Before I continue, thank you for your candid responses to me -- Please know that I do not intend to argue for the sake of argument - but for the sake of a better understanding for myself.
I believe, like you, that Satan has been influencing humanity since the beginning of time. The question I have never been able to answer (one of the questions I would like to ask God): What about all the people who walked this Earth before Christ? What about the people who lived in the Western Hemisphere while Christ was here on Earth? Were Native Americans damned, simply because they did not have access? It is confusing to me, when I compare the God of the Old Testament to the God of the New Testament.
I hear ya and nothing wrong with that....My answer would be.....
There are some things that we will not be able to grasp and or understand until we stand before God...we know the following things are true...
1. The invisible things testify to the power of God and the Godhead...
2. Day unto day and night unto night sets forth knowledge and there is no voice where they cannot be heard and or understood...so all are without excuse...
3. ALL of humanity came from the three sons of Noah and their wives so ALL of humanity at one time had a vestige of the truth<--- the same truth that Noah had and understood which resulted in his righteousness and saving faith...
4. It seems that every place the truth has been has run it's course and eventually is rejected and the people are judged by God and taken out of existence and or the nations involved grow base and sink into a false religion..
5. God is fair, just and even when a people is judged by war, famine and or disease or by a weather judgment God spares all of the children that have not reached the age of accountability as children who die before reaching this age are safe under the blood IMO....
6. The name Peleg means earthquake and in the days of Peleg the earth was divided<----goes to point 3 above which was after the flood and Noah...
7. God speaks in a still small voice and I have no problem believing that God in times past, before the word was written and or the possibility of a prophet and or (missionary) that if one truly wanted to know and experience God that God can make a way for that (proverbial) man on the island to hear the truth and or come to know God dia the truth
8. Maybe the people of the West were ripe for judgment and God allowed them to go their way and die in their sins...having said that I also believe that God is fair and that it will not be as hot for someone like an American Indian as it would be for a false teacher
9. There will not be anyone in heaven that has not come dia the truth and Christ just as there will not be anyone in hell that does not deserve to be there....
At the end of the day..every man, woman and child that walked the earth will have forfeited their soul unto God upon death and God is just, fair and righteous in what he does with said soul......
God has made the wicked for the day of judgment as well as the righteous for his glory......I know this is a hard thing to accept, but it is the truth.