I can very much emphathise with the desire for praying for the departed. Especially in light of the death of my parents. I am very confident my Mother came to faith before she died. The last conversation I had alone with my Father (who was not a Christian) was very much an answer to prayer. He was very open to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ but this side of Heaven I have no assurance that he gave his life to Christ before he died. Thus the notion that my prayers can someone how influence his eternity on the other side of the grave does have emotional appeal. However I cannot, have not and will not pray for my dead parents, or anyone else who has died. Below are eight reasons why Anglican Christians (and all Christians) shouldn’t pray for the dead.

1. There is no Scriptural support for praying to anyone other than God.

2. There is no Scriptural support when it comes to praying for Christians who have died.

3. To pray to dead Christians, (asking them to intercede for us) is to give them attributes that only God has. If every Christian prayed to dead Christians then those dead saints must have the ability to hear all the prayers of Christians on earth at once and simultaneously able to intercede for us, yet only Christ intercedes for us. (Romans 8:34)

4. Praying for the dead is unnecessary. Whilst I agree that those who have died in Christ are not in Heaven, (Heaven being the place where soul and body is reunited again) but are in Hades (the place of interval/world of the dead), there is no need to pray for them.

Those ho are redeemed are walking with the King – enjoying the Lord Jesus in his paradise with the wonderful joyous indescribable expectation of at a future point in time (when the Lord Jesus returns) of being bodily resurrected to the place that has been reserved and prepared for them personally by Him.

Those who have died outside of Christ will be segregated and separated from the Lord Jesus Christ and from his people and will suffer remorse and regret of knowing that the life that had on earth is over, with the knowledge that there is no altering of their choice in life to reject the Lord Jesus Christ, and with that the horrifying, agonisingly indescribable expectation of a future point in time (when the Lord Jesus returns ) of being cast into the Father’s garbage tip, the place that has been reserved and prepared for the Devil and his angels.

Thus praying for those whom have died does nothing to alter their destination. It is fixed at death. This is why Scripture is clear that we are to pray to God for the living.

Read it all at An Average Anglican Priest