The Shaking of Nations - A Harvest Tsunami Is On Its Way....

Global population has increased at a staggering rate through

those two milennia (as anyone who remembers Paul R.

Ehrlich's 1968 blockbuster book The Population Bomb can

attest) . At the time of Christ’s birth, the worl d was estimated to

hold fewer than 300 million people. By 1804 A . D . global

population had grown to one billion people. Yet barely over a

century later, in 2012 A . D ., it had ballooned to seven billion

people.

Let's look at that again: It took eighteen hundred years for the

world population to reach its first billion people. But it took just

another 208 years for it to jump from that to seven billion

people. Some estimates now hold that in a little more than three

decades (if not sooner) we will be at nine billion people.

Those are truly stunning numbers. But in comparison, how has

the church grown in all that time?

The late Dr. Ralph Winters was founder of the U.S. Center of

World Missions and former editor of its magazine, Missions

Frontiers. In 2009 he published an article that provides the

answer to our question.

Dr. Winters stated that in 100 A . D . there was just one believer

for every 360 people in the world. By 1000 A . D . there was one

believer for every 270 people in the world. By 1500 A . D . the ratio

had shifted to one believer for every 85 people in the world.