The Second Most Important Event in History

In case you missed it, the Christopher Nolan-directed historical drama on J. Robert Oppenheimer's quest to build the atomic bomb was a hit. You may say... it blew up. Excluding Barbie and Spider-Man, a drama on a 20th-century theoretical physicist was the highest-grossing movie of the summer.

Why is this theoretical physicist so fascinating to people? "Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived," Director Christopher Nolan contended to Time Magazine. "He made the world we live in, for better or for worse.”

Physicist Derek Muller would say, "He has affected every war waged and every peace settled since the end of World War II. He also created a way for humanity to destroy itself." After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, Oppenheimer believed of himself, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Nolan, Muller, and even Oppenheimer make a compelling point. We are living in the world Oppenheimer helped create. But is he really the most important person to ever live? And is the creation of the atomic bomb the most important event in human history?

Perhaps too predictably, I, a pastor, would disagree. Since the creation of the world, I believe the most significant person to live is Jesus of Nazareth. In just 33 years of walking this earth and 3 years of ministry, he changed the trajectory of history. We do not split time into eras by the creation of the A-Bomb. We split it at the birth of a Jewish carpenter. It was his death and resurrection that was hands down the most significant event in history.

I would then argue that the creation of the Atomic Bomb is not even the second most important event! My contention for number two would be the launch of the church on Pentecost. Out of that the ministry, message, and gospel of Christ spread across the world. Nations, dynasties, and philosophies have been created and died since Jesus. Yet even after 2000 years, Christ's church is greater than it has ever been.

So, at best Oppenheimer and the creation of the bomb are a distant third.

I believe that the church at its birth was the church at its best. It was at the origins of the church that we got a glimpse of who and what God intended his people to be. Worship with us tomorrow as we look to the second most important event in history and discover the kind of church Arborway was meant to be.