Why does God
Allow Evil? Click here: /Apologeticshtml/Why Does God Allow Evil 0908.htm
Should God’s
existence be proven? /Apologeticshtml/Should the Bible and God Be Proven
Fideism vs WCG.htm
Should People Pray to Their Dead Relatives and Family Members?
There
are two basic mistakes in praying to anyone who isn’t the Creator
Himself. First of all, we shouldn't pray to anyone other than to God
(meaning, the Father and, sometimes, Jesus).
This is the fundamental principle of the First Commandment (Exodus
20:3): “You shall have no other gods
before [or besides] Me.” When Jesus rejected Satan's final temptation to
worship him, He quoted from the Old Testament: "You shall worship
the Lord your God and him only shall you serve" (Matt. 4:10). There
is no place for praying or worshiping anyone else besides the Creator.
Three times in the Bible after someone mistakenly started worshiping someone
else falsely, he was (or they were) immediately corrected. When Cornelius "fell at his feet,"
Peter told him, "Stand up; I too am just a man" (Acts 10:25-26). Having been overwhelmed by the visions he had received through
one angel, John "fell down to worship at the feet of the angel." But the angel replied to him, "Do not
do that; I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren the prophets and
of those who heed the words of this book; worship God" (Rev. 22:8-9). After the pagans of Lystra misidentified
Paul and Barnabas as the gods coming down to earth as men, they brought
sacrifices out to offer to them. In
response, Paul and Barnabas tore their clothes and cried out to the crowd,
"Men, why are you doing these things?
We are also men of the same nature as you, and preach the gospel to you
in order that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made
the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them" (Acts
14:11, 14-15). By contrast, when King
Herod mistakenly accepted praises that he was a god for giving a good speech
from a crowd, and he didn’t rebuke them, an angel struck him dead (Acts
12:21-23). These were immediate, clear corrections, not implicit acceptances or
"sidesteps" that partially changed the subject.
So
clearly we shouldn't pray or worship anyone besides God, for only He has the
almighty power to answer our prayers anyway. The Catholic custom of
praying to departed saints or to the Virgin Mary is plainly in error for this
reason alone. (To relabel it "veneration" instead of
"worship" doesn't really eliminate the problem, since that's
basically a word game, mere semantics, that obscures the reality of what's
being done).
The
second error in praying to the dead stems from their being unable to hear us,
since they are totally unconscious until the resurrection. To prove this
doctrine in a brief email would be difficult. You could look up the book
"Here and Hereafter" by Uriah Smith at my Web site, www.lionofjudah1.org, if
you'd want to know more about it. A key favoring the dead being dead is
Eccl. 9:5-6, 10: "For the living know that they will die, but the
dead know nothing, and they have no more reward; but the memory of them is
lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and
they have no more for ever any share is all that is done under the sun. . .
. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no
work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol [i.e., the common grave of
humanity], to which you are going." The dead in Sheol can't praise
God, according to David (Ps. 6:5): "For in death there is no
remembrance of thee; in Sheol who can give thee praise?" The dead
aren't in heaven either, since even King David wasn't there after Jesus'
resurrection, according to the Apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts
2:29, 34): "Brethren, I may say to you confidently of the patriarch
David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. .
. . For David did not ascend into the heavens; but he himself says . .
." So since the dead are unconscious while awaiting the
resurrection, they couldn’t hear us even if we wanted to pray to them.
So,
if dead relatives can't hear us, let alone respond to our requests with power,
why should we pray to them? Instead, we should pray to God, who can hear
us and has the power to respond to our requests. There is no place in the
canonical Scriptures where anyone prays to someone who is dead. So we should
follow Jesus' model prayer, and pray to God the Father when we need help (Matt.
6:9-13), not to the Virgin Mary, to departed saints, or to dead ancestors, like
Chinese peasants traditionally did.
Clearly, we shouldn’t pray to (dead) relatives and family members.
Eric V. Snow
Click here to access essays that defend Christianity: /apologetics.html
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Why does God
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Does God Allow Evil 0908.htm
May Christians
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Rhetoric vs Sabbath Refuted.htm
Should
Christians obey the Old Testament law? /doctrinalhtml/Does the
New Covenant Abolish the OT Law.htm
Do you have an
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Hereafter.htm
Does the
ministry have authority? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Is There
an Ordained Ministry vs Edwards.html
Is the United
States the Beast? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Are We
the Beast vs Collins.htm
Should you give
10% of your income to your church? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Does the
Argument from Silence Abolish the Old Testament Law of Tithing 0205 Mokarow
rebuttal.htm
Is Jesus God?
Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Is Jesus
God.htm
Will there be a
third resurrection? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Will
There Be a Third Resurrection.htm
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