Against Iglesia Ni Christo

A week ago a member of the Iglesia Ni Christo claimed prayers to Mary and saints were wrong, and then asserted the saints are unconscious and that not even Jesus was to be prayed to, his statement is the following which is in black, my rebuttal is in blue

There is no such thing in the Bible that Mary was also resurrected like Jesus Christ and then she went to heaven with Jesus Christ. Mary is still sleeping in the dust, like all those who await resurrection, and cannot hear prayers.

 Like the Seventh Day Adventist group that their founder left, they too advocate soul sleep--the doctrine that once you die you are essentially without a consciousness until the resurrection--something that is never actually taught in the Bible. Furthermore, this group insists like most Protestants that Mary is "sleeping in dust, however, we Catholics believe Mary was resurrected a short time after her death in Ephesus, since she was the Ark of the New Covenant, since she contained the presence of God--Jesus Christ in her womb. We know this because of the parallel's Luke 1 draws between Mary and the account of David and the Ark in 2 Samuel 6, both refer to the hill country around Judea, both refer to the ark coming to a Levitical family--Oved Edom and Zachariah, and being there 3 months, and both refer to a person saying "how is it that the ark of the Lord should come to me." Psalm 132:8 is applied to Jesus and Mary, in regards to being caught up to Heaven.  Soul sleep is not supportable since Moses, Elijah spoke with Christ, plus the witch of Endor incident shows otherwise with Samuel, which the bible calls Samuel.

 "The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing" .(Ecclesiastes 9:5,10)

 A verse popular with Jehovah Witnesses too. They take it to mean the dead know nothing absolutely, but the context says the living know they will die, the dead do not have knowledge they will die, or anything else, because their fates sealed, they have nothing to look forward to. The Jewish explanation by the commentator RASHI is : “For the living know that they will die” and perhaps their hearts will return on the day of death and they will repent of their ways, but after they die, they do not know anything, and they have no more reward for the actions that they do from their deaths and onwards, for whoever toils on the eve of the Sabbath will eat on the Sabbath.—chabad.org

"The dead do not praise the Lord, nor any who go down in silence". (Psalm 115:17)

 This is another instance where reading the next verse shows what it means. "But we will bless the LORD from this time forth and for ever." It says they will bless God forever, its contrasted with the previous verse meaning they do not consider themselves part of the previous verse, the previous is referring to those spiritually dead, on top of that in Judaism the term "dummah"--silence in verse 17 is taken as an expression of damnation/hell especially in the Zohar.

Another reason not to pray to Mary is that anyone who does so is breaking one of God’s commandments. In the Bible God forbids anyone to consult the dead:

"Should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living?" (Isaiah 8:19).

 Now to see what the whole verses says:  

And when they shall say unto you: 'Seek unto the ghosts and the familiar spirits, that chirp and that mutter; should not a people seek unto their God? on behalf of the living unto the dead for instruction and for testimony?'--Surely they will speak according to this word, wherein there is no light.--

The issue was people using witchcraft, similar to what the Witch of Endor did, trying to conjure up dead spirits to get instructions back from them. 

The third reason not to pray to Mary is that Jesus taught that all prayer must be addressed only to "Our Father who art in Heaven". (Luke 11:2) Jesus did not even teach us to pray to himself; when he prayed he prayed to God. There are no examples of prayer to anyone except God, our Father in the whole Bible. Not to Jesus. Certainly not to Mary. And Mary herself, as we have seen, sung to and prayed to God, and Him only.

 They make a point kind of, there is no instruction to pray to Mary in the bible. In fact they go a step further and claim similar with Jesus, which is incorrect John 14:14 says:

If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.

On top of that we know from Acts 7:59 that some of the last words of Stephen as he was being martyred were "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." They cite the "Our Father" as proof we only pray to Jesus, however, there is no instruction that praying is limited to the Father, since Jesus explicitly permitted prayer to Him. There is no mention of prayer to the Spirit, however, yet it would make sense if the Son can be prayed to that likewise the Spirit can, and the absence of something so great in the Bible shows it would not be unreasonable to expect a lack of explicit mention of prayers to saints likewise absence.

The same goes for the singing of Ave Maria, or saying Hail Mary. People who do this need to understand that (1) the Bible teaches that Mary cannot hear them, (2) they are disobeying God’s commandment on talking to the dead, and (3) they are disobeying Christ’s instructions on prayer.

The failed to prove any of these points. Nothing in the bible says Mary cannot hear--in fact Elijah and Moses heard Jesus while on earth, the angels know when a Christian repents according to Jesus, Jesus said believes are like the angels, that his followers are to be considered alive even though physically dead, and he never mentioned anything about soul sleep, in fact Revelation shows people in heaven, and so does Hebrews 12.