"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:8-9, NKJV).

I am sure, like me, if you are a Science Fiction fan, or simply like physics and philosophy, you have wondered if it is possible to go back in time without appreciably changing the future. And if you have thought on it hard and long enough, you have concluded, like myself, that that is utterly impossible, unless, of course, you're one of those evolutionists who believes (without a shred of scientific evidence) that there are multiple universes and that it might be possible to jump from one to another and back again.

This might seem a rather strange topic to be considering on Sukkot. You might even think I have lost my mind if I tell you that I believe Yahweh can, and does, go back in time to change or undo certain things. Considering Sukkot is the final consummation, when Yahweh puts certain things to rights, with a view to righting the entire Universe at the end of the Millennium, I hope you may agree with me that this may not seem so far-fetched after all.

Consider this, then. Sins are sins because they're already committed. In a Hindu, Buddhist or New Age world, they are a permanent part of your karma that cannot retroactively be undone. Their solution is that you must be reincarnated and change the future by doing things right - of 'right-er' - the next time round, and so on, until you've got it completely right.

If we look at the life of the Master, Yah'shua (Jesus), we see a number of miracles that He did, but nearly all of them concern the 'present', that is, the present time in which they were done. The changing of water into wine was done, as it were, in the 'here-and-now'. And yet, as we look closer at even this earliest of miracles, we are forced to conceed that certain kinds of wine are only good if they are old - if they are matured. Somehow Yah'shua (Jesus) 'added time' to the wine and aged it, like a vintage. And yet, in order to 'age' the wine, it had also to be given a 'new' past, if that makes any sense. Time was stretched. Of course, we are in danger of running up against semantic arguments if we are not careful. The wine started as water and then, within what to us is an instant, an aged wine was produced. So we really haven't gone into the 'past' and altered it in any way.

But what about sin? When our sin is erased by the blood of Christ, we are healed not not only of the effects of sin in the present but apparently of the past too. Our 'past' as sinners is removed in such a way that Elohim (God) no longer 'sees' it. But that must surely involve more than 'seeing', since nothing can be hidden from Yahweh. I think in Protestantism, at least, and to a certain extend in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy too, that Yahweh is viewed as somehow 'blinded' to our past sins because he 'sees' us through Yah'shua (Jesus) as though the Saviour were some kind of 'filter' distorting His vision. I get the imagery but is it any more than just an approximation of the truth?

You see, the picture given to us in Scripture as far as past, forgiven sin is concerned, is that of something as though it never existed before, so that when Yahweh looks into our past - remembering that everything is before Elohim (God) simultaneously (past, present, and future) - it literally isn't there to be seen. Yah'shua (Jesus) isn't just a filter or a screen, to use the standard Christian metaphor, but He has literally reached back into the past and changed it, as far as the presence or absence of sin is concerned. The things we did are still there - we still remember them and no doubt Yahweh remembers them too - but, as Scripture says, the 'sting' of sin (and the death it produces) is no longer there (1 Cor.15:55), because in that particular realm or dimension, it is literally erased. It is as though we never broke any mitzvot (commandments) in the first place. It's as though we never violated the Torah - ever - even though we know we did and are grateful for the redemptive cleansing of the cross.

If it hard for us, of course, to conceive what it is like to have all time before us simultaneously. We were created into the flow of time - it is a part of our experience of reality. And though we are briefly separated from our bodies at death, and enter a (supposedly) 'timeless' domain (though who can for sure say?), we are nevertheless restored to a phystical space-time continuum at the resurrection. Time of some sort will always be something we participate in, in my view.

Finally, a last thought. The effect of the atonement, when it is appropriated by us through faith and repenting of our sins, accepting Messiah as Deliverer (Saviour) and dying to the Adamic self that produced sin in the first place, is not just that we shall be in a state as if we had never sinned, but we will exist in a condition in which we never did sin.

Jonathan Cahn said:

"In salvation, the impossible becomes a reality, the guilty become innocent, the tainted become pure, the rejected become those who were always beloved children, and our sins, which were as scarlet, become...as while as snow" [1],

"'Come now, and let us reason together,' says Yahweh, 'though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool'" (Isa 1:18, NKJV).

This is far better than any Science Fiction scenario. Who needs, or wants to, go back in time anyway? We'd only mess it up and cause calamities, perhaps even extinguishing our own futures. We'll presumably see past and present in a way similar to Yahweh one day. What Yahweh does to, and for, His children is better than any SciFi drama. At the final Sukkot we'll be celebrating all these things, and especially the truth of this immortal line:

"For He (Yahweh) made Him (Yah'shua/Jesus) who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of Elohim (God) in Him" (2 Cor.5:21, NKJV).

Endnotes

[1] Jonathan Cahn, The Book of Mysteries (Front Line, Lake Mary, Florida: 2016), p.17)