Revelation 8:3 Commentary and Bible Study

John now sees what takes place during this half-hour of silence. It is the time of prayer. For the sake of this illustration, all the prayers of God’s people have been gathered up together at the start of this vision, though in reality they are distributed throughout the whole of history. This is a literary device which shows more clearly that what is about to happen next is God’s response to prayer. In the vision the prayers come first and the trumpets follow as God’s answer to those prayers.Who is this angel that has authority to offer up incense with the prayers of the saints? We notice that the incense is given to him. If he had produced it himself we might have interpreted this angel as the Lord himself, for the incense surely refers to the sweetening influence of the Lord’s intercession mixed with the prayer of the saints. Christ alone intercedes for his people (John 17). Paul teaches the same: ‘Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us’ (Romans 8:34). He comes as our great High Priest to make petitions to God, just as the priests burnt incense in the temple in former times. He takes our prayers and purifies them before presenting them to God. But the incense is given to this high-ranking angel, and we do not have to interpret the angel as Christ. If we did not already know it, this passage in Revelation confirms that the incense stood for the prayers of the saints, and particularly the sweetening effect of Christ’s intercession. To God the prayers of his saints are something precious. They are a sweet-smelling perfume that arises from earth to heaven just as smoke ascends. Obviously, this does not mean that the worship of types and shadows is still performed in heaven, but the language of types and shadows is used to describe something which we can only understand through symbolic pictures. The angel’s censer is made of pure gold, as in the temple (1 Kings 7:50), signifying the great worth of prayer. The incense is offered upon the altar – which is probably the altar of burnt offering (Leviticus 16:12) – signifying that the prayers are acceptable because of the offering that Christ has offered. The censer used by the high priest when he entered into the holy of holies was kept within the holy of holies (Hebrews 9:4).