Gracious and Generous

God is gracious. He is generous with his grace. He wants to billions of people to enjoy his creation and embrace his love.

Up to the present time, a rough guess would be that fifteen billion people have lived on this earth, most of them during the last 100 years. Nearly half of the people who have ever lived are alive now. If you assume a history average of approximately one third of people coming to faith in Jesus, then about five billion people have found their way into eternal life. Would God be happy to call it a day with that number having found salvation? Most Christians seem to thing he would, but I doubt it.

God has created a universe that is so immense that it is difficult for a human mind to conceive the vastness. The new heaven and new earth is likely to be even larger. Five billion people are not enough people to fill the new heaven and the new earth. I can imagine that it would take five hundred billion people to fill this universe, so might take at least a million billions of people to fill the new heavens and earth.

The host of angels is almost too vast to be counted.

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands (Rev 5:11).

“Ten thousand times ten thousand” is an absolutely huge number. But there was a vast uncounted host beyond these, which no one could even count. This is without counting the third of angels that rebelled and joined the enemy side. Man was made a little lower than the angels, so if God wanted such huge number of angels, I am sure that he wants almost as many people in his kingdom.

The Bible promises that the number coming to faith will be too many to be counted.

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands (Rev 7:9).

A billion Christians could be easily counted. Life will have to go continue on earth for many generations, before the full number of those God has called and chosen are born.

A billion is a small number for God. A stingy person might be satisfied with saving a billion people, but God is generous and has far room for many, many more than that.