You are DEAD WRONG.
1) Jesus couldn’t possibly teach doctrinal error by means of the story. (the conversation between Abraham and the rich man.) And there are several, according to Protestant theology.
2) Abraham’s refusal to answer the prayer does
not prove that he shouldn’t have been prayed to in the first place. Prayers can be refused. He never said, “You can’t pray to
me!!!!! Pray only to God!” Protestants say we can’t pray to anyone but God. We can’t ask dead
people to intercede to God for us.
Jesus goes against both of those things by endorsing this story. He can’t teach falsehood in it. The rich man makes a petitionary prayer to
Abraham, not God, in order to get a request. He doesn’t even ask him to go to God.
He thinks that Abraham can himself answer it. (a false Protestant conclusion)
If
indeed it
were true that no one could ever pray to a creature rather than God, then Jesus couldn’t
possibly have told this story. And Abraham would have
certainly rebuked the rich man and would have told him to pray to
God alone; and would have chided him for going to
him instead of God
. It’s irrelevant to the issue that the rich man was dead, because it remains wrong to pray to someone (alive or dead) other than God, in Protestantism. It wouldn’t suddenly become right (with an essential change of principle) just because he died. Therefore, the rich man would have violated that.
3) Abraham didn’t say, “I don’t
have the power to send Lazarus and it’s blasphemous for you to think so.” He said, rather, that if he
did send him, it wouldn’t make any difference as to the
result Abraham hoped for. Thus, Abraham is presupposing that he has the power to answer a prayer request, but simply chooses not to, and explains to the rich man
why.
4) Had Abraham fulfilled the request it would also be another instance of permitted
communication between those in heaven or the afterlife (in this case, Hades) and those on earth, since the dead Lazarus would have returned to earth, to talk to the five brothers. Protestants tell us this is unbiblical and against God’s will (and is the
equivalent of necromancy), yet there it is, right in Scripture, from Jesus.
There are several other examples that Weber dismisses or ignores.