Revelation 9

¹ And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. ² He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. ³ Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. ⁴ They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. ⁵ They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. ⁶ And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. ⁷ In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, ⁸ their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; ⁹ they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. ¹⁰ They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. ¹¹ They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon. ¹² The first woe has passed; behold, two woes are still to come. ¹³ Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, ¹⁴ saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” ¹⁵ So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind. ¹⁶ The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number. ¹⁷ And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. ¹⁸ By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths. ¹⁹ For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound. ²⁰ The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, ²¹ nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.

I love corny preacher jokes. They are almost as enjoyable as corny dad jokes. Here is one I heard some years back:

A priest and a pastor from one of the local churches were standing by the side of the road, pounding a sign into the ground, that read:

“The End is Near! Turn Yourself Around Now! Before It’s Too Late!”

As a car sped past them, the driver yelled, “Leave us alone, you religious fanatics!”

From the curve they heard screeching tires and a big splash.

The pastor turned to the priest and asked, “Do you think the sign should just say, ‘Bridge Out’?”

At the least that deserves a polite chuckle, no? Ha! But it does make a valid point: human beings have an unbelievable ability to ignore and mock warnings only to plunge into destruction. Amazingly, tragically, this is the picture we find in Revelation 9 with the blowing of trumpets 6 and 7.

The terrifying judgment of God.

We must note a difference between the first four trumpets and the next two. The first four seemed to be the active work of God in sending judgment upon the earth “from above,” we might say. Trumpets 5 and 6 appear to be divine judgment in the form of God allowing certain hellish and demonic forces to torment mankind in the tribulation. The difference would be between God actively causing something and God allowing something to happen (i.e., note the language: “they were told not to” ((v.4)); “they were allowed to” ((v.5))). Both can be used by God for His purposes, but there is a difference in the execution of them.

¹ And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.

The reference to “a star” is likely a reference to an angel who either “falls” or “descends” from heaven to open the bottomless pit. Theories concerning the nature of this angel are all over the map, as Leon Morris demonstrates.

The most diverse identifications of the star-angel are given. He might be Nero (Weymouth), a fallen angel (Simcox, Love), the ‘angel of the abyss’ (Orr), an evil spirit (Kiddle), even Satan himself (Hendriksen, Hoeksema, Atkinson; Swete thinks ‘possibly Satan’). On the other hand he is seen as the Word of God (Torrance), an angel, possibly Uriel (Charles), our Lord himself (Berkeley). With the experts so divided it is unwise to be dogmatic. John does not identify him and we simply do not have enough information to do so.[1]

Many do believe this “star” is Satan, and not without some reason, but let us note that Revelation 20 speaks of an angel with the key to the abyss who is clearly not Satan (though this angel could be).[2]

¹ Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. ² And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years

The caution for humility in trying to identify this “star” is wise. What is most important is what is unleashed by the fallen star.

² He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. ³ Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. ⁴ They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. ⁵ They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. ⁶ And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. ⁷ In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, ⁸ their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; ⁹ they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. ¹⁰ They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. ¹¹ They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon. ¹² The first woe has passed; behold, two woes are still to come.

This is, to put it mildly, terrifying. The ominous shaft is opened. Smoke arises. Then locusts emerge from the smoke. They are locusts, but they are not ordinary locusts. They look like horses but they are crowned and have human faces with women’s hair and lion’s teeth. They are arrayed in battle. They are loud: “the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle.” And if all of this is not scary enough, “[t]hey have tails and stings like scorpions.” Numerous artists have attempted to depict these creatures, but let us be sure of this: all attempts to depict the locusts of Revelation 9 are doomed to fall short of the terrifying reality.

And what do these locusts do? They are allowed to torment everyone on the earth who has not been sealed by God. They cannot touch God’s children. God protects His children. But they are able to sting and afflict the rest of the earth.

How horrific! But there is one more detail. These demonic locusts are part of an army. They have a leader, a “king” who is “over them.” Who is this king? He is “the angel of the bottomless pit” and he is named “Abaddon” in Hebrew and “Apollyon” in Greek. He is the Destroyer! Again, Morris offers some helpful background.

