Praying to the Saints
If it is literal then the only saints who could hear our prayer would be those who were resurrected with Jesus and they would not be in heaven because it says those in the first resurrection would live and reign with Christ in his spiritual kingdom a thousand years.
It says the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.
Meaning they actually lived again here on earth, and the ones who were not in the first resurrection will live again here on earth which may be happening now.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
Ecclesiastes 9:5
For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything
I wonder who the saints were in the churches that Paul wrote his epistles to.
Had the Catholic church, which didn’t exist at the time, somehow manage to canonize them and Paul was writing his letters to some kind of elite special group of really spiritual persons instead of all believers everywhere?