Bottomless Pit
Revelation 9:1-12
Bottomless Pit/5th Trumpet
Revelation 9:1-12, Fifth Trumpet: The Locusts from the Bottomless Pit
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. 7 The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. 8 They had hair like women’s
hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. 9 And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. 10 They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months. 11 And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon. 12 One woe is past. Behold, still two more woes are coming after these things.
Revelation chapter 9 is a period yet to come, a future time called the great tribulation. Particularly the great tribulation of a three and a half period of God’s judgment. But we are seeing the very events that take place in the last part of the great tribulation known as the Day of the Lord. The day when the Lord comes in final fury, destroying the ungodly and the work of Satan and his demons and setting up the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. In that Kingdom where He will reign on the earth for a thousand years. That is followed by the new heavens and the new earth which is the eternal state.
We are then in the great tribulation, in the Day of the Lord. Particularly, we are going to be looking at what is the fifth trumpet judgment.
There are seven seals which unfold the seven-year period. Within that seventh seal there are seven trumpet judgments that come at the end of the tribulation period. Within that final seventh trumpet, there will be seven bowl judgments.
The apostle John who is seeing these visions and receiving this revelation is on the island of Patmos. John has been sent there in exile for preaching Jesus Christ. God is giving him some marvellous visions, glimpse of the future when the wrath of God will fall, and the Lord Jesus Christ will take back His universe from Satan and from sin.
From our vantage point, the next event will be the Rapture of the church. The church of Jesus Christ will be caught away and then will come the seven-year tribulation. Finally, the last half of that, the great tribulation, culminating in the day of the Lord, and then the Kingdom.
Now, as we have gone through this period known as the tribulation which lasts for seven years, it has been described to us in these seven seals. Actually, there is one scroll sealed seven times and each time a seal is opened, another judgment event hits.
When we hit the sixth seal, back in chapter 6, we entered the Day of the Lord. Then we came to the seventh seal in chapter 8 and in it are the seven trumpets and in the final trumpet, the seven bowls. Last time we looked at the first four trumpets in Revelation 8:6 -13.
➢ The first trumpet was judgment on the land. ➢ The second trumpet was judgment on the sea. ➢ The third trumpet was judgment on the fresh waters. ➢ The fourth trumpet was judgment on the heavenly bodies. As we come to the end of this great period of judgment then, the judgments are devastating.
➢ The judgment on the land was fierce and destroyed a third of the trees and shrubs and all the green grass. ➢ The judgment on the sea was some great continent- sized body catapulting out of space to hit the waters and devastated the sea, killing a third of what was in it and destroying a third of the ships.
➢ The judgment on the fresh water was a judgment that resulted in death because men can’t live without fresh water. ➢ The judgement on heavenly bodies more collapsing sky.
As frightening as those were, as terrorizing as they were, they are only in a sense preliminary to the fearsome judgment that comes in the fifth trumpet.
- For millennia the heavens had declared the glory of God and has shown His handiwork.
- Now the heavens are declaring His wrath.
End of those first four trumpets the heaven is unfolding. Now the focus changes from heaven to hell. Whatever heaven could do to devastate the earth is nothing like what hell can do.
Revelation 8:13, And I looked, and I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!” Chapter 8 we met seven angels who stand before God the elite of the angelic company, standing with seven trumpets waiting to blast their judgment.
We have already heard four. John looks again and here comes an eagle, an unusual eagle because it can speak.
Eagles are birds of prey, killers and are associated often in prophetic literature with judgment and with violence.
Jeremiah 4:13, “Behold, he shall come up like clouds, And his chariots like a whirlwind. His horses are swifter than eagles. Woe to us, for we are plundered!”
Hosea 8:1, “Set the trumpet to your mouth! He shall come like an eagle against the house of the Lord, Because they have transgressed My covenant And rebelled against My law.
