WORD STUDY – THE MENDELLA EFFECT
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.”
In the ten years I have been doing these word studies, I have always used this page as a word study. However, I have been troubled by something lately and more for therapeutic reasons than to share a devotional I want to share this speculation. Although I will give a word study into this tomorrow. Today I just want to introduce you to my troubled thought.
The above passage has troubled commentators for centuries. Not because the account in II Kings 20:11 seems to differ. One account says the shadow of the sun dial of Ahaz, Hezekiah’s father and the same account says the stairs of Ahaz. That is just a problem in translation. No what the issue that has commentators baffled is just what is the nature of this sign of the shadow moving backward.
Did God stop or reverse the rotation of the earth? Did God simply move the shadow and only Hezekiah was aware of the miracle. It seems this was a world wide event because not long after key officials from Babylon where they watched the skies closely, paid a diplomatic visit to Hezekiah and it was likely prompted by this miracle. Did God manipulate time? There is really no definitive answer to these questions.
So today I would like you journey with me into the Twilight Zone, into the world of speculation and as Rod Sterling used to say: “I present to you for your consideration.”
Some years ago when I was teaching in Bible College I had a student, let’s call him Jay, but that is not his real name, who was in Special Forces and was in the reserves. I got to know him not only as a teacher but on a personal level as well. When he graduated I sort of lost touch with him. Then one day a year or so after 9/11 I was looking at a the casualty list of soldiers who had been killed in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. To my horror I saw Jay’s name on the list. I immediately called the military office to inquire about the list. I mentioned Jay’s full name and the person on the line confirmed that a special forces soldier by that name was indeed on the list. I then shared what identification on him I had and this person again confirm he graduated from our college, confirmed the name of his wife and children, birthplace and other identifying information, as well as the date and time of his death.
I hung up the phone and I was sick. For I knew that the approximate time when Jay stepped on a mine I had a strong conviction to pray for him, in fact I woke up in the middle of the night with this urgency to pray for him, but I ignored it and went back to sleep. I called out to God: “Oh, Lord forgive me, you prompted met to intercede and I didn’t and now it is too late. If only I could turn back the clock to that night I would pray for his safety.”
A few years later I heard from another former student that he had attended a conference where Jay who was supposedly KIA in Afghanistan was one of the speakers. I told this student that it was impossible Jay died in Afghanistan. The former student only said: “He sure looked alive to me.” I called the military again and I was told there was no former special forces soldier by the name of Jay…that was listed as a casualty. They did confirm there was a Jay who did serve in Afghanistan but he was never wounded. I have been troubled by this now for many years but never shared it because I just wrote it off to some mental overload I probably had.
However, the other day I was searching the internet to just relax and read something bizarre. I found it, it was an article called the Mendela Effect. Back in 2010 a woman a claimed to have a clear memory of Nelson Mendela dying in prison. She recalled the funeral and even the people who attended the funeral. But, of course, Nelson Mendela survived prison and went on to accomplish great things. South Africa would most likely be an entirely different country today had Mendela died in prison. This woman was so plagued by this memory that she put it up on the internet. The internet went viral with thousands up thousands of people claiming the same memory but just brushed it off as some misguided memory, but with so many people having the same memory people began to unite and share their memory which was all identical in description. This created such a sensation that people started to share memories of other things that never happened. For instance the monopoly man never have a monocle but many people, myself included remember him with a monocle. Curious George never had tail but people remember him with a tail. I remember very distinctly as a child he had a tail but I was freaked out by it as a three or four year old. But there are no records that he ever had a tail. Another famous one is the Star Wars movie where Darth Vader tells Luke Skywalker he is his father people, myself included, clearly remember him saying “Luke, I am your father.” I clearly remember it because I thought it was showing some tenderness in Darth Vader to call his son by his name. But if you watch the movie now he says, “No, I am your father.” There is absolutely no record of Vader saying “Luke”, even the actors themselves, do not recall Vader using the name Luke. Here is the one that I am absolutely certain about. I grew up with Jiffy Peanut butter. Go to your grocery stores, you will find it is Jif Peanut Butter. Proctor Gamble says it has no record of anything called Jiffy Peanut butter. I have a clear picture of the Jiffy Peanut butter jar and it’s colorful letters.
Is this all just mind games? It is just our minds piecing together things that never happened and existed from other memories? Most likely this is the case. But how can thousands and thousands of people have the same memory and have it wrong? Or did they. Maybe there was a Jiffy Peanut Butter, a Kit-Kat and not Kit Kat candy bars. Maybe James Earl Jones did say “Luke, I am your father” even though he completely denies it. Maybe that little jingle you heard as a child that keeps ringing in your head spelling out O-S-C-A-R M-E-Y-E-R was really M-A-Y-E-R and you are just one of thousands upon thousands that tell yourself, “Well, I guess I just had it wrong.”
Or maybe it is something else, not time travelers changing the past, not parallel universes colliding but something that is found in Scripture. So you baby boomers who just traveled down memory lane with me, until tomorrow, same time, same website, this is Chaim Bentorah encouraging you to tune in tomorrow (for it may be yesterday) for the exciting conclusion to: “Is it ever too late to pray?” I will do a word study on verses I think address this phenomena
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