FRAGRANCE or FIRE?
“And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense,which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.” —Rev. 8:3-5
One of the fascinating things in scripture is the revelation of God’s power to use the same instrument to accomplish blessing on the one hand, or judgment on the other. The “two edged sword” of the Spirit, which is the word of God, is a prime example. One edge of the sword is surgical, so to speak, suited to cutting away the cancer of sin and introducing the convicted sinner to the healing power of Christ. But that same word will be the instrument of judgment when men who have ignored or rejected it stand before Christ in the last day.
Much in nature illustrates the same principle. Fire can melt ore and make for the removal of impurities, refining gold and silver, for example, or it can destroy and consume. Water is the same; it is essential to life, but when it comes as a flood, it can destroy life, and everything in its path. Many other examples could be cited, but these serve to illustrate the point. In the text before us there is a striking illustration in the censer in the hand of the angel in v. 3.
A quick review in the Old Testament book of Leviticus will disclose the divinely ordained use of the censer in worship. Aaron was instructed to use it in conjunction with the sin offering on the Day of Atonement: “And he shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the Lord, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the vail: And he shall put the incense upon the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not [Lev. 16:12-13].” Thus engaged, the censer was an instrument of worship and of life.
In our text for today, it is in this sense that the censer is employed at first, when it ignited the incense and gave a divinely ordained fragrance and significance to the prayers of the saints. It was an agent of worship and blessing in the presence of God. But immediately the same instrument becomes an accessory to the outpouring of God’s wrath upon a prayerless and godless world. Filled with fire from the golden altar which is before the throne of God and cast into the earth, it initiates “voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake,” preface to the awful judgments of the “seven trumpets” of the tribulation period.
A series of convulsions follow, employing the forces of nature on earth and elements in the heavens to bring chaos to the planet and incredible misery to its inhabitants. The Lord Jesus anticipated these things when He said, “Then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved…[Mat. 24:21-22].”
Man ignores the fact, too often also ignored by many a professing Christian, that the God who made the world and its environs has unlimited control over it. A man who identifies himself as a Christian told me today how it took millions of years to carve the canyon at Watkins Glen in Vermont. That kind of thinking comes from faith—faith in the philosophical scientists who, having rejected the idea of an omnipotent God as creator of all, cannot explain earth phenomena without interposing vast reaches of time, vague and unverifiable, to “explain” the undiscoverable. The simple fact is that should He choose to do so, the God of creation could carve Watkins Glen—or the Grand Canyon, for that matter, with His little finger in less time than it has taken to write this sentence. The instruments of His power are “two edged,” and men will experience either their deliverance or their destruction depending on what they have done with the Gospel of His dear Son.
Add your prayers to those of these tribulation saints whose worship will rise as a fragrance to God. Not prayers limited to pleas for physical welfare and temporal concerns, but prayers that incorporate worship and rise for His glory.
For His glory and our good,
"Pastor" Frasier
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