Richard Hollerman

As I was walking early morning, when it was barely light, I was thinking as I usually do. I saw only 2 or 3 people and they walked on by, with the ducks and geese also nearby.

With the world population of nearly nine billion people, we know that most of these are lost, will be lost, and will never come to Christ. There are a billion Hindus, and they all are lost. Then there would be some 400 to 600 Buddhists, and they also are lost, and I think that they all are atheists. Sadly we know that there are perhaps 1,900 billion Muslims, and, of course, they are all lost, having believed in Mohammed and disbelieved in Jesus. There would also be agnostics, atheists, and many others. There would also be Taoists, Shintoists, and atheistic Confucianists, as well as many Chinese atheists and various idolaters.

Of the some two and a half billion people who profess “Christ” in one way or another, many are Roman Catholics and Orthodox, and others are Deists, all of whom are lost and away from God. We refer to perhaps one and a half billion people.

Of the 800 million to one billion Protestants in the world, scattered among some four thousand different cults. sects and religions, with most of them clearly wrong and without God and His salvatioln. Of the other Protestants, we have tens of millions of Anglicans, some tens of millions of Calvinists, and also tens of millions of  Lutherans, and  of Methodists, and so forth. And, we know that many or most or all of them are lost and without a true knowledge of God in the forgiveness of their sins. They believe in infant salvation, feminism, denominationalism, and so forth.

We know that many of these people do not know God through Christ. They are lost, even though some of them are religious. We find this so sad and disconcerting. Many of these dear people think that they are right and assume that they know God but are dead wrong and are lost, without the Lord and His salvation.

And so I walked, in the partial darkness, and with the ducks, and with a few others, but I was thinking and thinking. How can it be that of the nine billion people on earth, on this terrestrial ball, so few are saved and so few really know God? Why is it that nearly all of them are without the Lord and His salvation? We know that so many of these dear people, with residences around the world, who believe in various gods and no God and even millions of gods, they simply don’t know the salvation that God has provided and Jesus gives? We wonder and wonder.

So it may be that I am walking in the dark and with the ducks and geese, but I think and ponder. Why is my question. And I wonder even more and go on my stroll around the lake in the early morning.