The Angel with the Golden Censer

Also known as: The Angel at the Heavenly Altar, The Angel Offering Incense, The Incense Angel, The Angel Before the Golden Altar

“Another angel” who stands at the heavenly altar with a golden censer, seen just before the Seven Trumpet Angels sound (Revelation 8:3–5). He is given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense rises before God together with those prayers; then he fills the censer with fire from the altar and casts it upon the earth, and there follow thunder, lightning, voices, and an earthquake — the prelude to the trumpet judgments. The scene binds heaven’s worship to God’s justice: the prayers of the faithful are received into the heavenly liturgy, and from the same altar the judgments proceed. His ministry takes up the priestly incense-offering of the Temple (Exodus 30), and Orthodox worship still lifts incense as the sign of prayer ascending — “Let my prayer arise as incense before You” (Psalm 141:2). Scripture gives him no name; the tradition sees a faithful heavenly minister, not a named archangel, though his office of presenting the saints’ prayers is exactly that ascribed to the Archangel Raphael in the Book of Tobit.