God appears to him in a dream. "Preacher," He says, "You have done great things in My name and you deserve honor for it. Nevertheless, there are billions out there who still do not believe in Me and evil is everywhere. I am going to allow you to make a great miracle that will be unmistakable sign to everyone everywhere of My power. Here it is: On the fourth day of the fourth month at the fourth hour after noon assemble as many witnesses as you can to observe My miracle. Four minutes before the hour, start praying to Me for a miracle and on the hour I will stop the earth in its course for four minutes so that all can see."

The evangelist awakes greatly excited. He recognizes that scientists will be regarded as the most reliable witnesses, and immediately sets out to contact astronomers and earth scientists about the forthcoming miracle. Many ignore him as a religious zealot who has gone over the brink; but a number, because of his fame, see it as an opportunity to put a miracle to test. As a result, twenty scientists begin to gather at the appointed place some days before the appointed hour. They set up numerous devices to measure time, from simple mechanical clocks to the latest atomic devices accurate to one second in a million years. They bring telescopes and other sophisticated devices to determine whether the sun stops even for a moment in its apparent course around the earth.

At four minutes before the fourth hour on the fourth day of the fourth month, the evangelist begins to pray. Never at a loss for words, he is particularly inspired, and all who listen are uplifted at his words. At precisely the fourth hour, all of the time measuring devices stop and the sun stops in its apparent motion. Yet, the witnesses are living and breathing and can observe. One of the scientists realizes that, with all the clocks stopped; there is no way of telling how long this state of suspension will go on. He decides to count his own heartbeat as the only available measure. Two hundred and eighty-six heartbeats later, the clocks start up and the sun's movement again becomes perceptible. As the scientist's heart ordinarily beats seventy-two times a minute and he may have missed the first several beats while thinking up his scheme, the miraculous stop in time lasted pretty close to the four minutes prophesied.

The assembled scientists are amazed and decide that they should report this in a paper to a leading scientific journal. They do so in proper scientific fashion, recounting all their preparations and the many measuring devices they had on hand. None of the devices, however, recorded anything during the time warp and instead show a continuous stream in time and no pause in movement of the sun. The scientists did, however, witness the event and have one reliable man's word that his heart beat at least 286 times while the heavens stood still.

They send their learned paper electronically to a prestigious journal. After several weeks, an electronic letter comes from the editor: "We have received your paper and sent it to three expert reviewers. All three agree that we should not accept it for publication. Measurement of time by heartbeat has considerable chance of error and there is no objective recording of the heartbeat. Prayer by an evangelist is not a convincing way to stop time, and a mass illusion could account for your observation. Nevertheless, we have some interest in whether prayer can stop time. If, with this evangelist, you can repeat a similar event with accurate measurements enough times to make a statistically significant set of observations, we would consider a revised manuscript describing all of your findings."

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