Praying to Mary - A Biblical Defense

[OrthodoxyUSA]

You are forgiven for invoking Jack Nicholson.

LOL!

Do you hear it too?

Forgive me...

 

[redleghunter]

In the meantime, I'd suggest saving your prayers for someone omniscient, who can actually hear you, ...

That's a good point.

 

[redleghunter]

Jesus said:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

 

[redleghunter]

Apostolic teaching/tradition on prayer:

To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified (set apart, made holy) in Christ Jesus, who are selected and called as saints (God’s people), together with all those who in every place call on and honor the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours:

 

[Friend-of-Jesus]

Praying to Mary or to any Saint in Heaven

By Tim Staples

Idolatry. Sin.

 

[ByTheSpirit]

God is my Father.

I never have to go through anyone to speak with my Father. He loves me and gave his Son for me so that i could have the privilege to approach him without any go between.

I wholly reject the idea of praying to saints. they are too occupied in God's glory to worry about my prayers anyway. I guarantee you any saint currently in Heaven is so raptured in God's presence and love they won't have one inkling to what you are saying to them.

Plus do saints in heaven know any earthly language? Do they get taught English 101 or Spanish?

 

[Brian Mcnamee]

I don't understand which part of John 14:6 they don't understand . Did they remove this verse from thier bible of they simply ignore it's egsistance?

Most people now don't realise how hard it was to actually pray to God before church age , there had to be high-priest from tribe of Levi , moreover only sons of Aaron could be high-priest and it was only once a year and not without blood !

Now you have Christ himself as the most high king and priest sitting on right hand of his Father , meaning that his work is completed , back in day Levi priests could not sit in holy of holys because there was nothing to sit on , thier job was not finished .

Since you have your king and priest praying for you right now , maybe you could pray to him only and his name is Jesus Christ not Mary , how hard is it to understand for there people ?

Hebrews 4:14-16

Every time you pray to Mary you blasphemy your high priest and king Jesus Christ , keep doing that but you will be judged for it i'm just saying what bible says about it .

have you read the psalms? full of prayers no high priest necessary; how about Daniel he prays in Ch 1 2 9 very wonderful prayers. Abraham's servant prayed when looking fro Isaac's wife.
The priest had certain roles established in the law and entering the holy of hollies was something only the high priest could do once a year. In Hebrews we are taught we can now all enter into that place where Christ has torn down the barriers The prayer to a saint of Mary is not right as imagine how could Mary hear all those prayers going up at the same time unless she was omniscient which is something only God is. If we have access to Jesus why would you go to a secondary person as there is only one mediator. The lives of many of these people are great examples for us to follow and these like Mary deserve great honor and respect. But we must not bow down before them, people bowed to Paul he forbade them, every time a man in scripture bowed to an angel they were forbade. We should only bow to God.

 

[woobadooba]

I am sorry that you do not understand that the saints are alive with Christ. It is not blasphemy to ask his mother to ask things of him. The wedding at Cana is a biblical example.

Show me one example from the Bible of anyone ever praying to Mary. Show me one verse from the Bible where the Apostles gave instruction to pray to Mary.

 

[Symph]

Ok watched the guy's video. I have trouble with catholicism. And I don't mean like, "Cause it's so bad and I wanna show everyone" or something I mean... cause I don't know how to handle it. The religion was born under false pretenses, it tried to turn christianity into paganism, it has a very... messed up history. But it's not like the well meaning catholics know this, and it's not like they can see it that way. When you're raised in something it's not so simple as just "Let me show you in the bible why you're wrong" you're talking about something these people feel at the core of their being, we can't just railroad their feelings too much.

I think the man in the video's defense of praying to Mary is remarkably weak. I don't think we can claim to so simply understand the meaning of that portion of an apocalyptic vision, but going by his logic, it still wouldn't endorse praying TO the saints. The verse says that the saints were taking these prayers TO GOD. That means the prayers intended destination, WAS GOD. If they were praying to the saints, why would the saints take the prayers up to God? If the intended recipient was the saint himself, then it's already reached it's destination, no need to take it up to God right?

But I just... I wanna be careful, catholics I don't mind if you go to confession, believe in a strange kind of prayer etc, just seek the truth and love Jesus and love people and I'm sure we'll be on the same side of this thing when it's over.

 

[Thursday]

I don't understand which part of John 14:6 they don't understand . Did they remove this verse from thier bible of they simply ignore it's egsistance?

Most people now don't realise how hard it was to actually pray to God before church age , there had to be high-priest from tribe of Levi , moreover only sons of Aaron could be high-priest and it was only once a year and not without blood !

Now you have Christ himself as the most high king and priest sitting on right hand of his Father , meaning that his work is completed , back in day Levi priests could not sit in holy of holys because there was nothing to sit on , thier job was not finished .

Since you have your king and priest praying for you right now , maybe you could pray to him only and his name is Jesus Christ not Mary , how hard is it to understand for there people ?

