With the methods of science, it should be possible to estimate the numbers lining up for judgment from the world's beginning to its end. All true believers are certain that their own ancestors will spring from the grave on the Last Day. This modest assumption allows a simple but alarming calculation to be made. The basic rule of sexual reproduction is that two individuals co-operate to make one. Everyone has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on back into history.
Sex means that the number contributing to a pedigree doubles each generation.
This, in its turn, implies that every sexual being has an enormous number of ancestors. The number is around ten thousand billion billion billion billion - ten with forty zeros after it. The Last Judgment is going to be a pretty crowded affair. There is, though, a problem. The number is greater by far than the world's population.