Smoke of the incense, thundering and light in the heavens. Is it like any temple in India?


Those sentences which are colored in orange are from Maharishi Dayananda Saraswati book Satyarth Prakash (The Light of Truth) and those which are colored in black are Jerry Thomas’s response.


"And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer: and there was a given unto him much incense. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightenings, and earthquake." (8:3 – 5.)

C. Now even in (the Christian heaven) there is an altar, incense is burnt, lamps lighted, eatables offered, and trumpets sounded before the altar. Is their heaven in any way less ostentatious than a temple of Vairagees? If anything, there is more pomp and show there.


Answer: For the interpretation of the symbolic language in the prophetical books, please read the article Introduction to the Revelation and Figurative Language of Prophetical Writings.

The voices, thundering, lightening and earthquake are allusions to the Law. In the book of Hebrews 12:18-19, it is clearly given as an allusion to the Law.

Hebrews 12: 18-19 For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. 

In the Revelation, the same allusion is used to remind us that the justice of God is being executed now on the world.

Incense is further explained as prayers of saints in the book of Revelation itself.

Revelation 5:8 “Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.”

The Holy Bible itself explains all these and Maharishi out of his ignorance continues to howl against the Holy Bible.