The Berean Table

Field	Detail
Pericope	Revelation 9:1–21
Theme	Under the sovereign hand of the exalted Lamb, the fifth and sixth trumpets unleash demonic torment and slaughter upon an unbelieving world; yet the destroyers act only by divine permission and within fixed limits, the sealed people of God are spared, and the great tragedy of the chapter is that the impenitent, even under terrible judgment, would not repent of their idolatry, murders, sorceries, sexual immorality, and thefts

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Opening Prayer

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Closing Prayer

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Timeline Context

Placement within the book. Revelation 9 stands at the heart of the second great cycle of judgments, the seven trumpets (8:2–11:19). The seals (chapters 6–7) gave way at the seventh seal to a profound silence and then to the seven angels with seven trumpets (8:1–6). The first four trumpets struck the earth, sea, rivers, and heavenly lights (8:7–12), each devastating “a third.” An eagle then cried “woe, woe, woe” against the inhabitants of the earth because of the three remaining trumpet blasts (8:13). Chapter 9 unfolds the fifth trumpet (the first woe) and the sixth trumpet (the second woe). The third woe awaits the seventh trumpet (11:14–19). Thus chapter 9 escalates the trumpet judgments from the natural order to direct demonic assault upon humanity itself.

Historical and literary setting. John, exiled “on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (1:9), wrote to seven historical churches in the Roman province of Asia, most likely during the reign of Domitian (c. AD 95) or, on some reckonings, in the later 60s. The original readers faced the seductions of compromise (Pergamum, Thyatira), the threat of persecution (Smyrna, Philadelphia), and the lukewarmness of prosperity (Laodicea). The locust imagery would summon to a biblically literate audience the prophecy of Joel and the eighth plague of Egypt; the Euphrates evoked the ancient frontier from which Israel’s enemies—Assyria, Babylon—had so often poured, and the Roman dread of the Parthian cavalry beyond that river.

Major surrounding events and their significance. Between the sealing of the 144,000 and the great multitude (chapter 7) and the judgments of chapter 9 lies a deliberate contrast: God first marks and secures His own, and only then loosens the agents of torment. This ordering is theologically decisive—judgment never touches the sealed. The fifth and sixth trumpets demonstrate that the world’s idolatry invites the very demonic powers it serves, and that escalating judgment, far from producing repentance, exposes the entrenched hardness of the reprobate (9:20–21).

Redemptive-historical placement. The trumpets sound in the era between Christ’s ascension and His return—the “already/not yet” of the New Covenant age. The exalted Lamb, having conquered through His death and resurrection (5:5–6), now executes the purposes written in the scroll. The judgments of chapter 9 are warning judgments along the road to the consummation, calls to repentance that anticipate the final outpouring of the bowls (chapter 16). The chapter stands under the banner of the slain and risen Lamb who holds “the keys of Death and Hades” (1:18) and who governs even the angel of the abyss.

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Historical-Grammatical Study

Genre. Revelation belongs to a fusion of three genres: it is apocalyptic (“the revelation,” apokalypsis, 1:1), prophetic (“the words of this prophecy,” 1:3; 22:18–19), and epistolary (addressed to seven churches, 1:4). Chapter 9 is dense, symbolic apocalyptic vision drawing heavily on Old Testament imagery. The visions are not photographic forecasts but Spirit-given pictures conveying theological realities; the interpreter must read the symbols against their scriptural background rather than press them into wooden literalism.

Key Greek terms and grammar.

• “Bottomless pit” (abyssos, vv. 1, 2, 11)—the “abyss,” the prison-place of demonic powers (Luke 8:31; Revelation 20:1–3). The “shaft” or “well” (phrear) of the abyss is opened with a “key” (kleis), and keys in Revelation signify delegated authority (cf. 1:18; 3:7).
• “Was given” (edothē, repeated in vv. 1, 3, 5)—the recurring divine passive. The fallen star “was given” the key; the locusts “were given” power; they “were allowed” (lit. “it was given to them”) to torment. The grammar relentlessly insists that demonic agents act only by God’s permission.
• “They were told” (errethē, v. 4)—again a divine passive: the locusts are commanded what they may and may not harm. Their malice is restrained by sovereign decree.
• “Torment” (basanismos, v. 5)—torture, the agony of a scorpion’s sting; the verb (basanizō) elsewhere describes judgment (14:10).
• “Abaddon” / “Apollyon” (v. 11)—the Hebrew Abaddōn (“destruction,” the place of ruin; cf. Job 26:6; Proverbs 15:11) personified, rendered in Greek as Apollyōn (“Destroyer,” from apollymi, “to destroy”). The destroyer is named so that the reader knows the abyss has a king, yet that king is himself opened up, loosed, and limited by God.
• “Prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year” (hētoimasmenoi, v. 15)—a perfect participle stressing that the very timing of the slaughter is divinely fixed in advance.
• “Twice ten thousand times ten thousand” (dismyriades myriadōn, v. 16)—two hundred million, an incalculable, symbolic host.
• “Did not repent” (ou metenoēsan, vv. 20, 21)—the climactic refrain; metanoeō is the great Gospel summons to “change the mind,” and its negation is the chapter’s tragic verdict.

