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“Note the inherent illogic here. Thus by your lights Peter’s inter-cessionary powers vanish as soon as he is dead!! While Peter was alive, the crippled beggar could not have obtained his recovery by direct prayer to God.”

.....And yet you put forth this passage of Scripture as if it teaches that believers on earth are to pray to departed believers, when it simply does not teach that. You have an idea you are reading into the passage.

“GOD chose NOT to include them in Holy Writ.” Who told you this? John says they could simply not all have all be written down. “

.....God can do anything. He did not. John says, “I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” The operative word is “suppose.”

.....Your view has a larger problem. Since those things Jesus “did” are unknown, it is a meaningless passage when it comes to supporting your claim. We simply do not have them. Nor do we know what they are.

“It may well be reasonably inferred that John is saying that followers of Christ not depend only on what was written down.”

.....No. A reasonable person would not take that specific passage and make that claim.

“There is no evidence anywhere in the passage that the Elders were prayed to by the people on earth. It just shows the prayers of saints being presented as incense to God. But this is in contradiction to what you wrote on (1) above. Incense in the old Testament was always seen as a form of prayers rising to God.”

Even if we accept your claim above, it falls short of anyone praying to a saint in Scripture.

“No list of traditions” This is beyond absurd. Christ established a Church, so that His Church will carry out faithfully the oral traditions of the day.”

.....Please provide a passage that says the purpose of the church is to carry out oral traditions. When you do that, we have something to talk about. Until then, it is an opinion.

“Since when should all this be written down when John in 21: 25 explicitly states that many things Chirst said and did were not written down.”

John says that the things that are written were written so that we would believe and in believing have eternal life.

Still waiting for that Scriptural proof. So far you’ve posted your closely held hopes and opinions.

Best

So you are reduced to quibble about the word “suppose” against a 2000-year Church history whose theological foundations have been settled not only by the early Church fathers, but by every reputable eminent theologian both Catholic, and non-Catholic scholars and theologians who have converted to Catholicism.

Besides, the word “suppose” is a Protestant invention. It’s not found in the official Catholic Bible which is what counts since it is the Church that infallibly assembled the books of the Bible. Before, the written word was sorted out, there was the one, true, Catholic Church, then, now, and forever.

The Douay-Rheims Bible tells us in John 21: 25

“But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written.”

The Word of God both written and UNWRITTEN matters, and only the Catholic Church continues to hold its sacred traditions, rituals, and liturgies as embraced by its saints, martyrs, and stigmatists, and all its followers.

This is why today Protestantism has been reduced to a caricature with multiple conflicting beliefs and as many “truths” as there are people who think they can crack open the pages of the Bible and authoritatively thump out God’s Word like the Creflo Dollars, Billy Grahams, Jimmy Swaggarts, Benny Hinns, Rev. Jeremiah Wrights; and very other scam artists of varying degrees who have used scripture to amass personal fortunes for themselves, and families, and in-laws, and sometimes with lethal consequences like the David Koresh’s of this world.