God, who sees the end from the beginning, knew that English would become the end times universal language, and that is exactly where He put His perfect, complete and 100% true preserved words.
Ok it seems some of you have moved on to other points but I just can't get past this statement lol. Is this a new doctrine or something? Usually in the past, statements like this have either had to be proven from the Bible or qualified as a personal opinion. It's an amazing statement in any case.
English around the world
Dr. David Crystal, professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, and author of over 50 books on the study of language, including The
Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language and The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of Language, in his book English: The Global Language (a
project sponsored by the U.S. English Foundation, which he is also a board member - CEO) has this to say:
On page 55 he states the total of English speakers to be 1,828,442,800 as
of 1990. By now it's well over 2 billion.
In 1995 ... there were about 12,500 international organizations in the
world ... 85% made official use of English - far more than any other language.
"In 1995, according to the European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages, 42% of European Union citizens claimed to be able to converse in English - well ahead of German (31%) and French (29%)."
"English has long been recognized as the international language of the
sea..." page 97
"The official use of English as the language of international aircraft
control did not emerge until after the Second World War." page 98
"The figures show that 80% of the world's electronically stored information is in English." page 103
English is the most widely-spoken language in the world. In "The Right Word at the Right Time" (Reader's Digest 1986) it was estimated that English is spoken by one billion people, or one-fourth of the world's population. The next language is Mandarin Chinese, with 800 million; Spanish, with 250 million; Hindi, 200 million; and Arabic, Bengali, and Russian, with about 150 million each.
Now that we have just hit six billion (12-99) people in the world, if the
ratios remained the same there are one and a half billion English speakers, one and a quarter billion Mandarin speakers, 375 million who speak Spanish, 300 million Hindi speakers, and 225 million of the others listed.
According to the World Almanac, ... In ratio of native speakers to total
speakers Mandarin has a 20% increase (no doubt mostly among other Chinese
dialects). Hindi increases by 33%. Spanish by 16%. English increases by a
whopping 49%!
No doubt the number is even higher when those who don't speak English
fluently is considered.
English is certainly the best language to reach the most people around the world with God's word.
