Revelation 15:8

And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and none was able to enter into the temple, until the seven plagues of the seven angels should be finished.

And the temple was filled with smoke ... "The main point of this is the inevitability of the plagues. When God's good time has come, nothing can stop final judgment."[47] This symbolizes the judicial hardening of the incorrigibly wicked. It will be recalled from Isaiah 6:4ff that the "smoke" from God's presence meant the prophecy of the hardening of Israel. So here, the smoke means that, in this situation, God's work of grace is finished. "None was able to enter into the temple." "The sanctuary is inaccessible ... the time for intercession is past."[48]

Rather than limit this to the end time, when this very condition of the human race will probably have occurred, why should it not also include the irrevocably wicked of any and all generations? It is a dreadful thing to contemplate, no matter how it may be interpreted. How dreadful must be that day, when for any man, or any nation, there comes the time when God's face is turned away, when his holy presence is obscured by smoke, and when prayer may receive no answer except the petitioner's agony. The bowls of the wrath of God were indeed once poured out upon rebellious Jerusalem, not because she rebelled against Rome, but because she had previously rebelled against God in the rejection of Christ. They were again poured out upon pagan Rome. When the vast wicked empire had finished with tormenting and persecuting the saints, and when the time came for God to humiliate her under the heel of the invader, the city fell in 476 A.D. From this it may be concluded that there is no world situation of entrenched wickedness anywhere on earth that has ever been safe, or ever will be safe, from the type of judgments signified by these bowls.

[47] Leon Morris, op. cit., p. 191.

[48] F. F. Bruce, op. cit., p. 656.