While There Is Life

While there is life in this decaying body, there is the opportunity for repentance, the chance to turn to reason, God, and morality.  As long as this life endures, there is hope for this--and very likely even after the resurrection of the dead to judgment.  How else could there be representatives of every nation, tribe, and language in New Jerusalem if everyone who dies apart from hearing of or committing to Yahweh and Christ is forever locked out of eternal life?  A deity that desires for all fallen people to be saved (2 Peter 3:9) would almost certainly at a minimum not withhold salvation from people who had no exposure to Christian theology in life, especially if they would have turned to rationalism and Christian moralistic theism if pushed in the right direction.  Yes, for rationalism as opposed to Christianity, there is absolutely no excuse for anyone to not turn to it without any social prompting since necessary truths and absolute certainties are accessible to all, but a merciful deity would likely not bar people from this chance to turn to truth as they temporarily have life once again.

No, the Bible does not mention this.  What it does teach is the ideas which would naturally be compatible with a post-mortem repentance, things that are both consistent with the offer of redemption after the resurrection of the dead (in between the first death and the resurrection, the dead are unconscious according to the Bible, as Ecclesiastes 9:5-10 and many other verses teach) and that also, in fact, would make it likely.  There will be life again for all people, the Bible states, though for some, this restoration to life will end in their just extermination (John 3:16, 2 Peter 2:6), while the rest will enjoy eternal life in cordial familiarity with God (Daniel 12:2, John 17:3).  There is nothing logically impossible, if Biblical Christianity is true, in some of those granted eternal life having come to rationality, repentance, and righteousness after their death and eventual revival before God.

The road to destruction, to the permanent death without resurrection in hell that Yahweh reserves for the wicked and unrepentant (Matthew 10:28), is still one that many travel on (Matthew 7:13-14).  General irrationality is always easier than general rationality for non-rationalists, since only the latter requires effort.  Apathetic or egoistic evil necessarily is the product of irrationality, the supreme sin which is present in all the others, short of someone making no assumptions having no idea what the evidence for Christian morality is and doing things contrary to it in this ignorance.  A "second" chance after death and resurrection (there is always a new chance with every breath and every moment) to turn to reason and God, and in turn to morality, does not exclude the masses inanely pursuing their preferences, emotionalism, and arrogance into consuming hellfire.  That is not why the Christian God would or would not permit such a soteriological offer.

In no way does any of this trivialize the need or obligation or urgency to turn to truth now, and not after a hypothetical but probable future resurrection.  What one should do is still what one should do not matter how many more opportunities one would have to turn from error; what is true by logical necessity or in light of contingent factors is still true.  There is no use fleeing from it or striving to remain oblivious to it.  Even if there was a verifiable or evidentially probable lack of an afterlife, much less the just destruction (death, not eternal torture) or blissful eternal life that the Bible teaches, logical truth would still have its supreme nature and any moral obligations would still be good and binding, rooted in the divine nature.  The only rational thing to do is to discover what truths and possibilities are intrinsic and knowable from strictly reason, whether or not one would be offered yet another "second" chance after death and resurrection.  While there is life, thankfully, now and after the probable resurrection by Yahweh, there is hope that any sinner could turn in repentance to reason, God, and righteousness.