A Sense Of Urgency

Matthew 24:14

"And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."


No one besides God knows when Christ will return and the end will come, but I am one of many who believe that we are clearly living in the end times. Many of the signs described in the Bible are happening or have already happened, and it is possible the end could come in our lifetime. This ought to give us a sense of urgency in our attempts to reach out in love to the lost and share the Good News of Christ. Even if the end will not come in our lifetime, our lives are so short and we have such little time here to make a difference in the eternal destiny of others. We need to have a sense of urgency and desire to share Christ with and reach as many lost people as possible. We will be accountable to the Lord for how we have spent our lives (see Romans 14:12), and one of the things we will be accountable for is if we truly followed Jesus and were the "fishers of men" He told us to be (see Matthew 4:19).

It is interesting to see that there has been more evangelism activity in the world in the last 15-20 years than ever before. God is mobilizing His people to share the Gospel and reach a lost & dying world like never before, and more people need to be obedient and go. There are almost 2 billion people who still have never heard about Jesus, so obviously there is much more work to do. We need to get serious in this spiritual battle for souls !!! Here are some interesting facts & statistics for world evangelism:

* World population: 6.6 billion
* Unevangelized population: 1.87 billion
* World Major People Groups: 15,958
* Unreached People Groups: 6,415 (1.8 billion persons)
* 680 million Evangelical Christians (11.5% of world population)
* 1.3 billion Muslims
* 1.0 billion Catholics
* 900 million Hindus
* 875 million Atheists or non-religious
* 350 million Buddhists
* 340 million Chinese folk religions
* 1.6% world population growth rate
* 5.7% growth rate for Evangelical Christians