BOSTON -- An original autographed magazine in which John Lennon claimed the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ is being sold by a New Hampshire auction house next week.

“Christianity will go,” Lennon said in the September 1966 Datebook magazine.

“It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity.”

The magazine is expected to sell for between $8,000 to $12,000, according to RRAuction.com whose auction runs until Sept. 16.

The auction comes a week after the release of The Beatles: Rock Band, a musical video game that had gamers and fans lined up at stores around the world.

Lennon's original comment on Christianity had been published in a London newspaper in 1966 and got little reaction in the United Kingdom.

However, its republication in Datebook caused a stir, according to Professor Brian Ward at the University of Manchester, England. He said many ministers in the South condemned Lennon’s remarks as blasphemous.

Some radio stations banned Beatles music and some records were burned.

Lennon, whose middle initial was W. for Winston, signed his magazine photo “John C. Lennon”, for Datebook publisher Arthur Unger. Unger later claimed Lennon told him “You know what the C stands for,” implying it meant Christ.

RRAuction. com specializes in celebrity autographs. It recently sold an autographed photo of Albert Einstein wagging his tongue for a record $74,340.

A check written by Neil Armstrong moments before he blasted off for the moon 40 years ago was sold in July for $27,350.