Einstein, Jesus, Non-linear Time, and How Long We Should Pray

Good morning my friend, Dr. Lee Warren here with you on another episode of Self Brain

Surgery and we're getting it done today on Throwback Thursday.

Now this is two weeks in a row that Thursday normally is the day that I give you something old.

This brings back something from the past, I've had surgery on Thursday mornings and

so I don't have quite as much time as I do on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays to bring you something new.

So I usually go back in the archive and find something relevant.

I wake up with something on my heart that, you know, the Lord, I feel like is telling,

me, hey, this this episode is going to help somebody today.

But today, just like last week, I've got something new for you that I ran across in a book that

I was reading, and it just kind of crystallized some thinking.

We talked a little bit recently about quantum physics. We've been talking a lot about prayer, a lot about hope and all these things, and how do

they tie together?

And so today I've got an idea for you that may change the way you think about how often

and how hard and how long you should be willing to pray for something that you're concerned about.

So if you're going through some kind of massive thing or somebody you love is going through

something hard, you get out on our prayer wall. For example, wlewarnmd.com slash prayer.

There are two recent prayer requests for people and their kids who are going through hard

things, people's children having legal troubles, having relationship troubles, having addiction

struggles, and these people are saying, hey, pray, help me pray for my kids.

And so I just want to give you some information today that might kind of bend your brain a

little bit, might make you sort of change the way you look at some things, and just

a little idea about how often, how long, and how hard you should pray.

And so we're going to do that today. It's not Throwback Thursday, it is maybe Theology Thursday, but also Physics Thursday, and also

Persistence Thursday, and we're going to just throw a couple of ideas at you, kind of quick,

and then we'll end with a little song from our friend Tommy Walker,

and just give you a little something to think about on Thursday.

Also, I have a couple of little announcements to make for you.

But before we do any of that, I just have one question for you, my friend.

Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place for the neuroscience

of how your mind works, smashes together with faith, and everything starts to make sense.

Are you ready to change your life?

Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired, take control of our thinking, and find real hope.

This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier.

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

This is where we start today. Are you ready?

This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time, my friend.

Let's get after it.

Music.

All right, you ready to get after it. Here we go. So first of all a couple of little housekeeping things

There is a TV network a Christian TV network that broadcasts all over the world. They're headquartered in Dallas called day star da ys t a r,

Go figure out where day star is on your.

Cable channel your satellite channel or find their channel on YouTube follow them on Instagram,

Because I'm gonna be there Lisa and I are going to Dallas soon

And I'm not going to tell you when I'm going to be on their show But we're going and I just want you to tune in and support them

It's a huge honor and a great opportunity And it'll be a little opportunity for you to hear some more about hope is the first dose and and some different ways to think

about,

The things you're going through these massive things in our life We're gonna have a great conversation with Joni and the whole team down there at Daystar

And I just want you to be ready so you'll know where to find it and the morning of me going on that show

I'm gonna tweet and want to post it on Instagram hit it up on Facebook. So make sure you're following me there

I'll also put it out on the newsletter,

And I'll announce it on the podcast the day before when we're gonna be there. So just be ready find a star bookmark it

They got some great stuff. You ought to be watching Anyway, Alicia Britt Sholley was on there recently Christine Kane was on there recently and their episodes are worth watching

So just check it out. They start that's the first thing second thing is you're gonna start seeing some.

Some new episodes pop up in your podcast app that aren't new episodes. I'm going back over,

time and adding transcripts to old episodes and the way the new system transistor works

when we switched over from substack to transistor, episodes that were over a certain number of

days old didn't get pushed out as new episodes but they're there. So if you go look for them

You'll find them, but if but if you don't specifically look for an episode It doesn't show up in the list on Apple or Spotify or whatever so when I add a transcript. It's gonna make me.

Republish these episodes as if they're new so that's gonna result in you seeing some episodes pop up that it seemed out of order

So you'll see like you know this is season 9 episode 32 or whatever it is 33,

and You may on the same day you may later see a new episode pop up that's season 8 episode 20

or something like that and that's just because we're adding transcripts.

But it's also going to give you an opportunity if you're a relatively new listener to see

some stuff that you might not have seen already and it'll be helpful.

So just don't think that there's some glitch or some problem.

It's just because transcripts are coming online as an added value to you and if you're a paid

subscriber which we're going to relaunch that opportunity for you to partner with us soon

since we switched over from Substackway to shut that down and now we're about ready to

go live with it again.

So if you're considering if you think this podcast is helpful and you're considering supporting us

You're gonna get a special episode at least one every month a special video at least one every month and some other,

Great things to support that massive value that we hope to give for you to give to you in exchange for your support

So be be prepared to hear about that

So you're gonna see a lot of new episodes popping up that are actually old episodes

But now I have transcripts and all that stuff and I just didn't want you to be surprised by that

So hey, it's Thursday instead of throwback Thursday today. We're gonna do let's call it spiritual brain surgery theology Thursday

How about that? I'm gonna give you an idea from.

