Arise, O Sleeper: Daily Thoughts from Revelation (Revelation 9:1-12)

His sons had told me how hard he was toward Christianity. Their attempts to get him to even hear their testimonies of finding Christ seemed to be met with anger and solid resistance. But now he was dying and they asked me to talk to him in the hospital room where he had received the news that there was nothing that could be done to save him. I did, and even had a subsequent visit with him at home and he gave only a halfhearted resistance to the gospel before repenting and believing and being saved.

God’s judgments poured out on the earth are not the final judgment. That is depicted in Revelation 20. These are “last ditch” efforts by God to wake up the sleepers.

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. 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. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. 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. 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. And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.

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, their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; 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. They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. 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.

The first woe has passed; behold, two woes are still to come. (Revelation 9:1-12 ESV)

The fifth trumpet releases the evil of the bottomless pit where an evil spirit Abaddon or Apollyon is imprisoned.  This judgment constitutes the first woe.  The scorpions released are too grotesque to be natural creatures.  Are they merely symbolic of something else, and if so, what?  If they are actual demonic spirits from the pit how do they have bodies?  It is hard to answer what these might be, and it is not necessary to explain.

What is not hard to explain is that they cause great suffering for five months.  Their “sting” doesn’t kill but torments.  And though people will long for death they will not find it.  Only those not sealed (like the 144,000) will be stung.  It is normally during suffering that we finally look to God for salvation.  If this woe does not motivate people, perhaps the second and third might.

It is astonishing to see people who are ill and suffering and obviously dying who, instead of choosing to look to God for real life, are embittered against God or deny Him altogether in classic repression of what they know is true (Romans 1:18). They would rather die than deal with what comes after death. Many others have found God during this most profound moment in their lifeline.