Revelation 9:1-8 (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.[a] 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. 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;
Revelation 9:13-19 (ESV) - Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, 14 saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” 15 So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind. 16 The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number. 17 And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire[a] and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were like lions' heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. 18 By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths. 19 For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound.
“Dark”, “Plagues”, and “Exposed”, three words in this sermon title that sound like the trailer for a horror movie. As Richard Phillips wrote, “The graphic symbolic pictures in these trumpet judgments are dark, grim, and horrifying. These bizarre images cause some Christians to avoid the book of Revelation as too disturbing and difficult. Yet the reality behind these visions is too real for us to dismiss.”
We begin with a review of our foundation for the book of Revelation. The Book of Revelation has the big banner over it: The Lamb Wins. Amen. This book shows us that God is moving all of history towards the fulfillment of the plan that He determined in eternity past.
We are learning about the Seven Trumpets of God's judgments. The first four trumpets brought plagues of death and destruction upon the earth. The final trumpet will be the trumpet of victory for the Christian, and a trumpet of war against the enemies of God. Here are a few New Testament scriptures that point to the last trumpet.
1 Corinthians 15:52 (ESV) — 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
1 Thessalonians 4:16 (ESV) — 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.
The last Trumpet is both a trumpet of victory and a trumpet of war. This morning, we will look at what happens at the sound of the fifth and sixth trumpets. I have repeatedly cautioned against assigning a literal meaning to these pictures and their details. But rather, look at the picture as a whole and what God is revealing.
Revelation 9:1-12 – The Fifth Angel blew the Fifth Trumpet. When the fifth trumpet is blown, an army of demonic locusts that could inhabit a science-fiction movie about space aliens is released upon mankind. BUT not upon everyone. This plague is under God's control, as all of the others.
There have been sincere Christians who have tried to assign literal images to the pieces of this picture. It’s been a disaster when their views have been found to be untrue. To cite one example, best-selling author Hal Lindsey, in his Best-Selling book, “Apocalypse Code”, published in 1997, informs us that the fifth trumpet describes attack helicopters that the Chinese army will deploy in our time. The tails like scorpions are the tails of helicopters. Lindsey’s error is in interpreting this vision through the lens of the news of his day — 1997 —rather than looking closely at Scripture.
It is clear that these invaders are not natural forces in our world, such as Chinese attack helicopters, because they are unleashed into history from a shaft of the bottomless Abyss where demons dwell (Rev. 9:1–2). Therefore, these locusts represent evil spiritual powers that are unleashed at God’s will into our world.[1]
Back to our interpretation of this symbolic picture. The imagery in this vision derives from two Old Testament sources. The first is Exodus 10:13–15, in which Moses casts a locust plague on Egypt. This fits the pattern of the previous trumpets in Revelation 8, which replicated plagues on Egypt. The other source is Joel 2:1–11, which describes the coming of the Lord’s judgment as an invasion of locusts. Joel described these large, devouring grasshoppers as “war horses” bringing flames and destruction, comparing them to fierce “warriors” who charge and “soldiers” who scale a wall (Joel 2:4–7).1
Clearly, these are demonic forces released from the bottomless pit. Pause here on that place-“The bottomless pit.” In the original Greek, these three words are a single word. The word is “Abyss.”
Do you remember the incident in which Jesus cast out a legion of demons from a man who lived in a graveyard? This story is recorded by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In Luke 8:31, it says,
And they [the demons] begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss.
Using Luke 8:31 and other scriptures, the Abyss is viewed by some as a place of imprisonment for demons, or as a restraint on the power and activity of demons upon the earth. We do know that the devil and demons are restrained by God. Here, at the sound of the fifth Trumpet, they are released, but still restrained.
Back to the picture in Revelation, Chapter Nine. The Abyss is unlocked and opened, and the number of demons released is so great that they are like a plague of locusts that darkens the earth.
In this picture, we are to see three limits and characteristics of this plague. First, we see that these demons are released upon the earth to torment people. They torment, but they are not allowed by God to kill. They bring such misery upon people that they seek death but cannot have it. The pain, torment, and misery drive their victims to suicide, but death is withheld (9:6).
What is this demonic tormenting? We are not told specifically, but we do have hints. We can agree that whatever it is, it is so awful that the tormented see death as a relief. But death will flee from them. This could be a mental, psychological, and emotional torment. It could also be severe physical torment, or both together.
In Revelation 16:10-11, we have another view of these seven judgments as seven bowls of God’s wrath. Remember, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls are connected.
Revelation 16:10–11 (ESV) — The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed their tongues in anguish 11 and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds.
The words “anguish” and “pain” are the same words in the Greek used by the Apostle John. The word means “tormenting agony.” That fits what the demons brought at the fifth trumpet. A tormenting agony of pain that was so bad they sought death as a relief. A final note on this. Dennis Johnson (Triumph of the Lamb: A Commentary on Revelation) comments:
“They sting like scorpions, showing the intensity of unremitting pain they inflict (9:5, 10). Their crowns and human faces signify personal intelligence and authority to carry out their grisly mission (9:7). Though limited in duration and severity, this outbreak of demonic activity among the unbelieving carries the expression of God’s wrath in the course of history to a new level, a first woe.”