Old Testament background. The chapter is saturated with Scripture. The locust army recalls Joel’s “great and powerful people” whose appearance is “like the appearance of horses” with “the noise of chariots,” that “leap on the tops of the mountains” (Joel 1–2, esp. 2:4–5). The plague of locusts that darkened Egypt (Exodus 10:12–15) frames the trumpets as a new exodus judgment upon a hardened, Pharaoh-like world. The serpent of Eden (Genesis 3:1, 14–15) stands behind the serpent-tailed horses and the whole demonic assault, the ancient enemy whose head the Seed of the woman will crush. The Euphrates echoes the prophets’ warnings of judgment poured from the north and east (Isaiah 7:20; Jeremiah 46:10, the “day of the LORD… by the river Euphrates”; Jeremiah 51 against Babylon). The smoke “like the smoke of a great furnace” recalls Sinai (Exodus 19:18) and Sodom (Genesis 19:28).

Covenantal and theological patterns. The trumpets stand in the line of covenant judgment: trumpets summoned Israel to war and announced the day of the LORD (Numbers 10:9; Joel 2:1; Zephaniah 1:16). The sealing of God’s people before judgment recalls Ezekiel’s man with the inkhorn marking the foreheads of the faithful before the city’s slaughter (Ezekiel 9:4–6) and the blood on the doorposts at the first Passover (Exodus 12). The whole chapter operates within the covenantal logic of blessing and curse: the world that worships demons is given over to demons, while the covenant people, marked with God’s seal, are preserved.

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Expanded Outline

Section 1 — The Fallen Star Opens the Abyss; Locusts That Torment but Cannot Kill (vv. 1–6)

Key Insight

The fifth trumpet opens a new and more terrible phase of judgment: “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” (v. 1). The “star” is no inanimate body but a personal agent—note “he was given the key.” Most Reformed commentators identify this fallen star with a fallen angelic being, perhaps Satan himself or one acting under his authority (cf. Luke 10:18, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven”; Revelation 12:9). Crucially, the key to the abyss (abyssos) is given; the destroyer does not possess it by right but receives it by permission. As G.K. Beale stresses, the repeated divine passive “was given” (edothē) throughout the chapter is the interpreter’s master key: every demonic act is a delegated, bounded act under God’s ultimate control.

When the shaft is opened, “smoke like the smoke of a great furnace” rises and darkens “the sun and the air” (v. 2). The imagery recalls Sinai and Sodom—the smoke of judgment and of the underworld. From the smoke emerge “locusts on the earth,” granted “power like the power of scorpions” (v. 3). These are no ordinary insects. William Hendriksen rightly reads them as demonic powers—the noxious, swarming spiritual forces that issue from the pit to afflict the souls of the impenitent. The locust of Joel and Exodus, the harbinger of the day of the LORD, here becomes a figure of hellish torment.

The divine restraint is emphatic: “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” (v. 4). This is the heart of the section. The very creatures of the abyss are commanded—errethē, a divine passive—what they may and may not touch. They are barred from the sealed (cf. 7:3–4). As Matthew Henry observes, “the devil can go no further than God permits him.” The torment is real but limited: “They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them” (v. 5)—the lifespan of a literal locust season, and a fixed, restrained term. The agony is “like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone” (v. 5).

So dreadful is this spiritual torment that “people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them” (v. 6). The world that scorned the living God finds even the escape of death withheld. Vern Poythress notes that the passage portrays the inner misery of those given over to the powers they have served. Christologically, the contrast is stark: the Lamb who holds “the keys of Death and Hades” (1:18) here permits the abyss to be opened, yet shields His own. The serpent may sting, but the head-crushing Seed of the woman has already disarmed him at the cross (Colossians 2:15).

Application

This passage steadies the believer between two errors. On one side lies a faithless terror that imagines evil to be out of control, a free-running chaos that might overwhelm God’s people. On the other lies a careless skepticism that scoffs at the very existence of demonic powers. Scripture corrects both: the powers of the abyss are real and dreadful, yet they are wholly leashed. The repeated “was given,” “were told,” “were allowed” should anchor the anxious soul. Satan is a chained dog; he can reach only as far as the chain permits.

For the Christian, the decisive comfort is the seal of God. Those who belong to Christ are marked and protected; the demonic locusts are explicitly forbidden to harm them. This does not promise exemption from earthly suffering, but it does promise that the torments of the pit—the spiritual ruin of those given over to their idols—cannot finally touch the redeemed.

A warning against misapplication: this text must not be turned into a manual for sensational demonology, nor into fuel for morbid fear. The chapter’s sober point is not to thrill us with monsters but to expose the horror of life under judgment apart from Christ, and to drive us to repentance and to refuge in the Lamb. We should neither obsess over demonic detail nor deny the reality of spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:12). The right response is to examine ourselves, to thank God for His sealing grace, and to plead for the lost while the door of mercy stands open (2 Corinthians 6:2).

Section 2 — The Description of the Locusts and Their King Abaddon/Apollyon (vv. 7–11)

Key Insight

John now describes the locusts in a series of vivid, deliberately unsettling similes that mark them as supernatural and martial. “In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle” (v. 7)—the comparison comes straight from Joel: “their appearance is like the appearance of horses, and like war horses they run” (Joel 2:4). These are an army, not a swarm of mere pests. “On their heads were what looked like crowns of gold” (stephanoi homoioi chrysō, v. 7)—a mock or counterfeit royalty, for the powers of the pit ape the dominion that belongs to Christ alone. “Their faces were like human faces” suggests intelligence and malevolent purpose, not blind instinct.

