The Worst Ones - Revelation 9

9:1-12 - The fifth angel sounds his trumpet and John sees “a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to the angel was given the key of the bottomless pit.” The JST is important here because without it, it makes it seem like Satan was given the key personally and we know that he was not, but the angel that blew the trump could administer keys of the kingdom. When the angel “opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit,” which darkened the sun and the air, “as the smoke of a great furnace.” This reminds me of the oil fires in Iraq. Out of this smoke comes “locusts upon the earth,” now whether this means Satan’s spiritual followers or actual insects or people or animals or what. The “locusts” look like battle ready horses with crowns of gold, the faces of men, the hair of women and the teeth of lions. They are wearing armor and their “Wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.” They had tails like scorpions with stingers. But these “locusts” are commanded to leave alone nature, and only torment “those men which have not the seal of God in their forehead… and their power was to hurt men five months.” Their king and leader is called “Adabdon” in Hebrew or “Apollyon” in Greek, both of which the IM tells us means destruction. Let’s get some context here for these “locusts.” There is an article from biblehub.com which gives us more insight into the actual suffering these locusts inflict as well as the five month time frame. These insects are not meant to kill but only torment people which “was as the torment of a scorpion.” I’ve never been stung by a scorpion, but I’d imagine that it’s pretty terrible, especially if you received multiple stings at once. I looked up scorpion stings online and the pictures make it look like something that is incredibly painful but not usually life threatening and I’d imagine that if you get several at the same time, you’d probably want to crawl into a hole and die, and apparently during this time of torment, people would prefer death to this suffering, but it will elude them. One of the most fascinating verses in all of scripture discusses this event saying, “And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee form them.” Man, I wonder what that means, but talk about horrifying, knowing that that’s your fate. Rough. As far as the five month time period stated, the article explains that this is the length of time for a locust’s life span. It says, “the devil and his agents have not unlimited power committed to them; they are restrained within limits by the will of God. The evils which follow in the train of heresy and infidelity are not as yet permitted to kill, for this judgment extends only to the natural life of man. God reserves the final killing to himself at the great judgment day. This is shown in the limitation ‘five months.’ This apparently meaningless period becomes explicable, when we remember that the usual duration of a locust plague is five months.” This is an interesting analysis which suggests that it’s not a physical affliction but instead a spiritual one. That’s something to think about. 9:13-21 - The sixth angel sounds and the voice from the altar before God “saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the bottomless pit.” The JST is again important here because the KJV has them being released “in the great river Euphrates,” which is in Iraq, I remember driving over it when I was there. The JST is important because we are currently at war around the Euphrates and so instead of thinking “oh crap we are already in it,” we can focus on instead preparing spiritually. These four angels are loosed “to slay the third part of men.” The IM quotes Bruce R. McConkie as noting, “Four angels of the devil, demons from the depths of hell, are given free reign to lead the armies of men in destroying a third of the population of the earth… The slain will be a third of the inhabitants of the earth itself, however many billions of people that may turn out to be.” Satan wants death and suffering and destruction so badly, a third of all people, that will end up being like 3 billion people, absolutely insane. But the number “one third” has been used several times throughout chapters 8 and 9, and in fact, if we consider Satan being cast out of heaven, one third of the spirits followed him, and two thirds stayed. I googled “what is the biblical significance of one third,” and on bibleask.org it explains, “The third means a great part, but not a major part. We must not take the phrase ‘the third part’ literally: the emphasis here is to show that in wrath, God remembers mercy, and that while He humbles all, He does not completely destroy.” That makes more sense, that it’s not an exact number but instead meant to signify which portion of the majority. The group who are doing all the killing if numbered as “two hundred thousand thousand” which is 200 million I believe, which is a lot of soldiers but less than 0.3% of the world’s population. These soldiers are described as sitting on horses with heads “as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.” Interestingly, if you envision a tank, it kind of looks like an abstract lion’s head, and the turret spits fire and smoke. Or these could gas masks, or helicopters, or who knows what else, or nuclear fallout. John specifies that these three methods are what kills one third of the people, “by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.” In this day and age, I think it’s safe to bet that nuclear weapons would most likely be involved if billions of people were going to be killed in a single war. As a friend in the army said once, “it’s hard to kill everyone with your bare hands.” Those who survive this massive destruction “yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood.” I don’t know if this means that all the rest of the people who are left alive refuse to repent or if this just indicates the ones that absolutely will not. I would imagine that after an event like a third of the world population being slaughtered, there would be a push toward repentance by most people. But reading this gave me a strong “Nephites at the end” vibe.