“Christianity is increasing in Brazil. If the trend continues, it is predicted that more than half of all Brazilians (109 million Christians out of 209 million citizens) will be evangelical Christians by 2020….Brazil is a land in revival…It’s a place where belief in miracles and healings are high.”[16]
What is taking place in Brazil is even more astounding when, prior to 1970, less than 3% of the Brazilian population was “Evangelical.” To go from 2.5% to over 50% of the population in a rigidly Roman Catholic nation in less than 50 years is unprecedented.
Latin America is literally exploding with the flames of revival.
Perhaps the growth of Christianity is most astounding in the vast continent of Asia. The People’s Republic of China only had about one million Protestants in 1949. Now there are conservatively “more than 58 million Protestants in China.”[17] Prof Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. He declares,
“By 2030, China’s total Christian population would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world.”[18]
Other journalists and unbiased observers are also acknowledging this incredible expansion of Christianity in China. One noted English newspaper published the following,
“Estimates of the number of Christians in China today vary between 60 million and 120 million, which would suggest as many as one in 10 of the population are already believers. It has been predicted that by 2030 there could be almost a quarter of a billion Christians in China making it the biggest Christian population in the world.”[19]
If the house church participants, and those spread throughout the rural stretches of China are considered, perhaps as many as 30% of the Chinese are now associated with Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity. Those numbers may be high, but there is little doubt about Christianity’s significant inroads into this once closed-off nation.
A land that was once opposed to the gospel, will likely be the center of it within a few decades.
This final report may surprise many, but Spirit-filled Christianity is also beginning to make advances throughout the violent Arab world.
In spite of the intense persecution, assassinations, and widespread church bombings, revival is exploding throughout North Africa and other parts of the Middle East. It has been conservatively estimated that at least “2 to 7 million people from a Muslim background worldwide now follow Christ.”[21] Other reliable reports suggest that there may be as many as 10 to 15 million undocumented Christians in Muslim countries.
“A Christian revival is touching the northernmost reaches of Africa. In a region once hostile to the gospel, now tens of thousands of Muslims are following Jesus. As the sun sets over the Mediterranean Sea, Muslims across Northern Africa are converting to faith in Jesus Christ in record numbers… What experts say is that there is a profound move of God in the predominantly Muslim nations of Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia.”[22]
“What God is doing in North Africa, all the way from actually Mauritanian to Libya is unprecedented in the history of missions. I have the privilege of recording testimonies and listening to firsthand stories of men and women, of all ages.”[23]
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