We studying Revelation, Chapter 9, and are in the Great Tribulation, the Day of the Lord:
9 Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it. 10 For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. 11 I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless. (Isaiah 13:9–11 ESV)
More precisely we are in the second half of the Tribulation when the full weight of God’s judgment comes in fury to destroy the word of Satan, his demons, his counterfeit kingdom, and all who chose to follow him through rejection of God.
We are in the second of 3 series of Judgements. The first is the breaking of the seven seals of the scroll - the title deed to the universe - being held by the Lord Jesus Christ. The seventh seal signals the sounding of the seven trumpets and we saw the sounding of the first four trumpets in Chapter 8:
The First Trumpet in Revelation 8:7 send hail and fire mixed with blood that burned up a third of the earth
The Second Trumpet in Revelation 8:8 brought a great asteroid crashing into the sea and killing a third of the sea creatures and destroying a third of the ships
The Third Trumpet in Revelation 8:10 sent a burning star named wormwood on the earth making a third of the freshwater undrinkable
The Fourth Trumpet sounds in Revelation 8:12 and the sun, moon, and stars are blackened.
After that, there is an eagle that flies over the earth and issues three woes for the remaining three trumpets that are about to sound. This is likely God’s constant merciful call for humanity to repent. Ezekiel 33:11 says, “God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” I suppose that’s why there are over six hundred warnings in Scripture about hell. God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, He is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.:
?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. (Revelation 9:1–12 ESV)
The First of Three Woes
The first Woe is the Fifth Trumpet. As the fifth trumpet sounds, John says he sees a star falling from heaven to earth. This star is holding the key to the bottomless pit. The results of all of this unfold a very frightening scene as we will see.
Stars are often used to describe angels and this star is the scene of Lucifer falling from heaven to earth:
12 “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! 13 You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ 15 But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. (Isaiah 14:12–15 ESV)
18 And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. (Luke 10:18 ESV)
Now, John is using the present perfect tense. So this is not something that happened in the past. Perhaps Satan was driven from his dominion over the earth and was cast down to the earth. Perhaps he was still in heaven as the accuser of the brethren and now he was struck down from heaven. He had the keys to hell and we see that he opens the shaft to the pit and what happens when he opens the pit is terrifying.
This is important. He’s already been thrown to the earth and all of the demons who have occupied the territories in the heavens and warred with the holy angels at that level are also cast down. So there is going to be an unleashing of demon power than the world has ever known. And that’s what makes the great tribulation so awful. Suppose we do not have to wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world and spiritual wickedness in the heavenly, and the battle is as formidable as it is. What’s it going to be like when the number of them is multiplied massively because they’re thrown out of the heavens?
The first thing that happens is that the smoke from the pit fills the air and blocks the light of the sun. You say, “Is it a real smoke?” To John, he saw smoke. I don’t know if it is physical or if it is spiritual. I would say it is a combination of both. What comes out of this pit is ugly black pollution. I believe it is hell releasing its corruption. It is the vile filth of the worst of the demons incarcerated in the pit let loose.
From these smokes comes a tormenting plague of demonic locusts. Ordinary locust plagues are unimaginable. They can literally make it look like night in the middle of the day. They can blot out the sky. The worst locust plague in modern times struck the Middle East in 1951 and 1952 in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. And they tell us every green and the growing thing was devoured across hundreds of thousands of square miles. (MacArthur). God used locust plagues as a divine judgment against people. We see it used by God in the eighth plague against Egypt. And we see the same thing recorded in Joel.
?25 I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. (Joel 2:25 ESV)
From this abyss comes a plague of demonic locusts that last for approximately five months, and all those upon the earth, with the exception of the 144,000 (Rev 9:4) These, however, are not insects. These are demonic creatures:
?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. (Revelation 9:7–10 ESV)
Faces like men indicate they are intelligent creatures. They are given the authority and power to torment, but not kill, the people of the earth for five months. Five months is the normal life of a locust. They live from May to September. They can devastate a land in minutes. By the way that’s the very duration of the rising floodwaters in the day of Noah.
They are limited three ways: their power, their duration, and who they can attack.
Their feminine hair makes them seductive and attractive. Perhaps that makes men easy prey like men today are drawn in by a woman with beautiful hair. They lure unsuspecting unbelievers to come close to them before striking them with their stingers. The teeth of lions show them to be destructive and hurtful.
