On Sunny Lane: Did You Ever Wonder?

Did you ever wonder what the world would be like if Jesus had not been crucified on the cross at the age of (give or take) 33 and had lived to a ripe old age and died a natural death?

I’ve been wondering about it lately. I’ve come up with a lot of questions, or, should I say, wonderings.

For instance:

Would the apostles have stuck with Him until the end or would they have become so accustomed to Him and His teachings that they would go back to their old way of life and get back to fishing?

Would the Pharisees and sadducees finally “seen the light” and followed Jesus?

Would His followers have continued to follow Him or gone back to their old work?

Would His message of love and peace continue to spread throughout the Mideast until it reached the whole world? Oh, wait--it has.

Would we need to have 150 or more denominations of Christianity, all claiming to be Bible-based?

Would there have been a need to write a Bible, or would His apostles and disciples have written lots of books about Him? Oh, wait--they have.

Would He have continued to perform miracles--healing the sick, preventing disasters, changing hearts? In many circumstances, He has.

Would He still be spreading His message of love and peace everywhere? Actually, through the hearts and hands of present-day followers, He has.

If Jesus had lived, say, 40 more years, would everybody have come to believe in Him--even the Romans? Would they have handed down that message of peace and love until it lived in our hearts today? Would that message so permeated society that it would reign supreme and evil no longer existed?

It seems to me that, since we all have free will, the world would probably have turned out the way it is today, no matter how long Jesus lived and how much He tried to encourage people to choose the right path. Maybe, the plan unfolded just the way it was supposed to. And, maybe, the world has turned out just the way it was supposed to,

The fact is that some people have hearts that are open to hearing Jesus’s message and following it and some people just never will. I just wonder which people are happy and which are not.

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Dorothy is the author of two books—“Miles and Miracles” and “Getting It All Together “. You can purchase a book or send a comment by emailing her at dorothybutzknight@gmail.com