This eagle comes associated again with judgment and this eagle can speak. He says with a loud voice, “Woe, woe, woe.” That word means damnation, judgment, sentencing, execution, curse. Those are all in and around the synonyms of that word.
“Woe to those who dwell on the earth.” It is used in chapters 3, 6, 8, 11, 13, and 17. It is a technical term for unbelieving people. Woe to those unbelievers on the earth because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound.
Why is this eagle flying through heaven saying this? The warning is mercy.
God is warning people that they still have time to turn, to repent, to believe, to be saved before the next judgment comes, before hell opens up and billows out all over the world.
Ezekiel 33:11, Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’
This is the reason why there are over six hundred warnings in Scripture about hell. ✓ God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. ✓ God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. ✓ God is always eager to warn the lost about judgment to come.
Even in the midst of the activities of judgment in the day of the Lord itself, there is warning. The rising build-up of judgment on the earth now introduces the final three woes that consummate the final seal. The final expression of God’s wrath in part, yet to be followed by a sixth and a seventh, and seven bowl judgments before Christ takes the earth.
There is still time. Two more trumpets and the last one including all the bowls. There is still a little time.
The first four trumpets involved the devastation of physical nature. We can only imagine what that’s going to be like. People have had a false security in the law of uniformity, the idea that everything is always going to continue the same from the beginning.
Peter talks about that foolish belief that the day is coming, when the already unpredictable elements of nature will become earth’s destroyer. The theory of uniformity is going to yield to the fact of catastrophe, just like it did in the Flood.
Men’s hearts will fail them for fear. They will die of shock. What they take for granted about the stability of the universe is going to come apart. 1. The pit unlocked. V 1, 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.
One of those elite presence angels who had been patiently waiting for his moment takes his trumpet and blows. And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth.
We have all seen our share of falling stars those asteroids or comets or whatever they are that move through the sky. We have all seen our share of falling stars. The people living in this generation will have seen some the likes of which we have never seen.
Revelation 6:13, And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind.
The stars of the sky are going to fall to the earth like a fig tree casts its unripe fruit when shaken by a great wind. It’s going to appear as though there are falling stars catapulting at the earth all over the place.
Revelation 8:8, Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. A great mountain burning with fire is going to fall into the sea.
Revelation 8:11, The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter. Wormwood is going to fall and into our atmosphere it will come and disintegrate, and its fragments will fall on the fresh water.
But this is not a star like any of those stars. This is a different star because it says about this star that the key to the bottomless pit was given to him. This is a star like we think of a star, a movie star, an athletic star, a music star. This is some kind of person.
This person could be identified in the terminology of angel as stars.
Job 38:7, When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
This star is from the spiritual dimension. This star which had fallen to the earth. This is a fallen star. Fallen already with ongoing results, the fall is in the past with continuing reality.
Who is the fallen star? Satan, the day star, the sun of the morning who fell.
Isaiah 14:12-15, “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations! 13 For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of
the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ 15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the lowest depths of the Pit. Description of the fall of Satan. He is an already fallen star.
Luke 10:18, And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Here is Satan, the fallen one identified.
Revelation 12:4, His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born.
This is the first time. We have a picture of a battle going on sometime during the tribulation. There is war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon.
Revelation 12:7-9, And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, 8 but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. 9 So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
They are having war with the dragon and the dragon and his angels waged war. They were not strong enough and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down. The serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world, he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
The first time Satan fell, a third of the demons went with him. Verses 7- 9, we find him thrown down a second time.
What does that mean? The first time he was thrown out of the presence of God. He was defiled, he had sinned and all those who sinned with him in the rebellion were thrown out of heaven. But since that time Satan has had access to go back.
Remember Job chapter 1 where Satan comes before the throne of God to accuse saints, he was still doing it.
Revelation 12:10, Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.
