Catholic Verses - 95 Bibles Passages That Confound Protestants?
MORE BIBLICAL RELICS: ELIJAH'S MANTLE, PETER'S SHADOW, AND PAUL'S HANDKERCHIEF
Pages 151-152: 2 Kings 2:11-14. Acts 5:15-16. Acts 19:11-12. Elisha's bones were what Catholics call a "first-class relic": part of the person himself. These passages, on the other hand, offer examples of second-class relics: items that have power because they were connected with a holy person (Elijah's mantle and even St. Peter's shadow), and third-class relics: something that has merely touched a holy person or first-class relic of a person (handkerchiefs that had touched St. Paul).
Note: King Hoshea destroyed the relic that Moses had created and God was pleased.
2 Kings 18:4-8 He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord had commanded Moses. The Lord was with him; he prospered wherever he went. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. He subdued the Philistines, as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city.
Page 153: God ultimately performs all miracles by his power, but in this case and many others he uses physical objects to do so (e.g., Moses' staff, a Temple made of stone and wood). Belief that God can use something in his creation for a miraculous purpose does not in any way imply that God is not the cause of the miracle.
Note: God does not care about physical objects and neither should you.
Matthew 24:1-2 Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
Page 153: Not many Evangelicals today would deny the recorded miracle of Peter's shadow curing someone, nor deny that apostles had extraordinary healing powers. But they would be in perfect accord with him in their general antipathy to the concept of relics. They take a very dim view of preserving the bones of saints, yet they have not offered a way, that I have seen, to reconcile the passage about Elisha's bones.
Note: Throughout history people have been mistaken for being dead when they were simply unconscious.
Acts 14:19-20 Then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there; and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city. And the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.
Page 155: Catholics, however (like the overwhelming number of those in the early Church), are not limited by this bias against matter as a purveyor of grace and the notion of relics itself, and so can accept the Bible's teaching, wherever it leads. And that teaching is that relics can and have been used by God to heal people and otherwise communicate his grace to them.
Note: Relics easily become idols unless you are focused on Jesus Christ.
1 John 5:20-21 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.
Note: The early church did not practice the veneration of relics.
In the early church the disturbance, let alone the division, of the remains of martyrs and other saints, was not practised. They were allowed to remain in their often unidentified resting places in cemeteries and the catacombs of Rome, always outside the walls of the city, but martyriums began to be built over the site of the burial, and it was considered beneficial to the soul to be buried close to the remains of saints, several large "funerary halls" being built over the sites of martyr's graves, including Old Saint Peter's Basilica; these were initially not regular churches, but "covered cemeteries" crammed with graves, and celebrating funerary and memorial services. The earliest recorded removal of saintly remains was that of Saint Babylas at Antioch in 354, but, partly perhaps because Constantinople lacked the many saintly graves of Rome, they soon became common in the Eastern Empire, though still prohibited in the West. Wikipedia Encyclopedia.