The catalogue continues: “their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth” (v. 8). Joel had likewise spoken of locusts with “the teeth of a lion” (Joel 1:6), an image of devouring ferocity. “They had breastplates like breastplates of iron” (v. 9)—they are armored, invulnerable to ordinary resistance—“and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle” (cf. Joel 2:5). The overwhelming, terrifying din announces an unstoppable host. Then the climactic feature: “They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails” (v. 10). The sting in the tail—repeated to underline the source of their power—links these creatures to the serpent and to deception (cf. v. 19; Isaiah 9:15, where the false prophet is “the tail”).

The decisive verse names their ruler: “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” (v. 11). Ordinary locusts “have no king” (Proverbs 30:27); these do. Abaddōn is the Hebrew for “destruction” or “the place of ruin” (Job 26:6; 28:22; Proverbs 15:11), here personified; Apollyōn is its Greek equivalent, “the Destroyer.” Vern Poythress observes that the double naming, in both Hebrew and Greek, addresses both the Jewish and Gentile readers of the church, declaring to all that the abyss has a king—but a king who is himself opened, loosed, and bounded by God. The very fact that John can name him is a statement of God’s mastery over him.

Christologically, the contrast could not be sharper. The locusts wear counterfeit crowns; Christ wears “many diadems” by right (19:12). Their king is the Destroyer; Christ is the Savior who came “that they may have life” (John 10:10), the same verse in which He warns that “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” Beale notes that Abaddon is a parody of the divine warrior, but a parody utterly subordinate to the true King. The Destroyer destroys only by permission; the Lamb redeems by sovereign grace.

Application

The detailed, almost grotesque portrait of the locusts is given not to entertain the morbid imagination but to make the unbeliever’s plight vivid and the spiritual war real. The Christian must take demonic power seriously: it is armored, organized, ferocious, and ruled by a malevolent intelligence. Paul’s call to “put on the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:11–18) is the fitting response—not bravado, not fascination, but the disciplined dependence of faith, prayer, and the Word.

At the same time, the believer must read the counterfeit crowns rightly. The powers of the pit imitate royalty but possess none of their own; they are usurpers on a short leash. When we are tempted to fear the church’s enemies—visible or invisible—we should remember that their crowns are gilded shams, while our King’s crown is eternal and His victory accomplished.

A warning against misapplication: this passage gives no warrant for speculative demonology, for naming and “binding” demons after the fashion of certain popular movements, or for treating spiritual warfare as a technique. The Destroyer is named here by God’s revelation, not by human presumption (contrast Jude 9). Nor should we grow obsessed with the enemy’s terrors; the antidote to fear is not detailed knowledge of demons but settled confidence in Christ. Practically, this means we resist the devil not by ritual but by submitting to God, standing firm in the faith, and fixing our eyes on the King whose name is above every name (James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:9; Philippians 2:9–11).

Section 3 — “The First Woe Has Passed” (v. 12)

Key Insight

A brief but structurally vital verse marks the close of the fifth trumpet: “The first woe has passed; behold, two woes are still to come” (v. 12). This sentence functions as a hinge, dividing the demonic torment of the fifth trumpet from the demonic slaughter of the sixth. It looks back to the eagle’s threefold cry in 8:13—“Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!”—and identifies the three remaining trumpets (fifth, sixth, seventh) with the three woes. The fifth trumpet is the first woe; the sixth, about to be described, is the second woe; the seventh trumpet will bring the third woe (11:14).

The word “behold” (idou) arrests the reader. The torment of the locusts, dreadful as it was, is not the end. “Two woes are still to come.” The structure communicates escalation and inexorability: the judgments mount, each more severe, marching toward the consummation. Yet the very announcement is itself a mercy. Matthew Henry notes that God gives warning before He strikes; the herald’s cry of “woe” and the interval between the trumpets are space for repentance, a divine patience that does not desire the death of the wicked but that they turn and live (Ezekiel 18:23, 32).

The phrase “those who dwell on the earth” (8:13) is a recurring designation in Revelation for the unbelieving, idolatrous world—those whose home and hope are wholly earthbound, in contrast to the saints whose “citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20; cf. Revelation 6:10; 11:10; 13:8). The woes fall upon them precisely as earth-dwellers. Beale observes that this interlude-marker reinforces the literary architecture of the trumpet section, signaling that John intends his readers to track the unfolding judgments as a deliberate, ordered sequence rather than a random cascade.

Christologically and pastorally, this single verse holds together divine justice and divine patience. The woes are real and will surely come; God does not bluff. But the announcement of “two woes still to come” is itself a gracious warning, an open door not yet shut. The same Lord who pronounces woe is the Lamb who weeps over the impenitent city (Luke 19:41–42) and who, in the long-suffering of these intervals, grants time for the nations to repent. The verse thus stands as a sober comma in the sentence of judgment, a pause that is also a plea.

Application

It is tempting to pass quickly over a single transitional verse, but its pastoral weight is considerable. First, it teaches us to take God’s warnings with full seriousness. “Behold, two woes are still to come” is not idle threat; the judgments of God are certain. We live in a culture that has largely ceased to believe in any final reckoning, but Scripture is unwavering: woe upon woe will come upon a world that will not repent. To dismiss the warnings is to invite the woes.

Second, the verse reminds us that the intervals between judgments are mercy. God announces before He acts; He grants space, time, and opportunity. Every delay in judgment, every season of relative peace, every postponement of the worst, is a gift of divine patience meant to lead to repentance (Romans 2:4). We should not despise this patience or presume upon it (2 Peter 3:9, 15).

