“Thank you for honoring these beautiful hymns and prayers. Do you have any more?”
Honor them? I did no such thing. I consider them to be obscene. A profane example of idolatry. I do not consider it “beautiful,” for I consider prayer to anyone but God to be worse than any obscenity I can imagine. You’re free to believe and do what you like, but don’t accuse me of honoring your practices. At no time have I ever believed that the Christians in heaven have the divine attributes of God, and can hear it and understand it the world over, billions at a time, thus making them equal with God in power and knowledge.
"At no time have I ever believed that the Christians in heaven have the divine attributes of God, and can hear [us] and understand [us] the world over,True - and well said.billionsan infinite number at a time, thus making them equal with God in power and knowledge."
I changed "billions" to "an infinite number," because the number you gave --- billions --- is well within human capacity on this earth even now. Digital media can efficiently handle billionfold communications in a flash. As for understanding and responding: well, computers don't quite "understand" in a human sense, but they do analyze, transmit, interpret, and respond. They are our servants, these cyber-machines, and through fiberoptics, satellite relay, and nanotechnology, they (and thus we) can do billionfold hearing (reception and analysis) and response even now.
Understand that the difference between listening to one person, and listening to a billion, is quantitative, not qualitative. If we can process billions of messages at once now, in 25 years --- if the Lord tarries --- we will be able to do trillions. And maybe some humans, the information elite, will have cybernetic interfaces in their brains by then. Will that make the information elite all divine? Ha. Not even close.
The divine power is infinite, not merely numeric. Just as infinite power is infinitely greater than onefold or twofold, it is likewise infinitely greater than a billionfold.
In other words, "a billion", even a billion to the billionth power, is still infinitely smaller than what exists within God's power.
Do you honestly think that a communications capacity that is even now commonplace--- to "hear" and "respond to" a chugga-bugga-zillion communications at a time --- seriously rivals Almighty God?
Do you understand that when one is in heaven with God, one is outside of time and space? Time and space no longer have any limiting power over the angels and the saints who are in the presence of God.
So if Mary, or the Martyr Stephen, or St. Michael the Archangel, can hear many people at once, it would not surprise me in the least. Even that pathetic wizened beaten dud, the fallen spirit Satan, can probably do that. And all the citizens of Heaven are greater than Satan.
I don't hold your mischaracterizations against you. What I think you were getting at --- and Catholics would agree with you on this --- is that, compared to the eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God, all creatures -- Angels and Archangels, Pariarchs, Prophets, Mary, Peter, Paul, Andrew, James, John, Aquila, Priscilla, Tabitha, Magalene, Barnabas, saints in heaven and saints on earth, internet wizards, computer sorcerers, cybernetic wankers and all --- are on a radically lower plane. Smaller than microbes by comparison.
Not equal to God. Not nearing parity. Not even close.