Board index ‹ Heaven and Hell

[Ebola Nugget]

The christian faith is prevalent throughout the west. But what about the societies of the east? Why didn't God intervene in Asia? Why isn't there a prophet there to spread the word of God?

What would be the fate of those intellectually incapable to accept Jesus as their lord and savior? Such as those suffering from a chronic disability.

These are just examples and the list can go on...

If God wanted to have a relationship with each and every human in existence, I don't think he did a very good job. What would the fates of those incapable or didn't have a chance to become a Christian? Would they forever burn, eternally in the inferno? This does not seem fair to me.

[Robot by Day]

Pauline letters suggest that those who are unaware of the gospel are judged by a different criteria, of whether they keep the law 'in their hearts'.

Now, for whatever reason, a lot of people use that and argue that we shouldn't do mission work. But in order to adequately argue that, you would have to know what God's secondary criteria is (we don't), and know that more people fulfill that secondary criteria than people who would convert to Christianity.

Also, there are plenty of missionaries in Asia.

[jimwalton]

In the book of Romans (5.13), Paul says people will only be held accountable for the information they had and what they did with it. There is a principal of reasonable accountability. According to Romans 5.13, people are not held accountable for what they had no possibility of knowing or knowing about. In Deuteronomy 1.39, the children who were too young to make a realistic decision are not judged, but are shown mercy; their level of accountability was directly related to their moral awareness. Isa. 7.15-16 teaches the same thing: God deals differently with people based on their knowledge. So we're getting a sense of the fairness of God, and that he takes many things into consideration as he makes his perfect decisions. So people who haven't heard will be judged according to a fair standard.

So what about people who lived in Asia, or on Papua New Guinea, or South Africa, or Alaska, who never heard of Jesus but lived and died? They will be judged fairly given their own motivations and actions. People will be judged according to the information they had, what they did with it, and their motives behind it. Every judgment will be fair based on what information people had, what they knew, what their motives were, and how they behaved given what they had access to. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair. So if someone hasn't heard of Christianity, they can't be held accountable for Christianity. But they will be held accountable for what they do know.

As far as people with intellectual disabilities, again, people will only be held accountable for what they were capable of and what they did with it, directly related to their moral awareness. There is no specific verse that talks about brain damaged people, but the Scripture teaches that anyone who is not capable of making a deliberate, reasoned decision is not held accountable like other people. I remember one person once saying, "Salvation is giving as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of God." That's pretty good, and it's clear. If your IQ is 50 , you will be reviewed on that scale. If 200, on that scale. If you never heard, on that scale. If you know plenty and have even had opportunities to converse about such things on public forums, on that scale.