Revelation 21:9-11 “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, "Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb's wife." (10) And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, (11) having the glory of God. Her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.”
The fourth category of individuals that will reside in the New Jerusalem is the church. In the above passage of scripture, the angel describes the holy Jerusalem as the Lamb’s wife. And we know that the bride of Christ, is in fact the church of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2). And so, we see that in fact it is the church of Christ that will be the main residents in the New Jerusalem. As we will see in further sections of this series, the number of saints living in the city will impact on various aspects, e.g. the design of the city and the reign of the saints. And so, it becomes necessary for us to be able to estimate how many saints will be living in the city. In order to do this, we will always look at scripture to give us some idea as to what that number might be, bearing in mind that our Lord Jesus said that few find the narrow gate to life (Matthew 7:14). There are two accounts in scripture where God reveals to us the number of His saints, and so if we were to take those two passages and apply those numbers as a percentage of the comparable population at the time, we can then use that percentage as a basis to estimate what the total number of saints will be. The one account, is when God tells the prophet Elijah that He had reserved 7000 men of Israel to Himself during the time when Israel had once again rebelled against God (Romans 11:4). At the time, the adult population of Israel was approximately 3 million people. Therefore as a percentage, the saints made up 0.23% of the total population. The next account, is when God tells the prophet Jonah that the city of Nineveh had a population of 120000 people (Jonah 4:11), and we know that God had reserved the people of Nineveh for Himself, because Jesus said that they would be included with the saints that would judge the world in the last day (Luke 11:32). At the time of the preaching of Jonah in the city of Nineveh, the total population of the earth was approximately 75 million people. Therefore as a percentage, the saints made up 0.16% of the total population. It is estimated that by the year 2050, the total number of people born into the earth from the time of Adam, will be approximately 120 billion. And so, if we were to apply the average of the two percentages to the total population of the earth, that would equate to a total number of between two and three hundred million saints.
Michael E.B. Maher
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