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Acts 12:9-11 Good News Translation
9 Peter followed him out of the prison, not knowing, however, if
what the angel was doing was real; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 They
passed by the first guard station and then the second, and came at last to the
iron gate that opens into the city. The gate opened for them by itself, and
they went out. They walked down a street, and suddenly the angel left Peter.
11 Then Peter realized what had happened to him, and said, “Now I
know that it is really true! The Lord sent his angel to rescue me from Herod's
power and from everything the Jewish people expected to happen.”
You may not remember the first time you heard this story. I
don’t. I encourage you to read it again in Acts 12.
Herod Agrippa, son of Herod the Great who slaughtered the
babies in Bethlehem after Christ was born, was as conniving as his father. The
Herods were descendants of Esau, not Jacob. So, they were not Jews. This made
the extremely nationalistic Jews hate them. The Herods always felt insecure in
their position as rulers over the Jews.
Agrippa sensed the hatred the Jews felt towards the
followers of Christ, so he arrested James, the brother of John, and in a public
execution he killed James. For once the Jews applauded his action. Being no
dummy, he arrested Peter and planned a great festival to kill Peter. On the day
of Peter’s execution, Agrippa sent his men to fetch Peter and bring him before
the huge crowd gathered for the spectacle. They came back empty handed. The
standard Roman penalty for losing a prisoner was death. Agrippa was disgraced,
and for revenge he ended up killing four quaternions of guards—16 guards. This
did not, of course, increase his favor in front of the Jews.
How did Peter escape? Was there magic involved? The Angel
materialized in the inner dungeon where Peter was. Chains fell off of Peter,
and he walked out of the prison. For an analogy consider a two-dimensional maze
like the one above. The object is to draw a crooked line that enters the maze
at the red arrow and exits the maze at the green arrow without crossing any of
the black lines. However, if you were to cover the maze with a thin strip of
transparent plastic, you could simply draw a straight line from the red arrow
to the green arrow on the plastic and it would not touch any of the black
lines. What just happened? Since you are three-dimensional, not two dimensional,
you simply made a line above the paper. This line is out of the two dimensions
of the paper—the black lines no longer existed. It was extremely close to the
paper, but didn’t touch the paper except at the arrows.
If angels are in four-dimensional space, they could be as
close to Peter—in the 4th-dimension—as a thin sheet of transparent
plastic, yet be totally undetectable by Peter and unrestricted by the prison
walls and doors. The angel would simply slide Peter out of his three dimensions onto this miniscule
thickness of the plastic sheet. He would not slide Peter’s bonds with him, so
they would no longer be around his wrists, neck, and ankles, and they would
fall to the floor. The bonds and walls and guards are now gone. The four guards
in Peter’s cell with him might hear the chains fall and see Peter disappear,
but they would be so shocked, they couldn’t respond immediately. Peter was
simply there one instant and had totally disappeared the next. The other guards
would be completely oblivious to Peter and the angel. Even Peter would be
mystified: he “thought he was seeing a vision.” Peter follows the angel out
onto the street, and suddenly he’s back in his own three-dimensions, and the
angel has effectively disappeared.
I’ll let you fill in the details. How did you imagine this
event happening? Again, this whole scenario as I have described it may be
totally wrong. There may be no fourth dimension. We need to re-examine the
whole concept of our existence. It may be that the angel drugged the guards into a deep sleep like we see in movies, but this would not explain how the bonds fell off or the locked doors opened.
Thank You, Lord,
that You have ways of providing for us that are totally beyond our ken.
