Revelation 9:1-12

The Fifth Trumpet

A sermon by Pastor Joe Haynes

Preached on October 21, 2018 at Beacon Church

At Beacon Church we believe in what is called “expository preaching”—where the main idea of a Bible passage becomes the main point of the sermon. Some passages, like this one, also contain predictions of the future—prophecies. So the sermon needs to also show how the fulfillment of the prediction connects to the main idea of the passage. In the fifth trumpet, the main idea is that God holds people accountable for sin. In the fulfillment we learn that their specific sin was worshipping idols in addition to worshipping Jesus. So if we see the main point of these verses, and learn how people were punished for falling away from pure worship of Christ, we’re supposed to take a long hard look at our own lives, and see if in some way we are doing the same thing—putting our confidence not only in Jesus, but also somewhere else. Your wife, or husband, would not put up with you having a second romantic interest on the side. Jesus will not let you get away with doing the same thing with your faith.

So far in our sermons on Revelation, we have traced the fulfillments of the first six seals, and then the first four trumpets, in major historic events in the Roman Empire, in the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth centuries until Rome was overthrown by wave after wave of barbarian generals with their armies—men like Attila and the Huns, or Odoacer and the Heruli. This is the next trumpet, so it should take place sometime after those events, so after about c.500AD. And since the city of Rome and its territories had already been conquered, we should also expect this trumpet to focus on the other territories that made up the whole civilization—the parts still ruled by Constantinople, called the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire was Christian—sort of. But they were divided over whether Jesus was God or created by God. And along with praying to Jesus, they most people also prayed to icons of Mary and all sorts of dead saints. So we have a probable time period, location, and a reason for God to punish them. Let’s see now what these verses say, and then how it happened.

An army of locusts

And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.  2 He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft.  3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth.  4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.  5 They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone.  6 And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.  (Rev. 9:1-6 ESV)

The first thing we must notice about this army of locusts is that God is in control. I have three reasons for saying that: a) the locusts come from the smoke, that comes from the pit, that is opened by the “fallen star” (don’t worry about how weird that seems, we’ll come back to it). But the key to open the pit is “given” to the fallen star (v1). He receives it from someone with greater authority. B) Locusts in nature eat vegetation but don’t hurt people. These locusts though, are “given power like the power of scorpions” (v3). Again, they receive it passively from someone in control. C) Finally, the imagery of “locusts”, just like the hail and fire, the waters becoming bloody and bitter, and the darkness of the earlier trumpets, are images taken from the 10 plagues God used to punish Egypt and free Israel from slavery. The locusts were the eighth plague. And “plagues” are not just diseases, but punishments from God. So as soon as we see the symbol of locusts in Revelation 9, we are reminded that God is punishing someone, and when we read that the key to the bottomless pit, and the power of scorpions, is “given” to the fallen star and to the locusts, we are reminded that this is all part of a judgement from God. All the trumpets are sounded because the Lamb opened the seventh seal in 8:1. Jesus is exercising divine and sovereign rule.

Their king

They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon. (Rev. 9:11 ESV)

And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. (Rev. 9:1 ESV)

Because Jesus is in control, it’s sort of surprising when we read in verse 11 that the locusts are serving Satan. Verse 11 has to be read together with verse 1. The symbol in verse 1 is “a star fallen from heaven”. That reminds us of three things: first, “stars” in the book of Revelation are symbols for “angels”. Jesus Himself gave John that interpretation in 1:20, “the seven stars that you saw in my right hand… are the angels of the seven churches”. (But you also need to remember that in Greek, the word “angel” literally means “messenger”—sometimes then stars represent human messengers serving God, or even serving false gods, and sometimes they represent spirits created to serve God.) Second, verse 11 tells us that this “fallen star” is “the angel of the bottomless pit”, who is called “Abaddon” or “Apollyon” in Hebrew and Greek—two words meaning “destruction” and “destroyer”. (Did you notice in verse 1 the star is called “he” and is handed a key? Now that makes sense: it can’t be a literal star. It’s a person!) Third, though some of you already figured it out, the first clue, “I saw a star fallen from heaven” takes us back to Jesus’ words to his disciples in Luke 10:18,

18 And he said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.  19 Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.  20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."  (Lk. 10:18-20 ESV)

Just as Jesus is in control; just as Satan himself, though fallen from serving God is still under the rule and authority of Jesus, so Jesus gives His followers authority over “the spirits” (Lk 10:20), the demons who, like “serpents and scorpions”, torment unbelievers. What the Destroyer intends for harm with these locusts, Jesus intends for good. About the smoke: In 8:4, that “smoke” is the prayers of Christians being offered to God. This new smoke brings darkness, because it is the unholy prayers of a religion that’s not from heaven, but from the pit.

