Revelation Chapter 8

VERSE 3 “Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.”

Why is the Incense Altar Inserted Here?

Why are we being shown the seven angels being given trumpets, and then before we see what the trumpets are we have the description of the incense altar scene?

In the incense scene in the last verse just before the first trumpet sounds, we see fire cast into the earth which causes lightning’s, and voices, and thundering, and an earthquake. The same lightnings, voices, thundering and an earthquake are found in the seventh trumpet. Since the fire of the altar has the same results as some of the events of the seventh trumpet we think that an important lesson is being emphasized in the vision of the incense altar and the casting of the fire into the earth. We will try to show that in more detail as we look at the verses that are inserted here, before the trumpets begin.

One of the key doctrines that were lost with the decline of the church was the ransom doctrine, and how it relates to the salvation for both the church and the world.

The coals of fire on the altar represent the completed ransom sacrifice of our Lord, which had been consumed by the fire of the altar and offered up to God. So we suggest that the altar scene here shows us the salvation that the church had received, and some of the benefits of that sacrifice to the church. The picture we see here is of the high priest offering incense up to God and we see that the incense is what made the prayers of the saints acceptable. Prior to our high priest Jesus the ransom sacrifice and the sin offering for us, we had no assurance that our prayers would be heard by God. We are now able to come before God as sons and offer up prayer to him.

In the trumpets we will see that salvation and the knowledge of what Christ had accomplished for us eroded away, doctrine after doctrine, through at least the first four trumpets. After that time, in the three woe trumpets, we see God begin to punish and break the power of the false church and state system and begin to restore the truths that had been lost.

We might look on the first 4 trumpets as being a call to alarm about the evil that was coming on the church, and then finally the last three woe trumpets as a call to battle!

When the incense is cast into the earth, the various false salvation doctrines of the nominal system came into conflict with it, hence the thundering’s, voices, and the earthquake. The true church receives a blessing from the understanding of the ransom and sin offering, but the false church is shown to be in conflict with it.

The trinity doctrine is in direct conflict with the idea that the man Christ Jesus died for the man Adam. The reason for that conflict is that if Jesus was actually God in the flesh, as the trinity doctrine claims, then he could not have been an exact or corresponding price (anti-lutron) for Adam and the entire race. The reason for that conflicting problem is that the trinity doctrine claims that Jesus was 100% man and a 100% God at the same time. Since God + man are not an exact price, then they cannot believe in the idea of the economy of the ransom where Christ died for Adam. If they admitted that was what was accomplished by Christ, then they would have to admit that he was not God when he was here on earth and they cannot do that without destroying the trinity doctrine.

That we see the same type of symbols in the seventh trumpet shows that the ransom doctrine was to be an important test; not only throughout the entire age, but that it would become an important issue to God in the testing of the seventh church at the end of the age.

Incense burned in Both Morning and Evening

Another thing that we see in regard to incense is that in the type of the law they burned incense both in the morning and at night while they were offering prayers to God. The thought was that the incense either carried the prayers up with it or that it made the prayers acceptable. In this scene we see that the angel described here is given much incense to add to the prayers of “ALL” the saints. What we think that we see here is that the incense that’s added to the prayers of all the saints represented what our Lord Jesus did during his life. His whole life was offered up as a prayer to God, and all of that perfect human merit is now able to be offered with the other prayers of the saints and make them all acceptable.

When we considered Rev 5:8, we saw that each of the elders had golden bowls full of incense that it told us were the prayers of the saints, and we wondered why the 24 elders or the Old Testament scriptures would have prayers of the saints. The term saints as it is used there probably are all the righteous prophets who in Old Testament times had prayed to God for help and deliverance from evil. Many of those prayers were answered during the time of the prophet, but other parts of the prayers could not be immediately answered, because they were going to need the kingdom to be fully answered. Because of what Christ our high priest has done, all of those prayers will be able to be answered in due time.” (Revelation Notes Southern Wisconsin)

Because of the importance of the next several verses we will take a look at both our primary commentaries on Revelation to see how they explain things beginning with the New Albany Notes of Revelation in our next post.