I. INTRODUCTION
A. Review of Past Blog Posts
- The Four Horsemen (Rev 6:1-8)
- The Fifth and Sixth Seal’s Effects on the Earth (Rev 6: 9-17)
- The 144,000 Are Marked with the Seal of God (Rev 7:1-8)
- God and the Lamb Are Praised (Rev 7:9-17)
- The Lamb Breaks the Seventh Seal (Rev 8:1-5)
- The First Four Trumpets (8:6-13)
B. Text of Rev 9:1-12
“1The fifth angel blew his trumpet and I saw a star which had fallen from heaven to the earth. He was given the key to the shaft of the abyss. 2He opened the shaft to the Abyss and smoke ascended from the abyss like the smoke of a great furnace. Then the sun and wair were darkened from the smoke of the shaft. 3Locusts come out of the smoke into the earth. They were given power like scorpions of the earth. 4The locusts were told not to injure the grass of the earth, any green grass, or any tree, except the people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5The locusts were not allowed to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. Their torment was like the torture of a scorpion whenever it strikes a person. 6During that time people will want to die but they will not. They will want to die but death will escape them. 7The form of the locusts were like horses prepared for battle, and their heads had crowns like gold, and their faces were like human faces. 8They had hair like women’s hair and teeth like a lion. 9Their chests were like iron breastplates, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many horse war chariots advancing toward battle. 10They had tails and stingers like scorpions. Their power was in their tails to injure people for the duration of five months. 11They had over them the king angel of the abyss. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon. The first woe has come. Look! Two more woes are coming after this. (Rev 9:1-12)[ref]Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.[/ref]
Photo Credit: Phillip Medhurst
C. General Remarks
The fifth trumpet is unique because John uses much more space to explain this trumpet. For the first four trumpets only seven verses are used while John uses twelve verses to describe the fifth trumpet.
“The stuff of horror movies, or nightmares, or both. We can only assume, when John wrote down this vision of the locusts, that he was intending to produce a similar effect. He lavishes more details description on these super-locusts than on any other creature in this vivid book” (Wright, Revelation for Everyone, 85).
II. THE FIFTH ANGEL AND AN OPEN BOTTOMLESS PIT (Rev 9:1-2)
A. A Fallen Star Opens the Bottomless Pit (v. 1)
“The fifth angel blew his trumpet and I saw a star which had fallen from heaven to the earth. He was given the key to the shaft of the abyss.” (Rev 9:1)
1. A Fallen Star