According to the New Testament, nobody can be saved apart from Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12, John 14:6), and those who do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah will die in their sins (John 8:24). What, then, is the eternal destiny of those who have never heard about Jesus, the savior of the world?
The tenth chapter of Acts is very instructive in this regard. It describes the conversion of Cornelius, a very devout man who feared God and prayed continually. The Lord gave him a vision and showed him that he should send some messengers for Peter. When they brought him to Cornelius, Peter told him about Jesus, and everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and baptized in water. These people were gentiles, and may have been the first non-Jewish converts to Christianity.
This passage demonstrates that God is not a respecter of persons, and that one need not be Jewish to come to Christ. It also demonstrates that if a person is truly seeking God with all of his or her heart, God will bring about the necessary means for that person to hear the gospel and come to Christ. Many stories of a similar nature have been told by missionaries returning from all parts of the world, throughout all of Christian history. In fact, missionaries have sometimes found pious people who have been given revelation from God concerning the gospel without having heard it from human lips.
If God is truly omnipotent and truly merciful, will He refuse to allow His Word to become known to those who are desperately searching for the truth? Of course not. His desire is that none should perish, but that all should come to repentance (II Peter 3:9). God cares for those who have not heard the gospel. However, people generally have a tendency to suppress the truth in unrighteousness due to their fallen nature (Romans 1:18). Although God makes His truth evident to all people, they tend to ignore it. People like Cornelius are happy exceptions to this rule, and God will always make a way for such people, sending the Gospel to them through missionaries, or even through supernatural means if necessary.
God is just. In the time of the day of judgement, nobody will be able to accuse God of unfairness. No one will be condemned for never having heard the Gospel. Rather, condemnation will result from having violated one's own moral standards (Romans 2:15,16). God will fairly judge all of mankind. On the last day, no one will be able to claim that he or she is being treated unjustly by God.1
It is possible that there will be people who will be saved through Jesus Christ without realizing that Jesus was the source of that salvation. C. S. Lewis has written:
Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him. But in the meantime, if you are worried about the people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can do is remain outside yourself.2
1 Don Stewart, "What's Going to Happen to Those Who Haven't Heard?" (tape), The Word For Today, P.O. Box 8000, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
2 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1943), p. 65.