They torment the people through a sting described as that of a scorpion. Usually, a scorpion's sting (in the United States) leaves the victim feeling signs of warmth around the skin site, redness, and pain. More severe symptoms include involuntary movements of the head, neck, and eyes, sweating, drooling, muscle twitching, high blood pressure (hypertension), vomiting, accelerated heart rate, excitability or restlessness, and low blood pressure. (abeepestpro.com). The scorpion venom affects the nerves themselves, and according to some studies that I have done the person unfortunate enough to be stung by a scorpion suffers from it for five months.
Having a breastplate means they are indestructible. The image here is clear. They are driven, like locusts to devour as much of something as they can. Therefore, these demonic insects are determined to spread as much misery and pain as they possibly can. They even have a king over them, named Apollyon, which means destroyer.
Proverbs 30:27 says, “The locusts have no king.” The point is, you can’t wipe out a locust swarm by killing the king. So when it says here they have a king, that’s the Spirit’s way of saying these aren’t insects. Some people think it’s Satan, but Satan is the prince of the power of the air, not the king of the pit. It would appear that "The Destroyer" is a "general" in Satan's demonic army. Satan has a military-like order in the demonic world (Ephesians 6:12; principalities, powers, rulers, spiritual hosts of wickedness).
The Second of Three Woes
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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. (Revelation 9:13–19 ESV)
Here you have the blowing of the sixth trumpet. And in the blowing of the sixth trumpet, you have another demon attack such as in the blowing of the fifth trumpet recorded in verses 1 to 11 of the same chapter. What follows the trumpet is a voice that comes from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God. In the Greek text it emphasizes that it is a single, solitary voice. Perhaps it’s the authority of Jesus, it is not identified, but the location of the voice is identified and that tells us the Holy Spirit is laying emphasis there. It is coming from the four horns of the golden altar.
This altar is found in Rev 6:9-11 where we see the souls under the altar asking how long until Christ’s vengeance. We saw that these are the prayers of the saints being offered in heaven. We also saw in Chapter 8 how an angel takes the coals from that altar at the breaking of the seventh seal and casts those coals down to earth.
A command is given to release the 4 bound angels– Rev 9:14. They are bound fallen angels.
4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; (2 Peter 2:4 ESV)
6 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— (Jude 6 ESV)
The site of their imprisonment is the Euphrates River. When they are released they will kill one-third of man. The Euphrates River was one of the original boundaries of the land promised to Abraham (Genesis 15:18). But the original Euphrates was in the place of Satan’s deception of Adam and Eve. It was in the area where Satan first began his assault on man. The river Euphrates has a very interesting history. The river Euphrates begins in the Armenian mountains, some of the highest on the earth, flooded in the springtime with melting snow, it goes down to the Taurus Mountains and down through the Mesopotamian valley to the Persian Gulf, all the way through that area of the world. It’s the most important, the longest, and the biggest of all rivers in western Asia. But it was the place where sin was first known, the place where misery first began. (MacArthur)
The history of mankind shows nations repeatedly turning away from God in order to raise up their own glory. Every empire promises its own salvation on earth with peace and prosperity. History records them all as crashing before invading forces of unforeseen ferocity.
One other important origin is located by the Euphrates and that is Babylon. From there the Tower of Babel and all kinds of false religions that involve astrology, pantheism, polytheism, idolatry, spiritism, and naturalistic philosophy which has penetrated all over the world. So you see the Euphrates is a demonic area.
William Barcley said these are Angels of Punishment coming from that part of the world that brought death, disaster, and slavery. The army they command with 200 million in its ranks has some believing it comes from China which has been listed at over 200 million. The best interpretation is that this is a demonic army.
The Hardness of Man’s Pride
?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. (Revelation 9:20–21 ESV)
By now, over half the world is killed. They didn’t repent of their idolatry, their murders, their sorceries, their sexual immorality, or their thefts. Six through eight in God’s Ten Commandments.
Repentance isn’t a popular topic in popular culture. In fact, the opposite of repentance is what most people seem to promote. People parade for their right to hate, others for their right to live immorally, others for the normalization of perversion.
I say to myself, “If I were an unbeliever and I were in this situation, I’d be converted,” wouldn’t you? I mean, I’d fall on my face. But by now, you have to remember the people of the world have seen it all. They’ve seen the furious judgments, they’ve seen the devastation of everything they treasure. They’ve seen the evil of Antichrist, Satan, and demons. They – they’ve heard relentless and miraculous preaching of the gospel of Christ.
What seems to become clear is that these are not just part of God’s final judgment, but also part of his warning.
?20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:20 ESV)
What we should remember is our best time to repent and come to Christ is now.
