What did people do before Bibles were available?

[*AQuietPlace*]

I've been thinking about this lately. The Bible being easily attainable by every person with a checkbook is a fairly recent development. For much of history, your average person did not have access to the written word of God.

What did those people do? How did they know God's plan and desires? They had to depend upon their leadership to proclaim the word of God to them. What if the leadership was wrong? They had no way of finding out.

Now, we insist that teaching line up to the word of God. We read it for ourselves. If the teaching isn't in the Bible, we can see that. But what if we didn't HAVE a Bible??

What about the time period after The Trinity and baptism in the titles became the Christian norm? How could your average person know that this wasn't the biblical method?

Many, many people in the past could not even read. How were these people to know if they were being told correctly? What if they were NOT told correctly? Were they doomed to hell because they could not read?

Why did God allow such a long time period to exist when the common man had no access to the Bible?