Mediation is biblical
In James 5. 14-16 we are told to get the Elders of the Church to pray for us and to annoint us when we are sick. Reading on, we find:

James 5: 16-18 " ...The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful. Elijah was a human being like us; yet he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain upon the land. Then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain and the earth produced its fruit."

So we see that intercession strengthens prayer. And the more righteous and faithful the intercessor is, the more powerful the prayer.

BUT THAT IS PRAYER ON EARTH. I'VE BEEN TOLD THAT PEOPLE IN HEAVEN CAN NEITHER SEE US OR PRAY FOR US.

That is a recent, man-made doctrine, with no authority behind it.

Hebrews 12.1 speaks of "a great cloud of witnesses" who surround us, and who consist of the faithful holy ones of God. Many examples of these witnesses are given in the preceding Chapter 11 of Hebrews.

Later in the Bible we see this vision of heaven:

Revelation 4.4: Surrounding the throne were twenty four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads.
Revelation 5.8: ...and the twenty four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

The twenty-four elders are shown offering the prayers of Christians to God; which is a mediatory role

Dear Webby...
thanx for the voluminous response:)
I noticed one 'living dangerously' bit in your post:

"But He is not our only intercessor" woops.. heresy alert meter is banging on the full scale deflection point :)

Nevermind..we have both shared our views.. let it be up to grace to confirm or deny anything under God...

I want to mention a CHRISTIAN VALUE now.. not related to our parenthetical discussion, but of a general nature.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXMjh_XbkiI&mode=related&search=

That video shows a marine hit by a sniper. (Snipers vid apparently) the events which followed are quite remarkable. The marine recovered, (flack jacket) was able to identify a lone 'van' about 75 meters away, and got off a couple of rounds into it as it fled.
The marines followed the van, and caught up with the wounded sniper in a back yard he had run into. The marine who was shot at, is a medic. He was interviewed on the news. He described how when they found the sniper, they immediately gave him medical attention and possibly saved his life. It was the medic who had been shot who gave that attention to the sniper.

Contrast this with the gruesome beheadings and torturing of Marines captured by Al Qaeda. Or even the 'Allahu Akbar' chanted by the sniper after he scored a hit on the Marine.

Yes..Christian values are alive and well.. God IS great..when the murderer/sniper experiences true greatness at the hands of his would be victim...the man he just tried to kill minutes earlier.

This is fun.

Following the Boaz vs Webby debate is like happening across a jelly-wrestling match in a Biloxi bar.

You've no idea what the rules are, you can't understand a word they shout at each other, but you hang around in case one of the participants accidentally exposes themselves.

Keep going, champs.

Hi there Pericles...I'm glad you dropped in at this moment.
Don't worry too much about Webby and me 'ripping each others throats out' :) My only concern really is that Webby knows and love the Almighty and knows the meaning of repentance and faith. I think he does. How he expresses that, and even though I may not adhere to his views.. does not diminish my deeper longing for his experience of Christ to be real and enduring.

But ....back to you :)

You may find this online article somewhat down your ally, as you often sternly rebuke we 'fundies' for our lack of credible historical evidence for Jesus.. ok.. if you have time, check this out.

http://www.trinitysem.edu/journal/montgomerypap.html

He is not exactly underqualified...

John Warwick Montgomery
M. Phil. In Law (Essex), Ph.D.(Chicago), Th.D. (Strasbourg)
Of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister-At-Law;
Member of the CA, WA,VA, DC and US Supreme Court Bars;
Emeritus Professor of Law & Humanities
University of Luton, ENGLAND;
Professor Apologetics and Vice-President for Academic Affairs-UK & Europe,
Trinity College and Theological Seminary, Newburgh, Indiana

He is also an international human rights lawyer.

Quite easy to listen to, but not sure how easy to read :) I'll try to find an audio link.

aah...found em...

http://home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/montgomery.htm

Some easy listening :)

You never know...by the end of this you might even understand what Webby and I are going on about.

Actually Pericles, I would more liken it to two stablehands arguing over the interpretation of an ancient Roman text about how to breed and train racehorses. While much of it may hold true, since the essential nature of horses hasn't changed, many of the specifics will be irrelevant or obsolete to a modern racehorse. While you could still train them in the same way, and you may have a healthy horse, you would very likely not have a competitive horse.

There's no need to bother posting audio for me, Boaz, I haven't the time for it.

Written words, though, are something else.

I love them. I love them all. As much as anything, they tell us an enormous amount about their author, and the way they navigate their way through life.

Take your new-found Professor Montgomery. He uses words as a means to earn his living, so they are critically important to him, or there's going to be no marmalade on his toast tomorrow.

The offering you pointed me towards was "A Critique of Certain Uncritical Assumptions in Modern Historiography", where his first target was the - interestingly unattributed - assertion that "'Miracles' are not a proper subject for historical investigation".

Unfortunately, his entire argument can be summarised as "since you can't prove anything is impossible, you might as well study it anyway, just in case."

I defy you to put his argument any more accurately than that.

So when it came to the "did Jesus really say that stuff" argument, I wondered if he would use the same trick.

He doesn't disappoint, does he?

"The answer, surely, is to treat the biblical materials with utmost historical seriousness — and that necessitates, we have tried to demonstrate here, both an openness to miracle and an opposition to unscholarly styles of criticism as the historian confronts God’s self-proclaimed written revelation"

His position again is that since no-one can disprove the accuracy of the Gospels, we should necessarily accept them as... well, gospel.

Is there really nothing more to it than that? If there is, please point it out to me.

I expect that there are everyday pressures on folk like Professor Montgomery to produce lots of words. He is probably measured, professionally speaking, on his word-related output. I can only attribute the emaciated nature of his argument to his need to write words - any words - in order to butter that toast.

Thanks for pointing him out, Boaz. If only to show that it doesn't matter how much academic status you have achieved, you can still talk nonsense.