Since Satan was thrown out as a permanent occupant, he has gone back as a visitor and, apparently, so have his demons. They have had some access to God. Here we find them thrown out of heaven again, this time Michael and his angels waging war. They are too strong for the dragon and his angels and the dragon and all the demons with him are now thrown down to the earth.
This happens in the time of the tribulation. It may be at the abomination of desolations at the midpoint, and it could be what triggers the second half terrors. What that tells us is that not all the demons are on the earth.
Satan isn’t even on the earth all the time. Satan might not be around to hear them while they are binding him. If he is up there most of the time day and night accusing the brethren, and he is not omnipresent, he must be up there a lot.
But the time is coming when all that accusation of the brethren stuff ends and he and all the demons who are in the air some are moving around on the earth, some are moving in the air warring with Michael and the other angels.
Satan, himself, spends a lot of his time at the throne of God accusing the brethren.
But at some point, in the time of tribulation, all those demons in the air engaged in the war with the holy angels and Satan, himself, are thrown to the earth so that the number of demons in the earth is multiplied massively.
By the time Satan in chapter 9 is given the key he is already been thrown to the earth. All 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 a greater force of demon power in the world than ever.
This is what makes the great tribulation such a great tribulation. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities, powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world and spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies. The battle is as formidable as it is going to be like when the number of them is multiplied massively because they are thrown out of the heavens.
God says that you want to have your day in the world, you have got all the demons now on the earth and there are even more, and I am going to give you the key to let the rest of them out. The Lord gives him the key to the bottomless pit.
Literally the pit of the abyss. Down in that pit there are more demons.
The Greek term is Abyssos used seven times in Revelation, and it always refers to the abode of fallen spirits, demons, the prison where demons are kept incarcerated. God, at His own discretion, has chosen through history to incarcerate certain demons.
2 Peter 2:4, For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; Some angels move in the heavens, in conflict with holy angels. Some demons move in the earth among men. Some demons are incarcerated in the pit, imprisoned.
The word that Peter uses cast them into hell. The word is Tartaroos, it comes from Greek mythology. When the Holy Spirit wanted to express hell, He chose words out of the vernacular. When Jesus spoke about hell, He used the word Gehenna because that was the word for the ever-burning city dump in Jerusalem, an unending flame filled with garbage and filth.
The word Tartarōsas, as it appears here came from Greek mythology. In Greek mythology that word referred to a subterranean place lower than the grave where the most
wicked and rebellious beings were sent to receive the worst and the most severe punishment. Jesus plucked the word out of the Jewish mind and culture. Peter plucks a word out of Gentile comprehension to describe the most terrible lowest pit of torment, punishment, and incarceration, the lowest hell.
They used to store the grain in pits in the ground. They were called pits of blackness, because it was dark down there. There have been fallen angels and because of the nature of their iniquity and their wickedness and their sin. The Lord has taken them and plunged them down, incarcerating them in chains in this pit down below the lowest hell, the place of severest torment and isolation.
They are there reserved for judgment. Their final sentencing will come in Revelation 20:10. They are thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone. What kind of demons get thrown in that place? It must be the worst.
Jude 1:6-7, And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting
chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; 7 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
Some of the beings that have been sent down there are there for good. The chains are eternal, unbreakable.
What did they do? They abandoned their proper domain. They stepped out of their proper realm. It would be like Sodom and Gomorrah.
What happened in Sodom and Gomorrah? Homosexuality, where men left their proper realm and domain of relationships with women and went after men. There were some angels that left the domain of fallen angels, demons, and entered into another domain.
There was a time when angels, demons, tried to have sex with women. It is described in Genesis 6 when the sons of God went after the daughters of men. The result was monsters in the world that God had to drown in a universal flood.
Those are some of the demons that the Lord said of sin so vilely that He put them in the pit.
1 Peter 3:18-19, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, 19 by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, All those demons down there, the ones that got put there because they sinned in Genesis 6 and assorted and accumulated other demons that have been sent down there.
There are more sent down there.
