There was recently a discussion in which common grace vs special (or saving) grace was bandied about. Curiosity got to me, and I wondered just how special is God’s saving grace? And so, I looked up some numbers to calculate a ballpark figure. I’ll assume, for argument’s sake, that half of the world’s population of Evangelical Christians comprise God’s “elect”. Therefore, if my math is correct; 0.5(600M/7.6B) = 3.95%. That is, God’s election is only extended to about four percent of the world’s population.
Put another way, for every soul born throughout the world, there is a likelihood of ~96% that the child is NOT of the elect. Well, at least I now know my approximate odds of God having found favor with me before the foundation of the world.
4 Responses
I think I’d consider the rest of the world population as well… How many untold millions in China are “underground” Christians, for example? And what about throughout world history, especially during the times of the early church in which “the whole world was turned upside down?” But, no matter what, “many are called; few are chosen.” This is, indeed, a biblical concept.
Exceedingly few are chosen according to Calvinistic doctrines. Makes me wonder if there’s a particular group from some country with a statistically significant difference with regard to the number of elect persons?