From Chapter 16 – The Afterlife. © 2020 by Emory Lynn.
The most beloved verse in the Bible for Christians is probably John 3:16, which has great implications for the afterlife:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
There are two words of major importance in this verse, words that few would recognize as being very relevant to the verse’s validity. These words are world and whosoever. Most Christians understand world to mean the entire Earth. However, as we’ve seen already, the authors of the Bible were usually referring to the world as they knew it, which was not the actual, entire Earth. They were not aware of the many millions of humans that lived beyond the bounds of their known world.
If God so loved the entire world, why would he provide salvation for mankind through his Son via a brief sojourn of ministry in only one little corner of the world? And why would his Son and his Son’s ministry go almost, if not completely, unnoticed in even that corner of the world by the non-Christian historians, philosophers and writers during the first century and a half CE? It would be more than a millennium and a half before word of Jesus would reach most of the world. During that time a large majority of more than 60 generations of potential whosoevers of the world, whosoevers who feared, suffered and bore the burdens of life just like the ancient Near Easterners, never received the bulletin that Jesus Christ had come to Earth to provide for their salvation.
The apostle Paul undertook the task of preaching the gospel of Christ to the “world.” After the Son of man unexpectedly failed to return to establish the Kingdom of God soon after Jesus’ crucifixion, Paul and other early Christians came to believe that God was delaying the apocalypse until more Gentiles had been given the opportunity for salvation. Paul worked diligently to spread the gospel to the world. In Romans, the letter Paul wrote to Christians in Rome (ca. 53-58 CE), he expressed his belief that the goal was in hand:
“Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? … So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have; for “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” [emphasis added].
(Romans 10:13-14, 17-18, NRSV)
Paul was obviously mistaken in thinking that his efforts and those of other early Christians to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ around the eastern and northern Mediterranean regions had gotten the gospel spread to “all the earth.” This shows again that the authors of the Bible had no idea how much larger the real world was than their known world.
It should be very enlightening to put numbers behind the point I’m trying to make. Specifically, how many people in human history lived without ever knowing of Jesus, compared to the number that did know of him? Let’s start by shooting down a common myth: Most of the people in human history are alive today.
Estimating the number of people who have been born in human history is a challenging and imprecise task. The Population Reference Bureau has come up with probably as good an estimate as can be expected given the lack of demographic data for most of human history.19 A website of theirs characterizes the undertaking this way: “Any such exercise can be only a highly speculative enterprise, to be undertaken with far less seriousness than most demographic inquiries. Nonetheless, it is a somewhat intriguing idea that can be approached on at least a semi-scientific basis.”
They started with the assumption that 50,000 years ago anatomically modern Homo sapiens had a barely self-sustaining population of two. From there they used available demographic data to make population estimates for several benchmark years up to 2017. The total population they estimated over this period is 108.5 billion (only live births were estimated, still-births were not included). This may seem surprisingly high unless you realize that until recently most humans died at a very young age. The 2017 population of 7.5 billion was only 6.9 percent of their total estimate. The number of people born before Jesus’ arrival (prior to the benchmark year of 1 CE) was estimated at 47.2 billion. The number born prior to 1650 CE was estimated at 86.5 billion. This is the benchmark year closest to the time when word of Jesus had spread to most of the world. The clear conclusion, even allowing for a very large margin of error: A large majority of the people in human history never heard of Jesus. Furthermore, if Jesus were to return in the not too distant future, a large majority of humans would still have come and gone without having heard of him.
The data change very little if you go with the young-Earth creationist assumption that human history started with Adam and Eve less than 10,000 years ago. Only 1.1 billion births were estimated prior to the benchmark year of 8,000 BCE. Subtract that number from all population numbers above and the bottom line conclusion is the same. Anyway you cut it, the whosoevers that had the opportunity to believe in God’s only begotten Son is small compared to the whosoevers that never had a chance to believe in him. This is without even considering the number of people in recent generations for whom salvation supposedly was not or is not available because they were born into the wrong culture or to the wrong parents. Currently about 31 percent of the world population is Christian.20
The Bible tells us that when God decided to condemn the human race because of rampant sin, he drowned one and all with a global flood, except for eight chosen people. When it came to condemning the human race, God’s batting average was one thousand—he got every one of his intended targets over the entire planet. The Bible’s account of God’s condemnation of mankind is a story of total success. But the Bible’s account of how God provided the means of salvation for mankind, touted in John 3:16, is a story of massive failure. It must be judged a poorly conceived plan for an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God who wants all humans to have a personal relationship with his Son.