Hebrews 4:14-16

Every time you pray to Mary you blasphemy your high priest and king Jesus Christ , keep doing that but you will be judged for it i'm just saying what bible says about it .

So you don't pray for others? You don't ask others to pray for you?

 

[woobadooba]

So you don't pray for others? You don't ask others to pray for you?

Praying for others is not the same as praying to others.

 

[Phil 1:21]

So you don't pray for others? You don't ask others to pray for you?

Asking someone to pray for you is one thing. Erecting a statue of that person, lighting candles and burning intense to it, kneeling before it and rattling off 53 rosary beads of "Hail Person I Want To Pray For Me" is quite another.

 

[Korean-American Christian]

Praying to Mary or to any Saint in Heaven

By Tim Staples

Jesus Christ is our ONLY Intercessor

Jesus is Our Advocate with the Father
1 John 2:1, NIV My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father — Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

Jesus is Our Intercessor
Romans 8:34b, ESV Christ Jesus… is at the right hand of God…. interceding for us.

Hebrews 7:24-25, NIV but because Jesus lives forever, He has a permanent priesthood. Therefore He is able to save completely those who come to God through Hhim, because He always lives to intercede for them.

 

[FenderTL5]

Praying for others is not the same as praying to others.

That answers half of the question, what about the other part?

 

[ByTheSpirit]

Exodus 20:4-5 NIV
4“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me

 

[Symph]

I'll add that.. deification of mary is not... I don't get it. She was chosen to bare the christ based on lineage more than anything, she clearly didn't always understand her son she was upset with him for following his father's will at age 12, she asked him to perform a miracle before it was his time, the bible just makes her out to be a good jewish woman who was faithful to her task like any other biblical figure. It never makes her the point in any shape or form, it barely even mentions her! I feel like this affinity for her has to have come from some of the gnostic accounts or something cause nothing in my bible should be leading anyone to think of Mary as divine, but in the gnostic texts....

Believe me I'm thankful to Mary for saying yes to God, but she's a very small player in this story, the only key role is Jesus.

 

[Instrument150]

Praying to Mary or to any Saint in Heaven

By Tim Staples

Goodness gracious.

If this is the case, then it sounds like if you are led to pray to a particular saint for some reason, it may not get you in trouble. This happened to me the other day:

I was practicing singing, and I had chosen the song, "Mary did you know?" as the subject of my training. Halfway through my first attempt at a run through, I started singing in the spirit and my own lyrics that escaped during the bridge were as follows,

"Now what are you gonna do Mary? What are you gonna do now that you know baby, now you know Jesus got to go. He got to go to the cross... what are you gonna do?"

This led to me stripping the headset from my head, falling to my knees while weeping and begging Mary for forgiveness that it was my sin that caused her to have to witness her flesh and blood son tortured so. This went on for several minutes until I realized that I was in essence praying to the spirit of Mary, and I stopped and rebuked myself for attempting to communicate with spirits.

Did I have to rebuke myself? Or was my prayer brought to God by Mary and acknowledged because if so, PRAISE GOD

 

[Alithis]

2Th 2:15

Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

Forgive me...

Sly and slippery.
They did not teach it by word or by tradition or their epistles.so you departed from them in order to impose your own.

I don`t worship your fake Godess Mary.

 

[Faith Alone 1 Cor 15:1-4]

Sly and slippery.
They did not teach it by word or by tradition or their epistles.so you departed from them in order to impose your own.

I don`t worship your fake Godess Mary.

Finally somebody who actually reading bible , God bless you.

 

[Symph]

Goodness gracious.

If this is the case, then it sounds like if you are led to pray to a particular saint for some reason, it may not get you in trouble. This happened to me the other day:

I was practicing singing, and I had chosen the song, "Mary did you know?" as the subject of my training. Halfway through my first attempt at a run through, I started singing in the spirit and my own lyrics that escaped during the bridge were as follows,

"Now what are you gonna do Mary? What are you gonna do now that you know baby, now you know Jesus got to go. He got to go to the cross... what are you gonna do?"

This led to me stripping the headset from my head, falling to my knees while weeping and begging Mary for forgiveness that it was my sin that caused her to have to witness her flesh and blood son tortured so. This went on for several minutes until I realized that I was in essence praying to the spirit of Mary, and I stopped and rebuked myself for attempting to communicate with spirits.

Did I have to rebuke myself? Or was my prayer brought to God by Mary and acknowledged because if so, PRAISE GOD

I think in THAT situation God may actually let her know something like that, but it's not like she's a deity who you could pray to for help or something, I mean I've had times when I just thought "Paul did you ever go through stuff like this?" And wondered if God makes him aware I'm speaking to him or not, but that's really not... it's not the same as asking Paul for help instead of Jesus, that's more of a gray area I don't think we have much of a way to know this side of heaven.