Well, who might that be? Certainly not the atheists I'm surrounded by.
He goes on to tell us--look here--you can communicate with them--They are not asleep in the earth--they are on the mountaintop--it's a city--with an innumerable company of angels, and there's the general assembly and church of the firstborn--and the spirits of just men made perfect--and God himself.
You think we're going to have to wait until some distant resurrection to experience this?
You can, not me, though. This is mine now and forever.
This is in direct opposition to Scripture. The only way to communicate with the dead is with demonic spiritism and even then, one is not really communicating with the dead but with familiar demonic spirits.
Remember, Molly, these verses:
"Ecc 9:5 For the living know that they shall die,
But the dead know nothing whatsoever;
There is no further hire for them; Indeed remembrance of them is forgotten."
Psa 115:17 The dead praise not the LORD,
neither any that go down into silence.
"All that your hand finds to do, do with your vigor,
for there is no doing or devising or knowledge or
wisdom in the unseen where you are going" (Ecc.9:10).
"Indeed the unseen cannot acclaim You, nor can death praise You;
and those who descend into a crypt cannot look forward to Your faithfulness.
The living! the living one! he is acclaiming You as I do today;
the father makes known to his sons Your faithfulness" (Isa.38:18,19).
In light of the above verses, the question must be asked:
How are we to take Hebrews 12?
Does Hebrews 12 say anywhere we can communicate with dead people?
Since "no one has ascended into Heaven except He Who descended, The
Son of mankind who is in Heaven," how can there be dead saints with Him?
No, dear friend, it is Catholicism which is mixed with paganism which asserts
we can pray to dead saints. When Constantine, a Roman ruler became a "christian"
and made Christianity the state religion of Rome he amalgamated the pagain religions with the Christian religion and thus was born the Catholic church. When he built the first huge church building in Rome he had half of it devoted to the Christian religion and half devoted to the pagan religion. That is what people in politics try to do, they try to please everyone.
I pray God will give all of you the grace to get this paganistic idea of immortal souls out of your lives. The only way, the only truly christian way to meet the Lord is via resurrection of the dead. Paganism does away with this need. Christianity makes the stand that resurrection is vital to our faith.
Tony