There is more, and it just gets worse. Recall from Chapter 6 that Jesus told his disciples’ to “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:5-7). Jesus’ command to minister only to the Jews is known as the Lesser Commission. Later in Matthew Jesus explained that his own mission was also intended only for the Jews:
Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matthew 15:22-28, NRSV)
Jesus relented and helped the Gentile woman because of her faith. However, he made it clear that helping Gentiles was not his mission. After saying he was only sent to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he put a fine point on it by saying it was not fair to take the children’s (a metaphor for the Israelites’/Jews’) food and throw it to the dogs. Dogs was an uncomplimentary term commonly used by Jews for non-Jews.21
A ministry only for Jews posed a major problem for early Christian leaders. Paul had argued passionately that Christ offered salvation to all Gentiles without having to convert to Judaism. An attempt to solve the eligibility problem shows up at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew—the Great Commission that the resurrected Jesus gave to his disciples. As was explained in Chapter 6, the Great Commission was a latter-day forgery that reversed the instructions Jesus gave his disciples during his ministry (the compelling scholarly evidence for this was also explained in Chapter 6.) “Now,” according to the resurrected Jesus, the ministry had expanded to take in “all nations.”
A close look at human demographic history shows that the whosoevers of John 3:16 does not include a large majority in human history. To be saved, one must be in the minority who has heard of Jesus, one must also believe in what has been heard, and according to what Matthew’s Jesus said during his ministry, one must also be a Jew.
How do apologists get around the apparent likelihood that most people are condemned to hell through no fault of their own? The well-known Reverend Robert Jeffress of the mega First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, rationalizes it this way (as he explained in 2017 on a radio program broadcast to over 1,200 stations in the U.S. and many other countries): All humans get what they deserve. Except for children we all are deserving of an eternity in hell because we’re all wretched sinners. It’s reasonable for everyone to spend eternity in hell unless they seek salvation through Jesus and by the grace of God.
There is not one occupant in the lake of fire that is not there except by their own choice.
— Dr. Robert Jeffress (Radio ministry, April 2017)
Regarding children that die before they can make reasonable decisions for themselves: God loves children and won’t punish them. Jeffress quotes several Bible verses that imply God’s love for children, and he interprets this to mean that God will therefore see that they are saved.
Hank Hanegraaff, popularly known as the “Bible Answer Man,” is the head of the Christian Research Institute and has been a daily radio talk-show host. Here is how he rationalizes the conundrum. Generalizing a common call-in question: “How can anyone born and living without any knowledge of Jesus or the Bible come to recognize God and achieve salvation with an eternity in heaven?” According to Hanegraaff, God created us in his image with the ability to recognize signs of creation. There is light, especially the light of the creation. If someone responds to the light, more light will be discernible, but man wants to hide in darkness. God exists in enough obscurity that if someone doesn’t want to find him, they won’t. God exists in enough light that if someone wants to find him, they will (here Hanegraaff is paraphrasing 17th century French polymath Blaise Pascal).
There is a huge problem with this assumed avenue to salvation; it’s exactly how paganism began and spread. When ancient people “searched for light” in the natural world, they came up with all manner of gods to explain how nature works—gods of the sun, moon, rivers, forests, winds, storms, you name it. Belief in such gods draws the ire of the God of the Bible as much as anything. In the Qur’an Allah gets extremely chapped off with people who believe in other gods. The problem is compounded when you consider the mentally handicapped who have never heard of Jesus and who aren’t even able to rationalize the light of God in creation. A plain reading of the Bible tells us that hell is their fate.
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
(John 14:6)
We know full well, independent of the Bible, that to condemn a person to an eternity in hell for reasons beyond their control would be a moral abomination. Justification of hell by way of original sin would likewise be a moral abomination. This is more evidence that our basic understanding of morality does not come from the Bible.
– – – – –
I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.” “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?”
— Annie Dillard (Pulitzer Prize winning American author. Quote from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.)
Notes:
19. Toshiko Kaneda and Genevieve Dupuis, 2017 World Population Data Sheet, (Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau, 2017); United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision (New York: United Nations, 2017).
20. Pew Research Institute, Christians remain world’s largest religious group, but they are declining in Europe, http://www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2017/04/05/christians-remain-worlds-largest-religious-group-but-they-are-declining-in-europe/. Accessed 5-3-18.
21. This interpretation comes from commentary about Matthew 15:25-26 in The Harper Collins Study Bible, New Revised Standard Version, (HarperOne, 2006).