Scripture from Spirituality world that also kind of mashes up with something from physics that we talked recently about quantum physics and how the,

Observation of something makes it more real turns it into reality

And so that you got to be careful what you put your eyes on and you also have to be willing to accept

Jesus's ability to stand in between two things and have them be true at the same time

So you can have a thing this massive thing that you're going through and you can have abundance and peace and hope and happiness and faith,

at the same time because Jesus is the God of quantum physics and he can make

two things true at the same time. Okay, so we talked about that. Go back and

listen to that episode if you haven't heard it. And so it's just gonna be helpful. Today though I want to give you a couple of things. One is a little

parable that Jesus told us in Luke 18 verse 1. He says,

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always

Always pray and never give up.

So let's put some timelines on our praying. What does Jesus say we should do?

Always pray and never give up.

And so he says here in Luke 18, he told them a parable to show them,

that they should always pray and never give up.

He said, in a certain town, there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought.

And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea,

grant me justice against my adversary. For some time he refused, but finally he

said to himself, even though I don't fear God or care what people think, yet because

this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't

eventually come back and attack me. And the Lord said, listen to what the unjust

Judge says, and will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones who cry out to Him day and night?

Will He keep putting them off? I tell you, He will see that they get justice, and quickly.

However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?

So Jesus is saying always pray and never give up now. Let me blow your mind a little bit,

So albert einstein who you've heard of fairly smart guy,

Is sort of famous for two things that he came up with one is called special relativity special relativity

Einstein's theory of special relativity was a paper he published in 1905.

And it's basically this it's it's the the way Relativity is the way that time and space relate to one another.

It's the relationship between time and space. So special relativity in a nutshell is sort of all physical phenomenon in the absence of gravity, how they behave and what they do, and the relationship that time and space have to one another.

Okay, General Relativity, which was his second paper that was published, I think, in 1920, 1915, actually.

General Relativity basically is astronomy, the big stuff. It's the Geometric Theory of Gravitation that he published in 1915, and it's the description

of how gravity affects physics on the large scale.

Einstein comes along and publishes General and Special Relativity and basically creates

this concept of four-dimensional space-time and a unifying entity of space and time which

led to, throughout the 20th century, a whole bunch of major breakthroughs in physics that

led to things like nuclear bombs and computers and podcasts and microwave ovens and all that

kind of stuff and advances in medicine and radiation oncology and all kinds of things

came along downstream from Einstein's theory.

But one little offshoot of his theory of relativity is this concept that time is not linear like

we think of it, at least in physics terms.

The physicists think of time as bendable and flowable and past and present as one sort

of continuum and it can go either direction.

And that sounds really weird because in our experience the clock goes forward, it never

goes back, there's no sense in worrying about the past because you can't change it, and

all that stuff, right?

Well, and that's true. In our observable universe, friend, you and I both know that what happened in the past.

We can't change it.

And we're concerned about the present and we're concerned about the future, but we can't

change the past, right? We're always talking about that. Well, let me give you a little study.

There was a guy in Israel that published a paper in the British Medical Journal in 2001.

His name is Leonard Lebovici and he published a paper in the British Medical Journal in 2001.

This is fascinating. He took a stack of hospital case records charts.

And divided it into two random piles. In fact, he used a random number generator

to divide these charts so that there was no human influence in it.

And all these patients had been in the hospital for sepsis, okay, so the infection in their bloodstream, right?

So he put the two charts in randomly generated piles that were generated by a computer,

how they got divided up.

These were age and sex matched charts that had similar demographics and all of that stuff.

And they had a blinded group of observers pray over one stack of these charts.

And the other group of charts did not get prayed for. So these represented real people

who were hospitalized for sepsis, okay?

And the paper was published in a legitimate medical journal,

British Medical Journal, 2001.

And what they found was that the prayed over group had a reduced rate of fever, shorter hospital stays,

and lower overall mortality rate. and that reached significant statistical impact.

So what that means is it was beyond random chance that this was an actual effect that was witnessed

of the preying over these charts. It reached statistical significance

to the level that it could be published.

Now this is interesting because Libavici told people he was doing this study to prove how absurd it is,

to publish papers about things you can't actually measure.

He didn't intend for this to be scientific research. It was a parody to him. And here's why.

Because even though the prayed for group reached statistical significance and had better outcomes

than those that were not prayed for,

these people had actually been discharged from the hospital up to 10 years before they were prayed for.

Some of them had already passed away. So his idea was let's study the effect of prayer

retroactively on people that were in the hospital years ago.

