SERIES: Heaven and Hell
Hell for Those Who Have Never Heard?
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Acts 8, Acts 10, et al
Introduction: Last Sunday’s message engendered a lot of response, most of it encouraging, but some of it challenging. One question several of you asked was essentially this, “Pastor, how can you be so sure all infants who die in infancy will go to heaven since the primary passage, 2 Samuel 12, dealt only with the death of the child of a believer?” Let me say it is true I am more certain the children of believers will go to heaven than I am that the children of unbelievers will. My basis for believing the former is biblical, whereas my basis for believing the latter is theological, i.e., it is based more on theological considerations than on a given Bible passage.
Ultimately, I rest my case on the character of God. I believe God is so gracious and merciful that He will save everyone who is savable. It is his nature to seek and to save the lost. However, He won’t violate His own Word or His holiness, so he won’t save those who refuse to believe in Him. But I see no theological reason why any infant who dies in infancy is unsavable.
One E-Mail I received was especially thoughtful and I want to read a paragraph from it. (By the way, I heard the other day about a little kid who was praying the Lord’s prayer and said, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from E-Mail.” Sometimes I agree, though this was an exception).
“Maybe God is vague in some areas (like the fate of babies) because we cannot understand with our limited mental capacities. It is very important to some people that God be fair and good by their understanding of fair and good. However, it seems to me that maturity in Christ would imply trusting in God’s pervasive goodness and justice even though we are not sure of some specifics. I have a feeling some of our conclusions will fall far short of the provisions God has actually made.
God loves far more deeply than we can love…. I think we should take more comfort from knowing God’s character than having to know the details of our destinies.”
I like that. I especially like this lady’s perspective on fairness. Bob Yarborough, a professor at TEDS, was recently reviewing a book for an evangelical publisher on women’s roles in the church. In the introduction to her book the author noted that historically the basically universal position of the church on the ordination of women has been that they should not be ordained to the preaching ministry. But she set that tradition aside, and the Bible verses that support it, with one simple question, “But is that fair?” Yarborough writes,
“I admit I was taken aback. I had never learned from the Bible that God is fair–just, yes; but that implies conformity to his own laws, his own promises, his own character. But fair–that implies behavior acceptable to peers…. Dennis Rodman doesn’t always play fair. It may not be fair that you have an office window and someone else doesn’t. Fairness is one thing. Justice, rightness, righteousness, is quite another.
Fairness has a great future today, because theology is now being done in the light of it…. In Wall Street language, society is bullish on fairness.”[i]
Everywhere today we hear the question, “Is it fair that people who have never heard the gospel should perish without it?” In a culture of rapidly disappearing biblical literacy, guess what the answer will be? But that is the wrong question; our question should be, “What saith the Scripture?”
What does the Bible say is the destiny of the unevangelized? I’m talking about those who have never heard that Jesus died for them. Are they lost? Almost certainly you have been asked this question, or perhaps have asked it yourself. Anyone who works with college students or shares the Gospel with unbelievers will eventually be hit with the objection, “But what about the heathen?” Just this past week I was asked, “What about the huge numbers of people in the rainforest who have never heard of Jesus? Can’t they be saved if they are living good lives and doing the best they can with what they know?”
I began my answer by suggesting that our picture of the people of the rainforest may not be entirely accurate. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an 18th century philosopher-theologian who claimed that primitive man was a free and happy being living in accordance with his instincts, without vice. This myth of the “innocent native” in an idyllic setting, untouched by the harshness of modern society, has pretty much been adopted by the sociologists and anthropologists of our day. It has even infected the church, as many seem to have the notion that primitive tribes are seeking God and trying their best to live rightly, but through no fault of their own, they remain ignorant of the Gospel. There is something seriously wrong with this perception.
I spent a week with the Yanomami Indians in the heart of the rainforest 18 months ago (this is the most primitive tribe in the western hemisphere), and while one week there certainly doesn’t make me an expert, I must tell you that nothing was more obvious to me (and missionaries who had spent their whole lives there confirmed it) than that those who have not been exposed to the Gospel are anything but innocent seekers after God. Immorality, murder, deceit, treachery, demon worship, and death were everywhere. The only Indians I saw who had any sense of fulfillment, happiness, purpose, or basic morality were those who had given their hearts to Jesus Christ. You could literally see the difference on their faces.
