One of the most challenging questions of the Christian faith is: What is the fate of those who have never heard the gospel? According to the Christian World Encyclopedia, it is estimated that in A.D. 100 there were 181 million people in the world, of whom less than 1 million were Christians. There were around 60,000 unreached people groups (i.e., tribes, nationalities) at that time. By the year 1000 there were 270 million people, 50 million of whom were Christians, with 50,000 unreached people groups. In 1989 there were 5.2 billion people, with 1.7 billion Christians and 12,000 unreached reached people groups. Although there is no way of knowing exactly how many people died without ever hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is safe to conclude that the majority of human beings who have ever lived fall into this category. What happens to them? How can God bring a negative judgement on their lives?
In this article, I want to explore the wideness of God’s mercy. God is infinitely more eager and passionate about bringing people into a relationship with himself than we are. God, in the expansiveness of his generous mercy, has providentially set up conditions to make himself universally and sufficiently known that all nations, tribes and people can respond positively to God’s offer of grace.
The Wideness of God’s Mercy
It is a few days before the crucifixion. Jesus speaks this parable in judgement on the religious leaders who rejected him. In doing so, he sets this judgement in the much wider landscape of the Father’s mercy.
2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.4 ‘Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.“
Matthew 22:2-7
The king in the story represents God the Father. The son represents Jesus. Those invited represent the religious leaders. The rejection was very willful and personal as evidenced that some of the ones invited went as far as mistreating and killing the messengers of the king. The king invited these people out of his great generosity. He has every right to be outraged at their hateful actions. Destruction is the result. The story does not end here, though. This king was determined to have a party.
8 Then he said to his servants, “The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.” 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Matthew 22:8-10
He sends out more servants to invite anyone and everyone. This invitation is wide and extensive. It is indiscriminate as it is being offered to “both good and bad.” (v.10) The wedding hall is “filled with guests.” (v.10) The invitation to the banquet goes out to all. Unexpectedly a problem arose.
11 But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, “How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?” The man was speechless.13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.“
Matthew 22:11-14
One individual thought he could come to the wedding on his own terms. When the king arrived, there was one guest not dressed in wedding clothes. The king requested an explanation, but the man remained silent, refusing to accept the king’s grace by entering into dialogue. Clearly the king showed love and acceptance to this person, but he desired to come to the feast on his own terms. Consequently, he is excluded from the party because he refuses to come on the king’s terms. Jesus concludes:
14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”
Matthew 22:14
It is important to notice that the first invited guests, as well as the guests invited as replacements, are all recipients of the king’s undeserved favor. Robert Farrar Capon explains: “Nobody in the parable is outside the king’s favor; everybody starts out by being, as far as the king himself is concerned, irrevocably in…. Nobody is kicked out who wasn’t already in. Hell is an option, but it is given to us only after being offered an invitation at the banquet.” (emphasis mine) God includes all in his grace and excludes in judgement only those who spurn that grace. Only those who decline to accept God’s grace are rejected.
This wideness and expansiveness of God’s mercy, as seen in this story, is a prominent theme of Jesus. On several occasions Jesus commented on the extraordinary faith he saw among Gentiles such as the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:21–28) and the Roman centurion, whose daughter was healed (Matthew 8:10). In this last instance, Jesus concluded:
I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 8:11
In announcing his crucifixion, Jesus declared that the effect is a universal call to all people to follow him:
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
John 12:32
As Paul declares, God…
wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:4
What About Those Who Have Never Heard?
So, if God has an amazing and indiscriminate wideness to his mercy, what does this mean for those who have never heard? Let’s look at several biblical answers.
The Melchizidek Principle.
