 So going back about 2,000 years, we know that there was a small messianic movement that developed in the land of Israel among Jewish people who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. And even though he was executed, crucified by the Romans, which was something that shocked and disappointed them, they continued to have faith that he would return. And so this small group of people centered themselves in Jerusalem, and they were awaiting the return of Jesus, many of them expected that he would return within that first century, within a generation. And we know that that didn't take place. Jesus crucified around the year 30, and 40 years later, he's still not back. And at that time, this community, this small group of followers that Jesus has, they are devastated with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, and the movement from that point on scatters, many of them go to Jordan that is theorized, others scatter to other parts of Israel. But what happens basically is that over the next 230 years, this movement slowly disappears. And by approximately the year 300, you really would not be able to find a Jewish person who says they believe that Jesus was the Messiah. And this is one of the great ironies of history because originally, in the first century, if you met anyone who told you that they thought Jesus was the Messiah, one thing you would know about them is that they were Jewish. And by the fourth century, if anyone told you that they thought Jesus was the Messiah, you would know one thing about them, that they were Gentile. And what is quite startling is that not only did the population of Christianity dramatically switch, because we know the movement was originally strictly a movement among Jews. Jesus told his followers that he only came for the Jewish people, and he only sent his followers to preach to other Jewish people. He told them specifically not to go to the cities of the Gentiles or the Samaritans. And so the entire movement switches dramatically from a Jewish movement to a Gentile movement. And then we know, surprisingly, that this non-Jewish movement of followers of Jesus grows to become the largest religion in the world as of today. So how does this happen? So although the movement of Jews who had faith that Jesus was the Messiah and that he would return, although this movement died out, we know there was a parallel movement, because during the first century there was a fellow named Paul of Tarsus. Paul of Tarsus never met Jesus, never met him in person, but claimed to have had visions where Jesus appears to him in visions. And Paul doesn't operate within the land of Israel among Jews. Paul basically takes his message, spreading his beliefs about who Jesus was to the Greco-Roman world in Asia Minor. And Paul becomes very successful in spreading his message. Paul attracts many thousands of converts to his message. And by around the year 300, this movement that basically is a product of Paul, not so much of Jesus, spreads to become a movement approximately the same size as the Jewish world. You have approximately 10% of the world at that time of the Roman Empire are Jews, and by the year 300 approximately 10% are Christians. It is a small group, and it's actually not a very popular group because Christians are more or less despised by the Roman pagan world. What changes changes dramatically in the beginning of the 4th century. You have the conversion of Constantine, who was the Roman Emperor to Christianity, following the conversion of his mother Helena. Now historians debate whether or not Constantine's conversion was an actual sincere religious conversion, or it was done for more pragmatic reasons, but nonetheless Constantine becomes, at least on paper, a Christian. And he eases a lot of the pressures and restrictions and prejudices that had been operating in the Roman Empire against Christianity. And in the year 325, he convenes the Council of Nicea, which is the first major gathering of all Christian leaders to consolidate Christianity. He saw Christianity as a very convenient way of harmonizing all the various different cultures within his realm. The problem of the Roman Empire was that it composed many different peoples with many different beliefs and philosophies, and it was a recipe for disaster because people would not be getting along. And so Constantine saw Christianity as a way of unifying his entire empire and having a cohesive world. In order to do that, he realized that various factions and beliefs and points of view within Christianity had to themselves come together, and that was the point of the Council of Nicea. This beginning of the process of Christianizing the Roman Empire was finalized around the year 380, by Emperor Theodosius, with his Edict of Thessalonica. And Christianity at that point becomes the official state religion of the Roman Empire, which if you're looking for an incredible head start to becoming the world's largest religion, there you have it. An empire that was at one point totally pagan becomes essentially 100% Christian. And with this religion, with Christianity entrenched as the official state religion of what we call now Europe, we know that in the 1400s the European societies began to colonialize the rest of the world. And so with colonialization Christianity is spread to the Americas, to Africa, to Asia, not so much by convincing the peoples, the first nations in these places that Christianity is the true faith, but basically Christianity is imposed upon the native populations in these countries. So with all these developments Christianity quickly becomes, or not so quickly, over the course of hundreds of years the world's largest religion. Now part of what happens is that Christianity is able to spread to many parts of the world because it appeals to people on many levels. For example, the pagan world prior to Christianity was a world where there were no ethics or morals. Christianity basically begins spreading ethical ideas and moral teachings that were rooted in the Jewish Bible. So for example, the idea of a creator versus the paganism of having many, many gods. The institution of things like charity and caring for the poor and the widow and the orphan. These are ideas that were rooted in the Tanakh the Jewish Bible and become spread through the missionary efforts of Christianity. And finally what's attractive to many people is the idea of a coherent history of the world that is rooted in ancient texts. Throughout the world people respect ancient texts. It has a clout of authority and stability in reality. So these are some of the reasons why Christianity, aside from the fact that missionaries generally imposed it on the populations they were colonializing, it was able to spread as well because many of the features of Christianity were basically presenting basic Jewish ideas to the rest of the world. Maimonides shares a daring idea. Maimonides in a section of his missionatoria, which was actually censored and taken out by Christian censors, but we discovered them not too long ago. So Maimonides shares an idea that perhaps he suggests one of the reasons that Christianity spread throughout the world, and he actually includes in this Islam. So he deals with the question of why is it that Islam and Christianity, which you can see as daughter religions of Judaism, why were they so successful in spreading the entire world? And Maimonides suggests that possibly this all plays into God's plan to bring about the ultimate harmonization and realization of the spreading of truth to the entire world because he doesn't say this, but I'm going to be reading into what he says. He says that if the Jewish Messiah came to a pagan world, the world would not notice. It wouldn't register because the idea of a Jewish Messiah in a pagan world doesn't engage them. It's irrelevant. And so what happens is in Maimonides' presentation is that world history basically is a history where the two dominant religions, Christianity and Islam, are basically religions that have an adversarial relationship with Judaism. And what happens is our relationship produces a kind of tension. There's a tension that's being built up, that we have this huge religious debate going on because the claims of Christianity, the claims of Islam are mutually exclusive with the claims of Judaism. And yet they revolve around very common ideas, teachings about a Bible, teachings about one God, teachings about a Messiah. And so what Maimonides suggests is that by having the spread of Christianity and Islam through the entire world, the entire world now is learning about these primary basic concepts that are relevant to Judaism. And that it's preparing the world for the ultimate revelation of when Messiah finally comes, when Messiah finally comes, the world is going to be able to have an aha moment. They're going to be able to say, oh, now we understand. Now we see what the Jewish people were always talking about. And so Maimonides suggests a possible reason for, again, why the idea of the spreading of Christianity might fit into God's ultimate plans for the completion and the coming to the fruition of all the promises for the messianic utopia in the future.