Hello Betty,
Well, we know that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are in heaven. We know that the only way they can be their is to have Jesus’ blood mediating for them. We have scripture indicating that Moses mediated between the Israelites and God. God was going to destroy the Israelites at Mt. Sini and begin again with Moses. Moses mediated with God and God spared His wrath on the Israelites.
I think it is clear that God works through human mediators, our Catholic priests through the Christ established sacraments of the Eucharist, Reconciliation, Baptism, Marriage ect. Both Old and New Testament people go to heaven mediated through Jesus Blood and in both Old and New Testament God has established human mediators.
I think it is clearly biblical that God desires human mediators (the Chruch).
NAB MAR 12:18
Then some **Sadducees who hold there is no resurrection **came to him with a question …\…12:24 Jesus said: “You are badly misled, because you fail to understand the Scriptures or the power of God. When people rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but live like angels in heaven. As to the raising of the dead, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob’? He is the God of the living not of the dead, You are very much mistaken.” **NAB EXO 32:7 **
With that, the LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved. They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it, sacrificing to it and crying out, ‘This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ I see how stiffnecked this people is,” continued the LORD to Moses. “Let me alone, then, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them. Then I will make of you a great nation.”
But Moses implored the LORD, his God, saying, “Why, O LORD, should your wrath blaze up against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with such great power and with so strong a hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent he brought them out, that he might kill them in the mountains and exterminate them from the face of the earth’? Let your blazing wrath die down; relent in punishing your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, and how you swore to them by your own self, saying, ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky; and all this land that I promised, I will give your descendants as their perpetual heritage.’” So the LORD relented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people. Moses then turned and came down the mountain with the two tablets that were written on both sides, front and back; tablets that were made by God, having inscriptions on them that were engraved by God himself.
**NAB EXO 32:25 **
When Moses realized that, to the scornful joy of their foes, Aaron had let the people run wild, he stood at the gate of the camp and cried,“Whoever is for the Lord, let him come to me!” All the Levites then rallied to him, and he told them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Put your sword on your hip everyone of you! Now go up and down the camp, from gate to gate, and slay your own kinsmen, your friends and neighbors!” The Levites carried out the command of Moses, and theat day there fell about three thousand of the people. Then Moses said, "Today you have been dedicated to the LORD, for you were against your own sons and kinsmen, to bring a blessing upon yourselves this day.“The Atonement. On the next day Moses said to the people, "You have committed a grave sin. I will go up to the LORD, then; perhaps I may be able to make atonement for your sin.” So Moses went back to the LORD and said, **“Ah, this people has indeed committed a grave sin in making a god of gold for themselves! If you would only *forgive ***their sin! If you will not, then strike me out of the book that you have written.”
To make this judgement, you have to see the role the Catholic church has played throughout soceity back in the 1600’s and so-on. I personally beleive that no man should alter or influence the way you form your beleifs. I beleive the bible as is is the only and ultimate source for religious beleif. I choose to look to priests abd bishops and so-on for reference and sometimes for an example as to how they interperate, but I alway keep an open mind, and try to mesh the bible to my own personal beleifs. I am catholic because it was what meshed with me, I am not meshing with it. Take a non-biased non-religious look into the history of the church, and all religions really, as an institution and the roles they have played throughout society. It will help you better understand how things are the way they ar ein the churches today.