FAITH ON EARTH WHEN THE LORD RETURNS

LUKE 18:8 – I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?

Jesus Himself declared that the end would come once the Gospel of the Kingdom of God had been preached throughout the whole world (Matthew 24:14). This means that Jesus Christ will return after people everywhere have heard the Gospel. A familiar slogan among Christians today is the call to evangelize vigorously so that the day of the Lord’s return might be hastened. This is not merely a slogan to encourage witnessing and evangelism; it is also a biblical truth. Yet, do we notice something significant about these two statements made by Jesus (Matthew 24:14 and Luke 18:8)? When the Gospel is preached across the earth, many people will undoubtedly believe in the Lord, and the number of Christians will increase. According to statistics (both official and unofficial), the number of believers today has surpassed one billion. Missionaries have traveled to every corner of the globe, and the Word of God is widely disseminated via the global internet. Today, few people remain unaware of the salvation found in Jesus. Yet, with such a vast number of believers, why did Jesus say that upon His return, He would find so little faith on the earth? Do those two statements—or rather, those two prophecies—of the Lord Jesus contradict each other? What is the significance of the fact that there are multitudes of followers, yet faith is absent?

Some have tried to explain this by claiming that everyone who possessed faith in the Lord had already been caught up into the air to meet Jesus, leaving no one with faith remaining on earth. However, such reasoning is deeply flawed. Humans might ask foolish questions due to the frailty and forgetfulness of old age, but how could the Lord Jesus—the Eternal One—utter two things so contradictory as to be absurd? Could it be that the Lord simply forgot that all the believers had already been caught up, leading Him to declare that faith no longer existed on earth? Such reasoning borders on blasphemy. Yet, if the Lord’s words are true and just (or balanced), what profound significance does His question in Luke 18:8 hold for the Christian community in this world? We know with certainty that the Lord Jesus never speaks falsely, and His words never contradict one another. What, then, is the true meaning of the verse in Luke 18:8? Was Jesus saying that, even though the Gospel is proclaimed throughout the earth, the number of those with true faith is so small that—when compared to that population of over a billion—the number of true believers is negligible? Is that the case? Suppose that among the more than one billion people who believe in the Lord, ten million possess true faith; what would that percentage be? It is 1%, is it not? But if the number of those with true faith is only one million, the percentage becomes 0.1%. Thus, although the percentage is low, the absolute number remains significant. Yet, if the number of those with true faith is only 100,000, what is the percentage? It is 0.01%, isn’t it? And if the number is 10,000, would the percentage be 0.001%? Furthermore, if there are only one hundred or merely ten people with true faith, would the percentage be 0.0001% or 0.00001%? Is such a percentage negligible?

We know that God has affirmed: “So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). Therefore, when the Lord Jesus indicates that at His Second Coming the number of those with TRUE FAITH will be so small as to seem almost non-existent, every Christian must awaken. We must strive to keep ourselves among that small remnant, so that we may be caught up in the air to meet the Lord and live eternally with Him. Amen.