The second limit and characteristic we want to notice is the duration of the plague. The torment will only last 5 months. This is symbolic language, of course. Some commentators say it relates to the natural cycle for locusts, since that is the picture John sees. Other scholars say the number five is half of ten, which ten being the number of completion, means this judgment by God is not complete. More judgment is coming. We know that this is not the final judgment.
I would say not to get stuck on the specific duration of this plague. That is not the point. The “five months” points us to God, who is controlling all of this for His purposes and plans.
The third characteristic and limitation is in Revelation 9:4. It says,
“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.”
This plague of demonic torment is not allowed to touch the Christian. The Christian is sealed. We’ve already learned that this is not a literal mark on a Christian’s head. The Seal of God is the Holy Spirit. These demons, released from the Abyss, only torment those who do not have the seal of God. God does not allow them to harm his children.
The objects of the scorpions’ attack are men, but only those of mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads. This takes us back to the seventh chapter, where John sees the sealing of the people of God before the last terrible period of tribulation, and this verse gives the purpose of the sealing. The tribulation will be a time of the beginning of the wrath of God upon a rebellious society, a time of fearful persecution of the church by the beast, and, as this trumpet shows, a time of demonic activity. God’s wrath will fall only on the worshipers of the beast (16:2), and God’s people will be sheltered by divine protection from demonic activity. But the church in the tribulation will be the victim of persecution and martyrdom as she has been throughout her entire history.[2]
Now we move to Revelation 9:13-19, the Sixth Angel blew the Sixth Trumpet. This trumpet, which is the second woe, is humanity’s last warning blast. When it sounds, a voice from the golden altar on which the church’s prayers were offered to God commands, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”
Verse 15 is interesting.
Revelation 9:15 (ESV), “So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind.”
Notice, “who had been prepared for the hour.” This is a reference to God’s Sovereignty and control of history. He plans, and He is exact in executing His plan. The “hour” has come. The “time” has arrived as determined. The four angels were released in God’s timing according to God’s plan. The demonic horsemen were held in check by God until God released them to do what He planned.
There are many wild ideas about the devil and demons. Movies and really bad preaching create fears about the powers of the devil. We have unbiblical ideas that demons can do whatever they want to whomever they want, whenever they want. This is not what the Bible reveals. We can see that these ideas do not align with what we read in Revelation and throughout the Bible. The devil and demons are on leashes. They cannot even twitch an eye without God's permission. You can believe Hollywood, or you can read the Bible and believe it. Christian, do not fear demons. You are a child of God, filled with the Holy Spirit.
There are three things we want to notice in this picture of the sixth trumpet. First, this command marks the end of a period of restraint of God’s judgment, because it rescinds the earlier command that four angels at the earth’s four corners must hold back the four winds until God’s servants have been sealed (Rev. 7:1–3).
A second thing to notice is an increase in demonic activity in the final days. It is a volume and depth of evil that mankind has never seen. There is also an escalation from the one-third destruction of land, sea, rivers (with some human death), and sky, to mental and physical torture of unbelievers, and now to the slaughter of one-third of the human population.[3]
When the sixth trumpet is blown, four angels are released with fire-breathing horses with stinging serpents for tails. John says the number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand—meaning an unimaginable number. They are released “to kill a third of mankind (9:15-16).” That is, a third of those unbelievers who are still alive. Remember, a massive number were killed in the earlier trumpets.
The Third thing to notice is who these demons ravish, torment, and then kill? Their own. These demons destroy their own worshipers. They devour men and women who choose to serve sin, the Anti-Christ, and lawlessness; who choose to love this world over the living God. There is no faithfulness in the kingdom of darkness. The kingdom of darkness is more like hyenas killing, stealing, and destroying each other.
This Chapter ends with the darkest of plagues. The darkest of plagues comes to full light from the darkness of these plagues. What is this darkest of plagues that is exposed by the trumpet plagues? Look at Revelation 9:20-21. This echoes Daniel’s rebuke of Belshazzar in the book of Daniel 5:23.
The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, 21 nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
Notice the refusal to repent in both verses. You have to be shocked. God released plagues of devastation on the earth, the sea, and the sky. Devastation that affected a third of earth and seas. We read of God releasing severe demonic tormenting, and then a death that wipes out a third of the population. All of these are on a biblical scale. Catastrophe upon Catastrophe. All of the power, intellect, and inventions of man are helpless to stop any of it. Although they are helpless, they will refuse to humble themselves and plead for mercy.
The unbeliever does the opposite of repenting; they buckle down in their foxhole of rebelliousness against God. They continue to ignore His warnings, shake their arrogant fist at Him, boast in idols, and strengthen their allegiance to the Anti-Christ.
