---
title: Revelation 15:5
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/revelation-15-5/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/revelation-15-5.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Revelation 15:5
testament: NT
section: Prophecy
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Revelation 15:5

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> After this I looked, and the temple—the tabernacle of the Testimony—was opened in heaven.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "the sanctuary of the tent of the witness was opened in heaven"

## JW Usage

Watchtower commentary reads Revelation 15:5 as the opening of Jehovah's heavenly throne-room for the seven last plagues. The "sanctuary of the tent of the witness" is taken as the heavenly archetype of the Mosaic tabernacle — the symbolically authoritative source of the bowls of wrath about to be poured out on Babylon and the beast.

## Protestant Usage

This verse is the third explicit "naos in heaven" identification within the same section (14:15, 14:17, 15:5). Three uses, three explicit heavenly locations. The verse closes any wiggle room about Revelation's consistent use of naos: every occurrence is the heavenly sanctuary. So when Revelation 7:15 places the great crowd "in his temple [naos] rendering sacred service day and night," they are in the heavenly sanctuary — the same naos opened in 15:5. The earthly-paradise reading of the great crowd cannot be sustained if naos means what it consistently means everywhere else in the book.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [I Heard / I Saw — Revelation's Literary Key](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/heard-saw-pattern.md) — Revelation 5:5–6 / Revelation 7:4–9 [Eschatology]