Gospel are the ones who would not have accepted it anyway (Acts 17:26-27; also explained in the philosophical concept of “Molonism”).
The only thing I can rely upon is God’s verification of his character, which includes the highest level of love and valuing each of us, to the point of creating the entire Universe with us in mind, and taking on the penalty of our wrongdoing on himself, which makes it entirely reasonable to assume he will handle each of our situations fairly. And, unreasonable to think otherwise.
God doesn’t judge on the evidence we don’t have, but on our response to what we do have.
Some people phrase the question in a more aggressive way, “Does God send people to Hell who never heard of him?” I heard this question asked to a professor of mathematics at Oxford, John Lennox, who noted: “Kind of a loaded question isn’t it?” By saying God “sends” a person places this image of God angrily pushing someone away who simply was unaware of God.
Two significant problems with the question. First, it assumes the person had no evidence or experience or any way of knowing about God. The Bible claims in Romans 1:20, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” This is declaring nature alone will provide the evidence and direction to seek God, if the person is open to relationship with God. You may disagree, but what have you done to establish the reliability of your claim against the Bible? The Bible has established itself as absolutely unique in displaying properties of a God involved in it (see blogs on the Bible).
A primary person in the Bible, Abraham, lived and died long before Christ, as did all those before Jesus’ time, yet God still credited to him the salvation of Jesus. Therefore, whatever the method, we have evidence that God provides all that is needed and judges fairly, whether we can figure out how or not.
Some may then ask why bother to evangelize then if God cares enough to give everyone a fair choice. One solid reason is because Christ emphasized the importance of us sharing, defending and helping others in their relationship with God, and Jersus most likely knows better than us. Also, like any good parent knows, involving children in good work is a blessing and fosters beneficial growth in them.
God doesn’t send people to Hell
The second misunderstanding displayed by the question is that God doesn’t “send” people to Hell, people send themselves.
Suppose I say no to God, should he respect my free will or reverse it? I like the approach my friend Frank Turek takes, when speaking to an audience about this issue. He brings up a common situation, asking the ladies in the audience if they ever had a guy pursuing them for a relationship, but they just were not interested. So the girl says they only want to be “friends”. Here is the important part, what if the guy then says, “No, we will be together and you will come to love me.” What are you girls thinking? Creepy.
The whole point of love and relationship is the ability to love or not. God is caring enough to not force our love but allow genuine choice to have relationship with him or not. In Jesus’ day, many witnessed his life and evidence validating his claim, and many told him to go away. They had evidence and choose to go their own way. This is real choice, but with real choice comes real consequences.