Luke 8:31, And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss.
When Jesus cast all those demons out of the maniac in Gadara all the demons kept saying “Please don’t send us to the pit.” Even the demons don’t want to go there. They want to be free to do their wickedness. They must have known that God was in the habit of sending demons down there. It isn’t just those who sinned in Genesis 6 in that perversion where they tried to cohabitate with women and produce an unredeemable race of demon men for whom the God/Man could not atone.
It was not just them, but others that God, at His own will and discretion, would through the ages send into that pit as a holding place to keep them there because they were so filthy and so vile until the final day of judgment when they are thrown into the lake of fire.
Can you imagine when Jesus was on the cross that somebody got the information to them? His body was dead, His Spirit was alive, He went to the spirits in prison.
Which ones were they? The ones who were disobedient during the days of Noah. Takes us right back to Genesis 6 and those fallen spirits that were cohabitating with women to produce that demon race. They were the ones incarcerated there along with others, and they were the ones to whom Christ appeared and announced His triumph over sin, death, and hell on the cross and then left.
We have demons in the air. We have demons on the earth. However, many have been added to from the original group, perhaps in Genesis 6, and they are down in the pit. Now you have a little bit of understanding of what’s going to happen in the world in Revelation chapter 9.
When it says the angel who had fallen, the star from heaven who had fallen, Satan, was given the key to the abussos to do what with it? To open the shaft and let all the demons out. Sin is going to run its final course. Satan is going to be able to have his entire force amassed with the exception, perhaps, of those bound in everlasting chains.
Even those bound in everlasting chains may also be released for a time so that the entire force of demon power to rampant all over the earth. The meaning of key is authority. Anytime you see a key, it’s authority. If you have a key, you have the authority because you can open and close.
The key doesn’t belong to this angel.
Who does it belong to? Christ says, “I am the One who lives forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades.” But He takes off His key chain, and He has given to this fallen angel, Satan, temporary authority to open the pit and let all the demons loose.
That is why we say chapter 9 is hell on earth.
V 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. Picture what the world would be like if we were to open the doors of all the prisons of earth and set free the world’s most vicious and violent criminals, giving them full reign to practice their infamies upon mankind.
Something worse than that lies in store for the world. Satan cast out of heaven is now permitted to summon to his aid the most satanic fiends in the abyss to act as his agents in bringing mankind to the footstool of the beast.
When the pit was opened smoke went up out of the pit. This is graphic language. Trying to express things that are inexpressible.
Is it a real smoke? To John he saw smoke. If it’s in the centre of the earth, in some way certainly the centre of the earth is molten lava. We could understand it. How physical or as to how spiritual it is and what combination of both of those is reality we don’t know.
The image here is that out of this pit comes ugly black pollution. The spiritual tone of it is what is most important. It is hell belching out its corruption. It is the vile filth of the worst of the demons incarcerated in the pit let loose. Demonic, satanic oppression comes roaring out of the heart of the earth, pushed out by infernal heat and pressure.
John writes that it is like the smoke of a great furnace, billowing smoke. The furnace of the pit of hell is opened and the blackness and the heat start billowing out to such a degree that the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit.
The clean air people are going to be very distressed by all of this. This is going to be pollution that makes the largest fire and the deepest smog and the worst kind of pollution in the oil fires seem like nothing. The “save the earth” crowd is concerned about has been affected.
The land has been affected, and the plants have been affected. The animals have been affected. The sea has been affected. The sky has been affected. Now the air, polluted beyond anybody’s wildest imagination, with the soot of the deepest hell billowing up.
The scene in the first two verses of the pit unlocked. 2. The power unleashed. V 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. Out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth and power was given them as the scorpions of the earth have power.
Like the plague of locusts in Egypt.
Exodus 10:5, And they shall cover the face of the earth, so that no one will be able to see the earth; and they shall eat the residue of what is left, which remains to you from the hail, and they shall eat every tree which grows up for you out of the field.
