Is everyone who was born before Christ in Hell?

Question

If knowing and accepting Jesus as your savior is the way to Heaven, what of all the people who never knew him? Is Hell rife with evil -- AND nice -- cavemen? Or were they eventually evaluated on their merits and "grandfathered" in?

Answer 1

No, read the Old Testament. The ticket to heaven was following the law (Scripture and making sacrafices) and loving God.

Jesus' role was to forever atone for our sins so we didn't have to keep doing the blood sacrafices. He was the ultimate sacrifice.

We will also be judged according to what we have done and what we had known. Everyone has eternal life regardless... where are you spending yours?

Answer 2

There are 4 hells:
The first is Greek haties, which means the grave, a lot of bones are in the grave but no souls.
It means death, a flesh death.

Then there is a place outside of heaven called hell it is divided into 2 sections
One side (the 2nd hell) WAS the lap of Abraham, for those who failed to live perfectly in the law.
At this time there is none there. Because of Christ!

The other side (the 3rd hell) IS separated by a gulf that only God can cross, this is a place that most would not want to go to. A place of the damned or where they who might parish await.

The 4th hell IS TO BE on earth, it is a Lake of Fire, where they that are judged and found wanting are thrown into and die the 2nd death.

Answer 3

Does everybody understand that these ancient people believed in two separate distinct states of death or “Hell.” There is a dark place and a lake of fire. My mother and father are dead. They are not in Heaven or Hell. They are dead. According to the religion known as Christianity noone is in heaven. Nobody is in Heaven. Nobody is in Hell. Why? The Great White Throne Judgement has not occurred. Why? Satan has not been destroyed yet. I do not think half of the people calling themselves Christians understand what the religion is saying. When you die you go nowhere.

Remember Saul. He gets the witch to call up the ghost. Where did the ghost come from? Heaven? Hell?

At some point in the future we all will be sequentially addressed in chronological order. If we are written in the book of life we go to Heaven if not we go to Hell. There is that Enoch story and I do not know how to address the question of persons born before Jesus. It is a religion it is not perfect okay.

Answer 4

Cavemen never existed..;) That's a myth of evolutionists.

Those who were good Jews and followed God went to Abraham's bosom..paradise..til a Savior came to take them on to Heaven.

Those who never knew of Christ...or God...still go to hell regardless... Ignorance is not an excuse or get out of hell free card. That's why missionaries spread gospel to even the most remote places...to introduce Christ to those who would never have heard of Him.

Merits have no place in heaven...that is works for salvation, and Christ does not allow that.

Answer 5

The hope they had before Christ was to live forever on a paradise earth read Isaiah tells all about this beautiful earth.
Revelation 5:9,10 Those who go to heaven will rule with christ over the earth. As Kings to rule the world.
Someone has to be on the earth for these Kings to rule over them.
Psalms 37:10,11 says the meek will inherit the earth and Jesus quoted it. Everyone isn't going to heaven

Answer 6

personnaly as a muslim i consder Jesus (PBUH) a geat human and a greater Prophet
but the thng of he took the purden of the whole world is somehow not rational abit for me ......if the chist died for all the humanity after him why God didn't made the earth as paradise with no suffdering no killing because all ppl are sinless
and that bringsme to a story i don't know if it is true or not
that duing Jesus (PBUH) live ,there was a blind man at the gates of the temple and other jew ppl ask is he blind for his father's o his mother's sins and Jesus simply replies none is taken by the sin of others ,an't that contradecting .
besides that it was mentioned in Quraan that after the Apple's sin God FORGAVE Adam and his wife even b4 God desended them to earth ......... so there is no need for a sn carrier..and that apolished the idea that the christ was crucified and he was simply sent up to heaven .
and that also proves that everyone's salvation is up to his work whatever he was before the chist or after him .

thank u for reading

Answer 7

Christians and Jews would say before Adam there was no law. With Adam came a simple law that we broke. With Moses came law that showed us how to overcome the sin we can't help with a sacrifice we can choose to give. Christians would say that, after Jesus, that law had been fulfilled for all of us and no more sacrifice was necessary.

So according to Christians and Jews, none of us are "evaluated on the merits"...nor do we need to be.

Xan Shui,
Philosophic Philanthropist, Honest Man

Answer 8

Mat 27:51 And, behold! The veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And the earth quaked, and the rocks were sheared,
Mat 27:52 and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep arose,
Mat 27:53 and coming out of the tomb after His resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

Who were these guys? I think they were people who died looking forward to the promise of God. No, they are not in hell...they are enjoying fellowship with the One they had spent their lives waiting for, and now finally, as Job said "in their flesh, they see God"

Answer 9

You might as well ask if you think the cat in the hat was abused as a child, because, just like your question, the answers you get will be based purely on how a person interprets text FROM A BOOK

It is not possible to manifest an answer and call it "fact" or "truth"

Answer 10

There were no cavemen. Didn't you read the bible? That's a pretty good question though. Maybe the Christian fundamentalists will weigh in on this one and come up with something that makes sense, but I doubt it.