Revelation 9 The Destroyer, the Army, and the Rebel:
(The Bad, the Worse, and the Ugly)
This morning I wanted to focus on the last sentence of this chapter:
The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.
But today we will not have time to consider all of the ramifications of chapter 9:20-21.
Before this is possible, there are many exegetical issues we have to discuss, because if you study the book of Revelation, or go to online materials available on the book, you’ll hear a lot of interesting ways of looking at this chapter-Trumpets 5 and 6. This week we’ll discuss those issues, and the context of the last sentence, then next week we’ll observe this very disturbing response of the world to the suffering torment created as God’s judgment is poured out on the earth.
The context
Chapter 8 introduced the 7 trumpets. In that chapter the first 4 Trumpets are sounded, and each trumpet reveals a horrible form of destruction coming on the earth, most of them looking like asteroids or a comet impacting the earth, and killing about a third of the population of plants and animals and people on the planet. At the end of the chapter, God declares “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!”
Chapter 9 describes two of those last three Trumpet Blasts.
Trumpet 5:
The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.
The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer).
The first woe is past; two other woes are yet to come.
The Star is a person this time, rather than a burning mountain (as in Revelation 8). Who this is we don’t know. An angel? Satan? Whoever he is, he is given a key to
the Abusso, the Abyss.
The Abusso appears in classical Greek literature as the place lesser or evil people go when they die. It was thought of as a place toward the center of the earth that mortals could access if they could find the secret passage. It was a place of fire and smoke and the lingering dead. The Bible only uses the term a few times: Here in Revelation (chapters 9 and 20) and Luke 8, where the demons who posses a man beg Jesus to be thrown out into the pigs, rather than into the Abusso. It seems to be a holding place for demonic creatures and fallen angels.
It may be related to Hell, Hades, Tartarus, and the lake of fire, but exactly how it is related is not clear, and it is, apparently, not exactly the same as any of these.
Since classical literature depicted the Abyss as a place somewhere in the center of the earth it is likely a first century Greco/Jewish reader may have something similar in mind. Whether this is to be understood literally or not, it is interesting that recent science has concluded that below the first few miles of the crust of the earth most of the earth’s core is melted, super-heated rock and iron. It is the spinning molten iron core which creates the earth’s magnetic field. So, the center of the earth really is a hot burning place. Who knows? If it is not literal, if the abode of fallen angels and demons is in some hyper-dimensional no-escape-zone which cannot be localized with our planet, the center of the earth is certainly an appropriately hot and forbidding place to liken it to.
Locusts, with power like scorpions-not harming grass, or plants, but only humans-to torture the people who don’t have the seal of God (the 144,000 from Chapter 7).
Some have seen modern war machines in the description of the Locusts. This is understandable. Just a look at the destructive power of anything like the Apache helicopter (AH-64) typically carrying a mixture of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and Hydra 70 rocket pods (Wiki). (SLIDE) Although such machines fit much of the descriptions (noisy, stingers, breastplate of iron, face of a man), many parts of the description do not fit (hair like a woman, not harming plants but only humans, and human beings surviving an attack for 5 months-if you are hit by an attack from an Apache helicopter you don’t survive). I would have three main retorts to this approach:
1. It looks more like biological weapons rather than fire and explosion weapons-only this kind of ordinance could torment only humans without damaging the environment, and could torment people without killing them.
2. There is a spiritual dimension to what is described here which is beyond what any human army can fulfill.
3. No war machine i know of fits the descriptions here completely. It seems to me that biblical prophecy is extraordinarily accurate. I expect a fulfillment which is complete and until there is a bit more development in human warfare and weapons i feel the interpretation which sees modern war machines in Revelation 9 is incomplete. These emissaries of satan are sent to torment people, not to kill them.
People will seek death but will not find it. Will long to die, but death will elude them.
Until recently if a person stopped breathing and their heart stopped, they could be declared dead. The past few hundred years scientists have debated and adjusted the time of death. In fact, when surgeons do open-heart surgery, they actually stop the heart during the time of the surgery, by old standards the patient would be considered clinically dead. Patients who’s hearts stop who are kept cold can actually be revived hours or even days later. Some who have lost their heart-beat for a period and have been in a coma for months-effectively dead by many standards-have simply woken from their comatose state and some have even returned to full functionality. When a person is dead is not entirely clear.
By a biblical definition it has something to do with the spirit. According to the Bible this body is just a temporary housing for our soul-a tent. When the physical body is no longer able to function, apparently the spirit, the consciousness, moves on. What if your consciousness could not leave a broken body? People are seeking death. What if they commit suicide? They jump from the tallest building in the city and land on the pavement-every bone broken, in excruciating pain. But they cannot die.
This is a horrific curse to be unable to die, even when your body is effectively dead. The idea of zombies seems to fascinate some people. Another movie was recently made on the subject. Imagine if your dead, decaying, putrefying, pain-wracked body refused to let your consciousness go. It is difficult to imagine a more gruesome and frightening scenario. This is the curse of the 5th Trumpet.