Their power

“Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth,” (Rev. 9:3 ESV). The scorpion-like power given to this locust-army is intended to point believers to realize the power behind this plague is a demonic power (like Jesus said in Luke 10:18-20). But don’t forget who’s really in charge! (Jesus. See Rev 8:1.) Still, the locusts’ power feels very real to their victims: they feel tormented. That power was “given to them” (the locusts), meaning even when it looks like the demonic power behind them is more powerful that Christ (and I think lots of people still wonder about that today!), don’t forget that their power to torment is a delegated power under the sovereign control of the Lord Jesus: I say that not only because “they were given power”, but limits are imposed on what they do with their power: “They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads,” (Rev. 9:4 ESV). Skipping verse 5 for a minute, look at 6: “And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them,” (Rev. 9:6 ESV). They are not permitted to do what literal locusts always do: eat vegetation, so they aren’t literally locusts, but people sent to harm people God was judging—not believers in Christ (v4b)—and not even to “kill” many unbelievers. “They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone,” (Rev. 9:5 ESV).

Death-by-locust-sting is not a real thing. But the imagery is not hard to figure out because the wording is taken from Amos 8:12 and adapted here with tragic irony. The Old Testament book of Amos was written sometime around c.740BC, about 20 years before the northern Kingdom of Israel was wiped out by the Assyrian Empire. The thing that shocked Amos’ hearers at that time was that Israel really thought God was still on their side, even though they cheated on God by worshiping other idols and astrological “star” gods. And Amos comes along and says that just as God was going to judge Israel’s neighbours for their wickedness, God was also about to judge Israel for their apostasy. In Amos 5:8, God taunts the demonic “star-gods” with proof of His sovereign power. And then in Amos 8:12, God says through Amos, because Israel didn’t put up with real Bible-teaching when they had the chance, soon they won’t be able to find a good Bible teacher anywhere:

11 "Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord GOD, "when I will send a famine on the land-- not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.  12 They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.  (Amos 8:11-12 ESV)

The image of a locust invasion comes from ancient Israel: Rev 8 is about events 1300 years later. But these people won’t even seek God’s Word. Instead of humbling themselves in repentance to God, they prefer to die like men, but these locusts actually forced them to live like dogs.

Their appearance

7 In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces,  8 their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lions' teeth;  9 they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle.  10 They have tails and stings like scorpions…  (Rev. 9:7-10a ESV)

The descriptions of the locusts starts with a word used only once in the book of Revelation: “appearance”. Interesting since this book is so visual! But it is revealed to John that the “appearance” of the locust symbol contains clues to help readers identify the locusts: bible clues (war horses, lions’ teeth, the sound of chariots, scorpion stings) and visual clues (crowns, faces, hair, and armor). Three of those clues (lion’s teeth, war horses, & the sound of chariots) come from Joel 1-2. Joel predicted a powerful nation was going to invade and conquer Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah, and symbolized them as locusts:

What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten. (Joel 1:4 ESV)

For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions' teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. (Joel 1:6 ESV)

Their appearance is like the appearance of horses, and like war horses they run.  5 As with the rumbling of chariots, they leap on the tops of the mountains, like the crackling of a flame of fire devouring the stubble, like a powerful army drawn up for battle. (Joel 2:4-5 ESV)

Joel called them “a powerful nation”, meaning they weren’t actual locusts but people invading the Holy Land (hence the human faces). These clues then lead us to expect a powerful nation to invade the Byzantine Empire. Moreover, since locust plagues in Israel came from the south, we should expect this plague under the fifth trumpet to come from the south. The other clues—“looking like” gold crowns (v7), “like” long hair (v8) and “like” iron breastplates (v9)—since they aren’t obvious clues from the Bible, are probably meant as visual clues for recognizing them.

Their time

They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them,  (Rev. 9:5 ESV)

…and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. (Rev. 9:10 ESV)

The tormenting power of these locusts is specifically named as a feature of the scorpion-like tails they are given. We learned from Jesus’ words in Luke 10 that this is a clue that their success would be due to demonic, spiritual power. So what demonically-inspired, powerful nation, attacked the Byzantines from the south, as plague on apostate Christians, not killing them but humiliating them, who rode horses, had something like gold-coloured crowns, long hair and iron armor, and arrived sometime 500 AD? The historian Justo L. Gonzalez writes, “Out of Arabia, a forgotten corner of the world that had been generally ignored by both the Roman and the Persian empires, a tidal wave of conquest arose that threatened to engulf the world. In a few years, the Persian Empire had vanished, and many of the ancient Roman territories were in Arab hands."[i] (Let me be clear that a Christian response to Islamic persecution is to pray for those who persecute us—to pray for all Muslims to find salvation and hope in Jesus.) Mohammed, the founder of Islam, claimed to receive the words of the Quran from the angel Gabriel.[ii] There is no doubt in my mind that he really saw an angel, one “fallen from heaven” (v1), but it wasn’t Gabriel: in Hebrew he is called Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon, “the Destroyer” (v11). In biblical imagery, the writings he received, and the religious worship they produced, were “smoke” that obscures the true light and covers the land in darkness.[iii] Motivated by Mohammed’s demon-inspired teaching, waves of soldiers swarmed over Arabia, the Middle East, and North Africa.[iv]

