Revelation 9: Locust Demons, 200 Million Army & Earth's Deed copertina

Revelation 9: Locust Demons, 200 Million Army & Earth's Deed

Revelation 9: Locust Demons, 200 Million Army & Earth's Deed

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The three woes of Revelation 8:13 belong to the last three trumpets and fall on the earth-dwellers, those settled and at ease on the earth. Each woe answers the trumpet about to sound. When the fifth trumpet sounds in Revelation 9:1, the tribulation is about six months from its end. The vision is an overview; later chapters return and fill in detail.The star has already fallen from heaven. It is not falling now. Satan has been cast out of the third heaven and is given the key to the pit of the abyss. That pit is a chamber within the abyss, and the abyss is in Sheol, also called Hades, in the center of the earth, where some fallen angels are imprisoned for their former activity. When the pit is opened they swarm out like locusts. They receive the authority of scorpions, so they may cause intense pain, but they are not permitted to kill. They may not touch grass, green things, or trees, and they may not touch the men who have the seal of God on their foreheads. That seal is a seal of judgment, of the same kind seen in Ezekiel 9:4, when those marked in Jerusalem were not to be killed as Babylon sacked the city. It is not the seal of the 144,000. The 144,000 seal concerned protection for their ministry. This seal marks those who belong to God. The word is anthropos, so it is not limited to Israel. Gentile saints come through the tribulation as well: many are killed by the harlot in the first half for opposing the world religious system, and many are beheaded in the second half for their witness of Christ. Israel in the wilderness is already kept while God purges the nation. The only people these demons may strike are those who belong to Satan. His own followers attack his own people. His house is divided.The shape they are permitted to take is given in similes, not as an identical portrait. Humans see angels only when those angels take a physical form, and that form is usually human. Here the locusts are like horses prepared for battle. The locust figure is the swarm. In Exodus 10 an east wind brought locusts over all Egypt until they covered the land, a plague unlike any before or after. These demons likewise come in numbers, not one by one, darkening the land and going out to harm men. On their heads are crowns like gold. They are victor’s wreaths, but only likened to gold. The Church alone among the saints receives victor’s wreaths, and those wreaths are gold. These are false wreaths, likely given when these angels followed Satan in his attempt to set his throne in the third heaven. Satan can produce a likeness of gold, not gold. He has a limited power to produce life, as the Egyptian plagues show, but not this. These are not the whole third of the angels who followed him. They come from the pit, a small part of the abyss, and their equipment marks them as lower ranks. Their faces are like the faces of men, their hair like the hair of women, their teeth like lions’ teeth. Long hair on a male face is shame, not honor. Nature itself teaches that long hair is a dishonor to a man, while a woman’s long hair is her glory and covering (1 Corinthians 11:14). They have breastplates of iron. In a later battle, higher angels wear breastplates of sapphire and gold. Iron marks the general ranks. The sound of their wings is like chariots and horses running to battle. They strike with the tail. This is not the ordinary appearance of a demon. They are subjected to this shape for this purpose. The simile is speed, a swarm not bound to the ground, and a scorpion strike. It is not a literal horse with wings running the streets. The strike is so painful, and the swarm so thick, that the one struck is not left studying the attacker. They hurt men for five months. When they stop, about a month remains to the end of the tribulation.They have a king, the messenger of the abyss (Revelation 9:11). In the context that messenger is the one given the key. His Hebrew name is Abaddon and his Greek name is Apollyon. Both mean Destroyer. Satan is the destroyer. The passage does not place a king of angels inside Hades governing the dead. The popular picture of a red figure with horns and a pitchfork, dragging men down and making bargains, is fiction. Satan is a cherub, still an exceedingly beautiful creature, whose reasoning is false: he still thinks he can be like God, and it is not working. Hades is not the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the final place. Their king is over them while they attack only his people. The first woe has passed. Two woes remain.The sixth angel sounds, and a voice comes from the four horns of the golden altar before God, telling him to release the four angels bound at the great river Euphrates (Revelation 9:13–14). The golden altar is the incense altar of Exodus 37:25, acacia wood overlaid with gold, its horns of one piece with it. The temple was a shadow of things to come. Horns of the altar were the place of a cry for mercy when no sacrifice was available. Joab fled to the tabernacle, took hold ...
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