Heaven vs. Hell vs. God's Address

[Cinjin]

to the best of my knowledge, the Bible says little about what happened to those who died before Jesus died on the cross (aside from Matthew's brief comment about the dead saint zombies). Clearly, the NT regards some of those who came before Jesus were "righteous". During Jesus' transfiguration he was seen with Elijah and Moses. So evidently, some where considered righteous before Jesus.

The common school of thought I've heard is that when Jesus died on the cross but before he rose again, he went to Hell and freed all the souls that he chose to save.

I've never gotten a very good answer to this question either (Most of the time I've gotten no answer). However, what I have been told is that those people who lived before the birth of Christ had "the sacrifices". In other words they were able to achieve the necessary blood atonement by performing regular blood sacrifices. Which of course is a common theme in the OT.

Now that theory could possibly hold water if it weren't for one glaring problem. Many people around the globe weren't practicing Judaism. While this theory may have protected the Jewish people, it seems that it would leave most everyone else out in the cold, so to speak. It stands to reason that most Asians for example, didn't know the god, Yahweh, and therefore weren't making the appropriate sacrifices to achieve atonement. Which also leads me to another question - Is any blood sacrifice acceptable even if made to a god with the wrong name. If the ancient Mayans sacrificed a young virgin to a volcano - would that count as an acceptable sacrifice since there was no possible way for them to even know of ancient Jewish law, let alone the god they were supposed to be sacrificing to?

Also if Jesus rescued everyone from Hell as the theory you mentioned proposes, than why cast anyone into hell in the first place?