What happens to Jews who do not believe in Jesus — especially those who never heard about him? What happened to my wonderful Jewish grandmother who never hurt anyone in her entire life? Is she in hell?
These are not questions to be answered lightly, as if heaven and hell were mere figures of speech. And, to be perfectly frank, we’re not just talking about your grandmother; we’re talking about my grandmother too. Still, the bottom line is this: While I don’t know your grandmother and I am certainly not her judge, I do know that countless millions of Jews and Gentiles have lived lives that have displeased God (and this includes at least some of our grandmothers), countless millions of people have condemned their souls through their words and deeds, and countless millions of people will be pronounced guilty on judgment day.
It wouldn’t be fair to you if I failed to warn you in advance. Of course, I will be the first to say that the New Testament does not explicitly address the issue of what happens to those who never heard the message of forgiveness of sins through Jesus, but of this much we can be sure: God is both a compassionate and righteous Judge, there are consequences to breaking his commandments, his standards are high, and if we reject his ordained means of atonement, we are in trouble.
As I said, I don’t know your grandmother and I am not her judge, but I can give you some guidelines that should help you evaluate the state of your own soul before God (and, possibly, think through some issues regarding Grandma too).
For starters, I would encourage you to ask yourself a couple of basic questions: What happens to Jews who do not follow the Torah? On what basis are we judged at death? According to the Five Books of Moses (specifically, Leviticus and Deuteronomy), our people would be blessed or cursed in this lifetime based on our faithful allegiance to God’s laws and commands.
It is an indisputable fact of history that, for the most part, we have been cursed through our disobedience rather than blessed through our obedience. (Read the Scriptures, and then keep on reading through our long, painful history.) If we have suffered such things in this world because of our sin, what does this indicate for the world to come?
Someone might argue that we suffer for our sins in this world rather than in the world to come. That, however, is not only speculation without clear biblical support, it is downright dangerous speculation. You are playing a risky game with your soul! First, suffering and punishment, in and of themselves, are not necessarily remedial or beneficial. How many incarcerated murderers are released from prison only to murder again?
How many alcoholics keep on drinking even as they degenerate through alcohol-related diseases? Second, many people commit ugly, heinous sins in this life and do not suffer for them, living to a ripe old age. When will they be punished? Third, the same God who judges us here and now will be the one who judges us then and there, and his standards are lofty and uncompromising. The only legitimate question to ask yourself is this: Using God’s Word as the rule, how do I measure up?
Consider the Ten Commandments. You can use them as a checklist, a kind of pre-judgment exam. How do you stand? Maybe you don’t worship the silver statue of an idol, but greed and materialism are just another form of idolatry. (Gods of silver and gold take many forms!) Maybe you haven’t slept with someone other than your spouse, but if you lust and fantasize after other people, you have committed adultery with them in your heart. 28
Maybe you haven’t murdered anyone, but if you have hated someone, then you have committed murder in your heart. The possibility of future judgment is something you need to think about. As surely as God judged our people in the past for our sins, he will judge us in the future for our sins.
This leads to another important issue. You may make light of the concept of hell and future punishment, but I wonder if you take seriously the intensity and scope of the horrible judgments that have already fallen upon us in the past. Do you realize that the Torah and Prophets warned us that God would send terrible punishment on us if we disobeyed—yet we sinned and the judgments were poured out? And they will happen again if we follow a similar course of behavior.
These prophetic warnings are not just words on a page. The Book of Lamentations describes actual history when it says, “Young and old lie together in the dust of the streets; my young men and maidens have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of your anger; you have slaughtered them without pity” (Lam. 2:21). This happened because of our sin!
In Deuteronomy 28, the Lord promised that terrible, horrific things would take place if we persistently sinned against him.
Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities.
The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For she intends to eat them secretly during the siege and in the distress that your enemy will inflict on you in your cities.
If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God—the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. He will bring upon you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed.
Deuteronomy 28:54–61
You may say, “I don’t believe it!” But it happened nonetheless.
You might reply: “Well that’s not the kind of God I serve.” But that is the kind of God he will be if you scorn him and reject his Word. If you choose to go your own way and do your own thing, you will suffer his wrath.
Consider also Daniel 12:2: “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.” This gives us a picture of what will happen to the human race in the future. And getting back to Grandma, certainly, of the multitudes who will arise to “shame and everlasting contempt” there will be countless women, many of whom were someone’s grandmother—possibly mine or yours—as well as someone’s mother and someone’s daughter. Those are the painful, tragic facts. All the sentimentality in the world will not change this.
