Will people who have never heard about Christianity / the Lord Jesus Christ (for example, people who live deep in a jungle) go to heaven or hell when they die?
Let me say three things in answer to this question:
First of all, we should be clear that God will judge people based on what they have done, not on what they have heard. Romans 2:12 says: “All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.” Everyone has received some degree of revelation about God, and will be called to give an account for how they have responded. Those who sin will perish. (Let me also say that our Western perspective on questions like these have been coloured by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau; He wrote about the idea of “the noble savage” – it was this idea that lost tribes were living in paradise until modern people came and disrupted things. And I agree that colonialism has caused huge disruption to many cultures, but hey when I lived in the Middle East, one of my neighbours had grown up living in tents in the desert, and I asked him what it was like: He said: “it was terrible.”)
Anyway, second thing: we have an example in the New Testament of someone far off who called out to God. This was a Roman centurion named Cornelius. God sent him a vision of an angel, And this is what god’s angel said to him: “Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor. Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter.” (Acts 10:31-32). So notice how God’s responds to this man who calls out to Him: He puts him in contact with Peter, who will brings the good news about Jesus. And so if we care about lost jungle tribes, we will make every effort to send people with the message of Jesus to those unreached people groups. Because that’s God’s ordinary means of saving people.
But third thing: what about those for whom it is too late? What about those Australian aborigines who lived here before the gospel came? Well here’s an interesting thing when the Presbyterian Church of Australia was formed in the year 1901, they considered this question, and they wrote a statement, called the Declaratory Statement. So this is not the word of God, but it is a statement based on careful theological reflection. And I want to read a paragraph from it:
…while none are saved except through the mediation of Christ, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, Who works when and where and how it pleases Him; while the duty of sending the Gospel to the heathen who are sunk in ignorance, sin, and misery is imperative; and while the outward and ordinary means of salvation for those capable of being called by the Word are the ordinances of the Gospel; …it is not required to be held that any who die in infancy are lost, or that God may not extend His grace to any who are without the pale of ordinary means, as it may seem good in His sight.
And so what this means is: let’s pursue the gospel mission, convinced that it’s God’s ordinary way of saving people. But if God wants to do something outside of the ordinary, well, that’s up to Him.
This question was originally answered in our evening service on 1 June 2025. I’ll aim to post another question and answer next week. You can read about how our question box works here.