It must be something like the cloud of a worldwide atomic blast. Something like a volcanic eruption that covers the whole world. A strange and panic-generating blackness that fills the sky and stifles the world’s breathing. It blots out whatever is left of the sun, moon, stars, and the sky. Then in the middle of it come something like locusts.
Again, that imagery is so profound because ordinary locust plagues are unimaginable.
Locusts descend to the earth in such thick masses that they can literally make it look like night in the middle of 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. They tell us every green and growing thing was devoured across hundreds of thousands of square miles. They ate it right down to the bare ground. But as bad as that is with real insects, these are not real insects.
We know that because real locusts don’t have
- a scorpion sting,
- have heads with crowns,
- faces like the face of men,
- hair like the hair of women.
- teeth like the teeth of lions, and
- breastplates like breastplates of iron.
These are some kind of special locusts. What is fascinating about this is that that concept of locusts is taken from the blackness of the cloud and the devastation. These are demons. God must create for them some form. Since Satan can’t create anything, when they are finally released as spirit beings, God must give them some form, at least in the vision they had a form.
What they do is supernatural and it’s just swarming, comprehensive desolation. These are locusts from hell, and they are not insects. The power was given to them, like the scorpions of the earth have power. They are repeated at the end of verse 5 and again in verse 10.
They have the ability to create pain, swarming demons, supernatural power. They have been wanting to get at God, Christ, and men for a long time. They have the power to inflict excruciating pain on the inhabitants of the world.
Suffering caused by these demons is compared to that of a scorpion sting. This insect is one of the most touchy and malignant that lives and its sting is perhaps the most agonizing that any animal can inflict on the human body.
In tropical countries, small children frequently die from the sting of the scorpion. The physiological response to a scorpion sting is similar to that which has been observed in many cases of demon possession. When someone is stung by a scorpion and gets the full blast of their poison, they will roll on the ground in agony, foam at the
mouth and grind their teeth in pain. Not unlike some demon- possessed people that we read about in the gospels. These are worse than any physical locusts or any physical scorpions.
- They are going to fly wherever they want.
- They are going to dart through the air.
- They are going to dwell in the darkness.
- They are going to be swarming demons from hell.
- They are going to come into the very bodies of people to torment them, perhaps to the degree that they agonize, foam at the mouth, grind their teeth.
- They are going to keep it up for five months without relief.
By this time the world has experienced a lot. The church has been raptured and gone to heaven. By now, they figured out that a lot of people were missing in a big hurry. They have been told by people who know what happened.
They would have known the tribulation believers have preached the gospel all over the world and died as martyrs for it, and some are still alive preaching. They will know that among the Jews there are an invincible, indestructible, 144,000 evangelists. There are two mighty
miracle-working preachers. There is a heavenly angel preaching the gospel. They will have heard the gospel, perhaps repeatedly. They will then have been driven into believing it by having experienced the fierce judgment of God’s wrath.
They will have seen the collapse of the false world peace, the devastations of war, natural disasters, famines, plagues, the reign of terror by Antichrist, the collapse of the heavens. The devastation of the earth and now this massive worldwide demon oppression possession and torment.
God allows them to experience a little direct fellowship with their future co-inhabitants in the lake of fire. Do you would think in the midst of this they would cry out for redemption? V 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.
This power that is unleashed is limited. They were told they shouldn’t hurt the grass of the earth or any green thing or any tree.
What does that tell us?
First, it tells us the grass has grown back because the grass was all destroyed over in chapter 8. There has been some time. There is a little recovery in the world. But these locusts are told you don’t eat grass but go after people.
Real locusts feed on green things. These are demons. They leave the grass alone and the two thirds of the trees that are left. The Bible is so precise about that. They only go after the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They go after people. Whatever they do to them is horrifyingly painful, the torment is terrorizing.
