On Retroactive Prayer

Retroactive prayer -- praying for something that's in the past. I have thought about it a lot, ever since as a child I first wondered if God would ever change something that happened in a past, and have wondered about it more so since people have asked me about it...

The first scenario I heard was a few years ago, in my late teens. Someone presented it to me this way: Suppose a missionary is on a plane, flying back to the United States, and a group of believers are praying for his safety through the whole three-hour-long flight... but, tragically, the plane crashes with no survivors during the first half-hour. Are those prayers during the next two and a half hours for nothing? Does God hear them? Would He go back and change the event so that it does not happen, because of their prayers?

Now suppose that the group gets a phone call saying that the plane is down. Do any of them continue praying? Probably not; they will figure that what has happened has happened, and think that prayer can no longer change anything.

My first thought was that prayer must be in faith, and while it was easy to pray for them missionary without knowing about the crash, it was impossible after the phone call; and since they didn't have faith, their prayers would not be answered (see the first chapter of James). But then I realized it was much, much more involved than a simple matter of faith....

I wasn't sure how to think about this. Do I doubt that God can change the past, should He choose to? No! And yet we've never seen Him do it. This would be proof enough that it is not in His nature... except that if He did it, we would never know it! Imagine that God changed the past in response to prayer. After He had done it, we would never have known that He had ever done anything, nor would we remember the prayer, since in the altered world there would be no need for the prayer. Thus, every prayer in history ever prayed to change the past would seemed to have been answered "no" by God, since the ones that were answered "yes" left no trail...

This raised even more troublesome questions. Are the most basic elements of my existance things I prayed for? What if I used to have red hair, and later prayed for it to be brown and now it is and always has been because God changed the past? What if I saw the family I have now, prayed to be a part of them, and God made it so?

I think you see where I'm going with this. Retroactive prayer raises a lot of issues that can't be easily answered.

After further thought, though... I've come to the point where I don't believe we should pray for things in the past to change. God's plan is perfect, and we can't know it or comprehend it. His plan is at work in the world, and asking Him to change something because of our shortsightedness will be a request He will not grant. Nothing happens that God does not allow or cause to happen -- thus, everything fits into His plan, and will not be altered. I don't understand how a lot of things fit into His plan, but asking Him to change what He has already allowed to happen or caused to happen is like asking Him to change His character ... and we know that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

One final thought, before you leave this page because it's getting too long.

How about praying for events in the past you haven't heard the outcome of? For instance, suppose a missionary goes to China, and you pray fervently that they will make it past the border. While praying, you realize that it was yesterday that they made the attempted crossing, not today. Should you still pray?

While the event has already occured, you do not yet know its outcome. And God is omnipresent in time -- He knew about your prayers of tomorrow when he brought you through today. So yes, pray for the missionary, for God can hear your prayers across even the great chasm of time...

I think that the trouble comes when we start praying for things in the past to *change*, for God to undo something that we thought He was wrong in doing, and I think that is dangerous ground, for it is indirectly accusing Him of making a mistake in carrying out His will. The past we cannot change, and I have seen no example in the Bible of anyone seriously asking God to change it. Instead of asking Him to change what cannot be changed, how much better it is to focus on the future, to partner with Him in molding it into what His will would have it be...