A question that sometimes comes up during religious discussions concerns how many Christians there are in the world today? Most people use the answer produced by global surveys, meaning those who answer “yes” when asked if he/she is a Christian. According to those surveys, approximately two billion people identify themselves as Christians, Protestants edging out Catholics. If pressed for a more precise figure, most of the respondents would undoubtedly limit their answer to those in their particular church, faith, denomination, nondenomination, sect, cult, etc. With the question in mind, let us find the answer using the only accurate method for identifying those who are in fact part of the family of God–His church. Let us count only those who believe and obey His unabridged Truth as stated by the prophets and apostles who heard His voice either audibly or through His Holy Spirit, then spoke and recorded His Words for posterity. Though we have no way of obtaining absolute figures relative to the number of actual Christians in today’s world with absolute accuracy, the figure put forth by those who are able to guess with a modicum of accuracy is approximately 10,000. Let us for a few moments examine the lives of those “peculiar” saints who separate themselves from the religious crowd by openly obeying God’s Word. Let us briefly study them in order to learn how they came to arrive at their spiritual destination.

With extremely rare exception, those who have walked and are walking the Godly way that leads to His Kingdom did not begin their spiritual journey by entering the strait gate and taking the narrow way outlined in Matthew 7:13,14. The reason being that Satan has deliberately hidden that way, thereby forcing determined God-seekers to search for and “find” it among the morass of conflicting, competing, contradicting religious organizations that comprise the Institutional Church system. Throughout history Satan has used false prophets, family and friends to hide God’s Way from those who seek Him. As a result they live their lives convinced that their god is THE god, their religion is THE religion and only THEIR particular organization has been called by God to spread THEIR version of His gospel to the world. It is extremely rare to find an individual who chooses to study God’s Word in search of Truth and who will seek out and listen to His ministers. These saints normally come to the Lord in the way exhibited by the people you are about to meet–God-seekers who found Him by following The Way More Perfect.

In Acts 18:24-28 we read about Apollos, a Jew known for his speaking eloquence who was “mighty in the Scriptures …. This man was instructed in the Way of the Lord, and being fervent in the (his human) spirit, he spoke and taught diligently THE THINGS OF THE LORD, KNOWING ONLY THE BAPTISM OF JOHN.” And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue, whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, took him unto themselves and EXPOUNDED TO HIM THE WAY OF GOD MORE PERFECTLY.” This man was zealous for the Lord. He undoubtedly took every opportunity to witness for Him using what knowledge he had. This describes the masses of preachers and lay witnesses in the modern church who, believing that they are in the center of God’s will, are convinced that they need only stay the course in order to go to heaven.

After being presented with God’s more perfect way and humbly accepting the correction it commanded, Apollos went into the region of Achaia where he “helped them much which had believed through grace.” Notice that “those which had believed through grace” believed that they had arrived at the finish line. However, they NEEDED MUCH HELP IN THEIR SPIRITUAL WALK. Having learned that God’s grace and his personal faith could not save him, Apollos set out to tell those who had “taken Jesus into their hearts as their Savior” that faith and grace constituted the starting point of their Christian walk, not the finish line as they believed and as the church masses have believed for hundreds of years. See Hope and Salvation. If Jesus Christ was the Truth of God in the days of old, then He still is today. Therefore we, as did they, must learn, believe and obey THE WAY OF GOD MORE PERFECTLY in order to inherit salvation at His return. To be continued. L.J.