Saints
Prayers to Saints
When asked how to pray (Matt 6) Jesus said to directs all our prayers to The Father. Nowhere else in the New Testament are we told to pray to anyone else.
We are told Jesus continuously intercedes for us and that the The Holy Spirit prays for us when we do not know how to pray.  These are done without our needing to ask The Father or The Holy Spirit.
Saints in the New Testament are not mentioned as anything other than believers and it is silent also about prayers to saints so The first test cannot apply so prayers to saints cannot be a doctrine as it is not in The Bible.  The parts of the second test need To be passed if prayers to a saint is to be an acceptable practice.
Test two
Test two part (a) Does praying to the saints promote the Lordship of ‘Jesus?
Praying to a saint is prayer away from The Father and ignoring what Jesus said about who to pray too.  So it ignores Him and this is a rejection of His Lordship
Part (b)  Does it break the law of love:
Rejecting whom Jesus said to pray too and praying to another is also rejecting The Father and Jesus personally. You do not reject someone you love.
Part (c) Does it cause a weaker brother or sister to sin?
Knowing prayers to saints fail the first two parts of test two then knowingly promoting this erroneous type of prayer leads to idolatry (‘placing the saint before Jesus) and to sin if accepted by a weaker brother.
Who are saints?
The Bible calls everyone who follows Jesus a saint. This is not how the Catholic church views saints.
A saint, in the Catholic Church, is someone who lives the Christian life as Jesus designed it to be lived, They are an example for all other Catholics to  follow.
What the Catholic Church has missed as that all are to live as these so called saints lived and be used by God to perform miracles as mentioned by Jesus in Mark 16:17-18.
Jesus said that the casting out of demons and healing would be evidenced in the life of those who truly believed in Him, and not just the ‘saints’ of the Catholic Church.
There should be no difference between the lives of saints and those living today.  If you hold to this belief that saints have some special thing you have two levels of Christian experience: A level that few can aspire too, as was lived by saints, and that lived by every day normal Christianity, which most live and which is far removed from the lifestyle of saints which apparently few will be able to reach.
Why ask saints to intercede?
The Bible says that the Holy Spirit prays for us when we do not know what to  pray and Jesus is always interceding for us with the Father and The Father only ever gives us good things.
Why do we need a saint to intercede for us? That would imply The Father, Jesus and The Holy Spirit are not doing their best for us and that we need to encourage or remind them through someone what they need to do to meet our need.
This would mean that they are not God as they are not showing us the love God would show because God is pure love!
It would make God a liar as He promises to meet all our needs if we follow Him, seek His Will and the purposes of The Kingdom of God (Mat 6:33).  It would also make a liar of the Psalmist who could look back over his life and say that those who are righteous with God would never lack what they need and would never need to beg for their food (bread).
To ask a saint to help you to do something displaces the Holy spirit, who is your guide, as well as The Father,  who provides all you need.  So if  God is not behind it as it questions God’s Love, His timing of things, His provision and His purposes, who the is behind this?
Relying on a Saint also takes your focus off Jesus as the one who is in charge of your life and gives to the saint a part of your life, which is idolatry, because you put the Saint between the Lordship of Jesus and yourself in that area of your life.
We are told, in the parable of Dives and Lazarus that those in heaven can not come back to earth or help people on earth.
Lazarus begged Jesus to send someone to earth to  warn his brothers.  Jesus said no !  They had all they needed in their scriptures.
The implication was that people were not sent back to  earth to  do the work of the Holy Spirit so apparitions of Saints and Mary go against what Jesus said in this parable.  Also, in The Bible only angels and Jesus are used to visually communicate with people in the Old Testament and the New Testament except once in the case of Samuel.
So then when a person prays to a saint, if the saint cannot answer their prayer who is? And is it answered in the way God wants it answered?
If it is Jesus, then why do we need to  pray to the saint.
If it is Satan, then we are in idolatry or deceived and should not be praying to a saint any way. His answer will also not be God’s answer for you
The danger of venerating and praying to saints is that it can lead to idolatry, and a reliance on the saint instead of God.  It also allows Satan to impersonate the saint and lead people astray.  But most of all it says that God is not doing His best for you and needs to be reminded by the saint on our behalf because God is apparently not listening to us or meeting out need as we see it needed to be met or God has not decided correctly and needs us and the saint to tell Him what to do.
This attacks God’s perfect knowledge, implying He does not know all we need as well as implies He is imperfectly loving us as He is not doing what we need Him to do for us.
’Saints’ are to be loved as brothers or sisters and not as anyone special.  They are not to be prayed to or venerated.  If you pray to them you are making them an intermediary between you and God and The Bible says Jesus alone is that.  If you venerate them you are taking away from the worship of Jesus.  Both of these are idolatrous if done deliberately, as you are displacing God in some way.
All religious worship that is not directed towards God is idolatry if it is knowingly done.
You can venerate (hold someone in high regard) but the moment you ask them to do something God alone is to do (according to The Bible) then you are in idolatry if you knowingly ask this matter of the ‘saint’.
Saints do not cause miracles as The Holy Spirit is The one who empowers us to do them and to say they do them is to remove The Holy Spirit as our empower.  If The Holy Spirit empowers the miracle then why are saints and Mary venerated for their occurrence and sainted for their occurring?  Besides, Jesus said the miracles done by saints would be the norm for those who believed in Him.
The moment you knowingly put a person before God in anyway or displace God’s working in anything you are making an idol of them.
God understands if these things were done out of ignorance and will try to get the truth to you.  The moment you have the truth and ignore it you are in sin and idolatry.
Saints as defined by The Catholic church is not found in The Bible.  So praying to saints does not pass the first test and cannot be doctrine.
The idea of praying to saints to ask their help is contrary to what The Bible says to do and is idolatry as it fails the second test by displacing a role Jesus only has.
The veneration saints is a practice that is wrong as it displaces Jesus and anyone knowingly praying to a saint or worshipping (venerating) them is in sin and if it is continued in is in danger of losing their salvation.