Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

8:3-5
for that would be about the length of time necessary for
a priest to enter the temple and offer incense and return
(comp. Lev. 16:13-14; Luke 1:10, 21).” 1
Alfred Edersheim’s description of this Temple
ceremony helps us understand the setting reflected
here: “Slowly the incensing priest and his assistants
ascended the steps to the Holy Place, preceded by the
two priests who had formerly dressed the altar and the
candlestick, and who now removed the vessels they had
left behind, and, worshipping, withdrew. Next, one of
the assistants reverently spread the coals on the golden
altar; the other arranged the incense; and then the
chief officiating priest was left alone within the Holy
Place, to await the signal of the president before
burning the incense. It was probably while thus
expectant that the angel Gabriel appeared to Zacharias
[Luke 1:8-11]. As the president gave the word of
command, which marked that ‘the time of incense had
come,’ ‘the whole multitude of the people without’
withdrew from the inner court, and fell down before
the Lord, spreading their hands 2 in silent prayer.
“It is this most solemn period, when throughout the
vast Temple buildings deep silence rested on the
worshiping multitude, while within the sanctuary itself
the priest laid the incense on the golden altar, and the
cloud of ‘odours’ [5:8] rose up before the Lord, which
serves as the image of heavenly things in this
description.” 3
Following this awe-filled silence, the seven angels who
stand before God 4 are given Seven Trumpets (the
Temple liturgy used seven trumpets: 1 Chron. 15:24;
Neh. 12:41). St. John seems to assume that we will
recognize these seven angels; and well we should, for we
have met them already. The letters of Revelation 2-3
were written to “the seven angels” of the churches, and
it is they who are represented here (granting, of course,
that these figures are not necessarily “identical” to the
angels of the churches). They are clearly meant to be
related to each other, as we can see when we step back
from the text (and our preconceived ideas) and allow
the whole picture to present itself to us. When we do
this, we see the Revelation structured in sevens, and in
recurring patterns of sevens. One of those recurring
patterns is that of seven angels (chapters 1-3, 8-11, 14,
15-16). Just as earthly worship is patterned after
heavenly worship (Heb. 8:5; 9:23-24), so is the
government of the Church (Matt. 16:19; 18:18; John
20:23); moreover, according to Scripture, there are
numerous correspondences between human and
angelic activities (cf. 21:17). Angels are present in the
worship services of the Church (1 Cor. 11:10; Eph.
3:10) – or, more precisely, on the Lord’s Day we are
gathered in worship around the Throne of God, in the
heavenly court.
Thus we are shown in the Book of Revelation that the
government of the earthly Church corresponds to
heavenly, angelic government, just as our official
worship corresponds to that which is conducted around
the heavenly Throne by the angels. Moreover, the
judgments that fall down upon the Land are brought
through the actions of the seven angels (again, we
cannot divorce the human angels from their heavenly
counterparts). The officers of the Church are
commissioned and empowered to bring God’s blessings
and curses into fruition in the earth. Church officers are
the divinely appointed managers of world history. The
implications of this fact, as we shall see, are quite
literally earth-shaking.
3-5 St. John sees another angel standing at the
heavenly altar of incense, holding a golden censer. A
large amount of incense, symbolic of the prayers of all
the saints (cf. comments on 5:8), is given to the angel
that he might add it to the prayers of God’s people,
assuring that the prayers will be received as a sweetsmelling
offering to the Lord. Then the smoke of the
incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascends before
God out of the angel’s hand, as the minister offers up
the petitions of his congregation.
What happens next is amazing: The angel fills the
censer with coals of fire from the incense altar and casts
the fire onto the earth in judgment; and this is followed
by peals of thunder and voices and flashes of lightning
and an earthquake. These phenomena, of course,
should be familiar to us as the normal accompaniments
of the Glory-Cloud: “So it came about on the third day,
when it was morning, that there were thunder and
lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain
and a very loud trumpet sound. . . . Now Mount Sinai
was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it
in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a
furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently”
(Ex. 19:16, 18).
The irony of this passage becomes obvious when we
keep in mind that it is a prophecy against apostate
Israel. In the worship of the Old Testament, the fire on
the altar of burnt offering originated in heaven, coming
down upon the altar when the Tabernacle and the
Temple were made ready (Lev. 9:24; 2 Chron. 7:1).
This fire, started by God, was kept burning by the
priests, and was carried from place to place so that it
could be used to start other holy fires (Lev. 16:12-13; cf.
Num. 16:46-50; Gen. 22:6). Now, when God’s people
were commanded to destroy an apostate city, Moses
further ordered : “You shall gather all its booty into the
middle of its open square and burn all its booty with fire
as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God” (Deut.
13:16; Jud. 20:40; cf. Gen. 19:28). The only acceptable
way to burn a city as a whole burnt sacrifice was with
1. Milton S. Terry, Biblical Apocalyptics: A Study of the Most Notable Revelations
of God and of Christ in the Canonical Scriptures (New York: Eaton and Mains,
1898), pp. 343f. See also Alfred Edersheim, The Temple: Its Ministry and
Services as They Were at the Time of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans, 1980), pp. 167f.
2. Edersheim notes here that “the practice of folding the hands together in
prayer dates from the fifth century of our era, and is of purely Saxon origin.”
3. Alfred Edersheim, The Temple, p. 167.
4. Tobit 12:15 speaks of “the seven holy angels, which present the prayers of the
saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One.”
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