Saints And Deuteronomy

[Anastasia13]

Hi

So I was talking with a guy I used to know about saints. He brought up Deuteronomy as a way of explaining why praying to saints is wrong. Here is the reference he used.

Deuteronomy 18:9 “When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, 11 or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. 12 For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, and because of these abominations the LORD your God drives them out from before you.

I don't know what version he used, but this is New king James. In his version, "one who calls up the dead" in verse 11 was probably where it said necromancers or something like that.

Anyways, how do you defend saints when this is thrown at you?

[Archaeology cat]

Ask him if Jesus sinned by speaking with Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration. After all, they were physically dead at the time (Moses at least; Elijah didn't die).

[Archaeology cat]

Also, bring up that the Saints, while physically dead, are alive in Christ in Heaven. After all, God is the God of the living, as Jesus tells us. Jesus says this in the same sentence as saying that God is the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob". I can't remember the verse off-hand, though.

Hope that helps. Those arguments don't convince everyone, but they're the ones I can think of.

[thessalonian]

Necromacy is conjuring up the dead for the purpose of gaining information from them. We do not gain any information from them. We do see in Revelatiosn 5 and 8 that our prayers, represented by smoke go up to heaven and added to that smoke is incense which the scripture tell us is the prayers of the saints in heaven added to ours. So they pray for us. We know that nothing separates them and us from the love of God, including death as we are told in Rom 8:38 and so they are still members of the body of Christ spoken of in Rom 12 and 1 Cor 12. The body of Christ works together for the good of all and so we draw the conclusion that those in heaven can and do pray for us. We also know that God is the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (note abraham Issac and Jacob were physically dead). Therefore we know that those in heaven are alive.

One may complain that those in heaven cannot hear what is going on. They will even use Eccl 9:5 which says that the dead know nothing. But one must remember that this is an old testament passage and that Christ was the first fruits of those who went to heaven first of all. It is clear from passages that say that "there is great rejoicing in heaven over 1 repentant sinner" and in Matt 12 "you shall sit on thrones juding the 12 tribes" and Heb 12:1 "we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses" that those in heaven must know what is going on here or there could be know way of them knowing someone repented, no way of them rightly judging and no way of them being a witness. If you want chapter and verse I can look up the passages I referred to.