Prayer makes things worse...

Revelation 8 opens with a vision of the seven angels of God being given trumpets.

But before more is said about this, there is a change of scene. Another angel arrives and this one is given a golden censer in which he is to burn a great quantity of incense, offered with the prayers of the saints. This he does, and the smoke of the incense, mixed with the prayers of the saints, rises up before God. When this has happened, the angel then filled the censer with fire from the altar where he has stood offering up the prayers of the saints, and he throws the censer down onto the earth. And as it crashes there, all kinds of disaster takes place: thunder, lightning, rumbling, earthquake.

It is after this that the seven angels then start to blow their trumpets, and as they do all kinds of disaster takes place. Ecological disaster in earth and sea, the collapse of trade systems, the loss of water security, the bringing of darkness all flow from the blowing of the first four trumpets. A loud, persistent, wailing comes from an eagle messenger: Woe, woe, woe! And things are going to get worse...

At the blowing of the fifth trumpet, demonic and hellish forces of destruction and war are released in the earth, causing terrible agony for those refuse the truth of God. At the blowing of the sixth trumpet, even larger armies of destruction and war are released. At the blowing of the seventh trumpet, all comes to a conclusion and the rule of God is seen throughout the creation.

The blowing of the trumpets is described only after the vision of the angel who brings the prayers of the saints to God. Certainly the language of the first trumpet, where things are hurled and cast, matches that of the censer, which, after the prayers have ascended to God, is then hurled to the earth causing havoc. I think that what the Seer is telling us is that the hellish chaos of destruction that is evoked by the blowing of the trumpets comes as the result of the prayer of the saints, the people of God.

All of us who pray undoubtedly pray for things to get better. We seek God's intervention and help. This would be true of the saints throughout the ages. It may be shocking to us to read hear how prayer results in things becoming worse, in all the powers of hell breaking out in terrible action.

What we must see is that the censer and the trumpets are given to the angels from the hand of God. These events that issue from the blowing of the trumpets and the casting of the censer are actually not the attacks of hell, but the judgments of God. The praying of God's people is closely linked to the outworking of the judgments of God in His world. The saints do not necessarily pray for judgment, but rather for salvation and vindication. But God's saving work in this age is always linked to the action of his judgments.

In a world in which it may seem that the hellish forces of destruction portrayed in this scene of the revelation have burst out of those pages into the reality of our lives today, we will undoubtedly be moved to pray for those so devastatingly