1 Tim 2:1-4: First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good, and pleasing to God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Do you believe in a universal Church? Do you believe in the Communion of Saints? If you do, then you must understand that being a universal Church, it is in all places (universal!), including Heaven. If you believe in the Communion of Saints, then you must understand that the Saints in Heaven are part of our Christian community and we can turn to them as we turn to each other for prayers and intercessions.
Please find an OT prayer or Psalm directed towards Moses or any other human being. You won’t find one. When Joshua prayed he went directly to God and did not invoke the name of Moses nor seek the departed Moses as an intercessor.
1 Tim 2:1-4: First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good, and pleasing to God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
If this is your reply, you’ve misread either the question or the passage. Big difference in praying for someone and praying to someone.
And those prayers are directed to Whom and through Who?
The former does not mean the other, as it is ignores the manifest separation and distinction btwn realms. In which only the Lord is shown being addressed in prayer to Heaven, and able to hear multitudes of prayers. That alone, and the absence of even one prayer by a believer to anyone else in Heaven, is enough to disallow Prayer to departed saints (PTDS) . No one can justify such an utter absence for what is such a common practice. Thus while RCs attempt to extrapolate support from Scripture for it, yet in reality Scripture is not their basis for assurance doctrine, nor is actual proof from it necessary, but this is a tradition of men.
The Bible teaches abundantly on prayer, and in order to warrant PTDS (praying to departed saints in heaven) one must find an approved example or teaching of it, and some insufficiency in Christ or as regards immediate directly access to Him. Yet the Bible provides just the opposite and clearly so, as in all the multitudes of prayers in the Bible, the Holy Spirit provides zero examples of any believers praying to anyone in Heaven but the Lord, and the only persons who do make offerings and supplication to the departed are pagans. (Jer. 7:17-19).
In addition, nowhere in any instructions on prayer is any believer directed to pray to anyone but the Lord (not “our mother who art in Heaven”). Nor is any other intercessor in Heaven mentioned, and rather than any insufficiency in Christ, the Holy Spirit explicitly exalts His unique position and attributes, in which He alone is uniquely able to help us because He alone was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin, and alone is exalted as Lord and High priest, and is set forth as the One believers have immediate access to in seeking grace. (Heb. 2:17-18; 4:13-16
Moreover, the holy of holies in which believers have boldness to enter through the blood of Jesus Christ, (Heb. 10:19) which the Old Testament type exampled, was never a place in which one was met with secretaries, but the high priest communed directly with God, and as Christ is our high priest, through Him believers have direct access by one Spirit unto the Father. (Heb. 10:19-22; Eph. 2:18)
In light of this the advocate of PTDS has no real support or warrant from Scripture, and is left seeking to extrapolate this out of analogy between earthly communications, supposing a complete correspondence to that between earth and heaven, and or a "God can do anything" hermeneutic, but which is a strained and problematic exegesis which cannot overcome the weight of evidence against it, and such attempts are typical of cults when faced with the same.