Third, the designation “those who dwell on the earth” presses a question of allegiance: am I an earth-dweller, whose whole hope is bound to this passing world, or a citizen of heaven who awaits a Savior from there? The woes target the earthbound. The right response is to set our minds on things above (Colossians 3:1–2).

A warning against misapplication: we must not use the certainty of coming woes to fuel gleeful judgmentalism toward the lost, nor to set dates and schemes. The proper posture is sober watchfulness, urgent prayer for the unconverted, and a holy fear that keeps our own hearts tender, lest we too be found among the impenitent.

Section 4 — The Sixth Trumpet: The Four Angels at the Euphrates and the Army of Horsemen (vv. 13–16)

Key Insight

The sixth trumpet sounds, and the scene shifts from torment to slaughter: “Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God” (v. 13). The voice comes from “the golden altar”—the same altar beneath which the souls of the martyrs cried out, “O Sovereign Lord… how long before you will judge and avenge our blood?” (6:9–10), and from which the prayers of the saints ascended with incense (8:3–4). Beale and Hendriksen alike stress this connection: the sixth trumpet is, in part, God’s answer to the prayers of His persecuted people. Judgment proceeds not from caprice but from the altar of God in response to the cries of the saints.

The command is given: “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates” (v. 14). These “four angels” are evidently destructive agents—most likely demonic—who have been “bound” until the appointed moment. That they are bound and then released, by divine command, again declares God’s total control: even the angels of destruction wait on His word. The Euphrates is freighted with meaning. It was the boundary of the promised land (Genesis 15:18), the frontier beyond which lay Israel’s great historic enemies—Assyria and Babylon—and, in John’s day, the dreaded Parthian cavalry. From the Euphrates, in Scripture, judgment so often poured upon God’s people; now judgment pours from it upon the rebellious world.

The precision of the timing is striking: “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” (v. 15). The perfect participle “had been prepared” (hētoimasmenoi) and the fourfold specification of time underline that the very moment of this slaughter was fixed in the eternal counsel of God. Matthew Henry comments that the time of judgment is as precisely set by God as its agents and its extent. Nothing is left to chance; the destroyers act at the appointed “hour.”

The extent is “a third of mankind“—a vast but still limited portion, escalating from the “third” of the natural order struck in the earlier trumpets (8:7–12) to a third of humanity itself, yet still short of total destruction, for these remain warning judgments, not the final end. “The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number” (v. 16)—two hundred million, an incalculable, symbolic host. Poythress cautions against literalizing the figure into a precise census; the number signals an overwhelming, innumerable army of destruction. Christologically, this army of judgment proceeds from the altar where the Lamb’s own people pray, executing the righteous purposes of the One who alone was found worthy to open the scroll (5:9). Even the loosing of the Euphrates angels serves the vindication of Christ and His martyrs.

Application

This passage teaches that God hears and answers the prayers of His suffering people, even when the answer is the solemn outworking of judgment. The voice from the golden altar reminds the persecuted church that her cries are not forgotten; the same altar that received the martyrs’ prayers becomes the source of God’s response. When believers are tempted to think their prayers under affliction go unheard, this scene assures them that God remembers, and that in His time He will act.

The precision of “the hour, the day, the month, and the year” should profoundly comfort the believer. Nothing in history—not even catastrophe—is random or out of control. God has appointed the times and seasons (Acts 1:7; 17:26). The Christian can face an uncertain and frightening world knowing that its very calendar of events is fixed in the wise and holy counsel of God.

A warning against misapplication: we must not turn the “two hundred million” or the Euphrates into a code for identifying specific modern armies or nations, nor build prophetic timetables on the symbolic numbers. The point is not geopolitical prediction but the assurance of God’s sovereign, precise, prayer-answering governance of judgment. Nor should the answering of the martyrs’ prayers be read as license for personal vengeance; vengeance belongs to God alone (Romans 12:19). The believer prays “how long?” and then entrusts the timing and the recompense to the righteous Judge, resting in His perfect justice.

Section 5 — The Fire, Smoke, and Sulfur; the Serpent-Tailed Horses (vv. 17–19)

Key Insight

John now describes the army released by the sixth trumpet: “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 and of sulfur” (v. 17). The three colors—fiery red, smoky blue (hyakinthinos, “hyacinth”), and sulfurous yellow—correspond to the three plagues that follow: “fire and smoke and sulfur.” This is the palette of hell and judgment; “fire and sulfur” (pyr kai theion) is the recurring biblical image of divine destruction, from Sodom (Genesis 19:24) to the lake of fire (Revelation 14:10; 19:20; 20:10; 21:8). The riders and horses alike are agents of a hellish, infernal judgment.

“The heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths” (v. 17). The lion-headed horses devour; their mouths breathe forth the very fire of judgment. “By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths” (v. 18). Where the fifth trumpet brought torment without death, the sixth brings death itself to a third of humanity—an escalation, yet still a “third,” still limited, still short of the final end. The repetition of “fire and smoke and sulfur” four times in these verses hammers home the infernal, judicial character of the plague.

The most arresting detail comes in verse 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.” The power is in both mouth and tail—a double-edged menace. The detail that the tails are “like serpents with heads” is theologically loaded. It links these creatures unmistakably to the ancient serpent, “that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan” (12:9; cf. Genesis 3:1). Hendriksen observes that the serpent-tails mark this army as demonic, the deceiver’s own brood, whose wounding is the wounding of the old serpent. The locusts of the fifth trumpet had scorpion-tails; the horses of the sixth have serpent-tails—both stinging from behind, both bearing the venom of the deceiver.

