Does LG refer to Lumen Gentium?
I think you have to look at the context of Christ’s words. I once got into an extensive debate with a Church of Christ person over this very issue because the Church of Christ apparently teaches that you have to hear about Jesus in order to be saved, so all those who haven’t heard about Christ yet are doomed. Jesus’ words presuppose that people have had a chance to hear about Him in the first place. This is mentioned in Romans 8:13-15, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?”
Romans 2:12-15, “All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughs now accusing, now even defending them.”
Acts 17:26-28, “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.”
God doesn’t judge us based on what we don’t know, but what we can know or do know. Those who haven’t heard of Christ, through no fault of their own have the natural law and the witness of creation to witness the truth to their hearts, and if they are faithful to that truth they do possess, they can be saved, because it’s God grace at work in them and His truth at work in them.
Also, we can’t discount that Christ may reveal Himself directly to people during their lives or at the point of death (as another poster mentioned). I personally know a missionary couple (Protestant) in Kazakhstan (a Muslim former republic of the Soviet Union) who have reported Muslims coming to them and telling them that Christ appeared to them in a dream, commanding them to repent and believe in Him. If He can do that in a dream, He can do that in the days or moments before a person’s death.