What does this show us? It shows us what God already sees. The hardness of the hearts of those who refuse Him. The darkest of plagues that is exposed by the trumpets is the depth and hardness of the hearts of the unbeliever. They have no shame in their hatred and selfishness. They have no shame in carrying out lawlessness and immorality. They are so blinded in spiritual things that they make idols and worship them.
We can already see how money is idolized and worshipped. People will put the pursuit of money above everything else, even their own family, and even before the living God. We see man-made idols everywhere. Some are celebrities, some are lusts, some are chemicals, some are power and control. The heart of man will make idols out of about anything, rather than the One Creator who made them.
This is a dark plague of stone-hard hearts. There is no fear of God. They refuse to fear God and cry out for mercy. This is the very stone-hard heart of Pharaoh in Exodus. Pharaoh, king of Egypt, watched Yahweh bring one plague after another and destroy his kingdom. He only hardened his heart more and refused to let the people of Israel go free from slavery. To Pharaoh, the pride in his heart went to war with God. We know who won that war, and who always will win. So it is with this war of stone-hard hearts that refuse to turn from their idols and wicked ways. God gets the final word.
Here is the Good News: God Melts Hearts!
The apocalyptic pictures are dark. Demon-like locusts torment people to the point of begging to die just to get relief. Millions times millions times millions of demons released to kill a third of the earth’s population. If it is a demonic war, it is not going to be easy deaths. Torturous deaths; agonizing deaths.
Hear me, Christian, as we saw in God’s Word, these plagues are not allowed by God to be on His children. Revelation 9:4, but “… only those people who do not have the seal of God …” We do not fear what we have read and described. These are judgments against those who have rejected God and His Savior—Jesus Christ. They refuse to repent. But we who belong to Christ Jesus have repented. We belong to the Savior, Jesus Christ. God melted our hearts. He melted your heart, and you surrendered.
God still melts hearts. This is what God does. He Melts Hearts. The Gospel of John 6:29 tells that God turns hearts to Jesus.
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
This is what God does. He melts hard hearts to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior. Christian, do you have a loved one who is not saved? These plagues await them. It is hovering over their heads even now. This message should bring a weight upon your heart for them. A heavy weight of sadness.
Here is what I encourage you to do. Let your love for these unsaved loved ones take action. Do you believe God still melts hearts? That He can melt any heart? Then it is time to take action. Here is my guidance. Get a notebook or journal, or cards to write on. Something. Write down the names of these family members and friends who need Jesus, or else they will perish eternally. After you write down their names, write out a prayer, a plea to God to save them, to melt their hearts. It doesn’t have to be long or fancy. Write your heart down on paper. Write a prayer for each on your list. Write their name in the prayer. Pour your heart into that prayer. Don’t hold back. This is between you and your heavenly father.
After you write a prayer, pray it out loud to the Father to melt their hearts. He will hear you. He will hear your heart. Going forward, whenever your faith is hurting for that loved one, go back to that prayer and pray it again. Remind God. Which is actually reminding your faith. You might find yourself adding scripture to your prayers. Praying God’s word to Him. Keep those prayers. Keep them to revisit them. Keep them to share when one of them gives their life to Christ.
Some of you might sit down with one of your unsaved loved ones and show them in Revelation what will happen to those who refuse Jesus Christ’s offer of salvation. Of course, with a gentle and broken heart for them. What we have read today is from God’s word. He has promised that this will come. It will happen. There is no way around this. Those who belong to Jesus Christ are preserved. Those who are not His will perish.
I turn my sermon to the non-Christian. This book, Revelation, was written to Christians. Yet, here you are hearing what a building full of believers has read and heard. Is your heart shaken by what is coming, by what God has planned for those who refuse His Savior? If you are unsaved, still holding on to your life, I plead, turn to Jesus Christ while you can. Beg for His forgiveness for your rebellious will against Him, and for your idols, for your heart that has opposed Him. Turn to Jesus and find forgiveness, wholeness in your soul, and the mercies of God. Heed this warning from the Bible. Do not delay. You are not here in this place today by mere chance. You are here to obtain mercy from Jesus Christ. Your own conscience tells you that if you die without Jesus Christ, you will die in your sins and perish. You know of friends or family who are saved. You see the difference Christ has made in their lives. You see that God’s love is real in them and towards them. How can you oppose and reject such divine salvation and love?
You are like the man standing outside the beautiful house looking in the window. You see beauty inside. You see others living free and joyful. Come to the door and knock! Come to Jesus and surrender. Give Him your life and sins.
I am not asking you to step out of your seat and come forward. I want you to leave this service today, go somewhere alone, and seek Jesus. Cry out to Him for mercy and forgiveness. I want you to meet Jesus without distractions. Call on Him for a new heart, a melted heart.
If you do seek Jesus, tell someone you know who is a Christian. Tell them that you have surrendered to Jesus to be saved and forgiven. And I want you to tell me. Call me. My phone number is on the back of the bulletin. And I want you to come back here next week and grow to know and walk with Jesus. Do not wait. Do not put off being free and saved from God’s judgment on sin. Do not wait.
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