Hey Andy, if we pray about something that happened in the past, can God change it so that it never happened?
Hi, wow, interesting question, but not uncommon, especially with the idea of time travel, and the fact that God’s not trapped in time like we are.
Praying For Change to the Past
Interestingly enough, I used to know a Pastor who prayed for things in the past. His explanation was that since God is outside of time, why couldn’t He? I have actually tried this with simple things, like forgetting to turn off a light in the house. The idea would be that if I prayed that God would remind me in the past to turn them off, then they’d be off now, right? Like in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, when they wanted to free their historical guests from the police department, but couldn’t because they didn’t have the keys.
Bill & Ted’s time travel to remember something in the past – check out this video clip:
Unfortunately, this has yet to happen in my own experience. For even after praying for God to remind me of to turn off the lights in my past, I’d always return home to find that nothing’s changed, and I still forgot to turn them off in the past.
What if God HAD Changed the Past?
But now, if you really want to make your head hurt, ponder this. What if God HAD changed the past. But now, if we prayed for something in the past to change, then how would we know something changed? How would we know today that it was different than before we’d prayed for it? Or, how would we know that we’d even prayed for it (like the picture above)?
It’s like those shows/movies where one little thing changed, and everything is completely different (like in Back to the Future). The only people not stuck in time knew about the change. The rest were oblivious to any difference. So with that in mind, maybe God DOES change things in the past when we pray for Him to. But since we’re stuck in time, there’s no way of us knowing if He answered that prayer or not, because to us, it’s how it’s always been. (ouch, brain pain!)
picture courtesy of @physicsindica from instagram’s #blackholes category
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