By Wendy Griffith, CBN News Reporter

Christianity is the world's most dominant religion with about 2 Billion people claiming to be Chrisitians.

CBN.com - In today's edition of the CBN News special series, "The World in 2050," reporter Wendy Griffith looks at how religion might be represented throughout the world of the future.

What will religion look like in the year 2050? Will Christianity still be the world's most dominant religion? Will everyone have heard the gospel by then? Although 50 years is still a long way off, some experts offer a few interesting scenarios on religion in the year 2050.

"Well, I see maybe Jesus coming [back] before then. All Christians believe Jesus is coming back, some of us believe He'll come in the moment of a twinkling of an eye when we don't think He will come," said Dr. Vinson Synan of the Regent University School of Divinity. "But if He does not come before then, then I think a lot of things will be happening in the church and in the world by the year 2050."

Today Christianity is the world's most dominant religion with about 2 billion people claiming to be Christians. Next in line are Muslims, followed by Hindus, various Chinese religions and many other minor religions. Jews make up just a fraction of the pie with only 14 million worldwide.

But what does the future hold for the Christian church? Dr. Synan says the Bible gives us two vastly different scenarios. Some call it the paradox of prophecy.

"The Bible tells us that there will come at the end times, there will come a great falling away, turning away from the truth, apostasy, bloodshed, battle of Armageddon, you know, disasters, all these things and then Christ will come," Synan said. "Then there's another paradox — the same Bible talks about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all flesh in the last days, now how do you harmonize this? Actually, we know both are going to take place, it's just a question of when."

In Synan's new book, The Century of the Holy Spirit, world renowned Christian researcher David Barrett gives the following as one possible scenario for Christianity between now and the year 2050:

By the year 2004, a massive revival will sweep across Asia accounting for more than 150 million new converts to Christ. Some say this is already happening in countries like China with reports of more than 10,000 new converts a day.

Operation Mobilization founder George Verwer thinks that revival is already underway. "We're in the midst of the biggest harvest of people to Jesus Christ the world has ever known," he said. "Today most of the work is through the Chinese believers, and the church is exploding, maybe 50 million, maybe 60 million, maybe more."

By the year 2025, Barrett suggests there may be 2.6 billion Christians on earth compared to two billion today, and 55 percent will be from third world countries.

By the year 2030, China will be converted to Christianity through the powerful house church movement — that is half the human race.

And by the year 2050, Barrett's scenario says there will be three billion Christians on earth, equal to about 34.3 percent of the world's population, and 50 percent of them will be Charismatics and Pentecostals.

"Now if this were to take place it would mean that this outpouring of the Holy Spirit would continue worldwide tremendously in the next 50 years," Synan said.

While this one scenario paints a bright picture for Christianity, there are other possibilities as well. Many predict deeper clashes between Christianity and Islam as both try to evangelize the world.

African evangelist Augustine Mpemba said, "You see there's opposition from Muslims trying to use money from Arabic countries to win Christians to Islam, but still we are seeing many Muslims coming to Christ after hearing the Gospel."

And promoters of a one-world religion have promised to keep beating the drums of humanism, world peace and the environment. Last year’s "World Religions Summit" hosted at the United Nations was a prime example. The message was clear: fundamentalists or religions that believe they have the only path to salvation were not wanted.

At the UN event, Ted Turner proselytized his liberated view of religion, describing his journey from Christian to secular humanist. "The thing that disturbed me was that my religion, the Christian sect, was very intolerant, not of religious freedom, but we thought we were the only ones going to heaven," Turner said.

If current trends continue, the push for "tolerance" at any cost will unleash even greater intolerance against the views of Christianity. Meanwhile, New Age ideals will become even more mainstream than they are today.

Christian pollster George Barna explained, "And so now we live in this nation where everything is up for grabs. You can slice and dice Scripture and add it to the Koran and Dianetics and everything else that's out there and come up with your own customized blend of faith, and it’s considered inappropriate for me to challenge you on any of that or suggest that's wrong."

Whatever the future holds, the real challenge for Christians from now until the year 2050 and beyond is to carry out the command that Jesus gave the Church about 2,000 years ago — to go and preach the gospel to all nations.

"Well, I think the key to really evangelizing the world and having spiritual breakthroughs is the power of the Holy Spirit," said Synan. "Just in November, Reinhardt Bonke held the largest crusade in all of Christian history with 1.6 million people in one service, and had over a million people converted in one service. And that's through signs and wonders and miracles, healings, it's incredible. The only way to reach large, huge masses of people is through the miraculous manifestation of God's power."

It is also expected that Christianity will continue to spread through exploding media capabilities — through television and the Internet. Many believe by the year 2050 it will be more possible than ever to preach the gospel to every people group on earth.