Human Beings on Earth & in Heaven, & Angels Help to Spread God’s Grace & Salvation, Including Through Intercession
The following exchange was formerly in the combox of the short video, Did Peter, James, and John Speak to the Dead? (3-3-26, Catholic Bible Highlights). Words of Protestant commenter @el-dorado507 will be in blue. He was eventually banned as a troll. I wanted to preserve his comments as an example of how not to argue, but unfortunately when you ban someone on YouTube it wipes out their prior comments. I have preserved all of them here, in any event.
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The whole point of the transfiguration was to point people to Christ not Moses and Elijah. Peter — like many of us — missed the point. This isn’t opening the door to Roman seeking of saints, it’s closing the door and pointing people to the Son.
Matthew 17:5 (KJV) While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. What did the Son say ? Pray to God alone.
None of which addresses the point I made there and throughout the longer video that this comes from . . .
Notice what you said! Asking others to pray for us—that’s biblical. Not praying to dead people—that’s unbiblical. So I get you want to find your doctrine in Scripture but what is plain is plainly written. You are going to great means to not accept the plain meaning. By the way, there’s a reason no one in scripture pleased God by praying to Abraham or Moses etc., etc.!! Just consider it and know sometimes we have to submit to God even over our pride and traditions.
Can you find a teaching either implicit or explicit that communicates something other than the truth found in these clear verses? Can you find a man of God pleasing and obeying God by praying to a dead saint?
Matthew 6:6 – “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.”
• Explicitly teaches that prayer is addressed to God, not to humans or intermediaries.
• 1 Timothy 2:5 – “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
• Clearly establishes that direct communication with God is the route for prayer, mediated only through Christ. These two verses understood properly shut the door on any other options for prayer. You can’t find a way around this. Your insinuation is: pray to (fill in the blank) instead of directly to God. If anything goes into the blank besides Christ you’re in error.
Guys, where has a Saint who’s gone before us prayed to other dead saints as mediums [sic] and it pleased God? Where?
I’m glad you brought up Abraham. Jesus taught that prayer to him was perfectly permissible in Luke 16. This short is from a longer video that dealt with a specific question: “does God want contact between those in heaven and those on earth?” That’s a key premise underneath prayer to saints, not proof of it. But it’s used as a supposed disproof to wipe it out. So we did a “defeater of a failed defeater.”
In Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-4 [I’ll cite them below] the “elders” (dead human beings) and an angel present “prayers of the saints to God. What are they doing with them? Either God involves them n our prayers by delegation, or they have them because people asked them to pray to God.
That’s interesting. How does Luke 16 prove people on earth should pray to people on the other side? Was the man on earth who talked to Abraham or was he in the spiritual realm because he had died and moved on? You’re now comparing apples to oranges and you go to everything except clear passages dealing with prayer to attempt to prove the unprovable. Apples to oranges. If you want to prove that those in hell and heaven can communicate now you got something. Until then your case is not proving your point. Find me an example where a saint on earth prayed to another saint in heaven and it pleases God? If it pleased God He would make it known. Why did nobody do this but you do do it?
What Luke 16 proves (which is what I’ve always claimed for it) is that there is such a thing as prayer to someone other than God (a thing that Protestants claim is unbiblical). The fact that the rich man is also in Hades is secondary and not germane to the point I am making. I’ve been through these arguments literally a dozen times, through the years, because Protestants always make the same, tired, fallacious arguments every time. Prayer to an angel is also explicitly taught in the Bible. Lot did that when he was leaving Sodom, and the angel granted his request that time. So it’s a guy on earth praying to someone other than God (an angel) and his prayer is granted.
Matthew 6:6 – ‘But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.’ Explicitly teaches that prayer is addressed to God, not to humans or intermediaries.
You don’t seem to understand syllogistic logic. It does teach that prayer is properly addressed to God. What it does not do is exclude prayer also to saints or angels. In order to undeniably, unanswerably do that it would have to say, “pray only to your Father.” If it said that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation and this video wouldn’t exist, because the Catholic Church would have never taught prayer to saints and angels. But as it is, Jesus taught prayer to a man, and Lot prayed to an angel, and there are several other indirect and deductive proofs, some of which I have mentioned in this combox.
You don’t seem to understand one mediator ! Let’s play a game. Bible says there is one mediator between God and man. Bible: Man prays to God and Christ is the mediator. You say: Man prays to God and (angels, other saints, Mary) are mediators. Do you see why that’s unbiblical?
No.
