just 5000?

Matthew 14

13 As soon as Jesus heard the news, he left in a boat to a remote area to be alone. But the crowds heard where he was headed and followed on foot from many towns. 14 Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

15 That evening the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.”

16 But Jesus said, “That isn’t necessary—you feed them.”

17 “But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish!” they answered.

18 “Bring them here,” he said. 19 Then he told the people to sit down on the grass. Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, looked up toward heaven, and blessed them. Then, breaking the loaves into pieces, he gave the bread to the disciples, who distributed it to the people. 20 They all ate as much as they wanted, and afterward, the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftovers. 21 About 5,000 men were fed that day, in addition to all the women and children!

I've wondered how many people were really there.

Verse 21 says 5000 men were there, plus women & children.

Now I've never been to a meeting where men outnumbered women. 

But for the sake of conversation, let's say there were an equal number of women - 5000

So now we're talking 10000 adults.

I don't think there were many daycare centers back then, so women had their kids with them (bless their hearts!)

We know that there was very little birth control back then.

At the same time, infant mortality was pretty high.

So would it probably be safe to say that each of the women had kids with them.

For the sake of conversation, let's say each woman had a couple of kids with her.

They probably had more than that, but for now let's a 2 kids with each woman.

That's 10000 kids (yikes!).

So that makes the total attendance to be around 20000 people.

To grasp that number, think of it this way...

Have you ever seen on TV or been to a professional hockey game?

Or a college or professional basketball game?

Those arenas where they hold those games usually hold between 18000 & 20000 people.

THAT's how many people really could have been there that day Jesus fed them all & had 12 baskets of leftovers.

Think about that...