I had been wondering why churches were closing their doors. Then I realized a more productive question to ask is: What attracted people to Christianity and Christian Science in the first place? Specifically, how did Jesus build his global, spiritually prosperous church?
What does prosperous mean? According to Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, it means: “Advancing in the pursuit of any thing desirable; making gain or increase; thriving; successful.”
One day while studying the weekly Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, I noticed these familiar Bible verses: “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judæa, and from beyond Jordan” (Matthew 4:23–25).
