The Locusts and The Angels (Revelation 9:1-21)

As with the last three seals, with the last three trumpets we move into the realm of spirit. But where the seals were concerned with heaven and heavenly realities, the trumpets tell of the abyss and the demons. These visions are described in much greater detail than the first four. The symbolism of the locusts is horrible and strange. It is not surprising that it has been interpreted in a variety of ways. It is unwise to be dogmatic, but the most probable understanding of it starts from the preaching of the gospel. When people fail to respond to God’s gracious invitation and set themselves in opposition to his purposes, then they become the prey of horrifying demonic forces. They suffer the consequences of their choice.

In this vision there is emphasis on the refusal to repent. God sends his judgments upon the wicked, but his aim is not to hurt. There is a purpose of love behind the judgments. They are to make plain the seriousness of sin, they are to lead people to repent, to turn to God and be saved. But when they do nothing of the sort they should not think that they have triumphed over God. He is in supreme command. They may resist his will, but it is to their own hurt.

I. The Fifth Trumpet of Demonic Oppression (9:1–12)

A. The Opening of the Abyss (9:1–6)

Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. 2 And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit. 3 Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. 4 They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 And they were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months. Their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. 6 In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.

1. When the first four angels blew their trumpets, the impact on human life was indirect. When the fifth angel sounded his trumpet, the effect was focused directly on humans. As with the blowing of trumpets one through three, John begins by describing something in heaven that moves to the earth. This time he sees a star that had fallen, an angel. (In Rev. 1:20 stars are called angels.) He was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. The same angel with the same key will reappear to chain and lock up the devil inside the Abyss (20:1). In both instances, the “key angel” acts in obedience to the will of God.

2. To follow John’s imagery, you must imagine the Abyss as something like a huge underground cavern, perhaps like an old gold mine. Then imagine a narrow shaft going up to the surface, with a locked door at the top.

B. The “locusts” that came out of the smoke from the unlocked shaft were unlike any that had ever appeared before.

1. People of the Bible lands dreaded locust plagues. Millions could suddenly swarm in off the desert any time during the five-month dry season (spring through late summer) and devour all vegetation. The eighth plague on the Egyptians was a divinely sent locust plague (Exod. 10:1–20). The prophets Joel and Amos knew of later locust plagues sent by God.

2. Clearly, the locusts were supernatural, for they harmed only people, rather than plant life. These locust demons appear to be a special class of evil spirits that has remained under God’s lock and key until this time. They have power to inflict severe but nonfatal pain on people for five months. Why will the supernatural hosts of evil be willing to inflict such agony that evil humans—also servants of the devil—will seek death, but will not find it? Evil always has a way of turning and devouring itself. The devil’s kind take delight in hurting and destroying each other.

C. These locust demons are compared to scorpions of the earth.

1. John describes the plague inflicted by these locust demons with the scorpion-like stings using intense language: torture … agony they suffered … they will long to die. Again, such a plague strikes from the jaws of the pit of hell and can have no natural origin.

2. The words, death will elude them, are terrifying but unclear. John means either that suicide will somehow become impossible during these months or that people will live in such agony they will wish they were dead. Who can imagine the nightmare of the world’s peoples all full of unspeakable physical agony, longing to die, yet remaining alive to experience even worse? Even more terrible, they refuse to repent of sin and turn to God (9:21).

II. The Sixth Trumpet of Eastern Invasion (9:13–21)

13 Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is 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 and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. 16 Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. 17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone. 18 By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed—by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths. 19 For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they do harm.

20 But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. 21 And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.

A. The Sixth Trumpet, or Second Woe.

1. When the sixth angel blew his trumpet there was no immediate release of forces of destruction, as with the previous trumpets. John simply heard a voice. The sixth trumpet, like the sixth seal, is much longer than the other members of the series.

2. The locusts of the previous vision were loosed from “the Abyss” by a fallen star (vv. 1–3), while in the present vision four angels are loosed from their place of restraint at the great river Euphrates (v. 14), far to the east of Patmos and Asia Minor

3. The structure of the scene, in which one angel (the one blowing the trumpet) releases four terrible angels to kill a third of mankind (v. 15), evokes the earlier vision in which one angel cautioned four others not to send destructive winds over the earth “until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God” (7:1–3).

B. Description of the Horses.

1. While the locusts in the preceding vision had “tails and stings like scorpions” (v. 10), these horses had tails like snakes (v. 19) with similar power to injure.

2. Even worse, out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur, viewed as three distinct plagues bringing death to one-third of the human race (vv. 17–18). If the first four trumpets brought “fire” on the earth (8:7, 8, 10), and the fifth, “smoke from the Abyss” (9:2), the sixth adds sulfur to the conflagration. These three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur (v. 18) will become basic elements in John’s subsequent visions of eternal punishment.

C. The Response to the Invasion.

1. For the first time, John gives full attention to the human response to these divine judgments. He has mentioned the human response twice before, but only in passing, as a way of dramatizing the severity of the judgments themselves, first in 6:15–17, where people hid in caves and cried out to the mountains to fall on them, and second in 9:6, where they desired death but did not find it. This time the human response is in spite of the severity of the judgment, not because of it.

2. It is natural to ask whether these plagues (v. 20) are the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur under the sixth trumpet (v. 18) or the whole trumpet series up to this point. But the question is moot because the three plagues of verse 18 are the only ones in the entire series specifically designed to be lethal to human beings (see v. 15).

Conclusion:

The Great Tribulation at the end of the age extends beyond the atrocities of nature recorded in chapter 8. It includes demonic disasters that bring horrible suffering, but not death, to the world’s sinners, while God’s people are sealed from this horrible suffering. A second assault will kill one-third of earth’s unrepentant people. Such demonic attacks should lead people to repentance, but they do not. Instead, worldly life continued in absolute disregard of God’s basic commandments.

1. Explain “the Abyss” in your own words.

2. How could fire, smoke, and sulfur kill a third of the world’s population?

3. How do you face the real but limited power of the demonic today? Should you change the way you face demonic powers? Why or why not?