So he did it almost as a joke, and what he found was, though, that the impact of praying for people

reached a statistical significance in fever, hospital stay, and mortality rate, even though

this had happened in the past. And interestingly, a similar research, a similar project was done by

other researchers looking at cardiac outcomes in people that had heart attacks and were admitted

into ICUs for cardiovascular problems,

and they found retroactive prayer

in a blinded, controlled study,

had impact and reached statistical significance in multiple variables that people did better

when they were prayed for, even though their illness had been in the past.

How weird does that sound? It sounds like a joke, right?

And these guys intended for the study to be a joke, and it was published as a joke.

The British Medical Journal does a Christmas issue every year in which they publish

what they call pseudoscience or goofy things, they think it's funny, right?

So what's interesting to me about this though is that Einstein comes along and says time is not linear,

time is bendable and flowable and relativity actually depends on that fact

that for physics to work, time can't be linear.

And Jesus says, I want you to always pray and never give up,

even if the thing you're praying about is somebody who doesn't fear God and doesn't care what other people think.

And Jesus said this, so this researcher in Israel says, I don't really believe this stuff,

I'm doing it kind of as a joke, we're gonna pray over these charts,

we're gonna have people pray over these charts of people that aren't even in the hospital anymore

and their illness happened 10 years ago.

And lo and behold, it turns out that that research verified the fact that praying for people makes them better,

even if their illness happened a long time ago.

Now, what am I saying, right? Am I crazy?

No, I'm just saying that Einstein has shown us that time is not fixed. And Jesus said.

Always pray and never give up. And if you get on the prayer wall,

there's people, desperate people, who are praying for things happening in their families that seem hopeless.

And if you're, if you have a diagnosis or you have a problem,

your family's been through some massive thing, it may seem hopeless to you.

And I'm just saying, I'm not saying that God's gonna go back in time

and remove the glial blastoma from your family.

I'm not saying that. I don't really understand this.

But what I do know is that there is impact and power in persistent prayer,

regardless of what other people think and regardless of whether they believe

and regardless of whether they fear God or not.

And even a scientist in Tel Aviv who's trying to prove that prayer is crazy

and that it's ridiculous and the idea even of retroactive prayer is stupid,

God winks at that and says, well, let me just show you something.

And it turns out that retroactively praying over the stack of charts makes the outcome better,

than the people that didn't get prayed for.

How else could you explain something like that?

You think the kingdom of God is bound by linear time? Well, Jesus says in Luke 17, 21,

people will say here's the kingdom or there's the kingdom, but you can't say it that way

because the kingdom of God is in your midst.

Jesus says the kingdom is coming, but it's already here. And we talked the other day about this liminality

of our position in time.

Is this, we're stuck in this world where there's massive things and trouble

and we're yearning and longing for just even a taste of what's to come.

And God says, hey, the kingdom's already in your midst.

The kingdom's already here. You just have to taste and see. You just have to pray and not give up.

You just can't quit, okay?

So when should you pray? Always.

Because maybe God's even able to do something in the past that's gonna affect your present or your future, maybe.

Maybe, you can get all wrapped up in this, maybe he knew you were gonna pray about that

so he answered that prayer that you didn't even pray yet and all that kind of stuff, but the fact is,

maybe time's just not as simple as we think it is.

The old Steve Miller band song, time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking into the future,

right, Einstein would say, hold up, maybe it doesn't.

Maybe it goes both directions. And so you may think that's crazy.

But Einstein's theories have a pretty good track record so far, right?

They predicted black holes. They predicted a lot of the things that we see now

with telescopes that we can actually measure and see.

Einstein's math predicted them in the 1920s before anybody could actually see them with their eyes.

And so maybe it's not magic that those prayers actually helped people in the past.

Maybe it's just because time doesn't flow into the future like Steve Miller thinks it

does. Maybe Einstein's a better theologian than Steve Miller is.

Maybe. Or maybe Dr. Warren's just nuts. But I know that when Hebrews 13 says, Hebrews 13, 8 says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday

and today and forever.

2,000 years ago, He said, hey, always pray and never give up.

Even if the person that you're talking to doesn't fear God or care what you think,

keep on pestering them with prayer because God can show up and He can change somebody's mind

and God can show up and He can change somebody's diagnosis and God can show up and He can heal your trauma

and God can relieve your burden and He can carry your cross and He can help you, friend.

Just always pray and never give up because maybe time doesn't keep on ticking, ticking,

ticking into the future. Maybe it's all wrapped up in relativity.

And maybe what your job is, is just to believe that Jesus means what he says,

when he says, hey, always pray and never give up.

And maybe you should believe that you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And maybe, perhaps, you should start today.

Music.

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you

by my brand new book, Hope is the First Dose.

It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.

It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audio books.

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the Most High God.

And if you're interested in learning more, check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

and go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self Brain Surgery, every Sunday since 2014,

helping people in all 50 states and 60 plus countries around the world.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your life,

until you change your mind, And the good news is you can start today.

Music.