Abaddon transliterates a Hebrew word meaning ‘destruction’ (Job. 26:6; 28:22; Ps. 88:11; Prov. 15:11). The Greek equivalent is given as Apollyon, which means ‘destroyer’. It is possible that this name is used rather than one of the other possible equivalents in order to convey a derogatory allusion to the god Apollo. What the Greeks worshipped as a god was no more than a demon. Beasley-Murray thinks there may be in mind the fact that Domitian saw himself as an incarnation of Apollo.[3]

Is this angel of the pit Satan? Quite possibly. Or, at the least, he is very high up in the infernal ranks of Satan’s army. Another question is whether or not the king of the demons, “the angel of the bottomless pit,” is the same angel as the one who falls to open the pit. I personally feel that these are two different angels. The one opens the pit and the other is bound in it, apparently, but many argue that it is one and the same and that the falling star is a depiction of the devil himself. Perhaps so. This much is clear: the king of demon locusts is certainly a hellish and horrible creature, either Satan or a demon high up in his hierarchy.

The fifth trumpet is terrifying. So too the sixth!

¹³ Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, ¹⁴ saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”

Some argue that the four angels of Revelation 9:14 are the same as the four angels of Revelation 7? Remember them?

¹ After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.

It is possible. Apocalyptic imagery is pretty fluid! However, I want to argue that the four angels of Revelation 9 are best seen as fallen angels who are themselves restrained whereas the four angels of Revelation 7 are holding back the four winds (the four horsemen perhaps). Gordon Fee offers a further interesting insight:

Now four angels are themselves pictured as bound, and are located geographically at the Euphrates River. For Israel this river (and therefore Babylon) was considered “north,” since most foreign invasions came from that direction, coming “down” against Israel along the coastal plain. In light of the following description of a vast army assembled for battle, this is almost certainly a pickup from Ezekiel’s prophecy against Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38–39). And given Rome’s own fears of the Parthian hordes, who had twice defeated their armies in recent history, this is the logical place for such a colossal threat to originate.[4]

Notice that these angels are themselves destructive. Again, it is likely best to see them as fallen angels themselves who God is going to let off the leash at this point.

¹⁵ So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind. ¹⁶ The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number.

The angels are released but in the releasing of them we discover that a hellish army has been released! And what an army it is! “Twice ten thousand times ten thousand” comes out to “‘two hundred million,’ a number,” Gordon Fee tells us, “that in antiquity simply did not exist,” and, if pictured literally, would show “cavalry, which at one mile wide would be about eighty-five miles long!”[5] Furthermore, Duvall points out:

The standing Roman army at this time numbered around 150,000 with an auxiliary army of roughly the same size. The demonic army would be almost 700 times larger than the world’s most powerful army at that time, and John’s first audience would have been shocked and overwhelmed by this number.[6]

This is astonishing! And, like the calamities unleashed in the first four trumpets, this army of in Revelation 9 “was released to kill a third of mankind.” Here again we see a measure of restraint, as frightening as this is. Consider the appearance of this army:

¹⁷ And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. ¹⁸ By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths. ¹⁹ For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound.

My goodness! The horses’ heads were like lions and they belched forth smoke and sulfur. Whereas the locusts’ tails were like scorpions, the horses’ “tails are like serpents with heads.” They had Medusa tails! And their tails bite out at rebellious humanity!

The astonishing stubbornness of mankind.

We read these terrifying images and we think, “Then surely—surely!—those who remained repented and cried out for mercy! Right? Surely this led to mass confession and repentance!” But watch:

²⁰ The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, ²¹ nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.

Oh my! Oh no! How can this be?! They not only did not repent of their sin (murder, sorcery, sexual immorality, theft), but they actually worshiped demons and idols! The Holman Christian Study Bible makes the astute point that “[i]t is ironic that unrepentant unbelievers, who worship demons (v. 20), are tormented by the very beings they worship…”[7]But is not that the great tragedy of sin? We come to love that which is wounding us, that which is tormenting us, that which is killing us. We come to worship our tormentors.

