Revelation 5: 8: And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.
Revelation 8: 3 – 4: And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.
During the seven church ages, the prayers of the New Testament saints had been gathered up in Heaven and were awaiting their fulfilment. Although some of these prayers had been realized as the ages rolled by, the majority of them would not come to pass until the Lamb came and took the Book to make His redemption claims. These prayers had all been stored up as incense or odours within the golden vials of the 24 elders.
When the Lamb came forth and took the Book, not only was He making His redemption claims, but He was making a way for every prayer offered to God to be made a reality. This is especially seen under the seventh seal in Revelation 8, with the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary on the Day of Atonement. Here we see the Lord Jesus clothed as the High Priest standing before the Golden Altar in Heaven, and offering much incense which represents the prayers of all the New Testament saints. In other words, the opening of the Book is connected with the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary whereby every prayer of yearning and every prayer made for transgression during the seven church ages would have its full realization by being answered on the great Day of Atonement at the end time.
But because the seven ages of the New Testament had only part-Word made available to the saints, they would all sleep in Christ awaiting their perfection or completion by the full opening of the Word in the last days, thus Paul would say to us in Hebrews 11: 40: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. What we come to learn from all of this is that throughout the seven church ages, there was the prayers of the saints being offered up to God as each age came and went, but at the end time, in the Bride Age that opened up by the Lamb’s taking of the Book, it is now the prayers of ALL saints ascending up to God, because the full Word is what makes a way for the fulfilment of every prayer that has been offered to God.
Under this great evening time atonement, Christ has said of us that we are the sinless, spotless, virtuous Bride of the living God (Ephesians 5: 25 – 27), because the accumulated sin heaped up in the heavenly sanctuary over the past 2000 years (where man sinned through ignorance and God “winked” at it) is all wiped away in the cleansing of the sanctuary by the full opening of the Word in the Lamb’s taking of the Book. We can therefore see that the realization and fulfilment of all prayers is actually based upon the revealed Word for the age, and unless a man prays according to what has been revealed, then his prayers will never be answered.