And what I saw is exactly the picture of the unevangelized that Paul paints in Romans 1-3. Listen to his summary in Romans 3:10-18:
“As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.””
Now mind you, this is not Paul’s description of the likes of the Yanomami Indians only; this comes after he discusses the pagan, the good man, and even the religious Jew. He claims none of them are righteous.
I am going to return to Romans later this morning, but before I do, I want to suggest that there are four major views of the destiny of the unevangelized. Two of them are identical to views we looked at last week regarding the destiny of those who cannot believe, namely agnosticism and universalism, so we won’t say much more about them. I will simply define again what those terms mean.
Agnosticism is the position that we don’t have enough information to know what their eternal destiny is, so we shouldn’t worry about it.
Universalism is the view that everyone is eventually going to be saved, probably even the Devil, so certainly those who have never heard will go to heaven, if there is such a place.
Of course, if either agnosticism or universalism are true, the preaching of the Gospel and the missionary enterprise are unnecessary. That’s why both of those activities are largely missing from mainline churches. Oh, they still use the terms “Gospel” and “missions,” but they don’t mean the same thing they used to mean by them. “Gospel” in some of these churches means the good news that homosexuality is an acceptable alternative lifestyle, and “mission” means helping Caesar Chavez conduct a farm worker’s strike or aiding Planned Parenthood open a new clinic in a poor neighborhood.
A third view of the destiny of the unevangelized, and one we want to examine carefully, is what we might call …
Inclusivism
Basically, inclusivism can be defined as the presumption that the saving work of Christ includes all people of sincerity and goodwill, regardless of what their religious faith is. Inclusivists are different from universalists in that they believe there is a hell for the wicked and for those who consciously reject the Gospel, but they can’t bring themselves to believe that God would allow all those who have never heard of Christ to spend eternity there.
Inclusivists are more biblical than universalists in that they agree that no one is saved apart from Christ. But they also hold that not all who are saved by Christ are aware of Him or know His name. Thus, a devout Hindu may be saved by Christ even if he knows nothing about Christianity, for Hinduism is not so much wrong as it is incomplete. Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner has popularized the term “anonymous Christian” to describe this supposedly saved, but unevangelized, person.
Let me say up front, I wish I could be an inclusivist. I am at heart a tolerant person. I grew up with a lot of intolerance, dogmatism, and legalism (not in my home, but in my church environment), and I never want to go back to that. But while I have changed my perspective on many things, I have never quit being a man of the Book, and one of the things I have discovered about inclusivists is that “fairness” seems to be their dominant concern, not conformity to Scripture.
I have listed four different twists on this view, all of which fall within the overall category of inclusivism.
Some inclusivists believe all people are saved unless they expressly reject Christ. This stands in contrast to the traditional view that all are lost unless they accept Christ. This is becoming a very popular view, and frankly, it’s probably the way I would do it if I were God. But I’m not, and the fact is, there are scores of Bible passages which describe the condition for salvation as “active believing,” rather than “not rejecting.”
Some believe in extended probation. That is, they presume there are or may be post-death opportunities to be saved. The notion is that when a Yanomami Indian dies, he is at that point given the chance to believe and be saved or to reject and be condemned. Or, the extended probation may extend well past the point of death. This assumes the Gospel will continue to be preached in the afterlife to those who did not hear it while living on earth, right up until the final judgment. After all, if Christ descended into hell between His death and resurrection, as the Apostles’ Creed says, and if He “preached to the spirits in prison” at that time (1 Peter 3:19), why couldn’t He do so in the future?
Of course, Christ can do anything He wants, but 1 Peter 3:19 is clearly talking about an event during which Christ preached to a particular group of spirits, namely those “who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.” There is no warrant I know of to view this a continuing ministry of Christ.
Furthermore, the whole tenor of Scripture is that “now is the day of salvation.” Don’t delay because tomorrow it may be too late. Hebrews 9:27 says, “Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” “Judgment” there does not refer to “inquiry” or “examination” but rather “sentencing.”
