So you think Jesus started a grass roots movement?
I thought high ranking muckity mucks designed Christianity for crowd control hundreds of years later. I mean, no one would have known about Christianity if Constantine hadn’t “converted” 300 or so years after some young guy’s crucifixion.
These days most Christians get preached about the God of grace and forgiveness. I guess that’s more pleasant. But back during the Protestant reformation, guys like John Calvin had some firery sermons about gods wrath.
In case you’re interested in some church history. There was a time period early to mid 1700s that was the “great awakening” in Protestantism. More focus on Puritanism and piety, also spread to the 13 colonies. During this time there was a focus on hell being a real place and the wrath of God. This preacher, Johnatan Edwards probably wrote the most famous sermon of the time.
It’s pretty different than what you’d hear at churches today If you want to do a quick skim. “Sinners in the hands of an angry God”
Read what I said. It was a movement perpetrated by people not in power to disrupt the current balance of power at the time. That it almost died and took a long time to be successful is irrelevant. All religions are just tools to cause social change or control the sheeple.