Where are the lost?
But where do lost people live? We need
to know if we are to go find them and work
with the Holy Spirit to bring them back into
fellowship with their heavenly Father. Of
course, lost people can be found in every
country, province, and county in the world.
Even lands that have experienced great revivals have people who don’t know Jesus,
have not experienced the Father’s love,
and have not received the gift of eternal
life. Lost people live in your neighborhood,
your town, your city, your country.
A significant question for those who
send missionaries is, “Where are the biggest concentrations of lost people?” While
every soul is precious, we need to know
where the lost are concentrated if we are
going to make extraordinary efforts to
send people to share the Good News of
salvation with them. This question has two
answers. One is geographical, and the other is sociological.
In terms of geography, the greatest
number of lost people live in the 10/40
Window. The 10/40 Window lies between
10 and 40 degrees north of the equator
and runs from North Africa to Indonesia
and Japan. About 66 percent of the world’s
population lives in the 10/40 Window; that’s
4.7 billion people. More than 2.8 billion of
them have never heard the Good News of
Jesus even once. The relationship between
spiritual darkness and material suffering is
highlighted by the fact that the vast majority of the world’s very poorest people live in
the 10/40 Window, with high incidences of
AIDS, illiteracy, and human trafficking.
The lost live in societies in which the
Good News of Jesus has not been understood and received. We call the ethnic
groups in which less than 2 percent of
the population is made up of evangelical Christians unreached people groups.
While the majority of these are in the 10/40
Window, many are not. We call a group
with no church, no missionaries, and no
Bible an unreached, unengaged people
group (UUPG). Sadly, according to IMB
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