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. Though the practice
dates to the earliest days of Christianity and is
shared by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, the other
Eastern Christians, and even some Anglicans—
meaning that all-told it is shared by more than
three quarters of the Christians on earth—it still
comes under heavy attack from many within the
Protestant movement that started in the sixteenth
century.


Can They Hear Us?
One charge made against it is that the saints in
heaven cannot even hear our prayers, making it
useless to ask for their intercession. However,
this is not true. As Scripture indicates, those in
heaven are aware of the prayers of those on
earth. This can be seen, for example, in
Revelation 5:8, where John depicts the saints in
heaven offering our prayers to God under the
form of "golden bowls full of incense, which are
the prayers of the saints." But if the saints in
heaven are offering our prayers to God, then they
must be aware of our prayers. They are aware of
our petitions and present them to God by
interceding for us.
Some might try to argue that in this passage the
prayers being offered were not addressed to the
saints in heaven, but directly to God. Yet this
argument would only strengthen the fact that
those in heaven can hear our prayers, for then the
saints would be aware of our prayers even when
they are not directed to them!
In any event, it is clear from Revelation 5:8 that
the saints in heaven do actively intercede for us.
We are explicitly told by John that the incense
they offer to God are the prayers of the saints.
Prayers are not physical things and cannot be
physically offered to God. Thus the saints in
heaven are offering our prayers to God mentally.
In other words, they are interceding.




One Mediator
Another charge commonly levelled against asking
the saints for their intercession is that this
violates the sole mediatorship of Christ, which
Paul discusses: "For there is one God, and there
is one mediator between God and men, the man
Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5).
But asking one person to pray for you in no way
violates Christ’s mediatorship, as can be seen
from considering the way in which Christ is a
mediator. First, Christ is a unique mediator
between man and God because he is the only
person who is both God and man. He is the only
bridge between the two, the only God-man. But
that role as mediator is not compromised in the
least by the fact that others intercede for us.
Furthermore, Christ is a unique mediator between
God and man because he is the Mediator of the
New Covenant (Heb. 9:15, 12:24), just as Moses
was the mediator (Greek mesitas) of the Old
Covenant (Gal. 3:19–20).
The intercession of fellow Christians—which is
what the saints in heaven are—also clearly does
not interfere with Christ’s unique mediatorship
because in the four verses immediately preceding
1 Timothy 2:5, Paul says that Christians should
interceed: "First of all, then, I urge that
supplications, prayers, intercessions, and
thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and
all who are in high positions, that we may lead a
quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in
every way. This is good, and pleasing to God our
Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to
come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:1–
4). Clearly, then, intercessory prayers offered by
Christians on behalf of others is something "good
and pleasing to God," not something infringing on
Christ’s role as mediator.
"No Contact with the dead"




Sometimes Fundamentalists object to asking our
fellow Christians in heaven to pray for us by
declaring that God has forbidden contact with the
dead in passages such as Deuteronomy 18:10–
11. In fact, he has not, because he at times has
given it—for example, when he had Moses and
Elijah appear with Christ to the disciples on the
Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3). What God
has forbidden is necromantic practice of conjuring
up spirits. "There shall not be found among you
any one who burns his son or his daughter as an
offering, any one who practices divination, a
soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a
charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a
necromancer. . . . For these nations, which you
are about to dispossess, give heed to
soothsayers and to diviners; but as for you, the
Lord your God has not allowed you so to do. The
Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like
me from among you, from your brethren—him you
shall heed" (Deut. 18:10–15).
God thus indicates that one is not to conjure the
dead for purposes of gaining information; one is
to look to God’s prophets instead. Thus one is
not to hold a seance. But anyone with an ounce
of common sense can discern the vast qualitative
difference between holding a seance to have the
dead speak through you and a son humbly saying
at his mother’s grave, "Mom, please pray to
Jesus for me; I’m having a real problem right
now." The difference between the two is the
difference between night and day. One is an
occult practice bent on getting secret information;
the other is a humble request for a loved one to
pray to God on one’s behalf.





Overlooking the Obvious
Some objections to the concept of prayer to the
saints betray restricted notions of heaven. One
comes from anti-Catholic Loraine Boettner:
"How, then, can a human being such as Mary
hear the prayers of millions of Roman Catholics,
in many different countries, praying in many
different languages, all at the same time?
"Let any priest or layman try to converse with
only three people at the same time and see how
impossible that is for a human being. . . . The
objections against prayers to Mary apply equally
against prayers to the saints. For they too are
only creatures, infinitely less than God, able to be
at only one place at a time and to do only one
thing at a time.



