Last week I was studying about Marxism and how the communist movement never really lived up to the expectations of those who promoted it. In light of that, as I started a different course on church history, I thought the following quote from Dr. Paul Maier in the forward of one of my textbooks, “The Church From Age to Age” was highly significant:
“Christianity is the greatest success story in the history of the world. No other religion or institution or government comes even close to the number of its adherents, with some two and a quarter billion in the present generation alone. It has exerted a greater influence, changed more lives, educated more people, fostered more progress in the arts and sciences, inspired loftier achievements in culture, and had a more powerful role in helping the helpless than any other institution on earth. In the past two thousand years, it has indeed proven to be the greatest movement ever.” Of course, I would add (and Paul Maier says something to this effect later on too), that it’s not really Christianity per se that has done this, but Christ, working through His weak and fallible people, the Church.