If Christ is the only way, what happens to those who don't hear about him before they die?

If JESUS IS THE ONLY WAY, WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO NEVER HEAR OF HIM?

This is a very hard question and you can take a couple of different directions with it. The first way would be to say that God as he is defined knows all, and therefore has engineered the world in such a way that no one is left without having a chance to accept the good news of Jesus Christ.

On the other hand some people refuse to believe that there are no circumstances in which a man dies without hearing about Christ. How can a loving God send a seemingly innocent man to Hell? That statement is full of assumptions. First we are not innocent we have all fallen short of the Glory of God. Second, God does not send us to Hell, we send ourselves. Does a judge send a criminal to jail, or does the criminal condemn himself to it? It is obvious through the Bible that you cannot be saved without Christ. So what about those of the old testament? they never heard of Christ, right? Wrong, they were saved by believing in God and trusting in the fulfillment of the prophecy of Jesus Christ. But we have come after Christ's sacrifice, so we are saved by believing in God and the believing in the death and Resurrection of Christ the LORD.

So what about those unreached? Will God condemn a man because we as Christians did not spread the good news? At first glance it seems we must assume that those unreached will not be saved. However there is an extra variable in this equation of ( no Christ=Condemnation ). This other variable(s) are mercy and grace. However since we are unsure of the way God will use mercy and Grace in judgement, we cannot know for sure how God will deal with those unreached. So it may very well be possible that God will have mercy on the souls of those who never heard of Christ, but since we don't know we as Christians are obligated to spread the good news in order to avoid the worst case scenario that the unreached will go to Hell. We must spread the word to all that we can in order to give all men a chance to chose to accept the Gift of Christ's death that God has given us.