It’s because you’ve ignored the fact there’s only one mediator and added additional mediums [sic]. That’s called error!
Nope; it’s called Protestant unbiblical /either/or” false dichotomy thinking. You assume that the word “mediator” means — or includes within itself — the idea that all prayer must go through Jesus to the Father, but that isn’t the context of the passage: which is that He is our only redeemer and savior. Moreover, this doesn’t even harmonize with Jesus’ own teachings on prayer, which is that we can and should pray directly to the Father [in the Lord’s Prayer], as you yourself pointed out.
None of that rules out asking dead saints and angels to intercede for us to the Father. Jesus taught that this was permissible in Luke 16. Lot’s answered prayer to an angel shows it, too. The problem here is that you want to ignore or rationalize away parts of the Bible that you have decided beforehand that you don’t want to agree with (which is heterodox, skeptical liberal theology), whereas Catholics believe in all of the Bible, not just a few carefully selected and endlessly repeated cherry-picked verses. Keep hanging around here and you will eventually pick up the ability to think and interpret the Bible biblically and consistently.
You’re reaching to prove something never taught by Scripture or example. Bible invites us to go boldly to God with our every supplication. I can’t imagine why you would think to pray to anyone but God but you can fool around with it and find out.
Was this invitation offered before the cross?
Hebrews 4:14-16 (KJV) 14 Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast [our] profession. 15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as [we are, yet] without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
We are in a totally new relationship now and you are trying to observe the old shadow that has been done away with at the cross. Please consider pushing people toward the one mediator who desires a relationship. Not towards angels and such.
You are conflating old and new covenant precepts. We have one mediator today. If you want to see prayer and mediation from the new covenant view it’s one mediator. If you want many mediators go back to the old covenant. Which is what it seems you desire to do. Let’s compare how things changed: Here are the key passages:
1️⃣ Angels as Mediators in Giving the Law
Acts of the Apostles 7:53 Stephen says to the Jewish leaders: “You who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” This indicates that angels were involved in delivering the Law. ⸻
Galatians 3:19 Paul writes: “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come… and it was put in place through angels by a mediator.” This is the clearest statement. The Law: • Was ordained through angels • Was given by a mediator ⸻
Hebrews 2:2 “For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable…” This refers to the Law as something spoken through angels. ⸻
2️⃣ Moses as the Mediator The “mediator” mentioned in Galatians 3:19 is traditionally understood to be Moses.
Deuteronomy 5:5 Moses says: “I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the LORD…” This explicitly describes Moses standing between God and the people — a mediatorial role. ⸻
Exodus 20:18–19 After God speaks at Sinai: “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” The people ask Moses to act as their go-between. ⸻
Hebrews 3:2–6 Moses is described as faithful in God’s house, but contrasted with Christ, who is greater — implying Moses had a covenant leadership/mediatorial function under the old covenant. ⸻
3️⃣ Summary of the Biblical Picture Under the Old Covenant: • God → Angels → Moses → People The Law was: • Ordained through angels (Acts 7:53; Gal. 3:19; Heb. 2:2) • Given through Moses as mediator (Deut. 5:5) This sets up the contrast in:
1 Timothy 2:5 “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Unlike the Old Covenant (multiple layers), the New Covenant has one direct mediator — Christ.
We don’t [ultimately] pray to someone besides God. We ask departed saints and angels to intercede for us to God. Even when we say “pray to saints” this is what we mean. We simply don’t think that the dead are no longer existence or don’t care about people on earth. The Church is one in heaven and on earth.
One mediator. End of the story. If you want to see prayer and mediation from the new covenant view it’s one mediator.
That’s untrue, as these passages (that take place after Christ’s death) prove:
Revelation 5:8 (RSV) And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints;
Revelation 8:3-4 And another angel came and stood at the altar 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; [4] and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. So they are mediators of our prayers in some sense, contrary to your unbiblical traditions of men
If you want many mediators go back to the old covenant.
You have missed many NT passages (RSV) that show human beings being mediators of God’s grace, prayer, and even of salvation. Here are 16:
Romans 11:13-14 . . . Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry [14] in order to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.
1 Corinthians 1:21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
1 Corinthians 3:5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.
1 Corinthians 7:16 Wife, how do you know whether you will save your husband? Husband, how do you know whether you will save your wife?
1 Corinthians 9:22 I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
2 Corinthians 1:5-6 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. [6] If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.
2 Corinthians 4:15 For it [his many sufferings: 4:8-12, 17] is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
2 Corinthians 5:20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. . . .
Ephesians 3:2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you . . .
