What happened to souls prior to Jesus?
You have to draw a distinction between the basis of salvation and the means for appropriating that basis. The basis for entrance into the Kingdom of God has always been the death and resurrection of the Son of God past, present and future. But appropriating that to people has not always meant implicit understanding of the gospel message. People in the Old Testament were saved on the basis of the death of Christ, which was still in the future. But the means of appropriating that wasn’t understanding the message, because they didn’t have a clue. It was a calling out to the mercy of God and living in the light of that mercy, as well as they understood it at that time.
