Praying for the dead?

Question

I was just reading the blog of a Catholic and in it he quote 2 Maccabees 12:46 "It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins." Is praying for the dead supported anywhere else in scripture? The author of 2 Maccabees states that there may be errors in that book. Since both Catholics and Protestants believe the Bible to be divinely inspired doesn't the author of a book of the Bible saying there may be errors in it mean that specific book should not be considered inspired and thus doctrine should not be taken from it?

2Maccabees 15:38 So these things being done with relation to Nicanor, and from that time the city being possessed by the Hebrews, I also will here make an end of my narration.
2Ma 15:39 Which if I have done well, and as it becometh the history, it is what I desired: but if not so perfectly, it must be pardoned me.

Sawyer - it is by the Catholic church.

MaH - I disagree with you about it being a literary affectation. That is not how it reads at all.

tebone0315 - No when I am at a funeral I do not pray for the deceased. Nor does the preacher pray for Heaven to accept them. They are dead and have already been judged. Praying for them would be pointless. I pray for their families who are here and still have a chance.

Answer 1

The Catholic church believes dead souls go to purgatory and stay there till they "earn" enough prayers to get out... ridiculous...Christian teaching puts saved, dead souls in heaven in the twinkling of an eye.... The dead need no prayers.

Answer 2

On Purgatory
http://scripturecatholic.com/purgatory.html

Catholic Encyclopedia on Purgatory
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm

More on Purgatory
http://www.catholic.com/library/Purgatory.asp

The Roots of Purgatory
http://www.catholic.com/library/Roots_of_Purgatory.asp

Purgatory, Fact or Fiction?
http://home.inreach.com/~bstanley/purg.htm

Purgatory
Purification necessary for heaven Heb 12:14; Rev 21:27
An intermediate state of purification Mt 5:26; Lk 12:58-59
Degrees of expiation of sins Lk 12:47-48
Can be aided by prayer 2Mac 12:45
Salvation; but only as through fire 1Cor 3:15
Temporary agony 1 Cor 3:15; Mt 5:25-26
Christ preached to spiritual beings 1 Pet 3:19
Nothing unclean shall enter heaven Rev 21:27
Sacrifice for the dead 2 Mac 12:43-46
A reality beyond the two realms of Heaven and Earth a place between or near 2 Cor 5:10; Rev; 5: 2;3 Rev; 5:23; Phil 2:10; Matt 18: 23-25 Luke 23:42
No forgiveness in this age nor in the age to come. Mt 12:32
"Extra" suffering. Col 1:24; 2 Sam 12:14

Scripture Alone? Is Half the Story Sufficient?
http://www.call2holiness.org/ScriptureAlone/ScriptureAlone.htm

1Ti 3:15 if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth. (n.b. he did not say that the Bible was the pillar and buylwark of the truth.....but the Church who wrote the Bible.)

Answer 3

It is not uncommon that non-believers see the Roman Catholic devotion to the Saints and the dead in general as falling under the prohibition of necrology as found in the Hebrew Scriptures. These people are not aware of the New Life of the Christian who has been called out of this life. They are not dead, but alive!

Rom 6:3-4
Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.
Col 2:12
You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

In 2 Timothy 1:18, St. Paul prays for Onesiphorus, who has died.


Question for you. When you are at a funeral do you not pray for the departed? Does not the preacher ask that the Lord accept the deceased into heaven etc?

Answer 4

I don't know if praying for the dead is anywhere else but in Maccabees. However I do want to say this: Isn't God outside of time? For Him everything is in the present. So even if we pray for someone who died 100 years ago it doesn't matter for God because He can apply that prayer to the person anyway.
Hope that made some sense.
God bless you.

Answer 5

As far as the condition of the dead, here is what the Bible states: “The living are conscious that they will die,” it says, “but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten. Also, their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite in anything that has to be done under the sun. All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol, the place to which you are going.” (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6, 10) Sheol is simply the Hebrew word for the common grave of mankind.

Regarding death’s effect on a person’s consciousness, the psalmist wrote: “His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts do perish.”—Psalm 146:4.

The Bible’s statements are authoritative and reasonable. Would a loving father make his children suffer because of sinful tendencies that are a part of their nature? (Genesis 8:21) Of course not. So why would our heavenly Father do anything similar? When some in ancient Israel adopted the pagan ritual of burning their children in sacrifice to false gods, God condemned such a hateful practice, defining it as ‘a thing that he had not commanded and that had not come up into his heart.’—Jeremiah 7:31.

Man’s sins result in death, not torment in an afterlife. “The wages sin pays is death,” according to the Scriptures, and “he who has died has been acquitted from his sin.”—Romans 5:12; 6:7, 23.
So if he's been acquitted from his sins already, they need nothing from us.


I noticed in Wikopedia it said about Maccabees ,"Jews regard it as generally reliable historically, but not a part of Scripture."

What does the Bible say regarding this? Deuteronomy 4:2 "You must not ADD to the word that I am commanding you, neither must you take away from it, so as to keep the commandments of your God that I am commanding you"

Answer 6

Yes, Maccabees IS included in the Canon of the ancient and historical Christian Church. Some sects have removed it, in order to support their beliefs developed in opposition to the ancient Faith.

As to the phrase the original question raises, that is a literary affect of humility, not a qualifiying statement of potential error.

The canon was closely examined by the historical Church, and this book was determined to be divinely inspired. The Holy Spirit guided those who were making those judgements to see the inspired nature of each of those books to be included. Maccabees passed that test, and so it stands today.

Answer 7

1 Cor. 15:29 also talks about being baptized for the dead. I was raised in a Protestant sect. However, finally, I did my own study, and 1 & 2 Macabees are scriptural (issue to the Catholics) presently; my 'settlement point; the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Answer 8

The idea that people need prayers to exit purgatory and get into heaven is completely against God's Word. Upon death, either a person is saved in Christ, or they are not, and they will be judged as such. To think that our prayers for a dead person will earn their way to Heaven simply makes no sense based on the entire NT in particular.

Of course, neither does baptizing babies, or allowing man to judge another as worthy or not to accept the Lord's supper.

All we can do is pray while they are ALIVE, that God calls them and they answer....

God bless.

Answer 9

Nope it's not even in Christian scripture at all.

Fact: Each is responsible before God for their sins, God is a just judge so he can't pick and choose punishment based on other prayers, I mean that's like a rich guy buying off a Judge in court to get his kid a lighter sentence, what's righteous about that?

Answer 10

Maccabees is not part of the accepted canon of Scriptures.