"When we pray, where do our prayers go to?" This was a question answered by John Piper in his 2006 sermon titled "Prayer and the Victory of God." Here's what he said. Final text on this to illustrate the connection between prayer and the victory of God is Revelation 8, 4 and 5.

This is amazing. I love this image. Try to get it. An angel, another angel came and stood at the altar. So now picture God. No, you can't picture God, but here it is. An altar and God and a throne. Another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints.

Get this. Millions of saints. This is a picture of heaven at the end. At the end, not back then, the end. So millions and billions and billions of prayers stored in heaven, never forgotten, not one "Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come" will ever be forgotten. With all the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne and the smoke of the incense of the prayers, the incense of the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand of the angel.

Now we usually stop there and we think, "Oh yeah, I've heard that the prayers of the saints are like incense and they smell really good to God and that's true and that's magnificent." You want to make God happy? Pray. You want to create a good smell in the kitchen of heaven?

Pray. But this text isn't going there. It's going to victory. Verse 5, "The angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar where these millions of prayers are burning. Filled it and threw it on the earth with peals of thunder and rumblings and flashes of lightning and an earthquake." You wonder, "Where did all these signs come from at the end?" They came from your prayers.

"Hallowed be thy name on the earth, O God. Let your kingdom come, O God. Let it come. Bring it in, O God. Let your will be done on this planet the way the angels do it in heaven. Hasten the day of our God." That's what gets thrown on the earth in fire.

The victory of God is coming and it's coming by the prayers of God's people. Amen. This clip was taken from John Piper's 2006 sermon titled "Prayer and the Victory of God," and he was talking about Revelation chapter 8 verses 4 and 5. This clip was suggested to us by podcast listener Justin Bushnell from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Thank you, Justin, for suggesting this to us. And we now have 18 episodes on prayer in the APJ Archive. You can find them. Go to the landing page at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn and type out the word "prayer" into the search bar and you will find all of those 18 episodes listed out right before your eyes.

Well, a question has come in about whether souls can be scared into heaven. In other words, what is the right and what is the wrong emotional dynamics that can happen in personal conversion? John Piper is going to sit down with us tomorrow and sort of untangle the entailments of this question.

I'm your host Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We'll see you tomorrow.