Poythress notes the parallel with deception: in Isaiah, the false prophet who teaches lies “is the tail” (Isaiah 9:15). The serpent-tailed horses thus wound not only with the fire of their mouths but with the lying venom of their tails—judgment that is both destructive and deceptive, a fitting recompense upon a world that “loved the lie.” Christologically, the contrast with Christ is profound. From the mouth of the demonic horses comes fire and death; from the mouth of the risen Christ comes “a sharp two-edged sword” (1:16; 19:15), the word that judges in righteousness and saves the believing. The serpent wounds with his tail, but the Seed of the woman crushes the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15), and at the cross “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame” (Colossians 2:15).

Application

This vision presses upon us the deadly seriousness of sin and the reality of divine judgment. The fire, smoke, and sulfur are the colors of hell, a vivid warning of the destruction that awaits a world that will not turn to God. We live in an age that has largely sanitized the concept of judgment; this passage refuses to let us forget that God’s wrath against sin is real, terrible, and certain. The right response is not morbid dread but sober gratitude for the Savior who bore that fire in our place.

The serpent-tailed horses warn us, too, of the deceptive character of demonic evil. The enemy wounds not only by open assault (the fiery mouth) but by lies and deception (the serpent-tail). The believer must therefore be discerning, testing the spirits, holding fast to the truth of God’s Word, for the same old serpent who deceived Eve still wounds with his venomous lies (2 Corinthians 11:3, 14; 1 John 4:1).

A warning against misapplication: we must not identify the fire-breathing horses with literal modern weapons or armies, as though John foresaw tanks or artillery; this is to miss the symbolic, scriptural texture of the vision and to read Revelation as a coded newspaper. Nor should the dreadful imagery drive the believer to despair; the same fire that destroys the impenitent has been borne by Christ for His people. The proper response is to flee to the Lamb, to hold fast the truth against the serpent’s deceptions, and to live in sober reverence before a holy and righteous God.

Section 6 — The Unrepentance of the Rest of Mankind (vv. 20–21)

Key Insight

The chapter reaches its devastating climax not in the slaughter but in the response—or rather, the non-response—of the survivors: “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” (v. 20). Here is the true horror of the chapter. The terrible judgments were, in part, warning judgments, summonses to repentance; yet “they did not repent” (ou metenoēsan). The hardness of the impenitent heart is exposed in all its tragedy. Matthew Henry observes that nothing reveals the depth of human depravity like the persistence of sin under judgment; men will endure the torments of the pit and the slaughter of the sixth trumpet and still cling to their idols.

The first object of their unrepentant devotion is idolatry. They would not “give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood.” This is a profound exposure: behind every idol stands a demon. Paul affirms the same: “what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God” (1 Corinthians 10:20; cf. Deuteronomy 32:17; Psalm 106:37). The irony is searing—the demonic locusts and horsemen torment and slay the world, yet the world will not abandon the demon-worship that invited them. The idols are powerless—“which cannot see or hear or walk”—a deliberate echo of the great taunt against idols in the Psalms and prophets (Psalm 115:4–7; 135:15–17; Isaiah 44:9–20; Jeremiah 10:3–5). Men forsake the living God for dead gods that cannot save them even from the judgments those gods provoke.

The list of unrepented sins continues: “nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts” (v. 21). The catalogue spans the second table of the law—murder (sixth commandment), sorceries (pharmakeia, occult practices, the manipulation of spiritual powers, often involving drugs), sexual immorality (porneia, seventh commandment), and thefts (eighth commandment). Beale notes that idolatry (the breach of the first table) issues inevitably in the breakdown of all human relations (the breach of the second table); a world that worships demons becomes a world of murder, occultism, immorality, and theft. The refusal to repent is total, embracing both worship and ethics.

Hendriksen and Poythress alike draw the redemptive-historical lesson: judgment alone cannot soften the reprobate heart. Only the sovereign, regenerating grace of God can grant repentance (Acts 5:31; 11:18; 2 Timothy 2:25). The same Pharaoh-hardening pattern that ran through the Exodus plagues (Exodus 7:13; 8:15) runs here: the more the judgments fall, the harder the impenitent grow. Christologically, this chapter magnifies the necessity and the wonder of the cross and of regenerating grace. Left to themselves, fallen sinners will not repent even under the torments of hell’s foretaste. That any do repent is the fruit of the Lamb who “purchased people for God” by His blood (5:9) and who gives repentance and faith as His gifts.

Application

These two verses are the pastoral heart of the chapter, and they cut to the conscience. The sober point of Revelation 9 is not the spectacle of demonic locusts and fire-breathing horses, but the hardness of the impenitent heart. We are warned that judgment by itself does not produce repentance; affliction can harden as easily as it humbles. This should drive us to self-examination: do I respond to God’s chastening with repentance, or do I, like the survivors, grow harder under His dealings (Hebrews 12:5–11)?

The exposure of idolatry behind every sin presses us to examine our own hearts. Idolatry is not merely the bowing to statues but the giving of our supreme love and trust to anything other than God—money, security, pleasure, reputation, self. And idolatry breeds the whole catalogue of sins: when God is dethroned, the second table crumbles. The list of “murders, sorceries, sexual immorality, thefts” is not remote ancient paganism but a mirror of every age, including our own—violence, occult fascination, sexual brokenness, dishonest gain.