Other inclusivists believe God will judge the unevangelized based on how they would haveresponded had they heard about Jesus. After all, God is omniscient; He knows not only what hashappened and what will happen, but He also knows what would have happened had things been different than they were. In His foreknowledge He could tell who of the early American Indians would have believed, and on that basis, He would let them into heaven. I like that idea, too. Once again, you can’t beat that for fairness. But once again there’s not a hint of it in Scripture.
Still others believe that a positive response to general revelation is credited as saving faith. In other words, if a person has not heard the Gospel, but he recognizes there is a God and casts himself on God’s mercy as best he knows how, this is acceptable and he will go to heaven. I don’t want to treat this view too lightly, because although I disagree with it, there are some intelligent theologians who espouse it. Furthermore, they communicate it very convincingly. For example, Norman Anderson writes of the unevangelized,
“What if the Spirit of God convicts them, as he alone can, of something of their sin and need; and what if he enables them, in the darkness or twilight, somehow to cast themselves on the mercy of God and cry out, as it were, for his forgiveness and salvation? Will they not then be accepted and forgiven in the one and only Savior? And if it be asked how this can be when they have never so much as heard of him, then the answer must be that they will be accepted on the basis of what the God of all grace himself did in Christ at the cross.”[ii]
And John Sanders adds,
“This position maintains that the unevangelized are saved or lost depending on their response to the light they have. If they respond positively, in faith, they will be saved; if negatively, they will be lost. ‘Saving faith’ (faith required to obtain salvation) does not necessitate knowledge of Christ in this life.”[iii]
One of the arguments often used by the proponents of this view is that there were many during OT times, like Abel and Enoch and Noah, who were believers and are surely in heaven today, but they did not know Jesus Christ. So why can’t we assume there were some among the original American Indians or among the Yanomami who worship the true God but don’t know Christ?[iv] I would respond that Abel and Enoch and Noah may not have known the name of Jesus, but they were saved by faith that God would send His Messiah to pay for their sins, and their animal sacrifices were offered in anticipation of His once-for-all sacrifice. They were saved by conscious faith in Christ, just as we are, only they looked forward to His coming, while we look back.
By now it should be apparent that I reject inclusivism as a biblical answer for the question, “What is the destiny of the unevangelized?” That leaves only one more possibility.
Exclusivism
Now that’s a dirty word today. If anything is politically incorrect, it’s exclusivism. But once again, “What saith the Scriptures?” I would describe the exclusivist view as a three-legged stool. The first leg is the proposition that:
Conscious faith in Christ is required for the salvation of anyone capable of exercising such faith. I include the limiting phrase, “anyone capable of exercising such faith” to make room for the preborn, infants who die in infancy, and those mentally impaired, but some of you who are real sharp may spot a loophole. After all, if someone has never heard of Christ, is he capable of exercising faith in Christ? I answer that with the second leg of the stool:
Every adult person has received sufficient revelation of God’s existence and character through nature and conscience to render him without excuse if he does not believe. I have alluded to Romans 1 several times already this morning. It’s time we look a little closer at what the Apostle Paul says. Let’s start in chapter 1, verse 18:
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
Friends, this is not a very flattering view of the unevangelized pagan, but for the most part, it’s accurate. In fact, it also accurately describes a great many civilized, even religious, people. Mankind without Christ is basically in the business of suppressing truth. In fact, our politically correct society may be the worst in history at suppressing truth. Just this week Charles Colson wrote in his commentary about a drama professor at Arizona State University who was fired because his classroom behavior was so outrageous that even a morally permissive, “anything goes” campus could no longer stomach it. What was his crime? He was teaching the plays of Shakespeare, a dead white European male, instead of plays written by postmodern feminist, gay, and ethnic authors.
Let me review. The first leg of the stool is the teaching of Scripture that conscious faith in Christ is required for salvation. The second leg is the fact that God has not left any people without revelation of Himself. Even if they have never seen a Bible or heard the name of Jesus, they have received God’s revelation of Himself in nature and conscience.
