There are definitely billions and billions of people who never get to hear of Jesus. It has always bothered me...
Its funny but when you eliminate the teaching of the immortality of the human soul, which is not taught anywhere in scripture (it is missing entirely from the Hebrew scriptures and not taught by Jesus or the apostles) the mystery is solved. When humans die they return to the dust, just as God told Adam. There was no afterlife in the spirit realm mentioned at all in Genesis.
The penalty for eating the forbidden fruit was death...not continuing life somewhere else.
"For dust you are and to dust you will return" is all God told Adam. (Gen 3:17) If there was a destination other than what God stated, then why was Adam not warned about it? Since there are no spirits of the dead to float off anywhere, they are all where the apostle Paul said they were....the same place where Jesus said Lazarus was before he raised him from the dead. He was simply said to be "asleep" (John 11:11-14; 1 Thess 4:13, 14)
The Bible teaches that Jesus will call all of the dead out of their tombs, both the righteous and the unrighteous. (John 5:28, 20) So even the unrighteous will get a chance to prove themselves in a period of judgment under the rule of God's kingdom.
When Jesus went to "preach to the spirits in prison", he was not preaching to the spirits of dead people....there are no spirits of dead people to preach to. The spirit realm is inhabited by spirits both good and bad. None of them were former humans.
Peter said...
"For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God,
after being put to death in the fleshly realm but made alive in the spiritual realm." (1 Pet 3:18-20)
19 In that state He also went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20 who in the past were disobedient, when God patiently waited in the days of Noah while an ark was being prepared. In it a few—that is, eight people—were saved through water." (1 Pet 3:18-20 Holman)
Look at Peter's words.....he does not specify when Christ preached to these disobedient "spirits in prison", only that he went there in his spiritual state after his resurrection. He was not alive somewhere during the three days his body was in the tomb....he was actually dead. He said that he would be 'in the heart of the earth three days and nights, just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish'. (Matt 12:38-40)
However, he does identify who these spirits were. He said:
"they were disobedient long ago when God patiently waited in the days of Noah as an ark was being constructed." These are not the spirits of humans who were wicked in Noah's day...these were the disobedient angels, who after the flood, returned to the spirit realm where they were thrown into a state of spiritual restraint called "Tartarus". This word is often mistranslated "Hell".
Peter said..."4 For if God didn’t spare the angels who sinned but threw them down into Tartarus and delivered them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment; 5 and if He didn’t spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others, when He brought a flood on the world of the ungodly..." (2 Pet 2:4-6 Holman)
It is because people read into these accounts things that the Bible does not teach that they get confused.
No one will be penalized for living in the wrong time period or in the wrong country. Those who sleep in death, both righteous and unrighteous have paid sin's wages and will be resurrected with a clean slate for a fresh start. Those alive when Jesus comes as judge will have had ample opportunity, like the people of Noah's day, to take appropriate action regarding the coming of God's kingdom. (Matt 24:36-39) The message of salvation has been preached in all the earth in preparation for the the end to come as Jesus said it must. (Matt 24:14)
We must be ready.
