Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

I heard of this a few years ago and thought it strange then and recently a minister made mention again.


The premise is that God is not bound by time so prayers that we pray today can "prevent" what might have been. It's a real mind bender, for sure!


While service is in progress we hear someone we know is in an accident - no details. We pray and "feel confirmation in the Spirit" that God is working in that situation. Then are told that even if there were no serious injuries - that in it'self may have been prevented by prayers offered after the fact. God is not bound by time/space.


What do you think?

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

I am sure God can do anything but how does He handle all the resulting paradoxes which can, will, or have occurred?

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

I don't know how to answer that. God CAN do anything. Whether our prayers are effective or not, we have no way of really knowing. When I hear sirens I pray not even knowing the situation. I know God does know, however.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

I knew some folks,who had a granddaughter and they said everytime the Spirit moved on her,she could tell if someone would be involved in a carwreck.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Maybe she was causing them ?? Hmmmm...

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

No joke one time her parents were out of town and they were planning on coming home late,anyways the grandparents asked their granddaughter was it safe for her parents to return home.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Scotty, I'm sure they were nice wonderful God-fearin people. It just so happens they were nuts too.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

This really happened.And the Grandfather used to talk in tongues in his sleep.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

They are nice folks.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Really hoping to get more feedback on this... whaddayathink?

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

More likely that God simply changed the seriousness of the injuries, by healing.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Haven't you seen Back to the Future? Got any photos with your annoying neighbor in them? Pray, and watch him fade away!

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Ya don't say! :lol

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Or like good old George who shouted "I wish I was never born!" and then proceeded to run into old acquaintances who no longer remembered him.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Or like that episode of Quantum Leap, where we find out that JFK wasn't killed in the original time line -- Jackie was. And that, my friend, is your answer! There would be no perceivable paradox in retro-prayers. You just would have a new history and memories, without even knowing about the old ones. :D

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Oh, and if your prayer was that your grandfather would die before meeting your grandmother?

Sayonara, RW.

:D

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Timmy you better enjoy life AND be nice to everyone on AFF, or I might pray a prayer that will change everything that's happened in your life.

PS Anyone wonder why the stocks are not dropping another 500 today?


(yeah it was me. But it was not in the original script!!)

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

They did the same thing with Marylin Monroe where Sam arrives to save her, only to have her die two years later which is exactly how she died in our timeline.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

But then you wouldn't be around to pray that your grandfather would die, which means he would most likely live.

If Montgomery Scott gave the formula for transparent aluminum to present day scientists because he knew how to make it in the future, and thus assumes credit for having invented it. Who actually sat down and figured it out originally?

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Doesn't matter. In the new timeline, grandpa's dead and you're never born. The paradox is really only a problem for time travelers, not for retro-prayer-warriors. But, even in that case (time travel), the solution is pretty simple: the universe splits in two whenever someone travels to the past. One half is the "original" time line, where grandpa lives and you are born and do the time-travel -- it continues from there without you (since you left the timeline to go back), and the other half where grandpa dies and you are never born.

Another Back to the Future scenario! Like Doc going back and telling himself about the flux capacitor, and Marty bringing rock and roll to the fifties. :)

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

I will say this, Timmy. Some prayers my Mother prayed were answered after she had been dead for years.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

I don't think "radio active" would be the best descriptor for this phenomena - if it truly is a phenomena.

"Radio active" indicates the presence of nuclear decay within a collection of atoms and the subsequent energy that is measured radiating out from the decay process. All of this is observed in "real time" and a predictable and inevitable sequence of events follows.

The only way to "undo" these events would be to launch this material into the heart of a star and allow the star's fusion to remodel that collection of atoms... and even then, it would be billions of years before the star goes nova and "recreates" the uranium and other heavy elements that we were observing to decay in the first place.

There is simply no way around this. Even if you could travel "back in time" - the radio-active material will still decay at the same predicable rates. That is simply its destiny. "Radio active" sounds cool, and if "cool" is all we want, then disregard everything I have said. But strictly speaking, "radio active" is a phenomena unrelated to the phenomena of "time traveling prayers."

To have a prayer "tunnel back in time" would obviously require a a time traveling agent ("God") Who hears you "now" and then acts in that already fulfilled reality (this reality - our reality) to effect whatever changes were requested by prayer.

If you prayed that a certain portion of radio-active material would NOT decay, then I suppose, it's a prayer about "radio-activity" - but the stuff will still decay at some point. If you prayed that your critically injured loved one had never broken their spine - then ... well, what's the difference between that and healing the broken spine in the present?

The only real difference is if our hypothetical loved one had never broken their spine in the first place. Then, what we are saying is that "God" kept them whole when in fact they were in no danger of a broken spine all along. We are simply inventing a cause for a desired outcome.

Millions of people don't break their spine every day. Personally, I am thankful that I didn't break my spine at any time in the past. I honestly can't say that "God intervened...!" because I don't know that He did. All I can say is, "That never happened to me, thank God."

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Radio active! HA!

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Seriously Pel, Have you ever heard of this?

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

I haven't heard of anyone attaching that term to this idea. I have heard about people who say things like, "I prayed after they were on the road and before I had heard that they arrived at their destination... they arrived safely, so my prayers were answered..."

I think that I've heard people also who sort of were reaching out for the concept that you describe. I don't buy into this.

If things worked out beneficially, or if the damages were at least mitigated then we are THANKFUL for what happened. The only way that this concept of "radio-active prayers" can be posited is if the outcome is still uncertain. Then the prayer is offered for the desired outcome.

I'd have to hear the actual "teaching" involved of course, but the whole thing sounds like someone misunderstood something from a physics television program and then tried to apply their misunderstanding to the Bible.

Do you have more information on this?

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Anything is possible.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Definition of RETROACTIVE (BTW that was my word not theirs.)

: extending in scope or effect to a prior time or to conditions that existed or originated in the past; especially : made effective as of a date prior to enactment, promulgation, or imposition


Quite simply, It was implied that prayers offered in present tense can effect the "outcome" of events already occurred. This, made possible by the fact that God is not "bound by time". Of course, the "outcome" was unknown to those praying at the time.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Except retroactive prayers. :)

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Never say never. :) I wouldn't spend a lot of time on it though.

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

LOL. Dude... I gotta get rid of these bifocals. Retroactive... d'oh! http://www.apostolicfriendsforum.com...ons/icon11.gif

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

Cindy, I do the same thing. Or if I see a firetruck with lights and sirens blaring, I pray, "Oh, Lord, whoever this involves, or whatever the situation,
I pray for all involved, in Jesus Name".

Falla39

Re: Retroactive Prayers Anyone??
 

:thumbsup