Some Questions that I can't get out my head

[trainers]

Wondered if anyone could help me answer a couple of questions.

I was at an easter service yesterday and the subject of the crucifiction came up (as you might expect). And these questions came to me.

Question 1
If God sent Jesus to die on the cross.

And people have free will to decide what they do.

What would have happened if the people who killed Jesus had decided they didn't want to kill him or they just hadn't gone down that route.

What would have happened to God's plan?

Question 2
When Jesus said to the theif on the other cross "today you will be in paradise with me" what does Jesus mean because I had thought Jesus went to hell until the resurrection.

Can anyone help me?

I shall obviously have to work through this a bit further - if God was outside of time and could see everything, then presumably all the "errors" in the way the universe has developed could be "fixed" so that there would be no famine, genocide etc... ah well, back to the drawing board again for a while...