An idea is floating around that Islam is the fastest growing religion. Perhaps it's true. However, I still believe that the number of persons who know and believe in Jesus are getting bigger. Below is an excerpt from the page of the book written by Richard Bauckham about the increased of number of persons who believe in Jesus.
Jesus of Nazareth, or Jesus Christ (as Christians call him), is undoubtedly the best known and most influential human person in the world history. Two billion people today identify themselves as Christians, with the implication that Jesus is the focus of their relationship to God and of their way of living in the world. Such followers of Jesus are now more numerous and make up a greater proportion of the world's population than ever before. It is estimated that they are increasing by some 70,000 persons every day.
This growth of Christianity is taking place despite its decline in the West, especially in Western Europe, and those who think the figure of Jesus Christ is of fading significance need to reckon with astonishingly rapid increase in numbers of Christian believers in other parts of the world, such as Africa and (who would have expected it?) China. Jesus is plainly no longer icon purely of the Western culture, but in fact he never was. He lived in the Middle East, and in the first few centuries of Christianity the faith spread in all directions--not only to Greece and Rome, France and Spain, but also to Egypt, North Africa, and Ethiophia, to Turkey and Armenia, to Iraq, Persia, and India. Christianity was a world religion long before it was a European one.
Richard Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2011.
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