Wrong. The issue is not communication in this realm, but that of praying to created beings in Heaven, which nowhere exampled or taught, despite the Holy Spirit choosing to record approx. 200 prayers in Scripture. A
And despite prayer being a most basic and common practice.
And despite the Holy Spirit being faithful to record supplication by pagans to created beings in the spiritual realm.
And despite there always being plenty of created beings in Heaven to pray to.
And only God is shown able to hear all prayer from Heaven, whereas communication btwn created beings in Heaven and in earth required both to somehow be present in the same realm.
See Revelation 5:8 and 8:3.
Angels and elders offering up prayers before the judgments of the last days in memorial (Rev. 5:8 and 8:3,4; f. Lv. 2:2,15,16; 24:7; Num. 5:15) is not a continuous postal service, and does not constitute praying to them, or the ability to hear all prayer from Heaven, which is unique to God.
And why are you arbitrarily choosing a 100 AD cutoff date when you're relying on writers from after that period for your manuscripts of Scripture and your information about what was going on before 100 AD?
Because all Scripture was written by that time.
No command, but again, there are requests and commands to pray for each other,
Which simply is not that of praying to created beings in Heaven, which you can only wish was in Scripture,c part from pagans doing it.
and the practice of specifically praying to departed saints is referred to in Revelation and is universal throughout the early Church.
Wrong. There are zero examples of the practice of specifically praying to departed saints in Revelation or anywhere else in Scripture. And the progressive contrasts btwn the NT church and the church of the 2 century onward testifies to its declension, and is not the standard. Wholly inspired Scripture is.
In addition to Revelation: "He is not the God the dead, but the living." "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. . ." And there is no teaching in Scripture that saints can't hear a prayer from earth.
None of this teaches praying to created beings in Heaven, or that they can hear all prayer. Just admit it does not rest upon the weight of of Scriptural substantiation, but is a later development of tradition. As with purgatory and other Catholic distinctives which are simply not manifest in the record of the NT church, and contrary to it.
And French historian Le Goff finds:
This was an innovation, as Salomon Reinach nicely observes: "Pagans prayed to the dead, Christians prayed for the dead." "It then becomes clear that at the time of Judas Maccabeus--around 170 s.c., a surprisingly innovative period prayer for the dead was not practiced, but that a century later it was practiced by certain Jews". (The Birth of Purgatory By Jacques Le Goff. pp. 45)
You're arguing with Webster's, not me.
Angels and elders offering up prayers before the judgments of the last days in memorial (Rev. 5:8 and 8:3,4; f. Lv. 2:2,15,16; 24:7; Num. 5:15) is not a continuous postal service, and does not constitute praying to them, or the ability to hear all prayer from Heaven, which is unique to God.<./i>
So why are they concerned in 6:9 about what's going on on earth, then?
Because all Scripture was written by that time.
And you only know this because of writers from the 2nd century and later who talked about it, so why are you implicitly citing them but then arguing they're irrelevant when they don't support your position?
Just admit it does not rest upon the weight of of Scriptural substantiation, but is a later development of tradition. As with purgatory and other Catholic distinctives which are simply not manifest in the record of the NT church, and contrary to it.
Well, Paul does command Christians to hold to the traditions he taught in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, and he also commands obedience to church authorities, so your disregard for tradition and the teaching of the early bishops is un-Biblical. But apart from tradition, there are various references to purgatorial fire and purification in the NT, as well as references to purgatory in the books of the OT that the radical Reformers arbitrarily excluded because they incorrectly assumed the Greek manuscript tradition was less authentic than the Hebrew manuscript tradition (something not even Protestant scholars would maintain today).