Prayers to the dead - not in the Bible

[NW82]

Thank you for not even reading my post.

I read your post. You referred to the Didache and Ignatius. The Didache, also known as The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is a brief anonymous early Christian treatise dated by most modern scholars to the first century, e.g. extra biblical text. Also Ignatius was just a man like anyone else, and hold no greater credence of his opinion than any other.

 

[NW82]

Prayers to the dead? Certainly not! However, Jesus Christ made it clear that those who follow Him "will never die". It is those living Christians who have preceded us into eternal glory whom we ask to pray for us, just as we ask other Christians still living on Earth to pray for us.

You are mis-quoting. The bible clearly indicates it is appointed to man once to die. Christ said this that believe in him shall never die, and yet people clearly die every day. Christ referred to the second, spiritual, death. We all die, we who believe will be resurrected to glorified bodies and then so shall we ever be with the Lord. Unless we all missed it, the resurrection hasn't occurred yet.

 

[☦Marius☦]

I read your post. You referred to the Didache and Ignatius. The Didache, also known as The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is a brief anonymous early Christian treatise dated by most modern scholars to the first century, e.g. extra biblical text. Also Ignatius was just a man like anyone else, and hold no greater credence of his opinion than any other.

You are mis-quoting. The bible clearly indicates it is appointed to man once to die. Christ said this that believe in him shall never die, and yet people clearly die every day. Christ referred to the second, spiritual, death. We all die, we who believe will be resurrected to glorified bodies and then so shall we ever be with the Lord. Unless we all missed it, the resurrection hasn't occurred yet.

Resurrection and given glorified bodies is two different things. The second being a physical resurrection. Since the soul is eternal we are given either eternal life or eternal death. It's that simple.

And Ignatius met Christ and studied directly under the apostles. How does that not make him authoritative?

 

[GingerBeer]

I read your post. You referred to the Didache and Ignatius. The Didache, also known as The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is a brief anonymous early Christian treatise dated by most modern scholars to the first century, e.g. extra biblical text. Also Ignatius was just a man like anyone else, and hold no greater credence of his opinion than any other.

Interesting that you say that. The letter to the Hebrews is anonymous and likely first century too and Paul was a man (some say Paul wrote Hebrews) like anyone else. Do you also hold it in low esteem because you give no greater credence to Paul's opinions that you do to Ignatius'?

 

[gideon123]

This post is extremely confused.

Where does Christ tell you to establish a relationship with people who have died, and risen?? Surely the whole point is to have a direct relationship with Christ himself. No-one else can save you.

It is true that those with real faith will be saved. Of course! But if they are saved, we dont need to pray for them, or to them. They are already saved.

And all will be judged by God. And that outcome is completely up to God.

If you start advocating prayers to 'dead people' then you begin to walk down a dangerous path. Salvation was given to Christ alone. Focus on that objective ... it is more than enough in the troubled world.

And please remember what happened to King Saul when he summoned the Spirit of Samuel from the grave. The outcome was extremely bad, and not what Saul had in mind.

 

[NW82]

Resurrection and given glorified bodies is two different things. The second being a physical resurrection. Since the soul is eternal we are given either eternal life or eternal death. It's that simple.

And Ignatius met Christ and studied directly under the apostles. How does that not make him authoritative?

Because it isn't scripture. Also have no scriptural evidence for what you just posted here.

 

[NW82]

Interesting that you say that. The letter to the Hebrews is anonymous and likely first century too and Paul was a man (some say Paul wrote Hebrews) like anyone else. Do you also hold it in low esteem because you give no greater credence to Paul's opinions that you do to Ignatius'?

Hebrews and the letters of Paul are scripture, the didache isn't.

 

[GingerBeer]

Hebrews and the letters of Paul are scripture, the didache isn't.

I think that the didache is holy scripture in the Ethiopian church. You might reject it. Protestants generally reject all but 66 books. That does not mean that Protestants are right. It's just a tradition - a man-made tradition - that Protestants follow.

 

[☦Marius☦]

This post is extremely confused.

Where does Christ tell you to establish a relationship with people who have died, and risen?? Surely the whole point is to have a direct relationship with Christ himself. No-one else can save you.

It is true that those with real faith will be saved. Of course! But if they are saved, we dont need to pray for them, or to them. They are already saved.

And all will be judged by God. And that outcome is completely up to God.

If you start advocating prayers to 'dead people' then you begin to walk down a dangerous path. Salvation was given to Christ alone. Focus on that objective ... it is more than enough in the troubled world.