Philippians 1:7 . . . I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.
Colossians 1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,
1 Timothy 4:16 Take heed to yourself and to your teaching: hold to that, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.
2 Timothy 2:10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus with its eternal glory.
James 5:19-20 My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and some one brings him back, [20] let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 3:1 Likewise you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives
Revelation 1:4 . . . Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne,
That’s an awful lot of Bible to ignore and contradict, in your confident but deluded proclamations of what the Bible supposedly teaches. You have a lot to learn about the Bible and it’s theology. You’re only at the “milk” stage. That’s okay. We all learn all the time. But the first step is to admit that we don’t know everything.
You seem to overlook the word grace has different meanings depending on context. Just like the word justified or righteousness can have different meanings based on context. Running all over the place cherry picking verses out of context is not disproving the truth that Christ is the one mediator between God and man.
It’s “systematic theology.” Look it up. If we Catholics provide no Bible, then we’re accused of being biblically illiterate. If we provide some 25 passages or more, as I have in this discussion, then we’re accused of misinterpreting, taking out of context, and/or “cherry-picking.” The latter is what you have clearly been doing. “1 Timothy 2:5, and did I forget about 1 Timothy 2:5, and oh, by the way, 1 Timothy 2:5 . . . ” We never denied it in the first place, so its perfectly irrelevant to keep repeating it.
You see only this and related passages; you utterly ignore mine or on the rare occasion when you do comment on one in passing, you immediately dismiss it or try to change the meaning so your false theology can survive the contact. I didn’t deny that Christ is the one mediator. Catholics don’t. Of course He is. My point is that this doesn’t rule out secondary mediators. You deny the latter; Scripture does not.
I gave the evidence and now you want to ignore it and go back to platitudes and slogans, and putting your head in the sand, so that you don’t have to interact with 17 relevant passages. It’s pathetic. And it’s all classic anti-Catholic behavior and methodology. It’s not honest, open-minded theological discussion or exegesis. You refuse to seriously discuss any Bible text except for the ones you bring up and endlessly drone on about.
Paul is not a mediator of grace in the same way God saves by grace. Good grief!
We never said he was. He and many others — indeed, potentially all of us — are mini-mediators. We participate in the spread of God’s grace and salvation, in a secondary manner, compared to Jesus being of course the primary and ultimate mediator. It’s just like prayer: dead saints and angels can assist with mediatory prayer and intercession; all the prayer always ultimately ends up going to God and is answered, or not answered by Him. This is the Bible’s teaching.
Consider what you are instructing people to do vs what Jesus instructs His people to do? You are not in agreement with Christ, sir!
I’m the one who has brought up all kinds of Scripture that you ignore. Then you falsely accuse and misrepresent what I am arguing. That’s the devil’s method (accuse and distort), not a serious, honest, open discussion about Christian theology and exegesis.
Jesus instructed his disciples to pray directly to the Father (Matthew 6:9). Never to anyone else.
He did the first, not the second (see Luke 16). The two aren’t mutually exclusive. This is your problem: the typical Protestant “either/or and false dichotomy unbiblical mentality. You don’t even think logically, before we even get to exegetical and theological issues. If you had the superior and more biblical view, you would interact with my arguments. But you don’t do the latter, so this disproves the former. It’s a classic display that our viewers and readers of the comboxes can learn a great deal from: to not argue and think as you do, because it’s contrary to the Bible.
Conclusion—why are you pointing people to other mediators?
Because the Bible does. Period. End of story. Case closed.
You know exactly what I mean by cherry picking incorrectly and changing context. If you want to pick two verses that teach the same content; that’s perfectly fine. You don’t like one mediator, I do. It’s simple. You reject it. I don’t.
You brought up the witch of Endor and a seance to prove your point. You think that is God teaching us to pray through other mediators. Sir, c’mon now ! This whole thing you are doing is not supported by anyone in Scripture. Not one disciple ever did what you want people to do. I just encourage you to stop.
