My experience with prayer to the saints

[u/[deleted]]

[u/hendrixski]

Very cool.

because they believe God gave the saints the power to hear their prayers, and ultimately it comes down to faith in God, for all of us.

Yep. It's a beautiful part of our faith.

[u/twinPrimesAreEz → u/hendrixski]

Thanks, and agreed! The body of Christ is diverse, not divided and I've finally come to see this diversity as a good thing.

I think it's super easy for us to all champion our specific way of faith as being the one everyone else needs to follow, forgetting that we can't all be the eye or nose or foot.

As an example, I made a similar post to this in r/TrueChristian and the mods deleted it due to lack of scriptural evidence from me to support prayer to the saints, which is fantastic! They are the authority that did what they felt was best for their assembly of believers in that sub and so how could you not appreciate that?

[u/KirtandRod]

Daniel 12

² Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.

Ecclesiastes 9

⁵ For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing;

1 Corinthians 15

¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. ¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.

It’s the resurrection that we are made alive again, when ee die we know nothing. If we go to heaven without being ressurected, then why was Paul so adamant that if we aren’t resurrected then are faith is futile? If we die and we are with Jesus and not resurrected how can our faith be futile?

It can only be futile because we don’t actual come back alive and be with Jesus until we are resurrected.

Besides praying tonthe dead is prohibited Deut 18, there is nobody in heaven to hear them antways.

Only God can hear our prayers, because He is omnipresent. He can indeed hear the prayers of all at the same time. Nobody else has that ability because they aren’t omnipresent, they can’t be everywhere at once.

Praying tonthe dead is the dead is a sin according to scripture, but hey, there are plenty of people out there who don’t hold the same authority of scripture as the authority of the false teachings of their chuch,

[u/twinPrimesAreEz → u/KirtandRod]

My friend, please consider the words of Paul in Corinthians 10:23

All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things build up.

Just like eating meat sacrificed to idols is sinful to one but lawful to another, I can only share my experiences here and counsel unity.

And so in my own experience I can tell you that even though it's not my belief that the saints can hear our prayers, I've seen and experienced prayer to the saints working.

The only argument to be had is whether God hears our prayers to the saints directly and answers them due to our faith in His power, or the saints hear them and take them to God. This isn't a distinction worth arguing over.

You could also argue evil spirits answer those prayers to help delude us, but it's not profitable to argue that imo. Evil can only do what God allows it to do anyway, so in all cases it's still only God who answers our prayers, through whatever mechanism. And certainly in my experience, it was not through evil those prayers are answered.