The Lamb’S Work Is Finished
THE LAMB’S WORK IS FINISHED
REVELATION 8:1-6
Among the virtues we must learn is patience. More harm is sometimes done through haste than slowness.
Today there is growing agreement that chapters 4–20 should be divided into a number of approximately parallel sections (4:1–8:1; 8:2–11:19; 12:1–14:20; 15:1–16:21; 17:1–19:21). They start at varying points but all terminate at the point of Christ’s return. If that is so, 8:1 comes at the end of the section that began with 4:1. When the seventh seal is broken, the silence shows that there is nothing more in the scroll. The glorified and victorious church has echoed the “It is finished” of its Lord. Nothing remains but for the Lamb to take up his power on earth. Even so he can wait; the Lord knows no haste in the fulfillment of his purposes.
With 8:2 we go back in time, probably to the fifth seal (6:9) and see the judgments of God in more detail. As was mentioned on 6:9, the golden “altar” (8:3) is a new feature. Hebrews 9:3f. tells us that it belonged to the Most Holy Place, ie this is a mere shadow of the heavenly reality. Incense has a double meaning. It is something that goes up, and so can represent prayer (5:8), but it also hides (Leviticus 16:12f.). So here it is something that hides God from humanity (Isaiah 6:4, “smoke”), symbolized by the veil of the tabernacle. This is a warning against taking symbolism as a sort of mathematical game in which, for the solver, two terms are interchangeable. If it were so, it would be no more than a poetic device. The seven trumpets speak primarily of God’s wrath on people from whom he is hidden.
In favor of a link with 6:9f. is the fact that the censer used for the offering of the prayers and incense is now used for the hurling of fire on the earth, prophetic of the woes to come. The fulfillment of the prayers of the martyred saints might seem a long time coming, but it was sure.