God Answers Prayer

 Reflections on Revelation 8:2-5

Throughout this age, saints give their lives for the word of God and the testimony they give for Jesus as was seen in the fifth seal. The opening of the sixth and seventh seals assured the saints that those martyrs would be remembered: Christ would return to judge the nations and gather the elect. But, what about those who suffer and are not killed? God does not ignore their plight, does he? No, the new vision, a series of seven trumpet blasts, assures suffering saints that they, too, are remembered before God. He hears the prayers of suffering saints throughout this age. Thus, the sounding of the seven trumpets is roughly parallel with the opening of the seven seals.

Model of Jerusalem; Herod's Palace
with the Temple in the Background

The vision of the seven trumpet blasts is introduced with the prayers of the saints ascending before God with the incense which an angel offers on the golden altar. This altar is not the altar of sacrifice from which the martyrs cried out earlier. Instead, it corresponds to the golden altar of incense before the veil in the Holy Place of the temple in Jerusalem. This altar, however, stands before God in the true, heavenly temple not made with hands. An angel, not a descendant of Aaron, serves at this altar. The prayers refer to the prayers of those suffering for their faith in Jesus. Their prayers remind us of the cries of the Israelites in Egypt (Exodus 2:23-25). The rising of the incense before God in his heavenly temple assures the saints that God hears their prayers just as he heard the cries of the Israelites.

After the angel offers the incense, he fills the censer with fire from the altar and throws it on the earth, and there is thunder, lightening, and an earthquake (v. 5), which foreshadow the judgments which God will send upon the earth.