Like it or not, Israel’s history suggests that judgment has been the norm—at least in this world. Some of our “grandmothers” died during the fall of Jerusalem in 586 b.c.e. (described so graphically in Lamentations) and during the fall of Jerusalem in 70 c.e., and both of these falls were because of our people’s corporate sin.
You see, there is such a thing as wickedness before the Lord. The Hebrew Bible speaks of sinners multiplied hundreds of times, using descriptive terms such as the “wicked,” the “ungodly,” and the “unrighteous,” just to name a few relevant terms. In other words, in God’s sight, it is not just the Adolf Hitlers of the world who are unrighteous. Rather, by his standards, most human beings (including most Jews) are unrighteous (although very few are as sinful as Hitler). And this again leads me back to Grandma.
It is possible that we all tend to sentimentalize about Grandma and Grandpa—as if they never had any grievous sins in their lives and as if there wasn’t even a hint of spiritual or moral corruption behind those tender eyes or within that kindly, gray head. Could it be that they seem so saintly to us because we knew them only in their old age, in a somewhat idealized relationship, and now, only from distant memories? Is it possible that when they were younger, many of them sinned too, while even in their elderly years, some of them were filled with anger, bitterness, and ugly, critical spirits?
Of course, you might say that you really did know your grandparents (or parents) well, and they were devoted Jews, living the most scrupulous, godly lives that could be lived, quick to repent when they fell short of the mark. The thought of them being in hell seems utterly incomprehensible—not to mention totally absurd—to you.
That’s perfectly understandable, and I remind you again: I am not their judge, nor do I set the standards for their judgment. God alone will determine their ultimate state, and my beliefs or your beliefs can’t alter the facts. Either they were righteous in his sight or they were not righteous in his sight. All the arguing in the world won’t change that. Either they will be resurrected to eternal life or they will be resurrected to eternal death, regardless of what you and I say. I can only point out again that, based on our performance as a people in this world, we should not be too optimistic about our fate in the world to come.
Do you agree with the biblical view that all people are not righteous but sinful? If you do agree with God’s Word, then that means many of the readers of this book, along with many people whom we know personally, are in danger of suffering God’s anger.
This is why Moses and the prophets warned our people about coming judgments (but we didn’t listen), it is why Jesus and his disciples warned our people about coming judgments (but we didn’t listen again), and it is why some Jewish leaders warned our people that the Holocaust was on the immediate horizon, urging European Jews to flee for their lives—but again we didn’t listen. 29 The notion that mass murder could be carried out in sophisticated, cultured Europe was completely unthinkable. Yet it happened!
Today, we warn all people of all backgrounds that there will be a final judgment, a great day of accounting. This too will certainly happen. How will you fare on that day? Are you ready to meet the Lord?
I should also caution you here against putting your hope in some of our traditions that indicate that even the worst of us will suffer only eleven months of punishment in the world to come. Where do our Scriptures teach such a thing? The fact is they don’t. Rather, as we saw from Daniel 12:2, they teach the opposite. 30
You may be thinking, “Okay, I may not be as righteous as I sometimes claim to be (especially when I’m attending synagogue), and I admit that I may have an overly sentimental view of my forefathers. But why do you claim that it is only those who believe in Jesus who go to heaven? It just sounds like some kind of magic formula to me, and it hardly seems fair to say that people will go to hell just because they don’t believe the same way you do.”
That’s a good point, and it deserves a good response. Here it is: All of us have sinned, all of us need a savior, and Jesus alone is that savior. All of us are guilty, all of us have become separated from God, and Yeshua alone can wipe away our guilt and bring us into a right relationship with God. Either this is true or it isn’t. It’s not a matter of just saying the right words (“I believe in Jesus! I believe in Jesus!”). It’s a matter of true repentance, true faith, and a true change of life through the Messiah. (See below, 2.15, and vol. 2, 3.7, for more on this.) And that’s why it’s so urgent that we tell everyone the good news of his coming. People are literally perishing without him.
Of course, everyone will be judged according to the light that they have, but for the most part, this is more a matter of severity of guilt as opposed to acquittal. Yeshua gave a parable to this effect:
Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, “My master is taking a long time in coming,” and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk.
The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers. That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
Luke 12:42–48
According to this parable, those who knew their master’s will and disobeyed will be judged more severely than those who did not know his will and disobeyed. But take notice of this: Jesus did not speak about those who simply did what was right without knowing their master’s will. Rather, he exhorted us by these examples of disobedience. This tells us something about human nature, since the two examples given deal with different levels of disobedience and different levels of punishment, not with obedience in contrast with disobedience. Left to ourselves, we do wrong!
