Help me understand a pardox?

Question

I am a believer in Jesus, and I struggle with a paradox. If you believe that the only way to heaven is to accept Jesus as your lord and savior and that you have to do this before you die in order to go to heaven.....then what happened to all the people that lived and died before Jesus was born? Did they go to heaven or hell, and on what merit were they judged?

Answer 1

Good question. Certainly many people never had the chance to hear about Jesus and the Christian God.

There are answers from within the Christian mythos that say "Jesus went to Hell and saved all the deserving Pagans". This doesn't work for me, for the following reasons.

Let's say you're in Hell, or the "bosom of Abraham" if you prefer. It's reasonable to assume that at that point, having entered the afterlife, you have SEEN the reality of the afterlife and of Hell/God.

Therefore, when Jesus comes to ask you to come with Him, any sensible person, presented with that evidence, would agree to follow Him.

Now let's compare that to the state of affairs with human beings today. We are in a world where the the proof of Hell/God is obviously NOT as evident as it was to those pre-Christian Pagans who were already in the afterlife when Jesus came to them. How can it be fair to ask us to make that same choice and come to the "right" decision, based on our relative lack of evidence?

What it amounts to is that the Pagans in Hell/the bosom of Abraham had a monstrous advantage over us, the people of the modern era. Therefore, God is at best unfair, at worst capricious.

Personally, I prefer to believe that God (if God exists) loves His creation and will turn away no one. I think that the concept of a Hell for unbelievers is a projection of the hopes and fears of His followers rather than a true reflection of His nature.

Answer 2

Theists will cite something they call the 'new covenant' basically when jesus got nailed to a tree, all the rules changed. Even though the bible says that the rules are inchanging and jesus himself says that all rules of the OT were still valid.

A more appropriate and unanswerable question would be: What about all the other people in the world who never heard of Jesus? People in North America and South America and Australia who never had an opportunity to be saved by knowing and accepting Jesus? The missionaries really didn't get to these places until over 1000 years after Jesus died. So all the people in all those places that never heard of Jesus for all those generations that died and could not have possibly known about Jesus, are burning in hell for eternity. Or at the very least can't get into heaven. That's pretty sh*tty if you ask me.

Answer 3

They are judged in accordance with how much light and knowledge they already had while living on the earth. Everyone who dies goes to the same place until the Resurrection, but there are different levels in that place (the spirit world, or part of which is called paradise by Jesus when on the cross). Every child of God will get an opportunity to hear the full Gospel of Jesus Christ before the Final Judgment. If that were not the case, then God would be considered unfair. But He is a loving and fair Father, and He knows the needs of His children. Have a happy day, and I send you a gummy bear.

Answer 4

If you believe that you 'must believe' in Jesus ON EARTH then I think you should consider that Jesus is 'The Only Begotten Son of God' who died 'for ALL of our sins' ... and that means the sins of those who died before he was even born. Jesus is 'both God and man' and was actually around 'before he was born as a man' and he'll be 'our judge' at 'judgement day' so those people who lived before, or who simply haven't had the chance to believe on earth will be given 'a chance' then to go to Heaven.

Answer 5

I believe God said they believed on the promises they were given of the messiah, I don't think they went to Heaven until Jesus died but at the time there were two side of Hell, one was paradise in Abrahams bosom. When Jesus died he took the righteous to Heaven with Abraham

Answer 6

Not everyone who believes in Jesus is going to heaven. Revelation says that number is 144,000 total.
So from 33 CE until today, 1,974 years have passed.
That averages out to 74 anointed Christians living per year throughout history. So it would be possible to have thousands living now. And their number is fading fast.
Those who lived before Jesus was born will have a Resurrection here on the earth during his 1,000 year reign. And for all of those who were not called to share his kingdom in the heavens, they too will be resurrected her on earth during that reign.

Answer 7

The concept of Heaven for the Good and hell for the Bad is all just False Religious teachings. The bible talks about a Resurrection of the good to righteousness and resurrection for the bad to judgement. True bible teacing has been obsecured like the wheat in Jesus' parable.

Answer 8

"Moreover, no man has ascended into heaven but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man." - John 3:13
The Bible states: "Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life." (Genesis 2:7) Though breathing sustained his life, putting "the breath of life" into his nostrils involved much more than simply blowing air into his lungs. It meant that God put into Adam's lifeless body the spark of life—"the force of life," which is active in all earthly creatures.

When the first man, Adam, deliberately disobeyed God's command, He said to him: "In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return." (Genesis 3:19) Where was Adam before Jehovah created him from the dust? Why, he was nowhere! He simply did not exist. So when Jehovah God said that Adam would "return to the ground," he meant that Adam would die and return to the elements in the ground. Adam would not cross over to the spirit realm. At death Adam would once again be nonexistent. His punishment was death—absence of life—not a transfer to another realm.—Romans 6:23.

What about others who have died? The condition of the dead is made clear at Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10, where we read: "The dead know nothing . . . There is no pursuit, no plan, no knowledge or intelligence, within the grave." (Moffatt) Death, therefore, is a state of nonexistence. The psalmist wrote that when a person dies, "his spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts do perish."—Psalm 146:4.

Clearly, the dead do not exist. They cannot know anything. They cannot see you, hear you, or talk to you. They can neither help you nor harm you. You certainly need not fear the dead.

Answer 9

That will remain a paradox. Another is that parable of that beggar who pleaded for scraps of food off the rich man's table, but wasn't given any. When he both died, the rich man saw the poor man in heaven. Now, did that poor man receive Jesus as his Saviour? Didn't Jesus tell this parable?

Anyway, to affirm my answer, *shrug*

Answer 10

How could Jesus be God if he 1) Arrived on Earth, like you said, after people had already been inhabitants for years and years before, 2) He was "KILLED"!! I never really understood that to begin with. Maybe, if you really are as confused as you say you are, you should start looking into other religions. It has never made sense to me that Jesus could be God, or even the son of God. To me he is just another prophet, like Moses or Mohammed. That seems to make a whole lot more sense.