About a week ago, the planet’s 7 billionth person was born, by the UN’s estimate.

This is extraordinary. For decades, futurists have been predicting that the population explosion would seriously threaten civilization. Somehow, though, advancements in producing and managing resources—food, water, energy, pollution, waste, wealth—have, to this point, overcome the difficulties. And people just keep multiplying. More than 200,000 every day.

For much of human history, life has been brutal, unsanitary and, often, quite short. Shockingly, the average human life expectancy worldwide at birth has typically been only 20 to 33 years. As a result, global population has been fairly static and low. As recently as four centuries ago—only 12 generations or so—our planet was home to only about 500 million people.

But then something started to change. People began to live longer—largely thanks to widespread improvement in personal hygiene and sanitation. Around 1800, after thousands of years, world population finally crossed the 1 billion mark. Then, the 2 billionth baby was born—get this—only 127 years after that. The next billion people were added even more rapidly: only 33 years. We then generated another billion people within a mere 14 years, crossing 4 billion in 1974.

Perhaps you see the pattern: The more people you have, the more people you make.

We reached 5 billion 13 years later—then 6 billion 12 years after that. The 20th century was like a gargantuan people factory: It started with 1.6 billion and finished with 6.1 billion. Now here we are at 7 billion, and we’re projected to top 8 billion in 12 more years.

You can see that the rate of growth is slowing—it actually peaked in the late 1960s. Still, we are riding an epic population wave. And remarkably, even with so many people, the general level of health and prosperity, by historical standards, is high.

Still, evidence shows the trend can’t hold. Serious questions loom over us about the effects and consequences of having so many people.

How many humans can comfortably live on Earth at one time? Ecologists and other scientists have pondered this—what they call planet’s “carrying capacity”—for years. The question is getting more urgent now.

How can we keep everyone fed, watered, clean and healthy? How can we dispose of their waste and trash? What sort of housing can they have? What about energy? Electricity? How many can have, say, cars, or appliances? Given the limits of certain resources our modern world relies on—oil, coal, natural gas—what happens when demand outpaces supply?

These questions are destined to become more urgent as the populace keeps expanding, particularly as expectations about standards of living rise. In the world’s most populous nation, a burgeoning middle class is suddenly demanding luxuries that have long been restricted to the Western world: meat in their diet and oil-burning cars, for example. Right now, America has fewer than 5 percent of the world’s people yet consumes 20 percent of its resources. What happens when 10 or 20 percent of the people want to live like Americans?

Meanwhile, most all the world’s population growth is happening in the less developed areas. While birthrates in much of the First World aren’t even at replacement levels, Africa and Asia are producing new people like mad. And of the 80 million babies born in developing countries each year, 20 million are in the world’s poorest nations. In other words, growth in human population directly correlates with growth in human suffering.

Nearly a billion people today lack access to safe water. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization projects that number will rise to 1.8 billion by 2025. More than a billion of the world’s people are undernourished, the fao says. That problem too is bound to grow, as food production is rising at only about half the rate of global population and food demand.

A particularly radical line of thought has emerged from the contemplation of such realities. It is, essentially, that the world just needs fewer people. This notion has found harbor in a number of different intellectual arenas, and quite influential people have promoted various forms of population control—some quite draconian. In China, over a third of married couples are restricted to having one child, a policy that has contributed to forced abortions and sterilizations, as well as female infanticides. Beijing credits the policy with preventing 400 million births since 1979. The head of British government’s Sustainable Development Commission, Sir Jonathon Porritt, considers that a smashing success, calling it “the biggest carbon dioxide abatement since Kyoto came into force.” His organization the Optimum Population Trust seeks to combat greenhouse gas emissions by cutting Britain’s population in half—through means it doesn’t specify. This passes for enlightened thinking today.

Problems related to rising population are certainly real. Famine, for example, is an important concern. However, to blame it on “too many people” is dangerously misguided. Many analysts say there is plenty of food to go around. The fact that it isn’t reaching everyone who needs it has many causes: bad leadership, economic trouble and poverty, rising unemployment and dropping incomes, rising food prices.

The problem isn’t a lack of good resources, it’s a lack of good resource management. It isn’t too many humans—it’s too much human nature.

As you can imagine, scientists’ estimates about Earth’s carrying capacity are all over the place. This is not an easy thing to try to figure out. But one respected scientific source says most serious estimates are between 10 and 20 billion people.

Clearly, to bring this planet to the point where it would comfortably support a population two to three times what it is today would require far better stewardship of its resources than we are exercising, and far greater cooperation within that population.

With many population- and resource-related issues, one can easily foresee mankind hitting an immovable wall at some point soon. With some of them, it is not difficult to imagine catastrophic consequences: famines, economies shutting down, societal upheaval, war.

These are exactly the sorts of conditions that biblical prophecy reveals will besiege our world in its final days, the beginning of which we are in right now. Epic clashes within and among populations, many of them over resources, are coming. Prophecy even specifically mentions a mammoth Asiatic army of a size that would never have been possible before those populations grew to the size they are today!

However, prophecy also reveals what lies beyond the violent end of this age. It describes conditions of peace, prosperity, abundance, good health, strong families—conditions extremely conducive to explosive population growth—that will prevail for century after century after century. Indications are that during the Millennium, under God’s direction, with principles of good stewardship in place, the population will grow well beyond 7 billion—it will far surpass 10 billion and even 20 billion. God even promises to reshape the topography in order to make room for more and still more people (Isaiah 41:15-16).

When one understands our Creator’s awesome purpose for human beings, and the incredible potential bound up within every last child created in His likeness, then one can appreciate the true beauty of this glorious population explosion!