How then should we view the state of those (both Jews and Gentiles) who have never heard about the Messiah and Savior? 31 We should see them as people about to get on a plane we know will soon crash. It is remotely possible that one or two of the passengers will survive, but for the most part, we can assume that just about everyone who gets on board will soon die. Therefore, we should warn them not to get on that particular flight, urging them to go another way.
In terms of those who never heard about Jesus, we believe that virtually all of them are in a fallen, lost state, although there might be someone somewhere who has longed for true salvation through the one true God, finding it and finding him without a human being telling him the message. Such things can and do happen. 32 But there is no question that our responsibility as children of the one true God is to tell everyone that there is a judgment, there is a hell (Hebrew, gehinom), and there is a way of escape: Jesus the Messiah has paid for our sins.
Will God be fair to those who had no opportunity to believe in him or obey him? Certainly he will. (Note what Saul of Tarsus, better known as Paul, wrote about his own life: “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief” [1 Tim. 1:13].) Speculating about specific details, however, is sheer guess work, and in point of fact, it changes nothing and profits little. Why not deal with what we know right now?
Do we believe God is being fair at this very moment? Do we believe his past judgments on our people (as recorded in his Word) were fair? If we agree he has been fair and he is being fair, then we can be confident he will be fair. For those who are not so sure about his past and present fairness, what makes us think our perspective is right with regard to his future fairness?
The bottom line is that truth is truth. To deny it does not change it. Sometimes people choose their religious beliefs so as to comfort themselves after the death of a loved one, even going to séances with the hope of talking again with their dear, deceased relative or discovering “new hope” in some kind of doctrine such as reincarnation.
Anything to avoid the finality of death! But think for a moment: What if I tried to convince you that your deceased loved one didn’t die, that the doctors were wrong and it was another body in the coffin? You would tell me I was crazy! You would accuse me of living in a dream world. It’s the same with hell and future punishment. Changing our beliefs will not change the facts. Denying that there is a real hell will not diminish its reality.
Only God knows where our forefathers are now, and what you say or what I write can’t change that one bit. This much is sure (and excruciatingly true): If our grandmothers have perished in unbelief, then their deepest desire, their most fervent, agonized request is that we do not join them, and their worst nightmare would be that we too would reject the only hope of salvation.
I certainly hope that our parents and grandparents somehow lived and died in good standing with the Lord and that they managed to receive mercy and atonement from him. But you must answer for yourself alone, and so I ask you again: What about you? Are you ready to face God? Will you be judged righteous or wicked when you die?
Are you sure of your atonement? Do you know your sins are forgiven? How much do you have to suffer (in this world or the next) to pay for your misdeeds? Are you positive there is no life after death or that the traditional Jewish teaching on limited suffering in the afterlife is really true? I urge you to give serious consideration to these questions. They really are matters of life and death.
28 Yeshua said, “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). This saying is also paralleled by the teaching of the rabbis. For example, Resh Lakish taught that if a man “commits adultery with his eyes he is also called an adulterer” (Leviticus Rabbah 23:12), while another Talmudic sage said that, “He who looks at a woman with desire is as one who had illicit intercourse with her” (Massekhet Kalla 1). See further Samuel Tobias Lachs, Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Hoboken/New York: Ktav/Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith, 1987), 96–98.
29 For the question of whether the Holocaust was in any sense a divine judgment, see 2.10.
30 The Talmud also makes reference to some people going to eternal punishment; see, e.g., b. Rosh Hashanah 16b–17a (where it is stated that the “completely wicked” go down to Gehenna and don’t come back up, with reference to Dan. 12:2); and cf. Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Rabbinic Perspectives on the New Testament (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1990).
31 Important biblical statements on this question include Romans 1–2, along with Romans 10:1–15; for recent discussion concerning this among evangelical Christians, cf. William V. Crockett and James G. Sigountos, eds., Through No Fault of Their Own? The Fate of Those Who Never Heard (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991); John Sanders, No Other Name: An Investigation into the Destiny of the Unevangelized (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992); Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the Only Savior? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994); idem, Gabriel Fackre, and John Sanders, What about Those Who Have Never Heard? Three Views on the Destiny of the Unevangelized (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1995).
32 Cf. some of the remarkable stories related in popular form in Don Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts (Ventura, Calif.: Regal, 1984); cf., however, the strictures of Tite Tiénou, in Crockett and Sigountos, Through No Fault of Their Own?, 209–15.
Brown, M. L. (2000). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 1: General and historical objections. (28). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.