Revelation 9 - All Hell Breaks Loose
It may seem like the powers of Hell dominate this world, but even they are under God's control & used for His purposes.
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Revelation 9 (NIV)
1 The fifth angel sounded his trumpet,
and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth.
The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss.
2 When he opened the Abyss,
smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace.
The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss.
3 And out of the smoke locusts
came down on the earth
and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth.
4 They were told not to harm
the grass of the earth
or any plant or tree,
but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
5 They were not allowed
to kill them
but only to torture them for five months.
And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes.
6 During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.
7 The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle.
On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold,
and their faces resembled human faces.
8 Their hair was like women’s hair,
and their teeth were like lions’ teeth.
9 They had breastplates like breastplates of iron,
and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle.
10 They had
tails with stingers, like scorpions,
and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months.
11 They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss,
whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon
and in Greek is Apollyon
(that is, Destroyer).
12 The
first woe is past;
two other woes are yet to come.
13 The sixth angel sounded his trumpet,
and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God.
14 It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet,
“Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”
15 And the four angels
who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year
were released to kill a third of mankind.
16 The number of the mounted troops
was twice ten thousand times ten thousand.
I heard their number.
17 The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this:
Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur.
The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur.
18 A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths.
19 The power of the horses
was in their mouths
and in their tails;
for their tails were like snakes,
having heads with which they inflict injury.
20 The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues
still did not repent of the work of their hands;
they did not stop worshiping
demons,
and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—
idols that cannot see or hear or walk.
21 Nor did they repent of
their murders,
their magic arts,
their sexual immorality
or their thefts.
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Revelation 9 Summary
All Hell breaks loose in Revelation 9.
Literally. The Abyss is opened and enough smoke billows out to darken the entire sky. After that, locusts like scorpions with horse shaped bodies, human faces and teeth like lions come out to kill those who don't have God's seal on their foreheads.
Don't get too hung up on the details until you first understand the big overarching picture. As you read this chapter in particular, don't try and figure out if the locusts represent American Apache helicopters in the various Gulf Wars (yes, that's somebody's theory). Don't worry about figuring out whether the 200 million troops in v16 are under the command of Vladimir Putin (somebody else's theory). Remember that the point of John's vision isn't to explain every detail of God's plan, but rather it's to announce Christ's final victory over sin and death.
God sent these terrible plagues out from Hell for one big reason: to drive people toward repentance, but even with the end result of their insolence bearing down upon them in terrible ways, people still did not turn toward God. The human heart is so hardened with sin that it would rather face monster locusts and fire breathing lion headed horses than repent!