A warning against misapplication: we must not read these verses with self-righteous detachment, as though the “rest of mankind” were a different species from ourselves. Apart from grace, we too would cling to our idols under judgment. The right response is humility, gratitude for the regenerating grace that granted us repentance, and earnest prayer for the lost. And we must repent now, today, of every idol, every murder of the heart (Matthew 5:21–22), every sorcery of the age, every immorality, and every theft, while the door of grace stands open (2 Corinthians 6:2; Hebrews 3:7–8, 13).

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Cross References

Comparative Gospel Study

Not Applicable as Direct Comparison — Revelation is New Testament apocalyptic prophecy, not Gospel narrative. However, Revelation 9 develops key Gospel themes that find their root and fulfillment in the ministry of Christ recorded in the four Gospels:

Christ’s authority over demons. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus exercises absolute authority over demonic powers: the demons recognize Him, fear Him, and obey His word (Mark 1:23–27, 34; 5:1–13). When He casts out demons “by the finger of God,” the kingdom of God has come (Luke 11:20). Revelation 9 displays the same authority on a cosmic scale: the locusts of the abyss and the angels of the Euphrates act only by the permission of the exalted Christ who holds “the keys of Death and Hades” (1:18). What the Gospels show in Galilee, Revelation shows over the whole earth.

The call to repentance. The first word of Jesus’ public ministry was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:15). The tragedy of Revelation 9:20–21—”they did not repent”—is the dark counterpart to that summons. Jesus warned that those who would not repent would “all… likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5) and lamented the cities that saw His mighty works yet “did not repent” (Matthew 11:20–24). The unrepentance of the earth-dwellers fulfills His sober warnings.

The protection of the sealed. The locusts are forbidden to harm “those who have the seal of God” (9:4). In the Gospels, Jesus promises that no one can snatch His sheep from His hand (John 10:28–29) and that not a hair of His people’s heads will perish (Luke 21:18). The sealing of God’s people in Revelation is the cosmic outworking of the Good Shepherd’s keeping promise.

The serpent and his defeat. The serpent-tailed horses (9:19) recall the ancient serpent whose works Christ came to destroy. Jesus “saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18) and bound “the strong man” to plunder his house (Matthew 12:29). The demonic judgments of Revelation 9 unfold against the backdrop of the serpent already decisively defeated at the cross (John 12:31; 16:11).

God’s sovereign timing of judgment. Jesus taught that the Father has fixed “times or seasons… by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). The four angels “prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year” (9:15) embody this truth, declaring that the precise calendar of judgment rests in the Father’s hand, just as Jesus said.

Old Testament Connections

Pentateuch. The eighth plague upon Egypt—locusts that “covered the face of the whole land, so that the land was darkened” (Exodus 10:12–15)—is the primary background for the locusts of the fifth trumpet, framing the trumpet judgments as a new exodus against a hardened, idolatrous world. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 7:13; 8:15, 32) is the pattern behind the survivors’ refusal to repent (9:20–21). Genesis 3 supplies the serpent imagery of the serpent-tailed horses (Genesis 3:1, 14–15), and the Euphrates marks the boundary of the promised land (Genesis 15:18). Deuteronomy 32:17 declares that Israel “sacrificed to demons that were no gods,” directly illuminating the demon-idolatry of Revelation 9:20. The “fire and sulfur” of judgment recalls Sodom (Genesis 19:24, 28).

Historical Books. Israel’s history of provocation through idolatry, and God’s repeated judgments through invading armies from beyond the Euphrates (Assyria, Babylon), stands behind the army of the sixth trumpet. The sin of “sacrificing their sons and daughters to demons” (Psalm 106:37, recounting Israel’s history) is the very sin the earth-dwellers will not abandon.

Wisdom Literature. Abaddon appears in the Wisdom books as a personification of the place of destruction: “Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the LORD” (Proverbs 15:11; cf. Job 26:6; 28:22), the very name given to the locusts’ king (9:11). The taunt against idols—gods “which cannot see or hear or walk”—echoes the Psalms: “They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see” (Psalm 115:4–7; 135:15–18).

Major Prophets. Jeremiah prophesies judgment “in the north country by the river Euphrates” (Jeremiah 46:6, 10) and against Babylon (Jeremiah 51), foreshadowing the Euphrates judgment of the sixth trumpet. Isaiah’s extended mockery of idol-makers (Isaiah 44:9–20) and his identification of the lying prophet as “the tail” (Isaiah 9:15) inform Revelation 9’s idolatry and serpent-tails. Ezekiel’s vision of the man marking the foreheads of the faithful before the city’s slaughter (Ezekiel 9:4–6) is the background for the sealing that protects God’s people from the locusts (9:4).

Minor Prophets. Joel is the dominant background. Joel’s locust army, “like the appearance of horses,” with “the noise of chariots” and “the teeth of a lion” (Joel 1:6; 2:4–5), supplies the very language of Revelation 9:7–9. Joel’s trumpet-blast announcing “the day of the LORD” and his call to “return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:1, 12–13) frame the trumpet judgments as a summons to repentance—a summons the earth-dwellers tragically refuse.

New Testament Fulfillment

Gospels and Acts. Christ’s authority over demons (Mark 5:1–13; Luke 10:17–20), His binding of the strong man (Matthew 12:29), and His teaching that the abyss is the demons’ dreaded prison (Luke 8:31) all anticipate the controlled loosing of the abyss in Revelation 9. Acts affirms that repentance is God’s gift (Acts 5:31; 11:18) and that God has fixed the times (Acts 1:7; 17:26), illuminating both the survivors’ inability to repent and the precise appointment of judgment.

