AND THE END WILL COME

In Matthew 24, the disciples ask Jesus what the sign of his coming and of the end of the age would be. Jesus goes on to describe events that will take place before the end, but he is clear that none of these things are either definitive nor conclusive. In verse 14, Jesus gives a definitive sign of the end, “And this Gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.” The progress of the Gospel in the world is the definitive indicator about how close we are to the end of the age. So how are we doing with the gospel? To answer that, let’s classify the 7 billion people on the earth today into three groups.
 
Group 1: The Christians
About 33% of the world’s population identifies itself as Christian. We call this segment of the population, World C. C for Christian.
It’s important to remember that not all of the people that fall into World C are true believers in Christ, they merely identify themselves as Christian because of nominal belief in Jesus or because they live in a country where everyone is considered Christian, so they would do the same.
 
Group 2: The Nonbelievers
This is the group where the people have access to the Gospel but have chosen not to follow Jesus. This group makes up 38% of the world. They have Bibles in their language, churches nearby, friends or co-workers who are potentially Christians, and have access to other Christian resources in their language. These people have access to the good news, but haven’t acted on it yet. This segment of the population is called World B.
 
Group 3: The Unreached
That leaves us with 29% of the world. Just over 1 out of every 4 people on this planet who not only have never heard of Jesus, they have no chance of hearing the Good News of Jesus Christ. They have no access to the Gospel - no Bibles, no churches, no believers nearby… no chance to learn about Jesus. They are the unreached people and we call them World A.

1 out of 4 people have not heard of Jesus".

​How Are We Helping
About 1 out of every 1800 Christians in World C decides to serve as a missionary. So, we can pull 400,000 missionaries out of that World C population. That’s our total cross-cultural missionary force worldwide. The majority of these missionaries (72%%) are being sent to the people of World C, the world that have Bibles and established churches!
25% of missionaries are being sent to World B where there is already some access to the church and to the Bible.
That leaves only 3% of the total missionary force to handle all of World A - the section of the population without any chance of hearing about Jesus. 29% of the world has no way to hear the Gospel, but we’re sending only a tiny portion of our Christian workers to them.
What about finances? Annually, all those Christians in World C earn a total of 42 trillion dollars. And, together they give about 700 billion dollars to Christian causes each year – that includes everything: Christian non-profits, churches, youth programs, missions, etc. Can you do the math? Less than 2% of Christian income is being given to Christ’s causes.
Out of that 700 billion given to all Christian causes, only 45 billion is given to missions. That’s a little over 6%. In fact, there is more money reported stolen from the church each year than what is given to missions.
So, we have 45 billion dollars to support 400,000 missionaries and their cross-cultural work. But how exactly is this allocated?
Well, 39 billion dollars goes to World C every year. Yep, 87% of that missions money is being spent in areas of the world that have Bibles and churches available and have largely already been evangelized.
5.4 billion (or 12%) goes to World B each year.
That leaves only 450 million dollars or 1% of all missions money going to World A, the least reached people of the world. To put that into perspective, Americans spend more money on Halloween costumes for their pets than what gets sent to World A. A little sad, don’t you think?
So, to summarize, out of 7 billion people in the world today only 3% of those people are going as missionaries with the help of only 1% of funds given to missions. This small group has the job of reaching over 2 billion people who don’t have access to the Gospel. So what are doing to help? Not a lot really.  A lot more needs to be done if we want to see the end of the age. We need to give more funds to our missionaries and we need more Christians called and willing to go. We need to increase those percentages and decrease the percent of unreached people! So what are you going to do to help change those numbers?

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."
Matthew 24:14