Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Temple Filled with Smoke
Revelation 15:5-8
5 After these things I looked, and the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened. · WEB
The temple of the testimony opens for the last time, the bowls come from the living creatures, and the smoke closes intercession until wrath is finished.
After these things I looked, and the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened.
The fifth sanctuary-opening, and the title is chosen with the whole book's freight: the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony — the wilderness name for the sanctuary as housing of the covenant tablets Numbers 1:50 Exodus 25:16, the ark's room seen open at the central movement's launch Revelation 11:19. As the last plagues assemble, the book points one final time at what the whole war has been about: the testimony — the law in the ark under the mercy seat, the commandments the remnant keeps Revelation 12:17 Revelation 14:12. The judgments about to pour are not temper; they issue from the covenant's own room, measured against the tablets the world's system defied.
The seven angels who had the seven plagues came out, clothed with pure, bright linen, and wearing golden sashes around their chests Revelation 15:6 — priestly dress, the sanctuary's own vestments Revelation 1:13: the executors of wrath come out robed like priests, because in this book judgment is liturgy — the temple's service in its final form.
One of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever Revelation 15:7.
The vessels are golden bowls — the phrase is exact, and the book has used it once before: golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints Revelation 5:8. The same vessels that carried the prayers up carry the wrath down — the correspondence the censer already enacted at the trumpets' start Revelation 8:3–5, now completed: the bowls of the saints' asking return as the bowls of God's answering. Nothing in the coming chapter is arbitrary; it is the how-long of the martyrs Revelation 6:10, measured, granted, and poured.
The temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power. No one was able to enter into the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels would be finished Revelation 15:8.
The cloud that filled the tabernacle at its dedication and the temple at Solomon's — glory so thick the priests could not stand to minister Exodus 40:34–35 1 Kings 8:10–11 — fills the heavenly temple now, with the darker consequence stated: no one was able to enter... until the plagues would be finished. The sanctuary's daily traffic — the incense, the mediation, the adding of fragrance to prayers Revelation 8:3 — suspends: probation's door stands closed; every case is decided Revelation 22:11; and until the wrath completes, no intercessor crosses that threshold. The most solemn architecture in the book: mercy's room, full of glory, shut.
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