117 billion people have ever lived on planet earth from the beginning of time to the present.
From the Population Reference Bureau and the World Economic Forum: “Calculating the number of people who have ever lived is part science and part art. No demographic data exist for more than 99% of the span of human existence. Still, with some assumptions about population size throughout human history, we can get a rough idea of this number: About 117 billion members of our species have ever been born on Earth.” How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? | PRB
8-13 billion people, since the time of Christ, have been considered Christian, using the broadest definition of “Christian.”
If you research the question and answer, you will learn that this figure is highly speculative for obvious reasons, but it does give a relative perspective. C. 12%
90 billion people who have ever lived, according to many Evangelicals, “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” (2 Thessalonians 1:9)
You can disagree with the numbers above but no matter what other reasonable numbers you use, the figures beg the question: “How and why would a sovereign and benevolent God create humanity knowing 90 billion would suffer in this life and spend eternity separated from him?
Assume the question is seriously asked by a friend, how would you respond? I’ll post my response at a later time.
Part 2 “How and why would a sovereign and benevolent God create humanity knowing billions would suffer in this life and spend eternity separated from him?”
The above question is what I submitted in my earlier post. It was encouraging to read how many of you understand the crux of the problem and end up with the same conclusion you will see below. Dare I say, only the unthinking or the coldest of hearts are not deeply moved by the prospect of even one person eternally separated from God, and more so 90 billion.
Understanding the biblical realities of universal guilt and justifiable condemnation don’t address the issue. The Bible is clear that knowledge of God has been made available to everyone sufficient to leave everyone guilty for rejecting that knowledge. (Psalm 1, Romans 1, etc). It is clear God provided a way, both before Christ and since Christ was on earth, to be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:19). It is equally clear that all who reject his grace deserve to be separated from God (Romans 1, 3, etc.) and will be (2 Thessalonians 1:9). But these realities, true as they are, don’t answer the question.
Likewise, proposing unbiblical ideas of universalism or annihilationism don’t answer the dilemma. Such theories may be assumed to address the idea of eternal conscious punishment, but they don’t address millennia of the earthly suffering of billions before death.
None of these arguments addresses the question, “How and why would a sovereign and benevolent God create humanity knowing billions would suffer in this life and spend eternity separated from him?
We seem to have irreconcilable descriptions of God:
On the one hand we have the God who described his desire for people to believe him and follow him (see Hosea). We have the God/man, Jesus, who wept over the unbelief of people. We read of the God who is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” We believe the “God (who) takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked” and the “God (who) so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son…”
On the other hand, we have the God who declared: “The soul that sins shall die;” “The wages of sin is death;” “Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
Two observations and a conclusion:
We cannot reconcile these matters! It does not mean they are irreconcilable. But it does mean we don’t have the ability to do so. Our attempts make less of God and leave us worse off than when we started.
God doesn’t choose to show us how these matters are reconciled or if they even need to be. To Job and to us, God says, “Shall a fault-finder contend with the Almighty? And “Will you even put me in the wrong?” And “Who is it that darkens counsel by words without knowledge.” (Job 38, 40) Just as God has not chosen to explain how Divine sovereignty and Human responsibility reconcile, so he has not chosen to explain the ultimate “why” of the destiny of the unrepentant.
We must conclude, where Christianity starts and ends, “I will trust God.” I will trust these imponderables (and myself) to the God who has demonstrated his power, his love, his holiness, and his justice.
We know God’s “track record” of forgiveness and grace toward his people in the 4000 years before Christ. We know of the birth, life, death and resurrection of the God/man Jesus who came to save us. We know what he has done in our own lives. We know the promises he has given. And we know he said, “I know my own and they follow me. I give them eternal life,” and “he who believes me, will live, even though he dies.”
There are many questions I can’t answer, but there is one I can, “Do I believe HIM?” If I do, I can trust him with all the other questions.