There are not many people in paradise, but the population of hell is huge?!?!

This must be what many right-wing evangelical Christians believe. For millions of Christians the belief that you must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God is a fundamental cornerstone of their belief system:

‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again he cannot enter the Kingdom of God’, so said Jesus to Nicodemus. A puzzled Nicodemus asks how is it possible for a man to be born when he is old. The answer of course was that man should be reborn in the spirit, not in the flesh. Millions of Christians claim to have experienced that spiritual rebirth, without which they believe you cannot enter Heaven.

However what about the millions who are brought up as Christian but whose religious rules and mores say something different. Catholics for example, believe in talking to God through Priests, not through Jesus. There is 1.2 billion that are alive today, heading for the fiery inferno. How about those with no faith who live a life of good works. Fire and brimstone for you. Faithful Muslim, praying 5 times a day? 1.5 billion, burning for eternity.

Hell is starting to look pretty crowded. 2.5 billion Souls, just taking into account currently living Catholics and Muslims. Of course we have had 200,000 years of homo-sapiens on planet earth before the birth of Christ. We have all the people in all the world, who by virtue of their geographic location, or by the time of their birth, could never have possibly heard the word of God, and therefore could never make the choice to be born again? How many do you think that adds to the fiery pit?

Born again Christians believe that you cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven unless your spiritual experience is exactly like theirs. Current estimates suggest that worldwide there are about 285 million evangelical Christians. About 13.1% of the total population. They are going to heaven. Everyone else is going to hell. Sounds somewhat like a privileged, gated, middle class community to me. Does your face fit? Can you follow the rules? Do you think, act, and behave exactly like us? Praise Jesus or be damned. Truly. In this version of events there really are not many people in paradise.