But what if a person responds to that revelation and tries to worship the true God, but he is still ignorant of the Gospel? Won’t he be accepted by God and admitted into heaven? Here is where the third leg of the stool comes into play:
God is willing to do anything necessary, including performing a miracle, to bring the Gospel to those who respond positively to His revelation in nature and conscience. Suppose there was an American Indian in 1575, before the pilgrims came, before the Bible was introduced or the name of Jesus was known here. And suppose that Indian acknowledged the true God and sought to worship Him. Would he be “saved” and eligible for heaven even if he didn’t know Jesus? I would say, “No, not if that’s the whole story.” But would there be any hope for him to be saved and thus be eligible for heaven? I would say, “Yes, definitely.” And I say that on the basis of two stories from the NT book of Acts.
The first is the story of the Roman centurion, Cornelius, recorded in Acts 10. I wish we had time to read the whole story, but we don’t, so I will simply tell it. Cornelius and his whole family were devout and God-fearing. He was righteous, he prayed regularly, and he gave generously to religious causes. But he didn’t know Jesus. God didn’t take the attitude, “It doesn’t matter. Cornelius is a God-fearer, that’s sufficient.” Instead, He did something amazing, performing a whole series of miracles so that this righteous, good, generous God-seeker could come to know Jesus and be saved.
The first miracle was a vision that came to Cornelius by an angel of God telling him that God had heard his prayers and urging him to send some of his servants to Joppa to find a man named Simon Peter. The next miracle was even more stunning. God gave Peter a vision that turned his whole world upside down. Up to this point Peter had been an orthodox Jew, abstaining from unclean foods and unclean Gentiles. But in this vision God sent a sheet down from heaven full of unclean animals and told Peter to kill and eat.
Peter objected to God’s instructions, saying he had never eaten anything but kosher food and wouldn’t start now. God reprimanded him for calling anything impure that God had made clean. Peter’s problem was that he was still living by the Mosaic law and didn’t realize that the death of Jesus had removed the Mosaic Law as a rule of life over believers. He’s not alone. There are a lot of Christians today still laboring under the burden of the Law of Moses.
At any rate, this happened three times, and while Peter was wondering what it all meant, Cornelius’ servants arrived, asking for him. The Holy Spirit told Peter to go with them because God had sent them. So he did. When he arrived at Cornelius’ house, a two-day trip away, he found a large gathering of people, to whom he said,
“You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection (perhaps not entirely true, but close). May I ask why you sent for me?” (Acts 10:28-29)
The rest of the story is fascinating, but the bottom line is that Peter preached “the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all,” (verse 36). He preached the perfect life of Jesus, His powerful ministry, His death on the Cross, His resurrection, His post-resurrection ministry, and forgiveness through His name.
And the result was that Cornelius and many of his friends heard the message, believed the message, received the Holy Spirit, and were baptized.
That this is the point of Cornelius’ salvation is clearly stated by Peter in Acts 11:14 as he retells the story.
The other case study I want us to briefly consider is that of the Ethiopian eunuch from Acts 8. You can read the story, and I hope you will, in verses 26-40. In essence this is what happened. This man was an important official in charge of the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. He had gone to Jerusalem to worship. I suppose he had learned from some traveler that the Jewish people had an inside track with the true God. While in Jerusalem he picked up a scroll of the prophets, and as his chariot was riding through the Gaza desert on the way home, he was reading the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.
Meanwhile God performed a miracle by sending an angel to Philip the evangelist, who told him to go to the desert and wait by the highway. When the eunuch’s chariot came along, the Holy Spirit told Philip to run alongside it. He saw the man reading and asked the Ethiopian if he understood what he was reading. “How can I?” he asked, “unless someone explains it to me?” And he invited Philip to get into his chariot and ride along. Philip explained to him that the 53rd chapter of Isaiah was a prophecy about Jesus, and Philip preached the Gospel to him. The eunuch believed and was baptized. As soon as he came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit suddenly took Philip away and plopped him down in Azotus, at least 20 miles north, to do some evangelism there.
Now I would like to ask you the same question about these two stories: What’s the point? What is their significance? I believe it is simply this, to teach us that God will go to any lengths necessary to bring the Gospel to any unevangelized person who responds positively to the revelation he receives in nature and conscience. God will not leave the seeking person in his ignorance, but will bring him the Gospel so he can be saved. If he did it for a Roman and for an Ethiopian, what’s to prevent Him from doing it for an American Indian or a Yanomami?
