Revelation 9

     9:1-12.  The Fifth Trumpet, the First Woe.

     As usual, the series of seven is divided into sets of four and three, three being the superlative.  Remember, the main purpose for all the trumpets is to warn men on earth to repent.  The warnings escalate when they are not heeded.  The warnings themselves do not bring judgment.  Unheeded warnings do, eventually leading to a final judgment.  The warnings harden the unrepentant, but they test, discipline, and sanctify those who call upon the Lord, and who trust in him.

     9:1-2.  Notice the past tense.  This fallen star (heavenly power) had previously fallen, and had embittered a third of the waters, poisoning many men (see 8:10 and notes).  This is, most all authorities agree, the great fallen angel, Satan (cf. Luke 10:17-20; also Is. 14:13, 14, where the king of Babylon is described as a type of Satan).  This is what John sees in his vision.  What we see are “emissaries of the devil arising from within the pale of this visible church proclaiming doctrines of demons” (Prutow; cf. Acts 20:29-30; 1 Tim. 4:1-2).  Just as Jesus gave the keys of the kingdom to his apostles, so the devil now gives his apostles the keys of hell.  The bottomless pit is opened, and minds are darkened by a love of flattery, error, and superstition.

     9:3-6.  The result is a release of torment and misery into the world of men’s minds and spirits.  These locusts do not come to devour grass or trees.  They torment men whose minds and hearts do not bear the seal of the living God on their foreheads to give them discernment, and to seal them in the truth (4; 7:2-3).  The damage they are permitted to 

do is restrained by God to this world.  Men may long for what they imagine to be the escape of death, but that is denied.  The believer may await with patience and hope his appointed time, but there is no rest for the wicked, and no hope in their death.  Their misery is but a warning of the undying worm.  The torment symbolically is restrained to a five, not a complete seven.   Like a natural locust plague, lies and deceptions can’t last forever (5; cf. 10).  They run their course.

     9:7-11.  As in Joel, this locust plague is described as an invading army, a type of the even worse armies coming with the sixth trumpet.  If these locusts are false teachers of
Satan’s lies, then they have the appearance of the golden crowns like real elders (cf. 4:4), their human like faces make a demonic show of “humanity and benevolence” (Ramsey).  Their hair like women’s hair signifies their powers of seduction, but their teeth like lions’ teeth shows their intention to devour (cf. 1 Pet. 5:8).  They carry out their warfare with the strongest defensive and offensive weapons (9).  After the devouring teeth have passed by, the after effects of their scorpion like stinging tails continues to torment for five months (10; cf. 5).  Their king is the usurper, the god of this world, whose name in the languages of both testaments means Destroyer.  He is the angel (messenger) of the abyss (11; cf. 1-2).

     9:12.  The “five month” plague of the first woe passes.  The stubborn souls of men smitten by false doctrine now bring upon themselves the remaining two woes.  Though the first woe in the vision is described as passed, that does not mean that human history is done with it.  All these things come and go and co-exist together in the church and the world throughout these last days.  But they certainly do follow a natural cause and effect order of progression as they recur.

     9:13-21.  The Sixth Trumpet, the Second Woe.

     This is just as written by the prophet Joel, who used the ravages of a locust plague as a warning from God to his people to repent lest a worse and more deadly army be sent.  And just as Joel was more concerned with the unseen spiritual battle in the hearts and minds of the OT church than he was with the literal invasion of the armies of the world into Israel’s inheritance, so here also.  The symbols here depict war, and though actual wars come, they are but symptoms.  The real battle between the church and the armies of hell are for men’s souls.  When the church’s immune system, so to speak, is healthy, the invaders never cross the frontier (figuratively, “the great river Euphrates,” 14).  But just as with Israel, the church over and over allows the world to invade, the church gets sick, and terrible symptoms, including wars that kill many, appear.  But the world is still the world, whether inside or outside the church, and so none of these just punishments brings the survivors to repentance.  Like Pharaoh, they are hardened instead (20-21).

     9:13-14.  This is the golden altar of incense (cf. 8:3), and the voice (literally one voice) is the voice of Christ interceding and answering the prayers of his suffering people.  It is their prayers that cause him to command the sixth angel to release the four wicked angels from their bonds.

     9:15.  No doubt this was not what God’s faithful people thought they were praying for.  But they prayed, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”  They prayed, “Deliver us from evil.”  They never supposed being overrun by the cavalry of hell (and being taken captive to spiritual Babylon) was the road to deliverance, anymore than Christ’s disciples saw Christ’s crucifixion as the answer to their prayers, but it was.  Christ uses the rebellion of 

Satan and his followers to bring about their own ruin, and to accomplish God’s own good plan and purpose (15; cf. Gen. 45:8; 50:20; Acts 2:23; 4:27-28).

      9:16.  The number literally is two myriads of myriads, symbolically an uncountable multitude out to destroy Christ’s kingdom on earth, but John heard the number of them.  They are all definitely numbered and known to God, and do have a limit.

     9:17-19.  Unlike the locusts, this army actually causes the death of a third of mankind as a consequence of their hatred of God’s laws (15, 18).  The riders ride their ideological war-horses, their superstitions, their lusts, their atheistic worldviews and intellectual pride.  They ride into battle wearing the colors of hell.  The war-horses use the red fire, the hyacinth blue smoke, and the noxious sulfurous yellow fumes of the abyss coming from their mouths to kill one third of men.  In addition, like the spiritual locusts before them, the horses carry a stealthy sting in their tails as they pass by, but this time it is the deadly poisonous bite of the serpent.

      9:20-21.  Despite all this just punishment, the survivors who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads (4) do not repent of their own works — their false worship (20), and their wicked and immoral behavior (21).  The survivors continue to break both tables of God’s law, as these verses show.  Therefore, God allows them to punish and destroy themselves with their own depravity and folly.