In 622, Mohammed moved his preaching to Medina where things took off. 10 years later, under his "successors" (caliphs) had conquered much of Arabia to the south, then turned east, and then north, and finally west.[v] Their horse-back armies (famous for gilded-helmets wrapped in turbans, neck armor called “aventails”, & chain-mail shirts)[vi] invaded the Holy Land, taking Damascus and Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire in 638; then Egypt in 642. North Africa, Spain, France--as well as totally consuming the Persian Empire with astonishing speed.[vii] It’s remarkable that Muslim policy destroyed 4000 churches in the province of Syria,[viii] but preferred to avoid killing Christians, humiliating them and subduing them with harsh laws, requiring “protection money”, and in an ironic twist of Providence, since those Christians liked bowing to idols, now they had to bow in the presence of ordinary Muslims.[ix] But verses 5 and 10 specifically say the locusts were allowed to torment for five months. How does that fit the first waves of Muslim Arab invaders? I’ve explained before that time periods in Bible prophecy are normally on the scale of a year in history for every symbolic day: the principle is laid down in Numbers 14:34—forty years wandering in the wilderness for forty days of unbelief by the spies sent to Canaan. In Ezekiel 4:5 God assigned Ezekiel a symbolic day for every year of Israel’s punishment: “For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment,” (Ezek. 4:5 ESV). And again the prophecy was given as “a day for each year” (Eze 4:6). In Daniel 9, seventy symbolic weeks of days until the coming of Christ are fulfilled on the scale of a real year for each symbolic day. Scripture tells us how to interpret time periods in symbolic prophecies: a day for a year.[x] So 5 months, or 150 days (a normal life-span for locusts!)[xi] = 150 years of initial Muslim conquest. After Mohammed started filling the air with the smoke of his preaching, Muslim forces devoured “Christian” lands until they were stopped in France by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732, “which marked the end of the first wave of Moslem expansion”[xii]—at least in the west. In the East, their rapid conquest faltered at the Siege of Constantinople in 718, and began to be reversed after the Byzantine army won the Battle of Akroinon in 740, on the edge of the region of the seven churches addressed in Revelation 2-3. By 750 the border between the Muslim Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire were stabilizing—a little less than 150 years since Muhammad was visited by the fallen angel.[xiii] In 762, the new Caliph moved his capital from Damascus, further away from Byzantine territories to Baghdad, beginning a “golden age” of Islam where its rulers became less consumed with conquest, and more concerned with culture.[xiv]

Sometimes, in history and also today, it looks as if evil is winning. It’s not. The victory belongs to Jesus, and every subsequent fulfillment of Revelation leads closer and closer to Christ’s final and glorious victory: In Revelation 9, we again see that what Christ’s enemies intended for evil, Jesus intends for good. “The first woe has passed; behold, two woes are still to come,” (Rev. 9:12 ESV). So what can praying to Mary gain you, if our sovereign and powerful King is also our merciful Saviour? Isn’t Jesus enough? Most of us probably don’t pray to literal idols, but are you so sure you’re not cheating on Jesus, splitting the affections of your heart with some other unholy Love? Other than Christ, is there something that, if you lost it, would make you feel like life wasn’t worth living? That’s an idol. Romans 1 warns us that if we refuse to repent from cheating on Jesus with other idols, God will give us over to them. We become joyless slaves to the things we worship. Some Christian pastors and bishops in the Byzantine empire tried to persuade people that praying to icons of saints was idol-worship. In the 720’s, after a century of Arab victories, the Byzantine Emperor, Leo III, seemed to listen.[xv]  He tried to lead the Byzantines away from idol-worship, but in the end, the people listened to the false-teaching of the popes and other pastors, and went back to their idols. Good Bible teaching got harder and harder to find.[xvi] Your flesh will tell you that you need something else besides Jesus to be satisfied. Your flesh is lying to you. Don’t listen.

11 "Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord GOD, "when I will send a famine on the land-- not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.  12 They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.  (Amos 8:11-12 ESV)