"How, then, can they listen to and answer
thousands upon thousands of petitions made
simultaneously in many different lands and in
many different languages? Many such petitions
are expressed, not orally, but only mentally,
silently. How can Mary and the saints, without
being like God, be present everywhere and know
the secrets of all hearts?" ( Roman Catholicism ,
142-143).
If being in heaven were like being in the next
room, then of course these objections would be
valid. A mortal, unglorified person in the next
room would indeed suffer the restrictions imposed
by the way space and time work in our universe.
But the saints are not in the next room, and they
are not subject to the time/space limitations of
this life.
This does not imply that the saints in heaven
therefore must be omniscient, as God is, for it is
only through God’s willing it that they can
communicate with others in heaven or with us.
And Boettner’s argument about petitions arriving
in different languages is even further off the mark.
Does anyone really think that in heaven the saints
are restricted to the King’s English? After all, it is
God himself who gives the gift of tongues and the
interpretation of tongues. Surely those saints in
Revelation understand the prayers they are
shown to be offering to God.
The problem here is one of what might be called
a primitive or even childish view of heaven. It is
certainly not one on which enough intellectual
rigor has been exercised. A good introduction to
the real implications of the afterlife may be found
in Frank Sheed’s book Theology and Sanity,
which argues that sanity depends on an accurate
appreciation of reality, and that includes an
accurate appreciation of what heaven is really
like. And once that is known, the place of prayer
to the saints follows.




"Directly to Jesus"
Some may grant that the previous objections to
asking the saints for their intercession do not
work and may even grant that the practice is
permissible in theory, yet they may question it on
other grounds, asking why one would want to ask
the saints to pray for one. "Why not pray directly
to Jesus?" they ask.
The answer is: " Of course one should pray directly
to Jesus!" But that does not mean it is not also a
good thing to ask others to pray for one as well.
Ultimately, the "go-directly-to-Jesus" objection
boomerangs back on the one who makes it: Why
should we ask any Christian, in heaven or on
earth, to pray for us when we can ask Jesus
directly? If the mere fact that we can go straight
to Jesus proved that we should ask no Christian
in heaven to pray for us then it would also prove
that we should ask no Christian on earth to pray
for us.
Praying for each other is simply part of what
Christians do. As we saw, in 1 Timothy 2:1–4,
Paul strongly encouraged Christians to intercede
for many different things, and that passage is by
no means unique in his writings. Elsewhere Paul
directly asks others to pray for him (Rom. 15:30–
32, Eph. 6:18–20, Col. 4:3, 1 Thess. 5:25, 2
Thess. 3:1), and he assured them that he was
praying for them as well (2 Thess. 1:11). Most
fundamentally, Jesus himself required us to pray
for others, and not only for those who asked us
to do so (Matt. 5:44).
Since the practice of asking others to pray for us
is so highly recommended in Scripture, it cannot
be regarded as superfluous on the grounds that
one can go directly to Jesus. The New Testament
would not recommend it if there were not benefits
coming from it. One such benefit is that the faith
and devotion of the saints can support our own
weaknesses and supply what is lacking in our
own faith and devotion. Jesus regularly supplied
for one person based on another person’s faith
(e.g., Matt. 8:13, 15:28, 17:15–18, Mark 9:17–
29, Luke 8:49–55). And it goes without saying
that those in heaven, being free of the body and
the distractions of this life, have even greater
confidence and devotion to God than anyone on
earth.
Also, God answers in particular the prayers of the
righteous. James declares: "The prayer of a
righteous man has great power in its effects.
Elijah was a man of like nature with ourselves
and he prayed fervently that it might not rain,
and for three years and six months it did not rain
on the earth. Then he prayed again and the
heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth its
fruit" (Jas. 5:16–18). Yet those Christians in
heaven are more righteous, since they have been
made perfect to stand in God’s presence (Heb.
12:22-23), than anyone on earth, meaning their
prayers would be even more efficacious.
Having others praying for us thus is a good thing,
not something to be despised or set aside. Of
course, we should pray directly to Christ with
every pressing need we have (cf. John 14:13–
14). That’s something the Catholic Church
strongly encourages. In fact, the prayers of the
Mass, the central act of Catholic worship, are
directed to God and Jesus, not the saints. But
this does not mean that we should not also ask
our fellow Christians, including those in heaven,
to pray with us.
In addition to our prayers directly to God and
Jesus (which are absolutely essential to the
Christian life), there are abundant reasons to ask
our fellow Christians in heaven to pray for us.
The Bible indicates that they are aware of our
prayers, that they intercede for us, and that their
prayers are effective (else they would not be
offered). It is only narrow-mindedness that
suggests we should refrain from asking our fellow
Christians in heaven to do what we already know
them to be anxious and capable of doing.
In Heaven and On Earth
The Bible directs us to invoke those in heaven
and ask them to pray with us. Thus in Psalms
103, we pray, "Bless the Lord, O you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to
the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all his
hosts, his ministers that do his will!" (Ps.
103:20-21). And in Psalms 148 we pray, "Praise
the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise
him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels,
praise him, all his host!" (Ps. 148:1-2).
Not only do those in heaven pray with us, they
also pray for us. In the book of Revelation, we
read: "[An] angel came and stood at the altar [in
heaven] with a golden censer; and he was given
much incense to mingle with the prayers of all
the saints upon the golden altar before the
throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with
the prayers of the saints from the hand of the
angel before God" (Rev. 8:3-4).
And those in heaven who offer to God our prayers
aren’t just angels, but humans as well. John sees
that "the twenty-four elders [the leaders of the
people of God in heaven] fell down before the
Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden
bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the
saints" (Rev. 5:. The simple fact is, as this
passage shows: The saints in heaven offer to God
the prayers of the saints on earth.

