When John's quote of the Beatles being more popular than Jesus was quoted in August of 1966 in America and all the negativity commenced, the world population that year was ~ 3.4 billion people.
What do you all think to this question - what percent of the world population heard/knew of the controversy? With technology all that it wasn't back then, radio and tv reports and written newspapers and magazines were the only way it would spread. The Beatles were the most "non Jesus" entity (most likely) then, right?
So how many people in the world knew of his quote, knew who he was?
Imagine in today's world with social media, how would it spread? Imagine the United Airlines goof x 1000 ?