Now have you considered one extraordinary fact – the sheer personal impact of Jesus of Nazareth?
No I don’t mean the great miracles that He did.
Take any ordinary bit of narrative in the Gospels and the overriding impression is that people recognise the presence of the Master.
The Master of men. It’s not as if He strode about like some great film director giving his orders, not just going around doing miracles, but in ordinary everyday things.

Take for example those professional fishermen who knew their own little sea better than anyone on earth. They were simply bowled over by the way He spoke to the crowds from one of their boats and the way he joined them and led them into the biggest catch they’d made in years – and above all and through all this – the overpowering humility of the man.

You can read about it in Luke chapter 5. There was no Hollywood lighting, no angelic choir singing on the sound track. A real man, but so totally humble, so obviously lacking in gimmicks and sales talk. So patently under the rule of love and self-effacement that when they got ashore with Him they just downed tools and followed Him, they’d go with him anywhere, they said.

The outstanding thing about this is that men do it even now. They are overpowered by the presence of this humble Jesus.