Paul’s Epistles. Paul’s teaching that “what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons” (1 Corinthians 10:20) directly explains the demon-idolatry of 9:20. His call to arm against “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” with “the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:10–18) is the practical response to the demonic warfare depicted in Revelation 9. His doctrine of the natural mind’s hostility to God (Romans 8:7) and of judicial hardening (Romans 1:24–28) illuminates the impenitence of the survivors. And his triumphant word that Christ “disarmed the rulers and authorities” (Colossians 2:15) assures us the serpent is already defeated.

General Epistles and Revelation. Peter warns that the devil “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” to be resisted “firm in your faith” (1 Peter 5:8–9). Jude recounts angels “kept in eternal chains” awaiting judgment (Jude 6), paralleling the bound angels of the Euphrates. Within Revelation itself, the sealing of 7:3 is fulfilled in the protection of 9:4; the abyss opened in 9:1–2 is shut and its king bound in 20:1–3; the impenitence of 9:20–21 recurs at the bowls (16:9, 11, 21); and the serpent of 9:19 is finally cast into the lake of fire (20:10).

Redemptive-Historical Context

Revelation 9 must be read within the great sweep of the biblical drama—Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation—and within the “already/not yet” tension of the New Covenant age.

At Creation, God made all things good and gave humanity dominion under His own kingship (Genesis 1:28). The Fall introduced the serpent’s deception and humanity’s rebellion (Genesis 3), and with it the entrance of demonic powers as usurpers within God’s good creation. The serpent-tailed horses and the locusts of the abyss are the long shadow of Eden’s serpent, the destroyer at work in a fallen world. Yet even at the Fall, God spoke the protoevangelium: the Seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). All of redemptive history moves toward that crushing.

In Redemption, the Lamb who was slain accomplished the decisive defeat of the serpent. At the cross “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them” (Colossians 2:15); through death He destroyed “the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). Christ saw “Satan fall like lightning” (Luke 10:18) and bound the strong man (Matthew 12:29). This is the hinge of history. The judgments of Revelation 9 unfold under the lordship of this victorious Lamb, who holds “the keys of Death and Hades” (1:18) and who governs even the angel of the abyss. The demonic powers loosed in chapter 9 are not signs of the serpent’s resurgence but of his bounded, doomed, and permitted rage in the interval before the end.

This is the heart of the “already/not yet” tension. Satan is already defeated at the cross, yet not yet finally destroyed; he is bound from deceiving the nations as before (20:2–3), yet permitted limited, restrained assault in this age. The trumpet judgments are warning judgments along the road to the consummation—not the final wrath of the bowls, but escalating summonses to repentance. They reveal both God’s restraint of evil (the locusts may torment but not kill; the angels are bound until the appointed hour; only a “third” is struck) and the hardening of the reprobate (the survivors “did not repent”). The same judgments that warn the elect to flee to Christ harden the reprobate in their idolatry, displaying the twofold effect of God’s dealings—as the sun melts wax but hardens clay.

At the Consummation, the picture resolves. The abyss opened in chapter 9 will be the prison into which Satan is finally cast (20:3, 10); the impenitence of 9:20–21 will issue in the lake of fire (21:8); and the sealed people who escaped the locusts will dwell secure in the new creation, where “death shall be no more” (21:4). Revelation 9 thus stands as a sobering interlude in the march toward that consummation, magnifying the necessity of repentance, the security of the sealed, and the absolute sovereignty of the Lamb over every power of darkness. The believer reads it not with despair but with worship: the destroyer is on a leash held by the pierced hands of the risen Christ.

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Systematic Theology Connection

The Sovereignty of God over Satan and Demons

Revelation 9 is one of Scripture’s most striking demonstrations that God reigns supremely over Satan and all demonic powers. The chapter’s grammar preaches the doctrine: the fallen star “was given the key” (v. 1), the locusts “were given power” (v. 3) and “were told” what they could harm (v. 4), the angels of the Euphrates were “bound” and then “released” by command (v. 14). Every demonic act is a delegated, permitted, and bounded act. Satan can do nothing apart from God’s sovereign permission and within the limits God appoints, as the case of Job makes plain (Job 1:12; 2:6). The Westminster Confession affirms that God’s providence “extendeth itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men… yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God” (WCF 5.4). God orders even the malice of demons to His own holy ends, neither authoring nor approving their sin, yet governing it absolutely. The practical comfort is immense: the destroyer is on God’s leash, and no power of darkness can touch the believer apart from the Father’s wise and holy will. This doctrine slays both dualism (the lie that evil is God’s equal rival) and despair (the fear that evil runs unchecked), grounding the believer’s peace in the God who holds the key to the abyss (Revelation 9:1; 20:1; Colossians 1:16–17).

