It isn’t only the Catholic church that prays to saints. The Greek Orthodox church, Coptic Chistian church in Egypt, the Syrian Christian Church, Armenian church and the Ethiopian church pray to the saints. The Anglican church believes in praying with the saints which is asking for intercession and praying with the saints, which is what I believed in.
Martin Luther had prayed to the saints but then changed his mind. John Calvin who started the Calvinism movement was against praying to saints. He believed in predestination which I do NOT believe in. I don’t believe God predestines some people to go to heaven and some people to go to hell. If that is the case, how to you explain free will. God wants all His children to go to heaven, and He gives all of us that chance.
Some modern mainstream Evangelical protestant churches talk about how the Catholic Church is leading people astray. And they say that praying to the dead is a sin. The reason why they think Catholics are sinning is because King Saul consulted a witch and asked her to contact the dead to know the future. That is NOT what Catholic’s are doing.
One of my evangelical friends who lives in a different state had an MRI in August to see if she would be a candidate for back surgery. She has terrible pain in her back and chronic sciatica, along with fibromyalgia. I feel so bad for her because she suffers so much.
After the MRI, the doctor called her and said the MRI showed something. One of the ducts on her pancreas was enlarged so he told her he could not do surgery on her S1 Joint. She was upset. Then she saw her regular doctor who told her she needed to get a CAT scan and to make an appointment with a specialist right away.
She went in for her CAT scan, and that showed multiple very small tumors on her liver and a 14mm tumor on the outer wall of her bladder. When she went in to see the specialist, he said the tumors on her liver were harmless, but he wanted to do surgery right away on her bladder and do a biopsy to test for cancer. She was scared it might be cancer.
The Monday before her surgery on Wednesday I fasted and prayed for her to be healed of her tumor. I had fasted during lent by giving up meat, but I had never done a serious fast for an answer to prayer. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be at first. I think the key to fasting is eating protein for each small meal. I didn’t eat any meat or fish. I had a chik’n veggie burger for breakfast for my big meal, for lunch I had raw almonds and almond milk, then for supper I had pretzels and almond milk which was a big mistake. I think there might be 1 gram of protein in pretzels which isn’t enough to stay with you. By the end of the night, I was extremely tired and felt kind of weak, so I went to bed early.
I prayed the week before her surgery and the week of her surgery. I asked Jesus and the Father to heal my friend and make the tumor disappear.
My friend didn’t tell many people about her tumor because she didn’t want to talk about it. She told one person from her church a couple days before her surgery, and they put her on the prayer chain. To my knowledge, I am the only one that fasted. Her husband who is a retired pastor did even fast.
Her surgery on Wednesday was at noon, and I knew they were going use some type of anesthesia for her outpatient surgery. I texted her about 4pm to ask if she was awake and if she was in a lot of pain and I didn’t hear anything back, so I assumed she was sleeping. Then around 5pm she called me and said she had texted me, but I never got the text. She told me the surgeon couldn’t find anything. The tumor had disappeared! It was a miracle!
I started worshipping satan the summer I was seventeen. It didn’t last long though and I started in July. The things that led up to it happened when I was 16 years old and were out of my control and I now believe I was a victim of witchcraft. I didn’t understand what was going on, and I thought God hated me, was going to damn me to hell, and I didn’t have any other choice. It was during that time I started seeing visions.
That June before I started worshipping satan, my sister and I used the ouiji board my grandma had and she gave it to my mom. My sister and I used the board once. We started asking questions and got gibberish for answers. I became interested in the occult and witchcraft after we used it. I started reading books about the subject but the more I read about witchcraft, I knew it wasn’t the truth. Witches don’t believe in God or satan. They believe in a variety of different goddesses and gods: Idols. I didn’t believe it because I knew that God and satan were both real. I knew that the God of the bible was the real God and that there weren’t any others. I thought God hated me and I was damned to hell, and I had no choice in the matter. I thought I should just worship the enemy because I was going to hell anyway. Yes, I was listening to the enemies lies and I was deceived.
Even though I was raised catholic I didn’t understand the religion, the rituals, or why I had to memorize prayers when I went to catechism class. Because no one explained things about God and prayer I never prayed or talked to God. Throughout childhood, and my teens I lived as an atheist. I never paid any attention to God. My parents did not talk about God.
I started having a lot of anxiety then and I also started seeing visions then. The first one was of an unborn baby in the womb that looked almost full term. I saw that one while I was sitting in my friend’s car while she went into Planned Parenthood to get birth control. I knew nothing about partial birth abortions at that time in my life. The next one I saw was of me and a man. That vision had to do with the biblical meaning of marriage. Then I saw the next vision in September. I saw the exact same vision on each full moon of every month for three months in a row. I would wake up in the middle of the night in extreme pain. The pain would get so bad I could not lie in bed anymore so I would get up and go downstairs to get something to drink and by the time I got downstairs I felt like I was going to pass out then I would break out in a cold sweat and then I would faint but not before seeing a vision.
I didn’t know what the vision was supposed to mean, but I saw the same exact one every time. The vision started with me seeing all black, then I would see a dot of gold light that would move in a clockwise circle until it was a perfect circle of gold light like a halo. After the circle was complete, I would faint. Now I think it has to do with three hours, specifically the third hour when Jesus died after he was crucified.
Soon I started dreading full-moon, I didn’t want to wake up in pain again, but I didn’t know what to do either because I didn’t even think of praying or that God would help me. In November I saw a personal ad in the newspaper. There was a personal ad from a man who said he was spiritual and looking for a spiritual woman and there was a number written under his personal ad. The number was a blind box number the newspaper used so people could respond by sending letters to the newspaper, then the letter was forwarded to him. He called after about two weeks, and we talked for a short period of time. I don’t remember our whole conversation now, but I know I had told him I worshipped the devil. I told him about the visions and the pain that happened on the full moon. In the want ads of that day’s newspaper there a notice about praying certain catholic prayers. I asked him if he thought I should pray them and he didn’t think it would be a bad idea.
About a week later I got a letter in the mail from Jonathan, the man in the personal ad I had sent a letter to. He wrote I was on the wrong path, and worshipping satan was just a negative self-fulfilling prophecy.
I prayed on the night of the full moon in December. I stumbled through the prayers and didn’t think God would even hear me. In the morning when I woke up, I realized I didn’t wake up in pain the middle of the night. God had heard my prayer and answered it! It changed my life! After that night, I started praying those prayers every day for protection from evil and I never left the house without praying for protection. I would read bible verses in my grandma’s old daily mass bible every morning when I woke up. I also started talking to God all the time.
I wonder if Jonathan was an angel on earth. I don’t mean heavenly angel but a human doing God’s will because he was at the right place at the right time. After that happened to me, I started asking God to help me be in the right place at the right time.
I know God can use anyone to make a difference in someone’s life. Maybe someday you will be someone’s angel on earth.
MKR Prodigal Daughter-Christian Perspectives from a Prodigal 