DOES A BIBLE TEXT TELL US TO GO TO HELP TO JESUS ONLY? 1 TIMOTHY 2:5,6
 
The First Epistle to Timothy tells us to pray for others for God wishes all people to be saved and to know the truth for “there [is only] one God, and [only] one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself as a ransom for all”.
 
Protestants say that this excludes and forbids praying to saints.
 
Catholics say it does not for “the context is about people praying for one another. When intercession is allowed then the verses cannot disprove the notion of saints doing it for us”. But the Bible advises prayer not to change God or to ask God to make some change for it defines all prayer as a manifestation of one law: “Thy will be done”. Biblical prayer is for pleasing God and nothing else not even intercession in the sense of trying to influence God to do something for another person or in any real sense.
 
When one does not know Bible teaching one can easily assume that the Catholics are talking sense and are right.
 
The Bible says that when we pray, our prayer has to be inspired by the Spirit of God to be real prayer (Romans 8:26, 27). The Spirit of God prays in us and the words we say are just inspired by him. God would not influence himself so since prayer is the Spirit's work prayer is not meant to influence God but is the person opening up to God. The Bible says that Jesus is the only mediator of intercession. Anybody who prays without the Spirit’s prompting is not really praying at all but just trying to insult and fool God. So, if I pray for my flu to be healed soon and the prayer is answered then it is not because I prayed but because the Holy Spirit prayed for me. My prayers just coincided with his or its but the petitions of the Spirit brought the answer. The Bible says we are all sinners and that for that reason our prayers are fruitless in themselves (James 3:9-12) so we are dependent on the Holy Spirit and the sinless Jesus to pray for us. James 3:12 says that we all make mistakes but these mistakes are sins for he says that they will be treated as worthy of divine judgement. Yet the Bible commands us to pray but it is better than nothing even coming from sinners.
 
The Bible at Romans 8:26 states that we are too weak to know how to pray as we ought so the Holy Spirit intercedes for us to make up for that. Praying to the saints undermines that idea totally. It's trying to ignore the Spirit so as to get lesser beings to do the interceding. If you believe the Spirit patches up what you do wrong in prayer, you will not invoke a saint. If you pray to a saint, then is the Holy Spirit fixing the faults so that the prayer will reach the saint perfected and persuasive? So the Holy Spirit then virtually prays to saints too! The Holy Spirit is not going to pray to the saints for us to pray to him for us so this refutes saint worship.
 
So, the Timothy verses are really instructing us to pray to God but not to intercede with him. The Catholic argument is wrong. Christians do not pray to change God or to tell him what to do for he knows but to humble themselves before him. That is what it is all about. Therefore intercession is immoral. Jesus does all the interceding necessary because though the Catholic Church denies this (Question 1320, Radio Replies 3) no prayer can be answered according to the Bible unless it is made through Jesus - ie given to Jesus to give it to God for you with his own input - and God is asked to listen to Jesus praying for us (Hebrews 4:14-16).
 
Jesus prayed that God would look after Jesus' followers and that God's will be done. It is quality of prayer not quantity that counts. Therefore if he was as perfect as Christians say, he made intercession for all and no other intercession is necessary. Praying to the saints would be denying his perfection.
 
Catholics would then argue that there are two kinds of mediation. The mediation of redemption is Jesus suffering on the cross to make up for our sins while the mediation of intercession is somebody praying to God to influence him for us.
 
They are saying the verses do not refute saintly intercession for they are not concerned with that kind of mediation.
 
They think that the verses are stating that there is only one mediator of redemption. Jesus redeemed us from the guilt and much of the punishment due to sin. The saints who take on some of the punishment for our sins are allegedly not redeemers because it is Jesus working in them that enables them to merit blessings. But to choose infinite or X good is to do something of infinite merit or of X value. Yet Rome says we cannot deserve grace which is ridiculous if we choose it freely. They must be redeemers. All the saints offered their deaths to God to save the world and to make atonement like Jesus so nobody can argue the verses only mean that Jesus was the only mediator who died for us. That would be stupid.
 
By the way, there are two kinds of mediators of redemption, those who take away the sin by atoning for it in doing good in its place and cancelling the guilt and those who did just take on the punishment for sin.
 
