Dan, go ahead with your question for Michael.
Yes, hello, gentlemen. Hi. Yeah, I just was wondering why the Catholics religion
prays to the saints.
Okay. I haven't found that anywhere in the Bible.
Okay, Dan. Good question. Yeah, yeah, excellent question. I do want to emphasize also, whenever
we engage in this topic, I want to make it very clear, we pray directly to God all the time,
very often. So, in any kind of intercession that we ask on behalf of the saints is not
something that that's all we do entirely. We would say that we do that in conjunction with
praying directly to God. I want to be very clear about that. Now, you speak about the biblical
precedent for you. You say that there's nothing in Scripture. Well, I mean, there's all kinds of
things that we believe by way of a theological conclusion. They're from Scripture. There are
things that are not explicitly said, but they logically follow. I'll give you an example
of that. Nowhere does Scripture say God is a Trinity, but it does theologically follow by
way of a conclusion from the fact that you see three distinct Persons in the New Testament,
and yet there's only one God. The only conclusion to that is the doctrine of the Trinity. Likewise
so it is with praying to saints. You ask why we do it. Well, in the exact same way that
you would ask your friends to pray for you. You see benefit in asking a righteous person,
one of your friends, to pray for you. Well, we do the exact same thing for those who are in heaven,
who are seeing God in heaven. They're beholding God in the beatific vision. They're holy. They're
pure because they're in the presence of God. And so their prayers are going to be very efficacious.
As far as biblical precedent that would indicate that we can do this, you do see in the book of
Revelation that the martyrs under the altar in heaven are aware of what is going on on earth.
They care about what is going on on earth. And you also see in Revelation chapter eight,
the angel presenting prayers of the saints to God, so clearly engaged in intercession on our behalf.
So by way of theological conclusion, if the saints are aware of what's going on on earth, which would
include our prayers, and they are presenting our prayers to God by way of intercession, then you
have prayer to the saints or the intercession of the saints right there in the book of Revelation.
Dan, I'm anxious to hear what you think.
Well, I find that a little far fetched. I still don't get where you're coming from. It doesn't say
to pray for their assistance when you pray to God, you don't need their help.
Well, I would -
I mean, why would you go to someone else when you can go directly to God? Wouldn't God be jealous?
No, for the same reason you go to your friends and ask your friends. I mean, why do you pray to
Mary? There's no such thing as why would you pray to a woman? Well, let's establish the first part.
Listen.
Okay, let's establish the first part. You do ask your friends to pray for you, right? Oh,
hang on. Go ahead. Yeah, but they're alive. Uh-huh. And the saints are also
alive. We don't pray to dead people. According to... Well, according to Jesus, He corrects that
error. Jesus specifically corrects people who says that they are dead. And He says, in fact,
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God of the living. So they're more alive than you
and I are. And they're aware of what's going on. And they're presenting our prayers to the Father,
as we see in the book of Revelation. So for the exact same reason... Why would God need them to
be praying for you when you could go directly to Him? Well, you do go directly to God. You also
ask them for your intercession in the exact same way that you go directly to God, and you ask your
friends to pray for you. It's a both and, not a either/or. So you're saying that God is incapable?
No, not at all. How did that follow from what I said? He's not enough.
No. Okay, well, anyway... Are you saying when you
ask your friends... I think I'm going to get going...
Well, when you ask your friends to pray for you,
are you saying God is incapable of answering your prayers? No.
No. And so I think it's a really bad argument. Let me also address the issue
of Mary being a sinner. There's nothing in Scripture that says she's a sinner.
She does refer to God as her Savior, but we believe that God is her Savior,
and He saved her from sin. He prevented her from contracting original sin.
So there's that, in fact, nothing in Scripture that indicates she's a
sinner. So that would be a human tradition that I think you're imposing on Scripture.