They can’t touch people who have the seal of God on their foreheads, who are marked out as God’s.
Is that the 144,000? Sure, they are sealed back in chapter 7. They bear the seal of the living God. It obviously refers to them as those who possess that seal. But it is not unreasonable either to believe that those who belong to the Lord would also be included in this group.
2 Timothy 2:19, Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: “The Lord knows those who are His,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” God’s not going to allow these demons to terrorize believers.
Revelation 3:12, He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name.
The true believer is going to have the name of His God written on him. Certainly, that’s the seal that indicates that He belongs to God.
Revelation 22:4, They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads.
The Lord already knows who His heavenly throng are, they have already come and embraced Him. He identifies them. They are marked out, and these demons can’t touch them. So, God puts very clear limitations on what they are allowed to do.
Ezekiel 9:4, and the Lord said to him, “Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the
foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it.” Mark out the righteous so when judgment comes, they don’t get hit. God is going to do that for those who still are alive. Many saints will have been killed by then, martyred, died in some of the natural disasters.
But God is not about to assault them with demons out of the pit. They will be marked. So, the extent of their damage is limited. They will only be able to deal with those who don’t have God’s seal. What they can do is even limited. They were not permitted to kill anyone.
V 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. Demons can kill if God doesn’t prevent them. Since Satan is the one who has the power of death, we shouldn’t be surprised that demons can kill.
People can kill, and demons are mightier than people. They would kill. They would come out of the pit and kill everybody if they could.
Satan is a killer. He is a murderer from the beginning. He would kill everybody if he could and send them all to hell immediately. One thing he wanted to do to Job had killed him. That’s the one thing God told him he couldn’t do. They can’t kill him.
The mercy of God seen here because during the five months of torment there’s opportunity to repent. They can’t kill anybody. They can just torment them for five months. People are going to wish they were dead. They won’t be able to die. We have people now who aren’t being tormented like this, and they are trying to kill themselves. God extends more opportunity for them to believe.
What an amazing grace?
What astounding patience? Five months is the normal life of a locust. They live from May to September. They can devastate a land in minutes. These demon locusts are going to have the career of insect locusts. For five months, one hundred and fifty days. The very duration of the rising flood waters in the day of Noah.
God is going to give them five months to repent. They are going to be tormented.
Like the sting of a scorpion when it stings a man. V 7, The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. It is a spiritual pain, not a physical one.
It is demon infestation. It is all the filth and vileness of a demon unleashed within a man. Not just a demon but maybe like the man who swept out one and got seven back, a worse condition, a severe domination by vile demons.
So bad. V 6, In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them. They will long to die, and death flees from them. Death takes a holiday. Again, this is judgment with mercy. It’s also severe judgment to those who don’t repent. There’s no relief.
During the five months people will attempt suicide. It will be a massive effort on the part of people. They will seek death. They will be devising all kinds of means and ways.
Every imaginable attempt. But bodies won’t drown. They will jump into rivers and not sink. They will drink poison, but it won’t kill them. Bullets won’t be fatal. Falls won’t crush them. They just won’t die. This again has a tone of grace.
All the while gospel preaching is going on.
Will it drive some to Christ? Surely, but those who can make it through this, according to the next trumpet, indicates they are not going to repent at all. The world’s going to know it’s over. There is no tomorrow for them, no hope. All they want is suicide.
Their earth has been devastated, the earth they love, the earth they worship, Mother Nature. The seas are gone, the fresh water is gone, the grass is gone, the trees are gone, the animals are gone, the sky is falling. Pollution from the pit of hell blackens everything. Everybody on the face of the earth is in excruciating agony. They are filled with demons. Their thoughts are as vile and wicked and wretched as they can be.
Only by the sovereign grace of God could anybody repent in that condition. There is nothing good left. Worst of all, they know there is no future, no hope, and they just want to die.
