Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 10
February 26, 1959
NUMBER 42, PAGE 8-9a

Population

E. L. Flannery, Bedford, Ohio

The world's population is growing so fast it is causing great concern to all who are aware of it. Every year it increases by 47,000,000 according to the United Nations. In twenty years Mexico will double her population to 60,000,000 according to present birth rates. India increases by 5,000,000 every year. Red China has 600,000,000, and grows by 13,000,000 every year. Our own nation is growing rapidly, too. The world no longer has vast empty spaces where overpopulated countries can find ease by migration.

The United Nations Survey states two-thirds of the people of the earth now are underfed, one-sixth are adequately fed, and one-sixth are well fed. This would mean about 1,866,666,666 people are underfed. (We have taken the figure 2,800,000,000 as the total population). This presents an awful picture, a worrisome fact to meditate upon. All these poor souls need food, clothes, shelter, other help. What can we do?

There are, we read, 1,500,000 members of the church now. If it is our responsibility to feed and clothe these 1,866,666,666 people that means each member — man, woman, boy and girl — have 1244 persons to provide for. At 20c each per day that would be $248.80; at 10c it would amount to $124.40. In my family there are five members of the church and just one income. My responsibility here in one day is more than my income for a whole month! even at the lower figure.

There are 15,000 congregations we hear. This would mean, if the churches are to assume responsibility for the world's underfed, that the 15,000 local congregations would on the average need to provide for 124,444 people daily. At 10c per day it would cost each church $373,320.00 each month — one-third of a million dollars, or about four million per year per congregation in America. The honest will agree we cannot do this job if we wanted to; if we had been commanded to do so. But God does not command the impossible of his servants.

In the pamphlet, The Population Bomb, published by the Hugh Moore Fund, New York, 17, N. Y., (prepared by a group of men devoted to international affairs) we read this sobering statement:

Hundreds of millions of people in the world are hungry. In their desperation they are increasingly susceptible to Communist propaganda and may be enticed into violent action.

Efforts to help them generally through our economic aid programs have not had the expected success.

There are more Hungry people in the world today than when the foreign aid programs began.

A 1957 report by the United States Department of Agriculture finds that population growth in the Far East is outstripping the rise in food production. Food per capita is less than pre-war. U. S. taxpayers cannot feed the world. Much as we may wish to help the earth's famine victims, we cannot even dent the problem with dollars.

At present the United States has about 6 per cent of the world's population. Some 37 per cent is Communist dominated now, and 66 per cent will be by 1977 if current trends continue. There is certainly a vexing problem in front of us. The twenty-first century may well see the decline of Western civilization. Our national leaders are striving desperately to do what can be done to preserve peace, to alleviate famine areas and depressed peoples, realizing 'America cannot long remain an island of prosperity in a sea of poverty" as Pakistan's former Premier said. Certainly if our government, backed by 176,000,000 citizens, knows we cannot dent this problem with dollars church members need to come out of their "dream world" and face the facts of economics.