People who never heard of Christ

[Wertbag]

What apologetics have you heard regarding people who never hear of Jesus?  If being saved is purely based on faith, and yet there have been billions who died having never heard the word, then what became of them?

Even from when the printing press was made, it was still centuries before translations were made and it became widely available worldwide.  So what about:

The people who lived before Jesus.

The people who lived after, but before the bible was available.

The people to this day who live in remote enough areas that they have never heard of Christ.

 

I saw an article by Frank Turek, and his answer was basically "screw them, they deserve to burn or god would have got the bible to them faster".  Other Christians seem to say people must be judged on different criteria, but what that criteria is no one seems to know.  Some believe in universal salvation, in that dropping to your knees in front of god and accepting Him then would be enough.  However if you are going to say there is a special exemption or different judging criteria (works perhaps?) for those who are ignorant, then you run into the problem that it is better to burn all bibles and never tell anyone about it.  It is only your explaination that damns them to hell, they would have made it if you never told them.  So missionaries would be costing souls not saving them.

 

This seems to be a rather large gap in the "faith equals salvation" line.

[◊ Krowb ◊]

That was pretty much the discussion one afternoon with my pastor when I still in high school.  A god of love, justice, and mercy could not send undeserving souls to hell.  My response was same as yours; spreading the gospel only brings death if all people without knowledge get an automatic admit to heaven.  My pastor said he'd have to think on it, but god does not send the innocent to hell.

 

Simultaneously with this, we had a youth pastor who told us that we'd be judged for every word spoken that was not in furtherance of spreading the gospel . . . we would be judged for the dinner conversations, judged for everything.  There were people going to hell for all eternity because we'd rather hang out with our friends than do mission work.  

 

It's definitely a conundrum for apologetics.