Praying to Dead Saints. The very fact that Roman Catholics feel they need to turn to strained connections like this to argue their point illustrates how alien such practices are to churches of the New Testament. Praying to Mary and other dead saints is not biblical and praying to anyone other than God is idolatry. By James M. Rochford. ... "Neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from the Church which even now is the kingdom of Christ.
Praying to Mary and the Saints.
Jesus instructed His followers, “…when you pray, pray to your Father” And He added, “In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven…” (Matthew 6:6-9).). To bow down to a statue or painting and pray to it is evil and it is forbidden in Scripture.
If you pray to the saints and you get some sort of answer, you would wrongly conclude that praying to the saints must be fine. This is where people begin to have a little trouble understanding what Catholics are doing when we pray to saints.
Catholicism teaches that it is okay to offer prayers not only to God but also to creatures such as Mary, Joseph, and others who have entered heaven. For more resources on this subject, see our earlier article “Catholicism.”. Should we pray to dead saints?
Fundamentalists challenge the Catholic practice of asking saints and angels to pray for us. Most pagan religions believe that when a person dies, the living should pray for his/her departed soul. The Roman Catholic practice of praying to dead saints finds no support in biblical stories like these. Nowhere in the Scripture do we find a reference for a godly person praying to the dead or another human being but to God.The Bible teaches that believers should pray to God alone. The historic Christian practice of asking our departed brothers and sisters in Christ—the saints—for their intercession has come under attack in the last few hundred years. Scripture explicitly forbids conjuring the dead … Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. It is worth noting that praying to the saints is rooted on praying for the dead. During the syncretism of paganism and Christianity many centuries ago, this doctrine insidiously crept in the church. If praying to dead saints is wrong, how does one explain Revelation 5:8? In his book A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong offers several biblical passages to support this assumption. But surely you realize that there may be other causes for ‘the answer’ other than the dead saint hearing your prayers. When confronted some Catholics say we don’t pray to them, but we ask them to pray for us.
by Matt Slick. Many non-Catholic Christians believe that it is wrong to pray to the saints, claiming that all prayers should be directed to God alone.
Praying to Mary and the Saints. The second objection to praying to the saints is that, even if Catholics do not worship the saints, they are at least calling upon the spirits of the dead. The pagans pray to … This is where people begin to have a little trouble understanding what Catholics are doing when we pray to saints. [1] We will consider each below with brief interaction: A Catholic Answers Tract.
History of praying to the saints. Many non-Catholic Christians believe that it is wrong to pray to the saints, claiming that all prayers should be directed to God alone. One of the erroneous teachings of the Roman Catholic Church is the doctrine of praying to the saints.