How Were Men Saved Before Jesus Came?

 I often see a question repeated in my Facebook Christian groups: What about people who lived before Jesus came? How were they saved? 

To my mind, the question is strange enough. However, I have seen some truly bizarre answers given. When I say bizarre, heretical would be an understatement. Some of them would qualify as occultic! 

One of the merely-heretical answers is that Old Testament believers were saved by the Mosaic sacrifices. That is a dispensationalist concept, and ignores Hebrews, as dispensationalists are wont to do: "It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins" (Hebrews 10:4). Old testament believers were enabled by the Holy Spirit to see through the type of the animal sacrifices to the anti-type, the sacrifice of Jesus, whose blood is truly effectual to the salvation of His people. That means that Old Testament believers were saved the

same way as New Testament believers, by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The difference is that the work of Jesus was obscured by the types and shadows of the Mosaic ceremonies. The Gospel is brighter for the New Testament believer because that obscurity has been removed. We have directly what the Old Testament believer had only indirectly. 

As  Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, "Do you mean by that, asks someone, that the saints in the Old Testament were not forgiven? Of course I do not. They were obviously forgiven and they thanked God for the forgiveness. You cannot say for a moment that people like David and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were not forgiven. Of course they were forgiven. But they were not forgiven because of those sacrifices that were then offered. They were forgiven because they looked to Christ. They did not see this clearly, but they believed the teaching, and they made these offerings by faith. They believed God’s Word that He was one day going to provide a sacrifice, and in faith they held to that. It was their faith in Christ that saved them, exactly as it is faith in Christ that saves now. That is the argument."