Revelation 9The Fifth and Sixth Trumpets

The star here is a being. Unlike Wormwood, “bitter plant,” who fell from the sky in 8:10–11 and was more a force of nature or of wrath, this star is an angel of some sort. Probably not a good one; it’s hard to be 100% sure. But he does God’s bidding, because all angels, good or bad, are still subservient to God.

“The star was given the key.” This is a divine passive: given by whom? The implication, present throughout apocalyptic literature, is that it’s by God. The divine passive runs through Revelation and shows up a couple more times in this chapter. God is dictating the action in the end times, and in this chapter, even though John doesn’t always tie His name directly to the action.

John sees the sobering inevitability of judgment, and he’s not blaming God for it. Humans are bringing God’s judgment on themselves. These divine passives preserve that balance of not blaming God.

He put the question to the whole room: how can you preserve the balance of not blaming God, in your words and heart, for bad things that happen? How do you cleanse your heart from that temptation? One answer: remind yourself of the good deeds He has done for you personally. Another: “In everything give thanks” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, KJV). As a lawyer in the room put it, there are no weasel words in that. Giving thanks when things are not going well takes out the temptation to blame God.

“The Abyss” is basically a prison where evil is sent. The scorpion-locusts come out of there to torment people in the next verses; later the beast comes out of there (11:7); and then Satan will be imprisoned there (20:3). This is the same place the “Legion” demons in Luke 8:31 begged Jesus not to send them. Demons and Satan don’t like this prison. It’s equated with hell itself.

The Greek here is more vivid and poetic than any English translation can render it: “They will chase after death, but death [now personified] will flee from them.” It’s a cruel game of hide-and-seek, and death is just toying with them!

So here’s the point: those who are tormenting God’s people will be tormented by the evil they’ve given themselves over to. The people receiving this wrath are the people who have been tormenting God’s people in the previous chapters. Once you give yourself over to the demonic, it will dominate and torment you. Here that torment has metastasized, become almost fatal, into torture that leads to suicidal thoughts. Those are all birthed in the demonic.

Take authority over the demonic in your life. Purge where needed. Don’t allow a foothold. There are sometimes matters of conscience at play, which Paul discusses in Romans 14–15 and 1 Corinthians 8–9. But don’t mess around with the demonic; don’t toy with it or dabble in it.

The tables discussed: Have you had any exposure to the demonic? What was that like? How can God gain victory through you? It could be as simple as a bad nightmare, or a feeling of oppression when you walk into a place.

From the room: one man had known since he was two or three that God was calling him, and has had numerous brushes with death. He has a healthy respect for the fact that there is evil in the world with an agenda against us, but no fear: God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). Another: do what Jesus did and speak the word, which means knowing the word; and remember that greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4), and who you are in Christ.

The scorpion-locusts are wild, and their description is crazy. He put an artist’s take on the screen: imperfect, as all artists’ takes are, but it gives you an idea. Some aspects of humanness, some of scorpion-ness, which makes it all the weirder.

This demonic force is unstoppable. “Breastplates” means human weapons won’t work here. If they’re coming for you, they will dominate and destroy your life.

They are not to harm the land, unlike what happens in chapter 8, but they torture people without relief. And they are incapable of harming those who have the seal of God. The point is this: God knows those who are His. We may suffer tribulation during this time at the hand of other humans, but the instruments of God’s wrath always avoid believers.

We did a Joel series here and talked about those guys. They were an unstoppable army too, and they had the teeth of a lion, the same as these. In the artist’s picture, at least they got the teeth right!

Scorpion stings are one of the most intense pains the animal kingdom can unleash on a human in a quick moment. That’s why people seek death: they’re being dominated and overrun by painful demonic attacks. But the demons won’t even let them die.

He has never been stung by a scorpion, but his dad was, when he lived in South Florida.

Abaddon in Hebrew means “the lowest depths of the earth, the realm of the dead,” and culturally the word was tied to “the angel of the pit.” So these armies were commanded by hell, death and destruction itself, to fill its bowels with more people. Yikes. I told you we were deep in the weird!

Apollyon could be referring to Apollo, one of the gods the Romans worshiped, but the Greek word plainly means destroyer, so that’s appropriate either way.

This was the first woe, a reference to the call of the eagle in 8:13: “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth.” Three woes: we’ve just gotten through one. Now the sixth trumpet …

“I heard a voice coming from the four horns.” Divine passive again: the action is being driven from the throne of God. We don’t know exactly whose voice it is (God, one of the angels, maybe one of the cherubim), but it’s coming from the throne, so the action is still dictated ultimately by God. John is still in the heavenly scene that began “in the Spirit” (1:10; 4:2), when “there before me was a throne in heaven” (4:2). So: God is sovereign. He doesn’t need our permission or approval to act.

There’s a balance here, and he put it to the whole room: how has God acted sovereignly in your life, versus how has God responded to prayer?

