HOW MANY WILL BELIEVE OUR REPORT?
(The following is taken from my book, ‘Who Hath Believed Our Report'?):
The following statement, made without including any evidence and simply taken at face value, sounds ridiculous, far-fetched, outlandish and ignorant: ‘Most of the world’s population at any given time in its history have died lost people and are now perishing in hell'. It just sounds so outrageous to say such a thing and most people immediately dispel such a notion without giving it another thought. To think that the many religious people, and even the irreligious who led lives that were filled with all sorts of ‘good deeds’, have all gone to hell because they did not believe the Gospel sounds crazy. But when the matter is looked into and certain facts brought to light, one will see that not only is such a thing plausible but it is irrefutable! The Word of God says that anyone who does not believe the Gospel of God will not be saved. Jesus Christ the Lord says: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mk. 16:16). No saving faith no salvation, is the Bible’s cry.
Most estimates put the world’s population today at approximately six billion. Six billion people inhabiting the earth as we speak. Many of them are fine upstanding members of their communities, many of them are outlaws, many are rich, many more are poor and most of them are religious. Over one billion of these people are Roman Catholic and, going by the fact that the Roman Catholic Church does not teach the true Christ of God's Gospel but a false christ of a perverted gospel, and is laden with ancient pagan practices and man-made traditions, none of these people can be said to be saved. No one is saying they are not sincere, only that they are sincerely wrong.
Muslims, the followers of Islam, are said to number approximately 1.3 billion worldwide. Such people, who for the most part are honest, hardworking people who are kind to their neighbors and are dedicated to prayer and a ‘spiritual’ life, openly admit that they do not believe that Jesus Christ was anything but a good man and a prophet. They do not believe He was the Son of God and certainly not that He is God. To such people the Scriptures speak clearly, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him" (Jn. 3:36); "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (1 Jn. 5:12); and Christ Himself says "...if ye believe not that I Am He, ye shall die in your sins" (Jn. 8:24). Christ Jesus also says this of Himself: "I Am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending...which is, and which was, and which is to come, THE ALMIGHTY" (Rev. 1:8 cf. Rev. 4:8). The Muslim gospel is not the Gospel of God and therefore no Muslim can be said to be saved. This is not a slur on the character of Roman Catholics or Muslims; it is simply stating a fact based on the Word of God. We do not deny these people’s zeal for their gods but declare that their zeal is not according to right knowledge (see Rom. 10:1-4).
So, thus far we have looked at only two groups of religious people and already find ourselves with over one third of the world’s population as presently being with no hope of being saved, for they are without the faith of the true God which believes only in the true Gospel of God. Already we begin to see that the statement in question is not as crazy as it first appeared to be.
Hinduism claims 900 million adherents and Buddhists are said to number 360 million. None of these people are saved for they abide not in the doctrine of Christ. That makes a total thus far of well over half the world’s population who are at the present moment, lost! But we are not finished yet! Now add to this Chinese traditional religion (225 million); primal-indigenous (150 million); African traditional and Diasporic (95 million); Sikhism (23 million); Spiritism (14 million); Judaism (14 million); the Mormons and the J.W.’s number collectively at least 12 million people. Neither one preaches the true Jesus and therefore, they too, could not be the bearers of God’s Gospel.
Baha’i (6 million); Shinto (4 million); Neo-Paganism (1 million) and we now have over 4 billion people worldwide who are involved in false religions! That’s two thirds of the world’s population! And still the number is not complete!
Add to all these: Charismatics, Pentecostals, Seventh-Day Adventists, The Quakers, the Shakers, Christian Science advocates, Scientologists, every Arminian based ‘christian’ denomination along with the Orthodox churches of Russia and Eastern Europe, and Freemasonry, not to mention all the irreligious people of the massive populations of Russia, China and India and we see just how verifiable and accurate the original statement, ‘most people are lost’, really is.
The figures we have shared with you concerning the followers of false religions and believers of false gospels makes this a fact which none can deny, or ignore. The numbers we have given you are not made according to our statistics but according to Adherents.com. Their numbers are an approximate estimate and were last modified in September of 2002. This article is written not because these people do not believe what we say, but that they do not believe what God says in His Word. ,
This brief study has clearly proven that the vast majority of the world’s population is lost. Proportionately, true believers elected of God to believe the Gospel of the Righteousness of His Son Jesus Christ, number only a handful. The Lord Jesus says "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matt. 7:13,14). Scripture says: "And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 Jn. 5:19). The following from the Word of God encapsulates in just 2 verses what our study has revealed: "...if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world (Satan) hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the Light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, Who is the Image of God, should shine unto them" (2 Cor. 4:3,4).
Yes, there will be a great multitude of people saved (see Rev. 7:9; 19:6), but this does not mean that at any one time in history true believers numbered in the millions or even in the hundreds of thousands. The following will bear this out: if there were only one thousand people saved each century, that’s just ten people per year, over the past six thousand years this would come to a total of sixty thousand people! If two thousand were saved it would total one hundred and twenty thousand. If only three thousand people were saved every hundred years, that’s only 30 people per year, there would be one hundred and eighty thousand people saved, and so on. So we see that for there to be a great multitude of people in heaven which no man can number, there needs not be millions saved at any one time. There may well be only a handful of people saved during the course of a generation but this does not mean that heaven will be occupied by only a mere trifle. The fact that the prophet’s question, "Who hath believed our report" is still asked today by the true followers of God makes this a fact that cannot be ignored. To do so would be foolhardy.
REPENT AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL