Originally posted by kern
I am curious where you came up with this statistic. Who keeps records on how many people have been saved in the world? And how would we get records from the 300's or 400's, for instance?
-Chris
Chris,
I heard this from a missionary friend of mine. I trust he knew what he was talking about. I think it does checkout pretty close if you look at the statistics. Much of this huge increase in evangelism is simply because there are simply more people to evangelize. There has been a huge population explosion just in the last century or so. The population in the 300's and 400's was steady at somewhere around 250 million or less. (It actually appears to have dropped in the 400's to less than the number of people that were alive at the time of Christ according to the chart I looked at. Does one of you history buffs know why?) Now it is 6.23 billion. Up until the later half of 19th century the population was still less than a billion.
Here are some numbers from World Evangelism Center.
Total world population 2002 6,229,803,156 (Source US government)
Total Christians in 2002 all denominations 2,050,616,000
Total Christians in 1970 all denominations 1,236,374,000
Total Christians in 1900 all denominations 558,132,000
Christians as a percentage of the world has actually decreased since 1900 from 34 1/2% to 33%. However that trend seems to have reversed just in the last several years, and Christianity is now increasing as a percentage of the total world population. Interesting huh?
This drop in percentage may make us think that the kingdom of God is in decline. However, it may actually prove the opposite. Think about which countries experienced the greatest population explosion of the twentieth century. They are for the most part traditionally non-Christian countries. The fact that Christianity only dropped a point and a half in percentage might actually show the phenomenal rate of evangelization that is happening in the world. Combine this with the evidence that Christianity may have started to increase as a percentage of world population makes the numbers even more astounding.
My missionary friend may have exaggerated a little, but not by much. The twentieth century truly was a century of evangelism. And it looks like the twenty-first century holds great promise.
Here is another telling statistic that may even help futurists and preterists love one another better.
Estimated number of Christian martyrs (1900) 34,400 (1970) 377,000 (2000) 160,000 (Perhaps the drop between 1970 and today is due to the demise of communism?) It is predicted that there will be even more than 160,000 in 2002.
Ozark
