IN THE BIBLE, DOES ANYONE EVER ASK [”PRAY TO”] A DEAD MAN TO INTERCEDE OR INTERVENE TO FULFILL A REQUEST?
Absolutely:
LUKE 16:24 (RSV) And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Laz’arus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.’
This is the Abraham of the Bible: long dead by that time, being asked to do something by a “rich man” (16:19, 22), traditionally known as Dives (which is simply a Latin word for “rich man”). His answer was, in effect, “no” (16:25-26). Thus failing in that request, he prays to him again for something else:
LUKE 16:27-28 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father [KJV: “I pray thee therefore, father”], to send him to my father’s house, [28] for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’
His request is again declined (16:29). So, like any good self-respecting Jew (Moses even “negotiated” with God), he argues with Abraham (16:30). But Abraham states again that his request is futile (16:31).
So, the next time anyone tells you that you can’t “pray to” or request intercession from a dead man, or anyone but God, show him this passage and let the fun begin!
It also shows (in a fascinating way) that not only can dead saints hear our requests, they also have some measure of power to carry them out on their own. Abraham is asked to “send” a dead man to appear to Dives’ brothers, in order for them to avoid damnation (yet another [potential] instance of dead men — like the prophet Samuel to Saul — communicating to those on the earth). Abraham doesn’t deny that he is able to potentially send Lazarus to do such a thing; he only denies that it would work, or that it is necessary (by the logic of “if they don’t respond to greater factor x, nor will they to lesser factor y”).
Therefore, it is assumed in the story that Abraham could have possibly done so on his own. And this is all told, remember, by our Lord Jesus. It is disputed whether it is a parable or not (several textual factors suggest that it is not; e.g., parables do not use proper names), but even if it is, it nevertheless cannot contain things that are untrue, lest Jesus be guilty of leading people into heresy by means of false illustrations or analogies within His common teaching tool: the parable.
Peace in Christ.
This parable does not have those implications.
Pray can simply mean asking in the natural sense, such as, “I pray, sir, could you tell me how to get to such and such?” It’s antiquated in English, however but is found used that way in older Bible translations. It does not mean “prayer” as we understand “Lord, teach us to pray,” as the disciples asked Jesus.
Prayer in the biblical sense means people in this world asking those outside this world, in the invisible spiritual realm, for things, and the Bible teaches that we are only to pray to Living God, not other created beings. Angels certainly appear to bring prayers to God like messengers, but they aren’t shown to have the authority to answer them themselves.
In this parable, the rich man is no longer in this world and addressing Abraham, but with him in the afterlife although there is an impassable gulf between them. So the rich man isn’t praying to him, but talking to him. And it’s natural he would. He is an unbeliever, and he knows by Cont’d
now that God won’t answer him, so he turns to someone around him whom he knows God accepts, and he tries him out. We see from his request that Abraham send Lazarus to him that he doesn’t know what Abraham can and can’t do, and much about the place He’s come to or no doubt spiritual matters either. He rejected the spiritual in his life. The next request and response, though, allows on the face of it the interpretation that he could send Lazarus back to the rich man’s brothers, but it in no way necessitates it. Jesus’ parables leave many aspects of what they talk about unaddressed, often it seems because the answer is something the Lord doesn’t choose to reveal to us right now. I do believe that this parable has to be a glimpse of the afterlife, but from what’s given, you can make an equally good but insufficient case both for and against Abraham’s ability to send Lazarus to someone in this world, and one reason why we would be kept in the dark is that it would be too hard for us to understand, reveal things we shouldn’t know now, create confusion, including more prayers to the dead as what was said could be twisted, and because the Lord’s point was about unbelief and its relationship to greed.