Adam and Eve are saved by the blood of Jesus?

[jack_hunter]

Adam and Eve are saved by the blood of Jesus?

To be saved you must accept Jesus as your Lord.

To be saved you must believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord that you accept the fact that you are a sinner, that as a sinner you owe the sin penalty, and that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the debt you owe.

But Adam and Eve didn't know Jesus, they never heard of him!

The question is Adam and Eve are they saved?

[Hyndis]

You can apply that same reasoning to everyone else who lived before the rise of Christianity, and to everyone else who didn't convert until much later in history.

So...lets see...

All of China, India, Japan, the Americas, all of those islanders, Australian aboriginies, and even Moses wasn't saved, because he never had heard of Jesus. Sure, he survived a flood...but he got sent to hell anyways because Jesus hadn't been born yet.

[Paradox]

This actually isn't a hard one for Christians to get around.

The standard Christian answer to this is that the crucifixion is the focal point in history where salvation was made possible. Christians today place faith in this event believing that it happened in the past. Pre-Christ believers placed faith in this event believeing that it will happen in the future. All the blood sacrifices were supposed to be typology for Jesus.

As for Adam and Eve, the idea goes that God demonstrated this future sacrifice by providing clothes for them. Their nakedness represented their sin and shame and God killed an innocent creature to provide the covering for this nakedness. In effect the first example of the atonement was demonstrated before their eyes.

If you think about it the Christians' belief and faith is based on what they are told (whether by divine revelation or texts or word of mouth). In any of these cases, does it really matter if the actual saving event is past, present or future. To them, all that matters is that it was, at some stage, provided.

[Hyndis]

But what about the Mayans? Or the Kingdom of Hawaii?

Did they have contact with Jews, and could they then look forward to a savior comming to fullfill the prophecies?

[Enlighten Me]

Originally posted by Hyndis
But what about the Mayans? Or the Kingdom of Hawaii?

Did they have contact with Jews, and could they then look forward to a savior comming to fullfill the prophecies?

And did their human sacrifices also point to Christ? Are we to admire their efforts to appease a god with human blood since it "foreshadows" the blood sacrifice of Jesus?

[Paradox]

But what about the Mayans? Or the Kingdom of Hawaii?

Yep, this is where the Christian argument begins to get messy and the church starts to argue with itself about it.

Generally, they argue from Romans 1 that God's qualities can be seen in Creation and that when this is recognised a progressive revelation is given to those that seek him.
The human sacrifices of other cultures would be seen as off-shoots from these ancient Adam & Eve style sacrifices. In the Christian viewpoint all civilisation branched off from them and so as the different cultures were eventually formed post-flood the significance of the sacrifices were gradually distorted into something else (of course that was the devil's work. ;) )

[Hyndis]

What about those civilizations that did not practice human sacrifice, then? ;)

I don't want to do digging up information on various cultures to see what kind of sacrifices they all did, but I'm absolutely positive that there were civilizations that did not practice human sacrifice. The Aztecs were the bloodthirsty bunch, but the Maya and Inca were more of the building type. Or, what about the people who lived in Alaska or Siberia? Seems way too harsh there to kill people on a regular basis for religion, as the weather and lack of food would do that for you.

[Paradox]

What about those civilizations that did not practice human sacrifice, then?

I was offering the Christian explanation for the cultures that also practiced sacrificial rituals not the ones that don't. It doesn't necessarily follow that just because a culture practiced something it would be passed on to another. Some cultures may have chosen not to take this on even if they knew of it. I can't for the life of me think why though! :D