Revelation 15:8 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Revelation 15:8

Comments

This verse is very important to us. ‘And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple, till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled.’ The meaning of those words – and this is the favourite interpretation certainly of the old interpreters – is most probably this: there can now be no acceptable intercession for people who are under final judgement. It is true that we don’t necessarily know who they are. Even Christians may suffer terrible diseases and die from them. Yes, but such diseases are not judgements for us because we are not afraid of death, and the sooner we die, the sooner we are carried into the presence of Almighty God. All our terminal diseases and their suffering and their pain can do for us is bring us nearer to the Lord, and bring us nearer to him in prayer, and to the place where we even more richly reap his comforts and sights of him; they speed the way into his presence. But we cannot tell who is under some kind of terminal wrath and suffering, so we may go on praying. Nevertheless the teaching here is that in some cases known to God, it is the last punishment for a person; there is no more grace; there is no more intercession. So while these things are happening, in the symbolism nobody enters into the temple. Again, this imagery is borrowed from the Old Testament. Its symbols are still the best means to convey certain aspects of God’s truth until we see him face to face. After the ark had been brought into the newly dedicated temple of Solomon, God gave the people a token of his presence among them by causing a cloud which represented his glory to fill the temple. The cloud filled the temple so that the priests could not continue to minister (1 Kings 8:10-11). That cloud was only a token of the presence of God, for, as Solomon immediately afterwards admitted in his dedicatory prayer (1 Kings 8:27), not even the heaven of heavens is able to contain God, much less this temple. But John sees into heaven itself where the true temple dwells. God’s anger makes it impossible for any to enter heaven, and this is linked to the pouring out of the seven last plagues by the seven angels. God’s anger is no mere token, a mechanical response of justice; it is really felt by the Lord. He hates evil with all his being and for him sin is an intensely personal matter. It is a direct affront to him, an assault on all that he loves and knows to be good. He who did not spare his own Son but delivered him up for us will not disregard wickedness for the sake of any lesser being. This is the prelude which shows the solemnity of what is about to follow.

Application

At the dedication of Solomon’s Temple the great song or poem that God revealed to Solomon was sung. It ran along these lines: if we sin like this and we do such and such a thing and our hearts are touched and we come to our senses and look to this house in repentance, there is forgiveness and mercy for us. Solomon says it again and again in his great message at the dedication of the temple. If we then turn to the temple and repent, God’s forgiveness is with us. But in a final plague you cannot turn; it’s too late. You are now hardened in your unbelief, your obduracy, your resentment against God and hatred of him, and we have seen it. You can see it in the videos; you can see it in the faces of some of the extreme and militant atheists. You can almost see their hatred of God, and you think: ‘That man seems to be completely hardened; he’s crossed the line.’ He is as good as doomed, as good as in hell, and God’s judgement of him will be perfect and fair. There will be nothing cruel about it. It will be exactly what he merits, and it will be terrible, and even now he seems to be consumed. That is what we are looking at in the last plagues. So there are two kinds of judgements constantly poured out in the world: reformative – represented by trumpets of warning – and punitive – represented by the last plagues.

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Revelation 15:8 Commentary and Bible Study