Paul proclaims in Romans 10:13, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?” Then he quotes Isaiah 52:7, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” This is a missionary passage par excellence, and Paul is attempting to generate concern for the unevangelized on the part of those who are supposed to be part of God’s solution. We are supposed to be the Peters and the Philips who take the Gospel to those who have never heard.
But, friends, if we refuse to go, do you think God’s hands are tied? If there were no missionaries available for the American Indians, do you think they were, for that reason, doomed to hell? I don’t. I believe wherever there are seekers after truth, God will provide a way for them to learn about His Son. Jesus once said if His disciples remain quiet, “the stones will cry out.” God is not willing that any should perish, according to Peter, and Jeremiah adds, “’And you will seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart. And I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord!” (Jeremiah 29:13-14)
So, when the exclusivist says that hell is the destiny of those who have never heard, he is not condemning innocent seekers to eternal torment; he is rather suggesting that if there are true seekers among the unevangelized, they will not be left without knowledge of how to be saved, even if it takes a miracle to get it to them.
Friends, we must avoid becoming callous and indifferent toward the unevangelized (which is criminal), or unduly optimistic that natural revelation alone will save them (which is unbiblical).
Conclusion: I am challenged by a statement from one of my favorite theologians, J. I. Packer: “If we are wise we will not spend much time mulling over this notion (i.e., the destiny of the unevangelized). Our job, after all, is to spread the gospel, not to guess what might happen to those to whom it never comes. Dealing with them is God’s business.”[v]
And Kenneth Kantzer, former dean of our own seminary, TEDS adds, “Scripture has not given us enough information to resolve this problem. God does not want us to spend enormous amounts of time investigating things about which we can do absolutely nothing.”[vi]
I accept the admonition of these two giants of theology, but I don’t think one sermon in 14 years constitutes an “enormous” amount of time devoted to the topic. And I humbly acknowledge that I may not have the last word on the subject. More brilliant minds than mine have come to different conclusions. But one thing I know. No one in this room can claim he or she is unevangelized and file an appeal on Judgment Day on that basis. If you never heard the Gospel before you entered this room today, you have heard it here today.
And in case you missed it, let me say it slowly and clearly. You are a sinner. The wages of sin is death, eternal separation from God. But God solved your sin problem by allowing His own Son, who never sinned, to die in your place. He paid your penalty. God not only invites you but commands you to turn from your sin and receive Jesus as your Savior and Lord.
DATE: December 13, 1998
Tags:
Heaven
Hell
Agnosticism
Universalism
Inclusivism
Exclusivism
[i] Bob Yarbrough, “The Future of Fairness,” paper delivered at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, April 13, 1998, 1.
[ii] Norman Anderson, The World’s Religions, 234-5.
[iii] John Sanders, “Is Belief in Christ Necessary for Salvation? The Evangelical Quarterly, LX, no. 3 (July), 241-259.
[iv] Those who espouse this view will even argue their position from the favorite texts used by exclusivists, which is the last view we’re going to examine, the traditional view that a person must consciously believe in Jesus to be saved. Two of those texts are Acts 4:12 and John 14:6. Acts 4:12 says, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” They agree, the only way to be saved is by the name of Jesus, but, they say, one doesn’t necessarily need to know the name. But I would simply ask, “Is that what Peter is trying to say in Acts 4:12?” Is that kind of subtle, esoteric interpretation being true to the intent of the author? I doubt it.
The other verse is John 14:6: “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.’” Again, those who espouse this fourth kind of inclusivism agree, “It is only through Christ and His death on the Cross that anyone can be saved. “But,” they would add, “If the pre-born or infants or those severely impaired mentally can be saved by the death of Christ without conscious faith in Christ, why can’t the heathen also be saved without conscious faith in Christ?” My answer would be that there’s a big difference between the adult pagan and any infant. According to Paul, the adult pagan has received revelation of God in nature and conscience but has rejected that revelation and distorted it. Such cannot be said of the infant or the severely retarded.
[v] J. I. Packer, Christianity Today (January, 1986), 25.
[vi] Kenneth Kantzer, “Preface” in Through No Fault of Their Own?, Ed. William Crockett and James Sigountos, 15.