The Half-Hour of Holy Quiet

All of heaven had been singing. John had watched a crowd from every nation and every language wave palm branches before the throne, while the angels fell on their faces and shouted, "Amen!"

Then the Lamb broke the seventh seal.

(Six of the scroll's wax seals were already broken. This was the last one holding it shut.)

The moment the last seal cracked, every sound in heaven stopped. The singers closed their mouths. The angels stood still. Not a harp string, not a footstep, not one feather rustled. For about half an hour, heaven was silent.

Half an hour is a long time to make no sound. (Try asking a room full of children to keep still for half an hour, and see how far you get.) In a place where the praise goes on day and night, it was very strange indeed.

John saw seven angels standing before God, and each was handed a trumpet. They held them and waited.

Another angel came and stood at the golden altar in front of the throne. In his hand was a censer, a golden pan for carrying hot coals. He was given a great heap of incense, sweet spices that make fragrant smoke when they burn, and he offered it on the altar together with the prayers of all God's people.

The smoke went up from the angel's hand, and the prayers went up with it, right before God.

John had already heard some of those prayers. Under that same altar were the souls of people who had been killed for trusting God, and they had cried out, "How long, O Lord, holy and true?" How long until the wrong things are put right? There were prayers from prison cells and sickbeds, from mothers and fathers and children, prayers whispered and prayers shouted. Heaven had stopped its singing, and God was listening to every one.

Then the angel filled the censer with fire from the altar and threw it down on the earth.

CRASH! Down came thunder and rumbling and flashes of lightning, and the whole earth shook.

God's people had asked him to put an end to evil, and this was the start of his answer. When the seven trumpets sounded, hard and frightening things came on the earth, warnings to a world that had turned its back on God. He does not let wickedness go on forever.

John had smelled that sweet smoke before. As a young man he had gone up to the temple in Jerusalem at the hour of prayer, where a priest burned incense on a golden altar every morning and every evening while the people stood outside and prayed. The smoke rose, and drifted, and was gone, and a few hours later the priest had to do it all again. Priests grew old and died, and still the people prayed and waited.

They needed a priest who would never go home and never grow tired, one who could go all the way in to God's throne and sit down there for good.

The Lamb who broke that seventh seal is that priest. On the night before he died, he prayed for his friends, and for everyone who would ever trust him. Now he is alive at his Father's right hand, and the Bible says he always lives to pray for his people. Their prayers rise with his. Jesus is still praying, and heaven is still listening.