Question:
Are we held responsible for unsaved people who die when we at one time had the opportunity to preach the gospel to those individuals?

Answer:
Basically we are not responsible for the eternal destiny of others. They are responsible to God for their own sin and will suffer in hell because they have not believed in Christ, not because we failed to witness to them. We need to obey the Lord’s command to do the work of an evangelist (2 Timothy 4:5) and to preach the gospel (Mark 16:15). If He gives us opportunities to preach to others, then we should make good use of the opportunity out of love for our Lord and love for their lost soul.

Our motivation for witnessing should not be a fear of being held responsible for someone else’s soul. First Corinthians 3:6 says, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” We do not save people, God does. We are merely signposts, pointing the way to Christ. God can save someone without any human intervention, or He may choose to use 100 different people who witness to one person and then they finally get saved. But even in that case, it is God who does the work of saving them, not the people who did the witnessing. We are not responsible for the salvation of people’s souls. We are responsible to obey our Lord’s command to preach the gospel. May we be more diligent in doing that and if someone dies whom we had the opportunity to witness to at one time, let that spur us on to witness more to those who are in our lives right now. It may help to make a list of people to whom a witness is long overdue and begin witnessing to them right now.