This principle goes back to Abraham, who traveled to the pagan dominated Canaan and encountered a priest by the name of Melchizidek, after rescuing Lot. (Genesis 14:18-20) Abraham, though given the special covenant revelation (Genesis 12:1-3), will receive blessing from Melchizidek and tithed to him as a spiritual superior. (Psalms 110:4, Hebrews 7:1-4) Abraham encountered a “pagan” who still had a true knowledge of God. So what? Missionaries, for generations, have observed this “Melchizidek principle” through cultures all over the world. Don Richardson tells of many accounts of God’s work among pre-Christian peoples in his book, Eternity In Their Hearts. One fascinating story is detailed as follows:
Two Christian missionaries came to the Santal people in India. One day they heard an elder speak of the “genuine God,” Thakur Jiu. When they inquired who this God was, they heard a fascinating story of how the Santal had worshiped Thakur Jiu before they came from the Middle East to India. As they migrated toward India, they could not find a pass through the mountains, so they propitiated the evil spirits of the mountains to let them through. Once through, the people had felt obligated to continue to appease the evil spirits. Over time they lost much of their knowledge of the Creator God, but they longed for reconciliation. The two missionaries concluded that Thakur Jiu and the God of the Bible were the same, and they proceeded to inform the people of what this God had done through his Son to reconcile them. The people were overjoyed to hear that their God had not forgotten them, and a remarkable number of baptisms followed in the years ahead.
Richardson observes that this revelation of God goes back before the time of Abraham, perhaps the Tower of Babel. (Genesis 11) Melchizidek obviously possessed it or something like it.
The Unknown God Principle
Paul says to the Greeks in Thessalonica that no one has been left “without testimony:”
Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.
Acts 14:17
He explained to the philosophers in Athens that they had a knowledge of the true God because:
26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.
Acts 17:26-27
Like the Santal people, among their many idols, they still had been given a knowledge of the true God, THE UNKNOWN GOD.
So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
Acts 17:23
A knowledge of the true God has been universal, going back to the Tower of Babel, evidenced in hundreds upon hundreds of ancient writings, songs, pictographs, rituals and tribal customs. These appear as an “interim Old Testament” for pagans which find their greater fulfillment in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Bible declares that God has been as sovereign over these other nations as he has Israel:
“Are not you Israelites
Amos 9:7
the same to me as the Cushites?”
declares the Lord.
“Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt,
the Philistines from Caphtor
and the Arameans from Kir?
The Cornelius Principle
God gives more knowledge to those who respond faithfully to the knowledge they have. In Acts 10, a man named Cornelius was a Roman soldier who was “devout and God-fearing.” (10:2) He had a limited but true knowledge of God. God sent an angel and gave him instructions to find Peter. (10:3-5) The Cornelius principle states that when people respond faithfully to the knowledge they have, God gives them more. Hundreds of missionary stories can be recounted along this line. For example, an Ethiopian people the Gadeos, had some who worshiped the Omnipotent Creator God, Magano. A tribal leader named Warrasa Wange received a dream from Mangano that two white men would come sharing a message. There are many details to this dream which became fulfilled. Two Canadian missionaries, Albert Brant and Glen Cain showed up in 1948. The Gadeo people responded to Jesus and in three decades there were 200 churches among them.
Dr. David Garrison, a missionary and researcher, compiled over one thousand interviews from Muslim-background believers. Those interviews have been collected from forty-five movements of Christianity in Islam in fourteen countries. He says that quite commonly these people come to Christ through visions and dreams sharing these common threads:
- “Jesus speaking Scripture to them, even Scripture they had never heard before.”
- “Jesus telling people to do something.”
- “A dream or vision that led to a feeling of being clean or at peace.”
- “A man in white physically appearing.”
The Thief On the Cross Principle
Jesus is revealing himself to multitudes on their death bed who do not know him, and like the thief on the cross (Luke 23:40-43), their simple response of repentance and faith merits for them the declaration of the Savior, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” It has long been noticed that Christ meets many people with his Good News of peace near their time of death. I believe that at this door between earth and heaven is a place where God often gives a final invitation to salvation.
What Does This Mean?
Fulfill the Great Commission.
The Bible gives us great hope for the nations and the unevangelized because of the wideness of God’s mercy. This hope, though, points us to the fact Jesus Christ is the desire of the nations. (Haggai 2:7) Every nation needs the gospel and finds its purpose in the gospel. (Matthew 24:14) This understanding should cause us to labor more purposefully that the nations be won for Christ.
All the ends of the earth
Psalm 22:27-28
will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,
28 for dominion belongs to the Lord
and he rules over the nations.
Let’s live on mission.
God has made all things to point to Christ. He is the universal Savior. This knowledge should spur us to greater worship and obedience. As Paul declares:
For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Romans 11:36
Story of Grace 
Very interesting, and thought provoking. Thank you😊
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