Jesus had told the man, “Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.”
And billions, who cannot agree on much else, have taken it as a fact.

“It must have happened,” they will tell you,
Whether any writer tells us after the fact that it did or not.

“And if it were not so,” they say, “then Jesus wouldn’t be Jesus,
And the whole thing’s a fraud, and you can throw the whole Bible in the toilet.”

And they continue to believe it, even if they can’t prove which paradise it was,
Or how it worked, or how long the man was there.
But it doesn’t matter, for we have it on good authority, they say, that he was.
And let a man say anything different and see if they don’t give him what for!

Well, I must admit that their certainty in his promise is admirable.
And it makes me wonder whether they would tell me that
His every prediction is to be embraced with the same unwavering trust—
Or is it only this one that must have happened as he said it would?