The medical journal, The Lancet, recently published the results of a ten-year-long study relating to global population growth. Its conclusions? The world is on the brink of a world-wide population crisis.
But the problem with Earth’s population is probably not what you think. Our planet’s population crisis is that its growth rate is about to start shrinking dramatically. Now this is already a problem in countries like Japan, where the elderly are outnumbering the youth. But by 2050 Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, and Russia (among others) will decline between 10% and 22.5%. Over all, the world’s population is expected to peak at 9.7 billion by 2063, the decline to 8.8 billion by 2100. 
Looking beyond 2050, the decline will be even more dramatic. “Populations are expected to more than halve in 23 countries and territories, including Japan (from around 128 million people in 2017 to 60 million in 2100), Thailand (71 to 35 million), Spain (46 to 23 million), Italy (61 to 31 million), Portugal (11 to 5 million), and South Korea (53 to 27 million). An additional 34 countries are expected to have population declines of 25 to 50%, including China (1.4 billion in 2017 to 732 million in 2100.”
Why is this a crisis? According to other articles on the subject, this decrease in population means a decrease in the workforce. And a diminished workforce means fewer taxpayers to fund social programs – particularly those for a larger elderly population.
In America this will not be quite an issue. Although our growth rate is projected to decline, the model the researchers used in this study does not anticipate any decline in America’s population. Why won’t America’s population decline? We have the Religious Right in America to thank for that. They keep pushing family values which naturally results in higher birthrates.
But isn’t it interesting how our world can rush from one crisis to the next? Ever since Paul Erhlich’s best seller, The Population Bomb, the world’s leaders and Planned Parenthood have been pushing for the use of contraceptives and abortion – especially in Third World nations – to curb population growth. The population explosion was considered humanity’s greatest threat. Now we’re being told the very opposite is the problem. The world’s population is declining too fast.
The conditions that created the Dust Bowl in the United States – extremely high temperatures and droughts in the 1930s – led many to believe our planet was burning up. Then, in the 1940s, the earth began to experience a cooling trend. By the 1970s this trend reached its worst, with many concluding we were on the verge of another ice age. Now we’re losing our minds over global warming.
Friend, God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son to save it. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). He is the atoning sacrifice for the whole world (1 John 2:2). God loves this planet’s people so much that He bankrupted heaven to save them. Is it likely that He’s going to abandon us to destruction by ice ages, global warming, over-population, under-population, global disasters, cosmic impacts, pandemics, or exploding stars? God’s simply invested too much into us to ever abandon us. “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27). Jesus will be with us until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).
PRAYER: Dear Father in heaven, thank You that You are forever watching over and caring for this planet, a rare and beautiful oasis in a vast and hostile universe. You provide us with just the right kind of star for our sun and placed us just the right distance from it. You gave us a powerful magnetic field to shield us from the sun’s solar wind and the universe’s cosmic rays. You provided our planet with wind and ocean currents which distribute food and the equatorial heat to every part of the planet. You gave us a clear oxygen-nitrogen rich atmosphere that traps the sun’s heat, burns up meteors before they reach us, and allows us to survey Your glory in the heavens. And, dear Father, You nourish and care for every living thing on this planet – from amoebas, to aphids, to animals and plants of every size. How great You are, O God. Great is Your faithfulness. Amen.
(Information from: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200715150444.htm; https://www.businessinsider.com/the-fastest-shrinking-countries-in-the-world-declining-populations#1-bulgaria-the-population-is-projected-to-drop-from-69-million-in-2020-to-54-million-in-2050-a-225-decline-20)