Oh my, oh my! They “did not repent”! How on earth can this happen? How hard hearted can human beings become.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, reflecting on the shocking atrocities he saw committed in Stalin’s gulags, wrote:

Evidently evildoing also has a threshold magnitude. Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return.[8]

Another Russian writer who thought deeply about sin and guilt and repentance, Dostoevsky, wrote:

Let me tell you, there is a limit of ignominy in the consciousness of one’s own nothingness and impotence beyond which a man cannot go, and beyond which he begins to feel immense satisfaction in his very degradation.[9]

That is a good description of the unrepentant heart: “begins to feel immense satisfaction in his very degradation.” Is that not so? Is it not possible to reach a point where we take a kind of demonic pride in our own wretchedness? Certainly that is so!

Jesus Himself marveled at the stubbornness of the sinful human heart in Matthew 23.

³⁷ “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

“And you were not willing.”

What about you? What about me? What of our beloved sins? Though they sting us, we love them. Though they wound us, we are attached to them. Will we not walk away from them? Will we not abandon our wretched sins?! Are we willing?

The beautiful promise of deliverance for the repentant heart.

I made a vow when I started preaching Revelation that I would never leave a message in darkness. There is great darkness in Revelation, to be sure, but, as I have tried to show, there is much greater light and hope! These warnings serve a purpose. You were not made to be tormented by demon locusts and demon horses with Medusa tails. You were made for God! You were made to live in fellowship with Him! This is why the light shines in the darkness. This is why the offer of forgiveness must be heralded and shouted into the darkness.

In Luke 23 we see the heart of the crucified Christ.

^34a-c And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Here is good news! Here is hope! The heart of God in Christ is one of mercy. He is calling us to repentance and to forgiveness! He desires to forgive!

The implication of this is clearly expressed in 1 John 1.

⁸ If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Yes, our sins are worthy of all of these horrors and terrors. And yet…Jesus lays down His life so that we can be forgiven our sins! You can walk into the future with peace and with joy, even in light of the judgment that will come upon the world. You can be sealed by the blood of the Lamb and the indwelling Spirit: sealed, protected, guarded against the just wrath of a holy God. How? By bowing knee and heart and mind and soul to the Lamb. By coming home to King Jesus.

Your sins want to hurt you. Your sins want to kill you.

Jesus wants to heal you. Jesus wants to save you.

Repent.

Believe.

Accept.

Then live!

 

[1] Morris, Leon L.. Revelation (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries) (p. 126). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

[2] But on the other hand, Beal: “The fifth angel sounds the trumpet, and John sees another vision of judgment. He sees a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth. This star is probably the same or at least similar to the star of 8:10, an angel representing sinful people and undergoing judgment along with them. The OT background is Isa. 14:12-15. Jesus uses virtually the same expression to describe Satan’s judgment in Luke 10:18: “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.” The expression here may be another way of saying that “Satan … was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Rev. 12:9; cf. 12:13). The conclusion that this is a fallen angel is also suggested by v. 11. There the “angel of the abyss” is called “king over” the demonic locusts and is referred to as “Abaddon” (“Destruction”) and “Apollyon” (“Destroyer”). The heavenly being who is sovereign over the abyss and locusts in vv. 1-3 is probably the same figure as the one in v. 11, who is said to be “king” over them (for the Satanic nature of this angel see on v. 11).” Beale, G. K.,Campbell, David. Revelation (p. 209). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.

[3] Morris, Leon L., pp. 129-130.

[4] Fee, Gordon D.. Revelation (New Covenant Commentary Series Book 3) (p. 128). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

[5] Fee, Gordon D., p. 129.

[6] Duvall, J. Scott. Revelation (Teach the Text Commentary Series) (p. 146). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[7] Holman Bible Editorial Staff, Holman Bible Editorial Staff. HCSB Study Bible (Kindle Locations 151611-151612). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[8] Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. Vol. I. (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973), p.175.

[9] Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Idiot. (New York: Everyman’s Library, ), p. 393.