Twenty-five Million Plus Souls Will go to Hell This Year!
By Matthew Foster
January 2001
In real numbers, between 25,941,000 to 51,882,000 people go to hell every year! How were these numbers derived? In 1998, 2,337,256 official deaths were registered in the United States, or 864.7 deaths per 100,000 people.1
Total death rate
How does this translate into worldwide mortality? If we assume 864.7 deaths per 100,000 people as a representational average across the entire world's population—somewhat of a grand assumption considering the variance in mortality rates across the world today, but it will serve to illustrate the point—and using the fact that there are approximately six billion people alive in the world today, the mathematics works out to indicate that 51,882,000 souls die every year world wide.
[6,000,000,000 people = 60,000 x 100,000 people
864.7 deaths per 100,000 people per year x 60,000 x 100,000 people =
864.7 x 60,000 deaths per year = 51,882,000 deaths per year]
At this annual death rate, how many souls die each second? Well, there are 31,557,600 seconds in a year as shown in the following calculation.
[60 seconds per minute x 60 minutes per hour x 24 hours per day x 365.25 days per year = 31,557,600 seconds per year]
Therefore, the worldwide death rate is 1.64 souls per second.
[51,882,000 deaths per year x 1 year per 31,557,600 seconds = 1.64 deaths per second]
Death rate of souls condemned to hell
How many of these souls are condemned each year to the fires of hell? Matthew 7:13–14 gives us an idea of how to discover the percentages of people who die and go to hell saying,
"Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."
The passage uses the words "many" and "few" to quantify the number of people going to hell or heaven. How many is "many" and how few are "few"? Webster's defines "many" as "A greater or additional quantity, number, degree, or amount." Greater than what? In this case, the number of lost people is "greater" than the number of saved people. Because people are either 1) lost or 2) saved, we can deduce that the number of lost people in the world is greater than 50%.
Webster's defines "few" as "Amounting to or consisting of a small number." A "few" could be anywhere from 1 to 49% in this example. So, there anywhere from 50.00…1% to 99.999…% of all people who die that are going to hell. This works out to be anywhere from 0.82 to 1.64 people going to hell each second.
Anywhere from 0.82 to 1.64 people are going to hell each second! This translates into 25,941,000 to 51,882,000 people going to hell every year!
These numbers represent as much as one quarter of the population of the United States! In real numbers, each year millions of souls are literally going to hell! Can you imagine one fourth of the United States population going to hell every year? At best, there is one soul dying and going to hell every second. At worst, there are almost 2 souls dying and going to hell every second. Every second!
These alarming figures are based on real death rate figures. This is not a hypothetical calculation. “There are souls to rescue, there are souls to save, send the light! Send the light!”
We cannot fall down on our job. We must remember our duty here on earth is to be ambassadors for Christ (2 Co. 5:20). As Christians, we have been given the Great Commission (Mt. 28:19–20) to make disciples in every nation. Let’s go forth into the fields and harvest without delay!
1Death Statistics Data Source: "Deaths: Final Data for 1998" Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Vital Statistics Report, 24 July 2000, Volume 48, Number 11. <