WORD STUDY – THE MENDELA EFFECT (PART II)

Isaiah 38:8: “Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down.”

II Peter 3:8: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Yesterday I told a story of a former student and the clear memory I have of learning that he died in Afghanistan. I have a clear memory of confirming this with the military and of the night I was awakened and convicted to pray for him about the same time he stepped on a mine. I did not pray for him at that time but I did after I learned he had been killed. A couple years later I learned he was still alive and active in the ministry. I called the military and this time they said they had no record of a special forces officer by that name killed in Afghanistan or Iraq.

At the time I passed this off as just a trick of my memory. I did have a high school friend who was killed in Viet Nam and my mind and memory probably fused the together to create a memory that never happened. That is until a few weeks ago I ran across an article about the Mendela Effect which told how thousands upon thousands of people have a very clear memory of Nelson Mendela dying in prison even through in our reality, he left prison became President of South Africa and lived a very fruitful life.

I had this thought, is it ever too late to pray for someone? There are many scientists who say that time is linear, that is the past, present and future exist simultaneously. Picture all of human history laid out on a huge table covering an entire galaxy and the past, present and future laid out on the table. Now picture God who does not live in time who, in fact, created time. He lives outside of time. So he is now pictured looking observing the past, present and future laid out on this table and observes the time of Hezekiah and the point where he is desperately ill and dying. God looks across that table of time and sees that Hezekiah dies shortly after his illness began. But wait, he prays and pleads with God to extend his life. God grants that request and gives him 15 extra years. So God steps into this time line and tweaks it giving Hezekiah an extra 15 years and not only that he causes the shadow on his sun dial or stairs, however you wish to translate it, to move backwards. God was literally playing with time.

But let me ask you, if God can alter the future and the present, why can He not alter the past? Why can we not intercede for an event in the past? Can the past be altered like Marty McFly in Back to the Future and have his future father knock out the local bully thus altering the entire course of Marty’s future and only Marty, the one who cause the rift in time is aware of the change? Could my prayer after the event have actually fulfilled God’s call on me to intercede such that God was able to prevent the event from happening as he wanted even if I prayed a couple years after the event. Only I really have a memory of what would have happened had I not prayed?

Why did Lazarus step from tomb and not talk about his experience in heaven or what he experience after he died? Maybe because Jesus altered the past so that Lazarus never died. Maybe that is why Jesus waited three days after he died to show up, to prove that the past can be altered.

What did Peter mean when he said: “One day with the Lord is as a thousand years?” Everyone has a theory. Some say Peter was only using symbolism as one thousand numerically means the end. Some believe it means the fullness or completeness. In other words God will bring to end or a fullness within one day or one period of time. Some will say that what he meant is that if you spend just one day with the Lord you can accomplish as much in one day as you can in a thousand years. There are many theories, but suppose we take this literally, one day is as a thousand years. In the Aramaic this day is yom which could mean an epic, a period of time and not necessarily be a literal 24 hour day. But let’s say that is what Peter had in mind. The word one is chad which like its Hebrew equivalent echad means one. However it really does not mean to be a cardinal number like the word ‘achath which is the cardinal number one but echad is often used as an ordinal number, a number that tells a position rather than how many. In other words like the number one draft pick. It is used to show an order. Thus this is referencing a key day, an important day, that stands out from among other days.

This next word that follows in the Aramaic is ‘aik which has many possible renderings, it all depends upon the context. It could be rendered as: as, as if, as though, even as, because, how, according to, about, so that, in order that, such as, or what. However, these choices are narrowed down because the word in II Peter starts with a Daleth and thus it would mean: in order that, so that, such that, what or how.

Suppose we say, “One day with the Lord is such that it is a thousand years and a thousand years is such that it is one day.” I am not saying that I right in this but I think Peter was telling us what scientist are now telling us that time is linear and if we could stop out of time like God we would find the past, present and future occurring at the same time and we would see God not only manipulating the present, but like Hezekiah, the future and maybe like my soldier friend, the past.

Can we pray for past events to be changed according to the will of God? I fear I cannot definitively answer that for you. Like Rod Sterling would say; “I offer this for your consideration.” However, if God awakens you in the middle of the night urging you to pray for someone, do it. If you fail to do it and you learn of tragic consequences, it sure would not hurt to repent and then pray, maybe God will change the past and only you will know and everyone will think you are nuts if you try to tell them God altered the past, even the person you prayed for will think you just snapped your cap, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to pray.-