The Bible says that Jesus saved us from sin by enabling God to pardon us and that he saved us from divine retribution so Jesus is the mediator of redemption both ways.
 
The verses present Jesus as the sole human mediator of intercession because they are not saying he is our mediator because he saved us by atoning for sin but because he offered himself and the only way he could offer himself was by prayer. The words “gave himself” are grammatically what the mediator statement is about. The prayer was what saved us and made the death able to save. The verses ARE saying that Jesus alone intercedes for us.

Saint-worship and dependence on anything other than Jesus and God alone is condemned.
 
WRONG ANTI-DULIA ARGUMENTS
 
Be wary of bad refutations of Catholicism from the Bible.

“Elijah asked Elisha what he could do for him before he ascended into the sky which proves that once he was in Heaven he could do no favours.” The Bible does not say that Elijah went to the heaven of God then. If he did not gain the power to answer prayers after he went up then this does not prove that the saints with God are unable to hear and answer prayers. Perhaps the prophet made a mistake and merely thought he could no longer be of service to his friend after he was taken from him. Perhaps the prophet did not have praying for him in mind at all for he had done it often enough before.
 
“Paul declared that David had served God’s purpose in his own generation so he cannot help us with his prayers now.” Does a Catholic saying that a priest lived his vocation well mean that he or she believes that he cannot be prayed to now?
 
In Jeremiah 15:1 God says that even if Moses and Samuel stood before him to intercede he would not bless the people of Judah. God may mean that if they opposed his will and prayed for him to change he wouldn’t. He is not saying that they do not pray and cannot hear prayers or that they can either.
 
If those verses that say the dead know nothing and do not get involved in life under the sun really proved that the dead are non-existent and that their souls did not survive (which they do not) they still wouldn’t oppose saint-worship. The Bible says that the dead will rise but it never says that dead will be out of existence until then. God could immediately re-create those who have gone out of existence at death.
 
CONCLUSION
 
The Catholic practice of praying to saints is not Christian. It is idolatry – the sin that is most savagely condemned in the Bible. The Bible says these things are seriously wrong and God finds them very offensive. It condemns idolatry as the worst sin. It even ridicules those who commit it so it forbids respecting Catholic idolatry.
 
BOOKS CONSULTED
ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME, Michael de Semlyen, Dorchester House Publications, Bucks, 1993
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS CATHOLICS ARE ASKING Tony Coffey, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 2006
BORN FUNDAMENTALIST, BORN-AGAIN CATHOLIC, David B Currie, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996
COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES Benjamin B Warfield, Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1995
FROM FASTING SAINTS TO ANOREXIC GIRLS, Walter Vandereycken and Ron van Deth, Athlone Press, London, 1996
MAKING SAINTS, Kenneth K Woodward, Chatto & Windus, London, 1991
OBJECTIONS TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM, Ed by Michael de la Bedoyere, Constable, London, 1964
PURGATORY, Rev W E Kenny BD, Church of Ireland Printing, Co Dublin, 1939
SERMONS OF ST ALPHONSUS LIGUORI, Tan Books, Illinois, 1982
THE BANNER OF THE TRUTH IN IRELAND, Winter 1997, Irish Church Missions, Dublin
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
THE LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS, by Hippolyde Delehaye, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1998
THE MISSIONARY POSITION, Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Christopher Hitchens, Verso, London, 1995
THE PRIMITIVE FAITH AND ROMAN CATHOLIC DEVELOPMENTS, Rev John A F Gregg, BD, APCK, Dublin, 1928
THE VIRGIN, Geoffrey Ashe, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. London, 1976
VICARS OF CHRIST, Peter de Rosa, Corgi, London, 1995

THE WWW
The following two sites show just what a liar Mother Teresa was and her callous heart is laid bare. They show the deceit of Pope John Paul II who is eager to make a saint of her.
OPEN LETTER TO MOTHER TERESA, Aroup Chaterjee
http://website.lineone.net/~bajuu/chatlet.htm
MOTHER TERESA THE FINAL VERDICT Aroup Chaterjee
http://www.meteorbooks.com/index.html
This fascinating book reveals shockers such as that the pope has beatified Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb who stood idly by as Jews and Communists were hounded to their deaths and the notorious fascist Cardinal Schuster of Milan.

BIBLE VERSION USED
The Amplified Bible