Why would Christianity have failed without God's miraculous power?
The odds against early Christianity were impossible: converts came from deep idolatry or Judaism, and Paul stayed only weeks in most places. Without God's miraculous working, new believers fresh out of paganism could not have survived or spread, and Christianity would never have gotten off the ground.
Les explains that if it had not been for the miraculous working power of God, Christianity would have never gotten off the ground. The odds were impossible because the people were steeped in idolatry, except the Jewish element, and they were just as steeped in their Judaism. Paul did not remain long in any one place. The Jerusalem church could prosper because the eleven, later the twelve, stayed year in and year out among the Jews in Israel. But where Paul established churches, it was often only a week or two—Antioch about a year and a half, Thessalonica only a couple of weeks. How could new believers fresh out of paganism make it? Les says he cannot understand it except that it was the miraculous power of God that caused Christianity to take off and permeate the whole Roman Empire. The pagan environment was intense, as in Corinth, where 1,000 female priestesses from the temple of Aphrodite came down into the city at night, confronting men every night.