How would Jesus walk in the current world?
Perhaps the better question: could—would—Jesus walk in a world such as ours?
When we think of His time, it is difficult not to envision the clean state of this planet.
There were no plastic water bottles slung at roadside, no belching smokestacks, no SUVs and pickup trucks, there was no McDonald’s.
It takes but a brief meditation to wonder at the course mankind has taken since the time of Our Lord and to wonder if all the modern niceties are quite as beneficial as we like to believe.
Put another way: does convenience equal benefit? Is a convenience store better than an open market?
We know only this: the dirt under Christ’s feet bore no pesticides.
Try to imagine the Lord in Miami Beach, SoHo in Manhattan, Beverly Hills, or Old Greenwich, Connecticut—perhaps a suburb of Washington. How would that have gone?
Would He have been reported as a vagrant?
A good question at a time when the Western world is awash in cash, stocks, and cryptocurrency.
The so-called 1990 prophecy, which many of you may recall, included these words: “Know this about the world: I would not appear on television, nor ride a car, nor travel in an airplane.
“Would I come in such a manner?
“Would I live in such a world?
“You think of the changes in very simple ways, without realizing the fundamental mistakes of mankind.
“The very artifice of your societies is false and against the accordance of God’s Will.
“This artifice shall not last.”
Too easy it is to discard His lifestyle as simply the way of the world back then.
His simplicity is never changing.
His purity could not be compromised.
Would He be considered homeless or simply eccentric? Or somehow would He fit in? Would His humility take other forms?
As a writer named Michael Frost notes: “How would Jesus respond to this world? By joining in the dissent and factionalism? By hating people from the other party? You know that’s not what He’d do.
“He stood with the poor in spirit, and those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. He offered comfort to those who mourn, and mercy to the merciful. Jesus told the pure of heart they would see God, and the peacemakers that they would be called children of God.
“When Jesus called His disciples together, he gave them a new way to live. He taught them to offer forgiveness to their persecutors; he showed them how to shame their oppressors by offering them the other cheek; he embodied the way of humility and suffering; he gave them a new way to deal with money—by sharing it.
“Rather than either opting into party politics or ignoring the system completely, Jesus’ people find a third way: the way of modeling an alternative society, an antidote to the sound and the fury that characterizes civil discourse these days.”
[resources: Tower of Light: The 1990 Prophecies]
