He Changed the World
No other person in history has influenced the world for good more than Jesus Christ. His life and message have greatly changed the
lives of people and nations. History is His Story. Remove Jesus of Nazareth from history, and it would be a completely different
story.
For the past 2,000 years, He has been the centerpiece of humanity. Charles Spurgeon, an English theologian, wrote:
Christ is the great central fact in the world's history. To him everything looks forward or backward. All the lines of history
converge upon him. All the great purposes of God culminate in him. The greatest and most momentous fact which the history of the
world records is the fact of his birth.?60?
Consider today's date on your calendar. It gives witness to the fact that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, lived on the earth. B.C.
means before Christ; A.D., anno Domini, is the Latin phrase translated "in the year of our Lord."
Believers who spread Christianity demonstrated an active, transforming energy and pure integrity that affected every society they
touched. Samuel Zwemer, a professor of missions at Princeton Theological Seminary in the early 1900s, said:
The gospel not only converts the individual, but it changes society. On every mission field, from the days of William Carey,
the missionaries carried a real, social gospel. They established standards of hygiene and purity, promoted industry, elevated
womanhood, restrained antisocial customs, abolished cannibalism, human sacrifice and cruelty, organized famine relief, checked
tribal wars, and changed the social structure of society.
It would be impossible to show the magnitude of Christ's influence on the world. I can only help you step closer to the mural of
history to examine a few of the ways in which His life and message have made a dramatic difference in civilization.
60 Wirt and Beckstrom, Living Quotations, No. 1749.
Bright, B. (1992). A man without equal (71). Orlando, FL: NewLife Publications.