And please remember what happened to King Saul when he summoned the Spirit of Samuel from the grave. The outcome was extremely bad, and not what Saul had in mind.

We don't pray for the saints, we ask them to pray for us. If you have ever asked a family member or friend to pray for you then it is essentially the same thing. Except we believe since the Saints are now perfect in their prayer and undistracted they can pray more effectively.

And Saul was using a medium to contact someone not resurrected in the Christian faith.

 

[☦Marius☦]

Hebrews and the letters of Paul are scripture, the didache isn't.

Actually none of them were "scripture" until the canon was established around the 500s. The only reason it was narrowed down to the books we have in the NT were to state the books needed for the individual believer- assuming that the believer would already be following the traditions of the Church.

The Irony is that the NT canon was established as part of Apostolic Church tradition, not to be separated from it- yet we treated like criminals for not throwing away all the other Apostolic wisdom and teachings just because we agreed 25 (because Revelation and Hebrews have always been controversial) books were definitely of the 12.


What really defines the authority of the a person's writing's is the power they have. The apostles were given the power to do public works because it proclaimed the authority of what they preached. And Paul was given this gift as well. But they were not the only ones. There were other church fathers and martyrs who did wonders and healing.

 

[Jipsah]

Are you looking to discuss these practices? I just am not sure about the purpose of the thread.

Easy, really. The purpose is to say "Catholics, bad!" "My church is red hot, their church ain't diddly squat!" "We rule, they drool!" "We're number one! We're number one!"

Same as always.

 

[Jipsah]

What does the following commandment mean?

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

It means you'd better stop taking pictures, of anyone or anything.

 

[Cis.jd]

This post is extremely confused.
Where does Christ tell you to establish a relationship with people who have died, and risen?? Surely the whole point is to have a direct relationship with Christ himself. No-one else can save you.

Sir, asking others to pray for you doesn't eliminate any direct relationship to christ. By your logic, then shouldn't your connect groups to pastors be forbidden to pray for each other or even with each other?
Revelation 5:8 is an example that heavenly beings can still pass prayers to God. The beauty about the Holy Spirit is that regardless of the physical death we are all still connected to him.

It is true that those with real faith will be saved. Of course! But if they are saved, we dont need to pray for them, or to them. They are already saved.

But not all saved people will just have their sins swept under the rug, especially if these are sins against other people that they haven't payed yet.

If you start advocating prayers to 'dead people' then you begin to walk down a dangerous path. Salvation was given to Christ alone. Focus on that objective ... it is more than enough in the troubled world.

Every old abrahamic to first christian belief prays to the people who are in heaven because we believe that no one is actually dead in heaven and are much more closer to God than us here on earth. If you think asking others to pray for you is some what diminishing towards Christ salvation, then maybe you should stop going to your church because your pastor actually does pray for the people attending that very day.

And please remember what happened to King Saul when he summoned the Spirit of Samuel from the grave. The outcome was extremely bad, and not what Saul had in mind.

What did King Saul summon him for and how did he do it?

 

[Basil the Great]

I did some research on this subject as it relates to Judaism. What I found there was most interesting. Apparently some Jews visit cemeteries and pray to God in the presence of their loved one's grave, in hopes that the deceased family member will hear their prayer and pray to God for them. However, it is deemed inappropriate by many/most Jews to pray directly to dead relatives. At first I felt that the difference was meaningless, but I guess there is still some difference between the two. Now as to the other matter, I have not found anything within Jewish tradition which forbids praying for the dead.

 

[Basil the Great]

The reason that most Protestants seem to be against praying for the dead is that they feel that it is useless, as most of them believe that one's fate is sealed at the time of death. However, if one truly comes to the conclusion that God exists outside of time and space as we know it, then why would it not be possible for God to use our prayers after the death of a loved one, retroactively in a sense, and perhaps offer a soul a chance at salvation at the moment of their death? Also, we cannot totally exclude the possibility that there might be some sort of intermediate state after death for some souls. I personally believe that such is probably true, not for everyone, but for some Christians and probably for some non-Christians. Jewish tradition certainly supports the idea of an intermediate state, though they limit it's time length to one year maximum. We all know that Purgatory is deeply rooted with Catholic doctrine and tradition. The Eastern Orthodox do not define how prayers for the dead help, but they do believe that they are valuable. The bottom line is that we cannot know for certain what happens after death. We do not know if prayers help, but they sure cannot hurt. We do know that the practice of praying for the dead goes back to the early days of the Church, so the early Christians apparently dismissed any possible connections of the practice to Necromancy.