Chapter and verse, please....
You want a chapter and verse for the fact that all spiritual benefits reaped through godly individuals are ultimately from God as the source of all grace and mercy? I'm really shocked that you deny that.
Yes, but in EVERY scriptural instance, we have living, embodied saints praying for other living, embodied saints. Never do we see any instance of a living, embodied saint appealing to a dead saint. Ever. The silence is deafening.
That's odd...I thought that people in heaven were alive. They have been granted eternal life, no? If anything, they're more alive than we are. As for being "embodied" I have no idea what having a physical body has to do with praying or answering prayer.
We do see various places in Scripture where those in heaven do hear the cries of those on Earth. See, for example Revelation 5 where the 24 elders (usually said to be a symbol for the Church in heaven) present the prayers of the saints to God.
Remember that Christianity proposes a two-stage post-mortem existence. In the first stage, which takes place when a Christian dies, he or she is whisked into the presence of God. Jesus called that situation "Paradise." And he promised it to a life-long murderer who recognized Jesus' authority only in the last moments of life. That man is every bit as much a saint as is so-called "Saint" Christopher or "Saint" Paul. In Paradise, all Christians are exactly EQUAL. The second stage occurs when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. At that time, all the dead will be resurrected to new embodied life. In THAT condition, some will have more glory than another. Thus I expect Saint Paul to have much more authority than me, for instance. But in the INTERIM state, if I go to Paradise before Jesus returns, Saint Paul and Saint Dunemeister are exactly equal in status. Between Paradise and Resurrection, there is simply no distinction between Christians with respect to status. None. And I defy anyone to provide solid scriptural warrant for thinking otherwise.
Your entire reasoning here is built on how you define "Paradise," as a place where believers currently go in distinction to heaven, as an "interim state." Traditionally, my understanding has been that Paradise was separate from heaven under the Old Testament economy, but that Christ between His death and resurrection took Paradise, along with all OT saints, into heaven. NT saints therefore go to heaven when they die, as Paradise has been joined with it. This makes sense since, at the Second Coming, we see Jesus coming from heaven with His saints. If there are no saints in heaven until after the Second Coming then that doesn't make much sense.
Praying "to" someone is an act of worship. If that's not obvious, I'm afraid I can't make it so by further argument.
If it's not obvious that Catholics and other Christians who pray to saints mean something different when they speak of praying "to" saints than when they speak of praying "to" God, then it is I who cannot help you. The phrases mean different things, as a knowledgeable person could tell you. Consider the usage of the word "pray" in Old English.
I'd say that it's perfectly legitimate to pray FOR and WITH the departed. That is, we can pray that God would grant them rest while they await the resurrection. We can also pray for those things that the departed are depicted as praying for in scripture. In scripture, we see the martyrs praying for justice, for God's kingdom to appear on earth as in heaven. We should certainly say our "Amen" to that. But we are nowhere authorized or encouraged to pray to the saints to grant us benefits that are already available to us through Jesus.
If all your benefits are granted to you through Jesus, do you ask others to pray for you here on Earth? Aren't you taking glory away from Christ by expecting them to provide you with spiritual/earthly benefits via their prayers?
Indeed, to bypass Jesus is one of the greatest insults one could offer him.
Again, my question above stands.
It's not as if you're saluting the saint when you pray to him (although you may be doing so). You're actually insulting Jesus. Why try to manipulate God by cajoling members of the heavenly court when, as a fully inherited adopted son of God you have the right to boldly approach God and ask for help, wisdom, or whatever? Christ has promised that he would answer our prayers, and we need not wheedle him through intermediaries. God is immediate to us through Jesus. Why all the bureaucracy
Again, my comment from earlier applies to your misconception here. Asking saints to pray to God for us is not a substitute for praying to God ourselves.