"We're more popular than Jesus now"

"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I know I'm right, and I will be proved right." Who said those words—Voltaire, Karl Marx, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawkings? They might have. The arrogance of man is so great that choices abound. Will the identity be clearer if the next line is included? "We're more popular than Jesus now." That's right. These words were published in the London Evening Standard on March 4, 1966. If you imagined (pun intended) that it was John Lennon of the Beatles, you got it right. Jesus was absolutely correct when He said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away" (Matt. 24:35). The fact is that John Lennon was a better songwriter than a theologian or prophet.