Question: Who is a saint? Is he the living or the dead? Or only the dead that has been canonized by the Pope?
According to Acts 9:32, 41. ROM 16:15, saints are believers, Christians, those in Christ. Saints are not only the dead in Christ.

You are at liberty to justify your "reasons" for praying through Mary and dead saints, but the Bible says Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need Hebrews 4:16. Who occupies this Throne? Mary or the dead saints? No! It is God Almighty.

If I have direct access to the throne of grace, why then should I go through Mary and saints to obtain mercy?

Let God and His Word be true and every contrary doctrine a liar. The number of those practising this doctrine does not and cannot void the Word of God, no matter how long the doctrine has been practised.

According to the Bible verse you quoted (1 Tim. 2:5), we only have ONE mediator- Jesus Christ, not many meditators. Follow the Word not Man and you will not err. God bless you.

A big error from the catholic perspective,once you are a christian you are a saint,either dead or alive.stop deceiving yourselves and embrace the truth.

Jesus already said it: "I am the way the truth and the life no one cometh to the father except through me".

So catholics praying through saints is just their way of doing what they know how to do: "alter christian belief".

joseph1832:
Jesus already said it: "I am the way the truth and the life no one cometh to the father except through me".

So catholics praying through saints is just their way of doing what they know how to do: "alter christian belief".

remember dey ar d first xtian...

ekemit:
A big error from the catholic perspective,once you are a christian you are a saint,either dead or alive.stop deceiving yourselves and embrace the truth.

where in d bible plss

I am a saint would you pray to me-like the disciples I am a Christian too.
All do I have to wait until I have past away?
I had travelled to the Philippines, a Catholic country, and I myself had seen the Catholic's go to the cemetery's to pray to their dead love ones, crowds of families, are meeting in one place once a year, bringing foods, drinks, and their golden candle sticks, plates etc.. the Chinese really show a great performance-when dealing with their dead, they bring in their riches.
I had seen them sitting around the grave sites talking to the dead, a caravel is set up inside the cemetery, so the children can enjoy more of their day. Before leaving the cemetery the families leave everything behind praying their dead love ones will feed of the gifts given to them. But what really happens the hungry people who live in the cemetery end up feeding themselves.
After the families leave the cemetery, later that night the children are ready to celebrate Halloween, another sign of worshipping the dead.
This happens all over the world-Catholic's praying to their dead saints-paying cash to the priest so their dead love ones, may get out of purgatory sooner.
This happens in the Vatican-they pray to the dead-And Jesus did say, let the dead bury the dead.

joseph1832:
Jesus already said it: "I am the way the truth and the life no one cometh to the father except through me".

So catholics praying through saints is just their way of doing what they know how to do: "alter christian belief".