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Extra, Extra, Read All About It. . .

© Richard Kent Matthews

I received this recently and thought those of you who read this topic on a regular or semi-regular basis might find it interesting:

Posted: May 17, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern

2005 WorldNetDaily.com

Let's start off with the biggest unknown fact of our time: The world is rapidly becoming all-Christian.

That's not theology or wishful thinking, just statistics. And the numbers are shouting at me. A billion people are going to switch their loyalties to Jesus in the next 11 or 12 years and that may be just the beginning. As you might guess, this megashift could play hob with the citadels of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. They might even hit a crashpoint.

It could also virtually wipe out secular humanism, the clueless corps of New-Agers, and the doomed hordes of post-modernists now wandering aimlessly about the wasteland of non-referential abstraction.

How do I reach such far-out conclusions? Am I as fringy as I sound? Let's consult the hard numbers. I'll start with the 20th century:

In 1900, there were 2 million evangelical or charismatic Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 200 million.

In Latin America during that period, the born-again population zoomed from 1 million to 170 million.

And in China, just since 1950, Christianity has exploded from fewer than a million to almost 120 million.

Do you detect a trend here? If so, congratulations, you're ahead of the New York Times, CNN and the massed legions of academe.

But you may be saying: "Aww, that growth all happened before the '60s, Jim. The world has gone to pot since then."

Ooh, are you wrong.

You've looked just at the Western church, and you've seen a lot of stagnant or shrinking elements (notably liberal Christianity, whose basic tenets are the opposite of the Bible). The liberal collapse has fogged up the whole picture.

Inhale deeply. You're about to see the true figures for the first time:

I have discovered that there is a definable core of the Christian faith that is growing at a white-hot pace - 8 percent a year. If that doesn't sound white-hot to you, consider these details:

This growing heart of the global church is a powerful mix of charismatics, Pentecostals, evangelicals, and a few Catholics. They are in countable networks. In 1970, there were 71 million of them. By 2000, there were 707 million.

Now, straight-line projections are silly because nothing ever goes in a straight line. But just to give you a comically precise picture of our current momentum: At 8 percent growth a year, the world would have more Christians than people by the fall of 2032!