The Destroyer Abbadon, Appolyon,
John gives the Greek and the Hebrew names.
In India, the related character would be Shiva-the god of Destruction. It is interesting to me that even today millions of people insist on worshiping a god that boasts a primary identity and function of destruction.
We should see that the locusts as well as the darkness are both related to the plagues brought against Egypt, and that God brought those plagues as a judgment of their gods (a god of insects, and a sun god, of which Pharaoh was supposed to be an offshoot). Joel also predicts these as elements of the Day of the Lord-the final chapter of human history. So looking back we need to see the connections to God’s work in the past.
Looking at the text itself, there seem to be tremendous spiritual undertones and overtones to these themes. Jesus said he saw Satan fall from heaven. The one leading these multitudinous hoards is a spiritual evil, and the locusts, and horses, and horsemen all seem to have demonic rather than merely natural power. The loss of death in torture is, itself, a horrible curse that certainly sounds as spiritual as it is physical. So, there is more going on here than merely physical war, and there is more going on here than some merely spiritual attack-this is demon empowered physical war against those who inhabit the earth after the Church is gone and it is unimaginably horrendous.
-The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.
The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury.
The voice from the 4 horns of the golden altar-
The horns of the altar in the Old Testament temple were there to provide a place to tie down the animal offered for sacrifice. The sacrifice of the Old Testament was a Lamb or a Ram. The Sacrifice of the New Testament is Jesus-the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. If a Voice comes from the altar it seems it must be the Sacrifice Himself that is speaking. Jesus is the Lord of Hosts-the Ruler of the Angels, and it seems He is giving the command for these four to be released.
4 angels from the Euphrates
to kill (Not to torment, but to kill) ¼ of the population-how much is left? 1/3 were wiped out in Chapter 8, those who remain are tortured 5 months by Trumpet 5, and now another ¼ of the population is wiped out by war. Any way you do the math at least half of the human population of the earth will be dead by the time the 6th trumpet blast has accomplished its purpose. Like the four horsemen were released by the first seal judgment, the four angels are released to bring their havoc on the world.
200,000,000 mounted troops.
horses with breastplates heads like lions, fire & sulfer out of the mouth-the power of the horses in their tails-like snakes (Hydra again?)
Horses are vehicles for the 1st century
Some have said that this number should not be taken literally-after all, it is just a way to double the biggest number available in Greek, and, therefore, probably indicates a REALLY big army. This may be true. Nevertheless taking this literally, there is no current army that has a number like this, and even all the current standing armies in the world could not add up to a number so large. Even taking into account Active, Reserves, militia, and private contractors, the total number of military now on earth is around 60 million.
So, perhaps, this indicates two things:
1. A unified army of the world, with all military forces of the world combined (something like the UN, but much more integrated and large), and
2. A militarized world with a higher percentage of the population in the military than we see now-a warring world, inspired by the hoards of hell, with the power to inflict injury and death.
By any measure it is a frightening image.
And with all of these ideas in mind we come to the baffling, shocking, incomprehensible ending of the chapter-a sobering commentary on the nature of humanity and the focus of the message for next week:
The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.
Surely there are lessons for the Church from Revelation chapter 9.
1. One is, I suppose, that we as the Church don’t have to go through the horrible events described there. Yet that is shallow comfort. The destruction is coming, and it is horrible. Jesus told us to pray that we are ‘counted worthy to escape’, but knowing it is coming is a terror, even if I know I, personally, will not have to go through it. People I know and love might. And that brings us to another lesson.
2. A central theme of the vision of Revelation is that we should not fret because of evildoers. In God's time justice will win out. Many times today we look around us and see that many of the people who run our nation seem to be motivated only by power and money, and are not concerned with the well-being of the people or the nation. Many are blatantly rebelling against God and His word. Yet the time will come when God will hold them to account. The world will be set right in God's time.
3. We have a responsibility to warn people-friends, family-a motivation for evangelism. As Paul said some are saved by love-it’s His kindness that leads us to repentance-but some are only saved by fear. If you are not frightened by the images of Revelation you don’t understand them. We need to warn people of the judgment to come. I know every end-of-the-world movie has a preacher on a corner proclaiming the judgment of God. Well, this preacher doesn’t plan to be here during the time God pours out His judgment. Once it comes the warning will be too late. We have to get the message out now.
4. But there is a more disturbing message to the Church. The people facing this judgment, the death of half the world’s population, desolation and destruction on an unimaginable scale, refuse to repent. Some of the things they refuse to repent of are elements Jesus warns the Church about in his letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3.
How could people fail to repent when facing such horror and destruction? Even at the end of the world, people refuse to give in to God’s plans. Why?
What does it take to get our attention? Is it possible the lack of repentance of this end-times multitude serves as a warning to the Church today?
We’ll try to answer some of these questions next week.
