The Greatest Phenomenon of Human History
Christianity has been the largest religion in the world for the past 1,600 years. About one third of the world’s adult population professes to be “Christian.” Islam is soundly in second place, with about one fifth of the world’s population professing to be Muslim.
This history of Christianity as the world’s largest religion fulfills a prophetic parable Jesus taught. He said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches” (Matthew 13:31-32 NRSV).
Despite all the ills that can be cited about Christianity, Jesus most certainly was the founder of it since the Jesus movement that he founded spread into Gentile lands to become Christianity. Yet Jesus was a Jew who was so overwhelmingly rejected by his own people—the Jews. We read of him, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him” (John 1:11).
That is the opposite of how religions have formed in history. Hinduism is mostly in India where it originated. Buddhism permeates Southeast Asia because it was founded by Siddartha Gautama in northeast India. Islam centers in Saudi Arabia because it was founded there by Muhammad. But Christianity began in Israel, which now has about the fewest Christians per capita of population of anywhere in the world.
I believe this is the greatest and most mysterious phenomenon of human history—that Jesus’ own people the Jews, who constitute a small number of people within the scope of all of humanity, rejected him yet the rest of the world has so accepted him. How can this be?
Jesus’ Resurrection
It is Jesus’ resurrection that has made all the difference. Jesus’ resurrection is the very foundation of Christianity, and I further believe that without it there never would have been any Christianity. It accomplished two things that caused the early Jesus movement, which consisted only of Jews living in the land of Israel, to morph into subsequent Christianity among mostly Gentiles throughout the rest of the world.
First, Jesus repeatedly foretold his inner core of disciples, his twelve apostles, that he would go to Jerusalem, be executed, and rise from the dead (e.g., Matthew 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:18-19). And after he was executed and entombed, his body was missing from the gravesite, and the Jewish and Roman authorities were never able to produce his deceased body to prove that he did not arise from the dead. Moreover, Jesus’ many post-resurrection appearances to his disciples which are recorded mostly in the New Testament gospels further confirmed this to his disciples.
Second, this confirmation of Jesus’ resurrection to his disciples by the risen Jesus appearing to them on multiple occasions emboldened them to go out into the world and begin to accomplish what he had told them to do—evangelize the Gentile world. For the risen Jesus said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19-20). That they did, and that is how Christianity started so small and became so large, like the mustard seed that becomes the biggest shrub in the garden.
So, Jesus’ multiple, post-resurrection appearances to his disciples—which are ten or eleven in number in the New Testament—so energized Jesus’ early disciples that they went forth with so much boldness in the face of persecution in proclaiming the good news about Jesus, that God raised him from the dead to prove that God had sent Jesus to be the Savior of the world, which mission he will complete at his yet future, literal second coming.
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