Will Only A Few Be Saved? How Did Jesus Answer? What Did He Mean?

There are two places in the New Testament where Jesus is recorded as teaching about the narrow gate, or the narrow door to life, and then states that few people find it.  In Matthew 7, in the same chapter as the Sermon on the Mount, we have a teaching from Jesus that reads in the English NIV: 

 

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)

One thing that bothered me about this teaching of the narrow gate is that it does not seem consistent with what Jesus taught at other times....