all of your inane questions can be answered with one verse:
Rev 8:4 And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.
Thanks, Good Quote. I learned something today...
“Rev 8:4 And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.”
Those are our prayers not those of departed saints. So no you have not answered the questions and quite silly to think that your one statement would answer them...they are precisely worded and require careful answering.
I am just very grateful that Christ would never consider any question I might have as “inane”...you just revealed your true colors with that statement. Additionally we know the very best teachers of His word would never make such a statement as well...only those full of themselves and pride from within. Someday you too will learn truth....willing or not you will surely know.
Therefore this conversation is done...I do not respond to people who would at any time consider my questions as “inane”...their hearts are far from His.
(Rev 8:3,4) “And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.”
Which, in the absence of any example of any believer praying to anyone else in heaven but the Lord, or instructions thereto, is invoked in support of prayer to the depart, as its presumes that this shows that God had not received them directly, and thus there is need for the angels to send them up to God, and out of which the need for departed saints as intercessors is then extrapolated.
At best, this might inspire but not sanction prayer to angels, but this does not show the need for praying to such as intercessors, or otherwise establish that God does not directly receive individual prayers, any more than the Old Testament saints had to wait for the priest to offer up incense, (Lev 16:12,13; Lk. 1:9,10) this being emblematic of prayer, ( Psa. 141:2; Rev. 5:8) before God would receive them.
The angels here are not making intercession for others, nor continually gathering batches of “knee mail” for God to answer, and the subject here is not about answering prayer. Rather, the
angelic function here is understood as collectively offering the prayers with incense as a memorial, representing the pleas of the saints, preparatory for judgment upon the earth which hated them.
In Rev. 5:8 we see that the 24 elders have “golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints” and it is again in a memorial sense, just David said that God had all his tears in His bottle. (Ps. 56:8)
Rather than having batches of prayers constantly being delivered for God to answer, the Bible declares that believers may “come boldly before the throne of grace,” (Heb. 4:15) being able to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, (Heb. 10:19) which certainly does not infer rerouting of an angelic secretary. Praise the Lord, to whom we are exhorted to draw nigh to, (Ja. 4:8) and not to angels or any others. The temple is where God met with man.
As for intercessors, it is Jesus who ever makes intercession for the redeemed, (Heb. 7:25) as His Spirit in the saints makes intercession for them according to the will of God. (Rm. 8:26,27)