First, I was interested in your comments because my wife died in February after a lengthy illness, and I have been trying to wrap my mind around the fact she is no longer here. She was here, but now she's not. I sense you have the same feeling for your friend.
As I'm sure you knew would happen, hundreds of people would post their ideas and theories. Some would be gentle and nonjudgmental. Others would be dogmatic. Some would confess to being unsure, and others would be equally confident.
But the fact of the matter is no one knows. Billy Graham doesn't know. Pope John Paul didn't know. Name whomever you wish, they don't know.
The most anyone can do is believe, be sure, be confident, be positive and, as Evangelicals like to put it, "hope" (in the Old English sense of that word). But none can ever know.
Thank you and everyone here for your replies. I guess the bottom line is that while many here are far more educated than I am in matters of religion, no one really “knows”. I guess that is what faith is.
One thing that I am sure of (in my own mind) is that God is a just and loving God. I am seeing many posts that claim that God’s standard is absolute perfection. If we so much as have a single impure thought, we fail utterly to be worthy of salvation. Who designed us? Were we designed to be absolutely perfect? If so, the designer utterly failed. I’d like to think that the designer was pretty good, so I am ruling out engineering error. We were designed in His image. IMHO, that means free will, able to make our own decisions and somewhat more than robots. If He knows everything, then He knows we are not perfect. He knew it from the day we were designed. We were not designed to fail; we were designed to be His greatest creation, one who may be somewhat unpredictable at times and stubborn. If we were perfect robots, what company would be be for God in the hereafter? I am not saying this as confronting the dogma of Christianity, but rather as I believe in the character of God.
But I am not a “universalist” who thinks that everyone on every path will get into heaven. I do believe in Jesus as the Messiah and I am trusting that God does not lie. I have met many people in my life that IMHO are unlikely to be saved, unless they have a complete repentance. I have met self-professed Christians and Jews who IMHO may not make the cut. I have met people who seem to have no conscience and even enjoy the suffering and humiliation of others. Of those people, IMHO God is not amused. There is hope for everyone, but eventually time runs out and for those people they will have to face whatever version of “hell” separation from God means. My opinion only, no one knows.