QUESTION:
7/18/2010: Are people who lived before the 1st century in hell? Orthodox Christianity did not arise until the 1st century. Countless other religions existed before it. Even if we assume that some members of the Jewish religion are in heaven, Judaism did not arise until the 1st century BC. Humans have been on the earth for 400 thousand years at the latest. So I was just wondering how you reconcile the fact that Orthodox Christianity is the one true faith, when it's existed for such a brief time in human history. |
ANSWER:
Christianity is the simply the continuation of the faith of the Old Testament, only unveiled and fulfilled in Christ. This hope has been with human race since the first human couple and the announcement of Genesis 3:15. Many people have been pleasing to God in the limit of the revelation available to them in various times and places. Malachi wrote long before Christ:
"Oh, that one among you [of Israel] would shut the temple gates to keep you from kindling fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the LORD of hosts; neither will I accept any sacrifice from your hands, 11 For from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, my name is great among the nations; and everywhere people bring sacrifice to my name, and a pure offering; For great is my name among the nations, says the LORD of hosts." (Malachi 1)
If God had appointed the people of Israel for a special mission and purpose, he was nevertheless involved in the lives of other nations, perhaps indeed all nations:
"Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O men of Israel, says the LORD? Did I not bring the Israelites from the land of Egypt As I brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?" (Amos 9)
So the people who died apart from the revelation of Christ did not go to hell but to hades (the King James Version uses - incorrectly the word hell to translate hades). Hades is the common abode of the dead where their souls are preserved by God's grace. These spirits beheld Christ when he descended into hades and those who were able and prepared to respond to the light of Christ were illumined unto salvation. This is portrayed on the icon of the resurrection. |
