Question:

In Acts 7:59, it clearly says that Jesus is being prayed to, since you only pray to God, then this demonstrates that Jesus is God. What is your response to this?

Answer:

Unfortunately, this is a translational difference only found in the NIV, which illustrates the extent to which Christians attempt to transform Christ into a deity.

The verse is rendered as, ““While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”“, NIV version. However the term, “prayed” is very odd in this context as it means “called out to”, or “called”, see its sister usage in Acts 11:13, which reads as is follows, “He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter.” If the term, ” ἐπικαλούμενον“, was used consistently, then Acts 11:13 is supposed to have read:

“Send to Joppa for Simon who is prayed (ἐπικαλούμενον) Peter”.

Since that isn’t the case and most translations place ” ἐπικαλούμενον” as some variation of “call“, to call, is called, etc, it’s a bit odd when Christians use Acts 7:59 to prove that Christ was prayed to based on a distinct translation which isn’t shared by much of the lexical Christian community in other variant translations such as in the KJV, NAS or in the Biblos Interlinear Bible.

One would have to ask, is calling someone akin to worship? In that case Christians should really not have telephones, cellphones, Skype, Viber etc.

and God knows best.