From the room: a man who was running from God without realizing it, until God set up a path only He could have set up, through the people he played basketball with, to bring him here. And a prayer answered: a family with a broken van and no money, praying for a car that would seat everyone, and God came through with two vehicles that seat seven. A woman led to the Lord by her babysitter before she even knew what she needed; and a pressure washer that came to life when she shouted, “You will work in Jesus’ name!”

These are not the same four angels as in Revelation 7, stationed at the four corners of the earth preventing destruction. Those angels were holding back the winds of destruction; they “had been given power to harm the land and the sea” (7:2). Then in the first two trumpets we see those winds of destruction released on the land and the sea (8:7–9). So their action is done, and it seems they were good.

These four angels are at the river Euphrates, which sits east of Judea (where all the action is going down!), in anticipation of the command to release that destruction on the people. Not the land and sea like the others were holding back: these guys are about the people. Now is the time. These angels are bad … demons.

So see this: even the enemy’s forces are subject to God’s command. God was saying, you’re not allowed to act right now. Their destiny was to destroy, but God had to seal His people first, so they had to wait. God would restrain them and hold them back until He was good and ready.

Here at the sixth trumpet, as with all the other trumpets, the destruction is great (a third of mankind) but not total. Total destruction is coming in the bowls, before the last battle and before the earth is disposed of. These four angels, as opposed to the ones in chapter 7, are not destroying the land and the sea; they are destroying people. And they’re mounting an army.

There is a timing to everything. God says, you’re not allowed to do this until it’s time. Then: release the four angels, and they go and do this thing.

Any math wizards? Someone in the room had it: two hundred million troops. China and India are east of the Euphrates and could muster an army that large, not to mention adding in Russia and most of the Middle East. Two hundred million troops from nations that hate God’s people is possible right now.

This could be a demonic cavalry or a human one, but either way it is an unstoppable force, meant for this day and hour, released by God.

“The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this.” Whatever our interpretations of the various symbolic imagery, what John is seeing in every picture represents someone or something that is very real. He’s seeing things he can’t always completely describe with the words he has. The imagery is vivid, and the destruction is real.

“Fire, smoke and sulfur” is a reminder of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19). Now the whole world is acting like Sodom, and receives that kind of judgment. Their breastplate colors are the same colors as the judgment coming out of their mouths.

The riders of this army are not the ones carrying out the suffering. Nope: it’s the hybrid horse-lion-snake-scorpions they’re riding. He didn’t have a great artistic rendering of this one. These are terrifying.

These verses culminate all of the first six trumpets and set up the interlude before the seventh: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, interlude, 7, every time. They were warning-signal trumpets, partial judgments that should bring those who are left to repentance. But as a group the people of earth are still stubborn, in rebellion against God and destined for destruction. In fact, before the total destruction of the bowls is poured out, another set of warnings (the seven thunders, 10:3–4) is proposed, but then the plan is sealed up and not used. The process of increasingly severe warnings will come to an end, and the final judgments, which truly line up with God’s holiness, will be poured out.

John then echoes the mockery of idol worship in Deuteronomy 4:28, Isaiah 2:6–8, 44:9–20 and 1 Corinthians 10:20–21: idols “that cannot see or hear or walk,” and you’re worshiping them!

These are demonic, Satanic idols. They have power: it’s just perverted, and it leads to enslavement, depravity and eternal death. The idols, and the demons that back them, will dominate the people who give themselves to them, as was shown in the plagues. The people become like the “gods” they worship: murder, sorcery, sexual perversion and stealing.

Even so, they’re being given the opportunity to repent. God’s mercy is magnificent. God, even knowing that these people will reject Him, chooses to offer them mercy anyway!

He asked the whole room: how does knowing God’s mercy affect your view of the lost people in your life, and your actions and words toward them? “It sure makes me pray differently.” No one is so far gone. You can’t make a blind person see, so you pray for them, and one woman read Acts 26:18 as a prayer for the lost: that God would open their eyes, so they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. That’s a good prayer for the lost.

The idolatry and sexual immorality here bring to mind Jezebel (2:20) and the Nicolaitans (2:15) from chapter 2, and we’ll see them again in the beast and Babylon in chapters 13 and 17. The rebellion of those spirits is a wholesale rejection of God, and a commitment to pagan hedonism.

All of these judgments with their one-third effect are a reminder that the final act of judgment is still coming. The trumpets’ plagues, much like the plagues on Egypt, were meant to turn the people who suffered them to God. With the Egyptians it worked with a group (some came out into the desert with the Israelites), but not with most. With the world at the end of time, it seems that most, or maybe even all, missed the warning and continued hating God.

The second woe declared by the eagle (8:13) now continues through the next two unfolding narratives, the interlude, all the way to Revelation 11:14. We’re in the middle of the second woe: the sixth trumpet takes a while. John’s pressing the gas pedal on the weird, and it’s not coming off.