You seem to be consistently opposed to intercessory prayer. Is this just for yourself or for every Christian?
Or has our gaze strayed to peripheral spirits?
Have the saints in heaven devolved to "other-dimensional" and now "peripheral spirits"? Is the body of Christ now divided with a section called "perepheral spririt"?
There is a German phrase: "Herr Pastor." You can look it up on Wikipedia, where it says: "The leadership style of the Herr Pastor was, to some degree, a benevolent dictatorship in the sense that the Herr Pastor held supreme decision making authority."
Here is an example where an earthly saint, someone who likely (tho surely not all) wound up in heaven. But, in their time here on earth, they operated as a "peripheral spirit." They assumed the role of a "benevolent dictator"--filling a perceived vacuum where there was none.
There is one Lord in the Church. That role has not been evacuated. Jesus Christ is the Head of the church. That role has not been evacuated. Jesus Christ is the true Pope of the church. The pope is not the head of the church; and the priest or pastor of any local church is not the head of that church. Everybody else is simply a servant-leader operating with delegated authority.
So, is the invisible Body of Christ as an organism divided? (No!) Is the visible Body of Christ that manifests itself in organizations and institutions divided? (Often!)
If you haven't seen what it's like when a pro player or a youth association/league player starts acting like they are the coach and takes matters into their own hands, then I can understand why you don't understand this concept of organizational divisiveness and "peripheral spirits."
If a player doesn't know his proper role & steps into a hat they are not meant to don, their sideline and on-the-field antics distract the rest of the team from following the authority of the coach. That player may eventually get his act together and the team becomes re-unified as one.
When the play clock is winding down, you as a quarterback don't have time to send 3 players to the sidelines to talk to the coach on your behalf. You need to look to the sideline coach play-caller and signal back & forth as to what the play is going to be.
When you're waiting to step into the batter's box, you don't have time to go through a sign language routine several times to communicate to other players on the bench to talk to the coach on your behalf. Get the signal from the third base coach; if you don't understand it, call time out and go talk to him (not the players on the bench).
My point is we all have limited time on this earth. Are we praying enough to God? Jesus? No!!! So why be further distracted by praying to spirits who will never answer our prayers! God will!
Do you understand what intercessory prayer means? [D-fendr, #474]
Each time I highlight how overfocusing on the "great cloud of witnesses" can possibly crowd out the One who will return on the clouds, I get this same response thrown up: "That I just don't understand intercessory prayer." (A response that Campion and perhaps others kept surfacing earlier in this thread).
So, again, let me highlight what several of us agree/disagree on:
We agree intercessory prayer (having fellow saints lift up your concerns) is vital [tho D-fendr & Campion deem me as "suspect" in this area].
We seem to agree that this complements rather than replaces praying directly to God [we agree on in this in theory; I think we might disagree on how this actually plays itself out in the practice realm].
We agree that heavenly saints intercede on behalf of earthly ones [we disagree on whether they are privvy to all/most of our prayers being lifted up to heaven].
This last point applies to earthly saints as well as heavenly ones! Just because we all agree that it's important for our fellow earthly saints to lift up prayers on our behalf, doesn't mean that 99.9999% of earthly saints have access to them!!! Imagine if you told me that 99.9999% of earthly saints don't access your prayer petitions & I responded the way D-fendr & Campion have responded to me: "You just don't understand intercessory prayer."
It doesn't matter if we each agree of the import of including the saints in intercessory prayer! If saints, whether they be above OR below, can't access those prayers, then it's a mute point [pun unintended].
Our differences of opinion, then, are boiled down primarily to the issue of what dimensional barriers exist--barriers that affect communication access. But the foundation that this difference sits upon is ultimately bigger: Scriptural guidance.
You seem to step out in faith minus Scriptural guidance. And I say, if this was important enough for us to do, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or the apostles would have guided us to do so in Scripture. The Holy Spirit promised us to "lead us into ALL truth" (John 16).