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Biblical Answers to Three Protestant “Mary Mistakes”

Biblical Answers to Three Protestant “Mary Mistakes”

Last updated on: June 13, 2026 at 1:09 pm by Dave Armstrong

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Biblical Answers to Three Protestant “Mary Mistakes” 2026-06-13T13:09:13-04:00 Dave Armstrong

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This is a transcript of the initial portion of the video, Biblical Answers to Three Common Protestant “MARY MISTAKES” (Catholic Bible Highlights with Kenny Burchard, 12-1-25). Words of various commenters in the combox will be in blue.

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Austin Suggs, an Anglican who runs the Gospel Simplicity YouTube channel (94,100 subscribers as of 11-1-25), did a video called, “My Honest Concerns About Mariology” (9-19-25). It has over 30,735 views and 2,245 comments in a little over five weeks. Now, not all comments represent the thought of the channel where they are posted, and no one could possibly monitor more than 2,000+ comments. But these falsehoods I will detail are influencing many thousands of people and ought to be responded to. So here we go. Kenny will play the role of these Protestant critics / commenters.

I listen to Catholic radio . . . to understand . . . all they do is talk about Mary . . . they say that she can answer prayers. I thought that’s only our heavenly father because he knows what we need and don’t need and Mary doesn’t.

She cannot hear prayers.

Nowhere does it say in scripture to pray to Mary.

She cannot hear prayers. That would make her GOD THE MOTHER in the Trinity! Stop it cult!

In Jesus’ story of Lazarus and the rich man in Hades (Lk 16:19-31), the rich man petitions Abraham twice to send someone to help his five brothers avoid his own sad fate. Abraham says no, just as God sometimes refuses to answer prayer requests. But he never tells the rich man that he is wrong in making prayer requests to him. And he knows about the needs of his five brothers because he says, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (RSV).

It’s the same thing with the dead prophet Samuel and Saul (see 1 Samuel 28:15-20). Lot asks two angels to spare his life when Sodom and Gomorrah are being destroyed, and this time they do answer his prayer (Gen 19:15-22). So if Abraham, Samuel, and angels can do this, why not also Mary?

Mary is asleep. She cannot hear your prayers.

Soul sleep is an unbiblical heresy that John Calvin vigorously opposed. Hebrews 12:1 says that “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses”. Presbyterian Greek scholar Marvin Vincent in his Word Studies in the New Testament stated that this means, “the vast host of the heroes of faith who . . . have entered into their heavenly rests watches the contest from the encircling tiers of the arena, . . . filled with lively interest and sympathy, and lending heavenly aid.”

For some strands of Roman Catholic Mariology, people can’t see the difference between things said in the first five centuries and things said in the most recent five centuries.

This is to be fully expected, because all doctrines develop. The canon of the Bible did; so did Christology and trinitarianism. But we see big and essential differences between many doctrines of Protestantism and the views of the Church fathers. So, for example, Protestant historian Alister McGrath stated that the Protestant view of external, imputed justification was scarcely taught at all by the Church fathers. Yet they believe it anyway. That’s not even a development. It’s a late-arriving novelty. And I have a hundred Bible passages proving that it’s a falsehood. But Catholic Mariology is a consistent development from themes explicitly present in the Bible.

If you need to pray through Mary to get to Jesus, then she is a necessary mediator through whom prayers and graces flow through to us.

It’s ”necessary” only to the person who needs that help, not in and of itself. It’s not a whit different from the ancient Hebrews communicating to God through the mediator Moses: “Then the people cried to Moses; and Moses prayed to the LORD, and the fire abated” (Num 11:2). God told Abimelech that Abraham would pray for him, so he could live, “for” Abraham was “a prophet” (Gen 20:6-7). “All Israel” (1 Sam 12:1) “said to Samuel [the prophet], ‘Pray for your servants to the LORD your God, that we may not die’. . .” (1 Sam 12:19).

God told Job’s “friends”: “my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly” (Job 42:8). King Zedekiah asked the holy prophet Jeremiah to pray for him and the country (Jer 37:3; cf. 42:2: “[they] said to Jeremiah the prophet, ‘Let our supplication come before you, and pray to the LORD your God for us’ “).

Related Articles

Follow-up: “Gospel Simplicity” (Austin Suggs) Combox Anti-Mariology

Goddess Mary? Reply to Gospel Simplicity’s Austin Suggs . . . and His Objection to St. Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary [9-25-25]

Response to an Inquiring Protestant (Austin Suggs) (Strictly Biblical Arguments Regarding the Papacy & Mary’s Immaculate Conception & Assumption) [5-3-22]

Related Web Page

Mary: The Blessed Virgin

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Summary: Response to misrepresentations of commenters at the Gospel Simplicity YouTube channel (Anglican Austin Suggs). Falsehoods that influence thousands ought to be responded to.

Immaculate Conception

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