The Power Of Cosmic Revenge (the rich have nothing to look for in heaven).
Early Christianity made an incredible about-face that broke all the banks on the domination of people, which triumphs until today over about one-third of the world's people. The Church outcompeted Roman civic morality by offering something the empire could not, namely, a cosmic guarantee that injustice would be reversed.
Christian morality did not begin as a ruling ideology. Early Christianity was a survival strategy of the powerless inside the Roman Empire. The poor, the sick, slaves, widows, and socially dead had no access to honor, lineage, or power. What they did have was resentment, suffering, and time. Christianity re-coded these deficits into moral capital. Poverty became virtue. Weakness became election. Obedience became holiness. This is exactly Nietzsche’s genealogy, and it is historically accurate.
The Church did not “take over” morality by force at first. It outcompeted Roman civic morality by offering something the empire could not, namely, organized care, narrative meaning for suffering, and a metaphysical guarantee that injustice would be reversed. Feeding the poor was not charity in the modern sense. It was recruitment, loyalty-building, and moral leverage. If the Church feeds you, buries you, baptizes your children, and promises cosmic justice, it owns your horizon of meaning.