You are right.  This is the point of the entire exercise, to realize without the sacrifice of Christ, all was lost.  "By grace are you save, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast."  Therefore, God, knowing the condition of man, his proclivity to sin; provided the way, the truth and the light, that all may come through him, "the door" if you will, that if any man should knock, that he should enter by that way.  God can not look on sin, He did not judge one sin greater than the next as do men, sin is simply sin.  As for hellfire and brimstone.  Hell of the church is not so.  Hades, or Hell is "eternal separation from God" and since all that is good comes from God, it means eternal darkness, separation from all that is good.

There is much debate on hell and I see it all pointless to debate, but a lot of people have fun doing so.  I look at it  like this; "to know Gos is to love him."  Why would I want to be separated from him?  Many of us have suffered the separation and loss of someone we loved dearly, imagine the pain of regret if we are aware in the afterlife of the biggest failure, the biggest loss of all, an eternal one.

Time is relative, relatives take time.

That is exactly the point, less the 'what they believe in' part. It's believing in Christ, and only believing in Christ, who live an absolutely perfect life and was crushed under the almighty wrath of His own Father for the sins of mankind, that assures a place in heaven. Since the fall, every human being ever born wa born deserving of that wrath, but Jesus took our place. It's when we realize what a horrible state we are in, and throw ourselves on the mercy of God and His atoning sactifice that we have truly believed and can have assurance that we can spend eternity in the presence of God.

All this self-centered Christianity that revolves around God's wonderful plan for us, having our best life now, reduces God to Santa Claus, and talks about 'sin' as just  annoying little habits that God looks past because He accepts us 'unconditionally' is pretty much junk food.

In His Toolbox,

B4B
http://mypeoplepc.com/members/dcartwright/CMF_FortCarson/