It’s so hard for people to survive with no hope. But the locusts come at night with their voices soft as thunder as they tear your hope apart, as they turn your dream to shame. 3. The appearance unveiled. V 8-10, They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. 9 And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. 10 They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months.
These are exaggerated features of these locusts, and they describe not any kind of locust that anybody ever saw. But John in his vision sees them as some kind of formidable spiritual army. Compare this description with Joel 2:1-5, where the destruction army is introduced there as well.
Notice “like” or “as” used nine times, so this is a description that is an attempt to describe them as if they were like locusts. Their appearance “was like horses prepared for battle” They are warlike, they are defiant, they are armed, they are powerful, they are bent on destruction.
Their heads are crowned like gold. That is shining and sovereign. They have the victor’s crown. They are invincible. There is no cure for the strength for the sting. They are dominant, they are sovereign, they are victorious.
Their faces were like the faces of men. They are intelligent and rational beings. “Their hairlike women” Their seduction, and attractiveness, luring ability. Some of these things parallel the way a locust looks.
Jeremiah 51:27, Set up a banner in the land, Blow the trumpet among the nations! Prepare the nations against her, Call the kingdoms together against her: Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a general against her; Cause the horses to come up like the bristling locusts.
But their teeth were like the teeth of lions Fierce, powerful, and deadly. Their breastplates are invulnerable, insensitive and they are formidable, like “iron; the sound of their wings is like chariots, many horses rushing to battle. They are inescapable. There’s no place for refuge. They’re fast, they’re mobile. Nothing stops them.
It is like the Holy Spirit wants to say that again just so everybody remembers it.
V 10, They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months. It’s the third time He has said it. They have one purpose, give pain, hordes of demonic spirits in the millions with forms prepared somehow by God in this vision to show John what a frightening, horrible, and terrorizing thing.
This is as demons possess the bodies of the unregenerate and work in them the wretched wickedness that they have been brewing in the pit. They do it just for five months. This five month takes us right up near the end.
What happens to them? Revelation 20 says the angel, the one who had the key to the abyss, comes down from heaven. This time another angel has the key. He has got a chain. He gets Satan, the devil, binds him for a thousand years and throws him in the pit.
Stana along with him goes all his forces. Finally, at the very end of the Millennium, they are cast into the lake of fire. The pit unlocked, the power unleashed, the appearance unveiled. One very brief point, the prince unmasked.
V 11, And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon. They have a king.
Proverbs 30:27, The locusts have no king, Yet they all advance in ranks;
The point being that we can’t wipe out a locust swarm by killing the king. They don’t have one. Nobody can figure out where the brain power is in a locust swarm. When it says here, they have a king, that’s the Spirit’s way of saying these aren’t insects. This is not describing some historical event in the past. These locusts have a king. It even tells us his name.
He is the angel of the abyss. He is head over the pit. Some people think it’s Satan. It could be. But Satan is the prince of the power of the air, not the king of the pit. Satan’s running lose all over everywhere. He is up in heaven at the throne of God, not managing affairs in the pit.
It well could be some exalted angel who from being in the very presence of God has now become the guy in charge of the pit, the chief of the imprisoned demons.
It tells us his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, in Greek, Apollyon, and both mean destroyers. He is a destroyer and that’s his name.
Job 26:6, Sheol is naked before Him, And Destruction has no covering. Abaddon is associated with Sheol, the grave, hell, Hades, the pit. Perhaps is best to see this is as some fallen demon in charge of the pit who leads his troops out. His name is destroyer. The devastating destruction is unthinkable. But this is what awaits man who rejects Christ.
Why would men do this? Why would they go through this and continue to reject? the answer comes back as clearly as it was written originally in the gospel of John. It is because men love darkness rather than light for their deeds are evil. They love their sin even to the death.
God mercifully keeps saying, “Turn towards Me, why will you die? V 12, One woe is past. Behold, still two more woes are coming after these things.
The first woe is passed. Behold, two woes are still coming after these things.