“Enter by the
narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to
destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate
and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
Matthew 7:13-14
Tonight's passage
comes right after "Ask, Seek, Knock" during the Sermon on the
Mount. It comes right before Jesus talks
about "True and False Witnesses."
The passage is the transition from teaching to warning. Let's examine the original Greek to uncover
deeper meaning to this Scripture.
In English,
"narrow" and "wide" are consider antonyms of each
other. An antonym is a word opposite in
meaning to another (e.g., bad and good).
"Narrow" is diametrically, contradictory different to
"Wide." The Greek word is
stenos which means narrow or figuratively the closely-defined path God ordains
to travel on to gain His approval. Wide
is platus in the Greek or broad. To
emphasize how wide and broad, the author restates with the Greek word,
euruchóros, or spacious, wide. The next
time narrow is used in the text, the word is thlibó, I make narrow, persecute.
The Greek word for destruction here is apóleia
which means destruction, loss, perishing, eternal ruin. It has as its root word of apollumi which we
have discussed means the "lost," unbeliever. This leads us to another pair of antonyms,
destruction and life. As a contrast to
apoleia, the Greek word here is zóé which means life, both of physical
(present) and of spiritual (particularly future) existence.
The Scripture has
one last pair of antonyms, many and few.
In English, a few has been numerated as three to five. In the Greek, oligos means small, brief, few,
slight, little. Many is polus which
means many (high in number), multitudinous, plenteous, "great" in
amount (extent), numerous. Multitudinous
gives us even further insight. Many is
populous, crowded, containing many people or inhabitants, having a large
population, containing many inhabitants, abundantly populated.
In this warning,
Jesus tells us that an abundant amount of people walk the copiously large road to
unbelief and death. Rarely can a person
be found that walks the closely defined, persecuted road to belief in Christ and
eternal life. So, how rare is a true
redeemed person in Christ? How
many of us are truly saved?
Luke 17:28-30
Perhaps examining
Lot's story we may discover the rarity of Christians. Sodom and Gomorrah population has been
estimated anywhere from 600 to 1200 to almost 5000 people. According to the Bible, only three people
were spared. Let's be generous and
define "few" as 3 out of 600.
The population of the plant Earth today is roughly seven billion. Using a Lot definition of "few," 35
million true redeemed believing Christians are alive today.
Millions of people
doesn't seem rare or few, but let's consider a few more statistics. The United States of America (USA) has a
population of almost 300 million people which three quarters profess to be
Christian. 129 million people in the USA
identify themselves as Evangelical, born again Christians. Using the Lot definition of "few,"
all the Christian alive today would have to be living in the USA. Even with that, the 35 million doesn't even
come close to the 129 million Evangelicals.
35 million doesn't even compare to the 60 to 80 million people estimated
to be killed in World War II.
After these things I
looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all
nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before
the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and
crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on
the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Revelation 7:9-10
This great multitude
of believers uses the same Greek word as our previous text, polus. Therefore, at the end, there will be plenty
of believers, right? But exactly what is
a number "no one could number?" The life
expectancy during the time John wrote this was 40 years. If someone counted from one the second they
were born and increased the number a second until they died at 40, that person
would count to over 1.2 billion. To
count to 35 million would take a little over a year. We need to also consider that only over 110
million people were estimated living at this time. I conclude counting a million would seem to be a lot to them.
This study arrives to this question: How do we know if
someone is truly saved? Yes, we will
know them by their fruit, but we don't know their heart. Only you know your own heart. Only you know whether you have a relationship
with Christ. Only you know if your fruit
is from the Holy Spirit. We will only
know who truly believes in Christ when we get to heaven. In the grand scheme of things, by tonight's
Scripture, there's not going to be a lot of us. Nearly 107 billion people have walked the
planet Earth. Using the Lot definition of "few," only 535 million
will believe. That's only 0.5%, five
people out of every 1000. Even if the Lot definition is wrong, it can't be far off. Few and many are antonyms, direct opposites. If many is the world's population, than few would be in the millions not billions.
Five people out of
every 1000. Are you one of the five?
