Agnus_Dei said:
Show me from the Old or New Testaments where asking a saint to pray for me, as I would ask my wife to pray for me is condemned.
Deuteronomy 18:10-11 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard,
or a necromancer.
--Necromancy is praying TO the dead--exactly what the Catholics do.
The condemnation we read in the OT is a far cry from asking a saint to pray for us. Catholics are not conjuring up spirits for the purpose of gaining information.
You are praying to the dead; plain and simple. That is necromancy, no matter which way you cut it. It is punishable by death.
Besides that your concept of prayer is wrong. There is not a man on earth that can intrecede for you in the way that you speak of. No priest can be your intercessor. No saint, whether on earth or on heaven can be your intercessor. Only God alone can do that. Consider:
Romans 8:34 Who is he that condemneth? It is
Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God,
who also maketh intercession for us.
1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, and
one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
1 John 2:1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
We have an advocate, a mediator, an intercessor, who is Jesus Christ alone. No saint can take upon himself that work. No priest can presume to have that power. Only Christ can forgive sins. Only Christ can interced on our behalf. Catholics do not understand true prayer at all. It is useless to pray to any saint for it is impossible for them to interceed for you anyway. Only Christ can do that.
I remember as a kid my two uncles and their friends (they were teenagers) all sitting in a dark room with candles and a knife stabbed in the middle of the table. Four of them had their hand on the knife attempting to contact a dead friend of theirs…THIS act is what is condemned in the OT. Anyone but a fundamentalist with any common sense can discern the vast qualitative differences between the two.
The occult is condemned in the Bible; it is true. So is all praying to the dead. Your restricted interpretation of the passage is not the only thing that that passage is speaking of. All praying to the dead is condemned. It is sad that you don't believe the Bible.
In addition you’ll have to convince me that those in heaven are suddenly cut off from the vine Jesus shows us in John 15:1-8 which Paul builds upon 1 Corinthians 12:25-27 and Romans 12:4-5.
Did I ever say that no one goes to heaven? No.
Do the passages above ever show anyone praying to anyone in heaven? No.
Your proof texts don't prove anything. There is no place in the Bible where we have any incident of anyone praying to people in heaven--never.
You may believe that the dead are just laying in the grave waiting for the Resurrection, but those in heaven are alive to God per Mark 12:26-27. In the arms of God they are more solicitous of us than they were on earth. Just as Paul ask the other disciples to pray for him, so now we can ask Paul and the other saints to pray for us.
Paul probably doesn't know that you even exist. What proof do you have that he does know anything about you. Do you ascribe omniscience to him. Is he also a god. Are all the saints in heaven little gods, and God the Father a "Big God"? Have you taken on a belief similar to that of the Mormons? Do these saints all have omniscience, omnipresence (to answer all the prayers of all the RCC's all over the world in all the languages of all the RCC's all over the world? You attribute the attributes of God alone to these so-called saints. Therefore you believe in a big God and many other little gods. Your religion is not better than the Hindus--totally polytheistic, as well as occultic. And yet none of this even phases you. Amazing!
We are NOT cut off from fellow Christians at death, but are, strangely enough and contrary to your unreflecting thoughts, brought closer. We being the body of Christ continue, if you agree with it or not, in ONE communion, the communion of saints.
Instead of spouting off RC theology why don't you show me something from the Bible. I was a Catholic for twenty years. I am totally familiar with their heretical teaching. But that is not what the Bible teaches. There is nothing in the Bible that teaches that those that are in heaven know anything about what goes on in this earth whatsoever. What the Bible does say is that there are no tears in heaven. So what makes you think that they will be able to see all the heartache and sin on this earth? But go ahead and believe in your occultic beliefs. Pray to the dead like those in the occult do. God condemns your actions. If you lived in the OT, you would be stoned to death.
The ancient Jews believed in the intercession of saints, see 2 Macc 15:11-16. Jeremiah himself wrote that Moses and Samuel made intercession for the Jews, apparently meaning after their deaths (Jer 15:1).
1. Maccabees is not and never was Scripture. The Jews never accepted it as Scripture. Thus there is no proof that the ancient Jews believed that way since the Jews rejected that book as totally spurious.
2. Any Jew that did believe in the intercession of the dead and practiced it would have been stoned. That was the law.
3. Every prophet interceded for the nation of the Jews. That was part of their work. We don't live in the OT. We can come right before the very throne of God without any intercessor but Christ Himself. We don't live in the OT, and need no priest or prophet as Israel did. Consider:
Hebrews 4:15-16 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
Every believer is a priest before God. Every believer has no need for a priest. Christ alone is the only intercessor that he needs. Your comparison with Jeremiah and Samuel is apples and oranges. It is a ridiculous comparison.
So DHK, you have a Jack Chick misunderstanding of what necromantic practice is (why does that not surprise me) and you try and force it on the Catholic practice, which isn’t there. Also the term communion of saints and its allied term, the Mystical Body of Christ mean nothing in the vacuum you live in.
You can stop with the slander. I don't even read Jack Chick. I was a former Catholic who got saved, and with my own objective study of the Bible saw the error of the RCC when comparing it to the Bible. I had to make a choice whether to follow the teachings of the Bible or the teachings of the RCC. I could not "serve two masters." The one gave me eternal life; the other condemned to Hell. I chose God.
The word "saint" means "holy one," "sanctified one," and is used of those who have trusted Christ. If you used it correctly you would apply it only to living believers on this earth. But the RCC has corrupted the term. For example the proper way to use the term would be to say "saint D28guy," saint Eric," "saint Bro Bob," "saint Eliyahu," etc. They are not normally applied to those in heaven.
Consider:
1 Corinthians 1:2 Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus,
called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:
Romans 1:7 To all that be in Rome, beloved of God,
called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth,
with all the saints which are in all Achaia:
Ephesians 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,
to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:
Almost every epistle is addressed to the saints, and no in no epistle is any saint prayed to.
Yes, their bodies are lifeless, but what of the soul DHK...Does your soul die at death?
Yes it does. Man is a triume being. Check 1This.5:23--body, soul and spirit. It is the spirit that never dies. The soul is like the brain, and dies with the body. Read the first two chapters of Genesis. God created animals with a soul. Their souls will not live forever; neither will ours. It is our spirit that communes with God, that will live forever.
They that worship God, must worship him in spirit and truth. It is true that the word "soul" is sometimes used to refer to the entire person or interchangeably with spirit, but generally speaking it refers to the emotional and intellectual part of man, not the spiritual. Every man has a spirit. That spirit becomes alive when man becomes saved.
Ephesians 2:1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
--They were once dead, spiritually dead, but their spirit came to life when they got saved, and the Holy Spirit came in and regenerated them.
However every person dies. And until the resurrection takes place they are considered dead. It is wrong to pray to the dead.