Pete Jackson

In the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, recently voted one of this nation's top five books, the main character, Arthur Dent, wakes up to find that his house is going to be demolished by a bulldozer to make way for a new bypass. He says that it's the first he's ever heard about it. But he's told that 'the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months'.

It turns out that the plans were there on display, but in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet inside a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'beware of the leopard'. And Arthur Dent wasn't told about them until way too late, and so his house is going to be demolished whether he likes it or not.

It's an amusing commentary on the workings of local government if nothing else.

What's going to happen to people who've never heard about Jesus and Christianity? This question asks if the God of the Bible is like that, will he bulldoze people on judgement day who have no idea, no warning, people who have never heard of him? And who would want to believe in a God like that?

Here's why he's not like that:

No-one will be judged for what they could not have known

In Matthew 11 vs. 20-21 Jesus tells the cities that have seen all his amazing miracles, yet still ignored him, that come judgement day they'll be worse off than Sodom and Gomorrah, two famous cities that God obliterated in the Old Testament.

He says that's because they've seen far more of him than those cities ever did, so they're more culpable. That is, there are degrees of God's judgement. He judges people according to how much information has been given to them and holds them responsible for how they've responded. So no-one is going to be held responsible for something they could not have known.

However, the Bible is clear that:

Everyone knows something about God

God's announcement about himself isn't locked away in a filing cabinet, it's all around us in everything that God has made (Romans 1:19-20). God has shown that he is real, he's there, and he's powerful by making the universe, stuff we all see and experience on a daily basis. It's shouting out to us that God is there, that God is powerful.

But we suppress it, we ignore it. We might not even realise we do it, but we do. Everybody knows something about God, so we're all responsible for having lived without reference to him.

God is just and will do what is right when it comes to judging people who haven't heard the Christian message. Ultimately only he knows what people have done with the information they've been shown about him. And nobody will be able to raise their hand and say 'that was a bad call God'.

So I know he'll do what is right where people who haven't heard about Jesus is concerned. That in no way let's us Christians off the hook of getting out there and telling people about Jesus, it just means that God is just in judging everyone.

However ...

Some people know an awful lot about God

What the Bible is extremely clear about is this, what happens to people who have heard about Jesus and yet have never responded correctly to him. And of course, after tonight, all of us here fit into that category, those who have heard. Perhaps the more pressing question for us is what have we done with what we have heard?