President Dallin H. Oaks is spreading the word: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints soon will have more missionaries than ever serving across the globe.

The Utah-based faith currently has 87,000 missionaries. But “in coming weeks,” Oaks said Saturday, that number will rise, giving the church the “largest number of full-time missionaries” in its 196-year-old history.

He did not specify, in a church news release or in his social media post, the new record number expected to be reached.

Why the surge? The 93-year-old Oaks pointed to the “first wave” of 18-year-old female missionaries after the church lowered the minimum age for their proselytizing service from 19 last fall.

A similar jump happened after the church, in 2012, reduced the age for male missionaries to 18 (down from 19) and, at the time, to 19 for women (down from 21).

Oaks also credited the creation of 55 new missions — all due to come on line in July and upping the worldwide total of Latter-day Saint missions to 506.

“These missionaries’ first responsibility is to testify of Jesus Christ to a world that suffers without knowledge of his divine mission,” the Latter-day Saint prophet-president told new mission leaders during a Saturday seminar at Provo’s Missionary Training Center. “They invite people across the globe to become part of his true and living church.”

Oaks said the “fashionable opinion of this age is that all churches are true. If that is so,” he added, “then all religious messages that identify differences in religious doctrine, like ours, are unimportant. That conclusion can cause us and others a serious loss of religious freedom.”

He pointed to three reasons why he said the Latter-day Saint faith represents the restored gospel of Jesus Christ:

1. The full doctrine, including knowledge of the purpose of mortal life.

2. Priesthood authority.

3. Mormonism’s unique testimony of Jesus.

“Our knowledge of the nature of God is what distinguishes us from the formal creeds of other Christian denominations,” Oaks said in the release. “... We are not grounded in the wisdom of the world or the philosophies of men — however traditional or respected they may be. Our testimony of Jesus Christ is based on the revelations of God to his prophets and to us individually.”

Those differences were evidenced recently when the U.S. Department of Defense briefly withheld the “Christian” designation for the church in its pared-down tally of recognized religions for the military’s chaplains. The Pentagon later removed “Christian” and other classifications from all the listed faith traditions.

Oaks did not serve a proselytizing stint as a young man, but his wife, Kristin, who converted as a young girl, did.

“I personally know how much happiness and security this gospel brings to a world hungry for truth and hope,” she told the new mission leaders. “Because of missionaries like you, I stand here today.”

In his address to the group Thursday, senior apostle Dieter F. Uchtdorf said modern missionaries are appointed in a manner similar to how Christ called his apostles in the New Testament: “Willingness first, ability in time.”

“No matter who you are, if you have desires to serve, you’re on the team,” he said in a separate news release. “You don’t have to be good at it in order to start. Just follow Jesus Christ, walk in his paths, and seek to become more like him.”

And soon more Latter-day Saints than ever will be donning those missionary name tags for the 17.8 million-member church — from Australia to Arkansas and Uruguay to Uganda.