The people that died before Jesus..

..did they all go to hell? Or did their animal sacrifice and strict cleansing rituals save their souls? Just wondering.

 

beats me...

i doubt they went to hell

 

yeah, they went to hell. Maybe not the Jews, but everyone else did, because God actually hates most of humanity and only told the one group of people (Jews) anything that'd get them to heaven/paradise. Everyone else got fucked.

 

That's another question that there is no reasonable or clear biblically-based answer for, and that will probably get ignored here. Stick with prophecies; you'll get more info than you ever thought existed.

 

When people die, they go to sheol, the realm of the dead. There is a great chasm (possibly a real chasm... most likely it is metaphorical) between those who are in God's presence and those who are not. Both await the resurrection when all will be raised to either everlasting life, or everlasting condemnation. This is what happened to people before Christ and it is what happens to them now.

Biblically, you do not go straight to heaven or straight to hell. That is after the resurrection.

People were saved into God's presence the same way that anyone is saved (including those that have never heard the gospel). They recognize that God exists and that they are not worthy to enter God's presence. They recognize that they are incapable of any action that will get them into God's presence. They trust that God will make a way (or that he already has) for them. That is what the statement "Abraham believed and it was counted unto him as righteousness" means.

 

The whole of Christianity is 'made up', just like every other religion.

Sounds a little like purgatory, and I guess works within that belief system.

I appreciate God is a fickle contrary diety with a penchant for giving out baffling conflicting information, but surely he wouldn't condemn people when they had no possiblity of achieving his criteria. That wouldn't be very loving forgiving and all that other stuff. Besides if that were true hell would surely have exceeded capacity centuries ago.

Don't buy that pagans need their souls saving. Saved from what exactly, how, why?
Anyway I doubt the rituals etc would make any diffrence in the eyes of God, those were practised out of reverence and intentions to other Gods. Thus in directly violation of the commandment 'have no Gods but me'.

Of course there could be no hell, and it's actually all a rather underhand vindictive way to gather recruits and then keep everyone behaving themselves. *shrugs*

 

No, the christian god told them specifically cleansing rituals and what they shouldnt eat and everything, really nitpicky stuff, its all in the old testament.

 

Animal sacrifice and stuff, that was done by the pre-christ people(dont think I should call them christians as he wasnt around yet)

 

That's a pretty strong statement. What evidence do you have for it being 'made up'? Perhaps I am misunderstanding what 'made up' means. Could you clarify?

It isn't at all like purgatory. In purgatory, you are (theoretically) purified from any inremittant sin. The concept of Purgatory also denies the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, and, in my opinion, is based on an understanding of sin that is inconsistent with a Biblical understanding of sin.
At death, our decisions in life are ratified. We cannot change our minds at that point. So sheol is a place of joy for those who await resurrection to glory and a place of agony for those who await the resurrection to condemnation.

But there isn't a criteria of works that you must achieve. You simply have to recognize that you CAN'T and then trust that God will make a way (or has made a way). That is one way in which Christianity really stands out from most other religions. Christians admit that there is nothing we can do, no set of works, sacrifices, or prayers that we can say that are worthy of God's grace.

Anyway, scripture tells us that humanity has been given three "lights" to guide us. We have the light of creation, the light of conscience, and the light of Christ. We will be judged on how we responded to the light we were given.

God doesn't have to forgive. He is merciful, though, and chooses to. And Hell isn't so much of a place as it is a relationship (or, more exaclty, a lack thereof).

Well, everyone has done wrong. Every wrongdoing besmirches God's honor. Honor that is rightfully His. Justice and equity demand that when honor is unjustly taken or besmirched, the offenders honor must be equally besmirched. Pagans (just like the rest of humanity) are saved from eternal shame and disgrace, being relegated to indifference on the part of God.

Ummm... okay?

Except that Hell in the Bible was never used as a motivator to keep everyone in line. Another way to look at it, though, is that it is like a fireman warning people that they are standing in a burning builing and the only safe way out is to follow him. Is that a vindictive way for him to gather followers? The motivation is what is key. What evidence do you have that the motivation for talking about Hell was to threaten people into service? I would say that it is more consistent with the character of Christ to want to warn people of impending danger.