Once again, you distort and misrepresent what we contended. When this started in the combox of the longer video, your original claim was that we deliberately ignored the fact that a seance was involved and tried to hide that fact, in order to make our argument. At least you acknowledged that after I corrected you, and edited your comment. The following is what we contended in the video (I cite my transcript upon which it was based):
Saul spoke to the prophet Samuel after he died (1 Samuel 28:3-25). It occurred in conjunction with a forbidden seance, but nevertheless, the real Samuel appeared and gave a true prophecy: that Saul would die the next day. If God absolutely forbade any such contact, then Samuel simply wouldn’t have appeared. Samuel’s appearance itself is obviously not forbidden because if God didn’t will that, it wouldn’t have happened. How Saul and the medium attempted to “bring him up” was what was grave sin. That’s all a given. But it doesn’t overcome the force of the argument, because it works in the same way that the rich man and Abraham works (for the purpose of this argument). A dead person is petitioned / prayed to. This violates the Protestant tenet that we are to pray to / invoke no one but God. Abraham never said that the rich man shouldn’t petition him. He refused the petition (a different thing) because it violated God’s will. . . .
Because many Protestants don’t like the idea of any contact at all between living and dead / those in the afterlife (i.e., departed from this life but still alive in terms of conscious and eternal existence), they make out that “Samuel” in the story was merely an impersonating demon.
Summing up, I wrote in the other combox:
No one is sanctioning the occult or approving of Saul seeking the medium. We made that very clear in the video. The question of whether a dead saint can be prayed to is distinct, as we made very clear also. Saul petitioned the real Samuel and Samuel never said he shouldn’t do so. He merely refused the petition because it was against God’s will.
. Pray through a witch to Samuel, get killed. Okay.
Then you made this biblically absurd argument that Moses used to mediate through prayer and now supposedly no one does that because Jesus is our mediator? That directly contradicts the inspired Scripture in James:
James 5:13-18 Is any one among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praise. [14] Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; [15] and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. [16] Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects. [17] Eli’jah 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. [18] Then he prayed again and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit.
James is not saying pray to dead people, dude.
The Bible has taught from beginning to end (Genesis to Revelation) that prayers of more righteous people have more effect, so that if we really want to get an answer from God, and His aid, we ought to find the most righteous person we can find and ask him or her to pray for us to God. That was Moses and Abraham and Samuel and Jeremiah in the Old Testament, and it’s the same in the new, with James illustrating the principle through the example of Elijah stopping the rain for three-and-a-half years. I proved the principle with scores of passages:
Bible on the Power of Prayers of the Righteous [11-16-22]
Absurd argument? I gave you exactly what the Bible said.
[the two “laugh till you cry” icons were his]
You have a choice. Either start interacting with all the Scripture I have provided now, and make rational counter-arguments, and stop repeating your inanities over and over, or you’ll be banned as a troll. My patience isn’t infinite, and I’ve never suffered fools and closed-minded people easily. You have one hour to start making those sorts of normal replies to my arguments.
I’ve replied from Scripture. You are saying praying to a witch and getting killed for breaking God’s law given to Israel is proof we should pray to dead people. I don’t think you are making a stable argument. . . . Threatening to ban me is childish.
“Threatening” to ban a loud-mouthed, pompous troll who repeatedly refuses to interact with the people who host the very combox he is participating in, with insults, and endless repetitions of fallacious or irrelevant material, is standard Internet protocol for trolls.
Everyone agrees with that, just as 99% of people would never countenance a boor who — like an obnoxious salesman who won’t shut up — came into their home, dominated the conversation, and insulted their deepest religious beliefs, while neither listening to them nor interacting with their reasoning. That’s rude, insufferable behavior, and no one puts up with it.
You have literally lied about and distorted our very arguments over and over, and do so again now, You won’t interact. You won’t learn anything. Your only useful purpose here is to be an example of the worst ways to conduct a “discussion” and how not to defend one’s own view. You have 30 minutes to start truly interacting with my arguments, as opposed to distorting what they even are and ignoring my real contentions and spouting your erroneous talking points for the 28th time.
Proverbs 26:4-5 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. [5] Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
I applied 26:5 up till now. Unless something drastically changes in the next half-hour, I’ll be applying 26:4 and saving everyone else here from more of your imbecilic inanities as well.
I’m not understanding how my going to Scripture to prove an error [sic] makes me unscriptural. Regardless, you’ve become triggered. Let’s calm down.
Time’s up. See ya and may God bless you and open up your eyes to see and your ears to hear. But even He can’t and won’t do that if you don’t allow it and refuse to cooperate. He respects human free will choices too much to force anyone to do the right thing.
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Photo credit: image related to Revelation 5:8 [Bible Art / “Free to use for non-commercial purposes with attribution.” See terms.]
Summary: God often decides to utilize human beings and angels as secondary, non-essential “mini-mediators” to accomplish His purposes, in terms of grace, prayer, & even salvation itself.
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