Total Depravity and Judicial Hardening

The refrain “they did not repent” (vv. 20, 21) is a vivid testimony to total depravity and judicial hardening. Even under the torments of the fifth trumpet and the slaughter of the sixth, the survivors will not turn from their idols, murders, sorceries, immorality, and thefts. This confirms that the fallen will, left to itself, is unable and unwilling to repent: “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot” (Romans 8:7). The Westminster Confession declares that fallen man “is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto” (WCF 9.3). Moreover, God judicially hardens the persistently rebellious, “giving them up” to their sin (Romans 1:24–28), as He hardened Pharaoh (Exodus 8:15, 32). The horror of Revelation 9 is not chiefly the demonic locusts but the impenitent heart that endures judgment and still clings to its idols, proving that judgment alone cannot save and that only sovereign grace can grant repentance. This doctrine humbles the believer (apart from grace, I would do the same), magnifies the necessity of regeneration (John 3:3; Acts 11:18), and drives us to pray for the lost, that God would grant them repentance (2 Timothy 2:25; Ezekiel 36:26).

Divine Judgment

Revelation 9 unfolds the reality and righteousness of God’s judgment upon a rebellious world. The trumpet woes are real, escalating, and certain, proceeding from “the golden altar before God” (v. 13) in answer to the cries of the martyrs (6:9–11). The imagery of “fire and smoke and sulfur” (vv. 17–18) is the biblical palette of divine wrath, from Sodom (Genesis 19:24) to the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10). The Westminster Confession affirms that God “is most just and terrible in his judgments” (WCF 2.1) and that He will judge the world “in righteousness” (WCF 33.1, citing Acts 17:31). These trumpet judgments are not the final judgment but warning judgments, foretastes meant to summon the impenitent to repentance before the unalterable end. God’s judgments are never arbitrary or excessive; they are the righteous response of a holy God to persistent rebellion, and even in their severity they are restrained and remedial, granting space for repentance. This doctrine instills holy fear (Hebrews 12:28–29), magnifies the cross where Christ bore judgment for His people (Galatians 3:13), and presses the urgency of fleeing to the Lamb while the door of grace remains open (2 Corinthians 6:2).

The Preservation of the Elect

The locusts are forbidden to harm “those who have the seal of God on their foreheads” (v. 4), teaching the preservation and perseverance of the elect. God first seals His people (7:3) and only then looses the judgments; the sealed are explicitly spared the torment of the pit. This seal marks divine ownership and guarantees protection: “the Lord knows those who are his” (2 Timothy 2:19), and believers are “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:13–14; 4:30). The Westminster Confession teaches that those whom God has accepted “can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end” (WCF 17.1), kept “by the power of God through faith unto salvation” (1 Peter 1:5). Because the believer bears the seal of God, the spiritual ruin reserved for the impenitent cannot finally claim him; he is owned, marked, and kept by God Himself through every judgment. This doctrine grounds the believer’s assurance not in his own strength but in God’s keeping power (John 10:28–29), producing both peace amid judgment and zeal in obedience. The sealed do not presume; they persevere because God preserves them.

Common Grace and the Space for Repentance

The structure of the trumpet judgments—warning before the final end, intervals between the woes (v. 12), torment “but not to kill” (v. 5), only “a third” struck (v. 18)—reveals common grace and the divine space granted for repentance. God does not pour out final wrath at once; He restrains, warns, and delays, that the impenitent might turn. “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance” (Romans 2:4), and “the Lord is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). This patience is a form of common grace, extended even to the reprobate, leaving them without excuse. The Westminster Confession speaks of God’s goodness and long-suffering toward all (WCF 5.6–7), even as it affirms His sovereign withholding of saving grace from the reprobate. Every restrained judgment, every interval, every delay is a gift of divine patience, an open door for repentance that the impenitent tragically refuse and thereby compound their guilt. This doctrine warns against presuming upon God’s patience (Romans 2:4–5), stirs gratitude for every day of grace, and fuels urgency in evangelism, for the door now open will one day be shut (Luke 13:25).

The Justice of God

Revelation 9 magnifies the justice of God in His dealings with the wicked. The judgments answer the martyrs’ cry, “how long before you will judge and avenge our blood?” (6:10), proceeding from the golden altar (v. 13). The punishment fits the crime: a world that worships demons is given over to demonic torment; a world that loves the serpent’s lie is wounded by serpent-tails. The Westminster Confession affirms that God is “most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands” and “most just and terrible in his judgments” (WCF 2.1), and that He will render “to every man according to his deeds” (WCF 33.2, citing Romans 2:6). The justice of God is not vindictive cruelty but the holy and necessary response of a righteous Judge to unrepented sin. God’s justice ensures that no evil escapes His notice and no martyr’s blood is forgotten; in His perfect time He will vindicate His people and righteously recompense the impenitent. This doctrine comforts the persecuted (their cause is in just hands), warns the oppressor (the Judge sees all), and restrains the believer from personal vengeance, for “vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19; Deuteronomy 32:35). It also drives us to Christ, who bore divine justice for His people that we might be spared the woes (Romans 3:25–26).

Sin and Idolatry

The catalogue of unrepented sins in verses 20–21—idolatry, murders, sorceries, sexual immorality, thefts—provides a searching anatomy of sin and idolatry. The list moves from the first table (idolatry, demon-worship) to the second table (murder, immorality, theft), teaching that the root of all sin is false worship: when God is dethroned, the whole moral order collapses. Scripture defines idolatry broadly as the misdirection of supreme love and trust; covetousness itself “is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5; cf. Ephesians 5:5). The Westminster Larger Catechism, expounding the first and second commandments, condemns “all worshipping” of “any creature whatsoever” and every form of false worship (WLC 105, 109). Crucially, behind every idol stands a demon (1 Corinthians 10:20; Deuteronomy 32:17), so that idolatry is not harmless but spiritually deadly. Idolatry is the fountainhead of all sin: the heart that gives to a creature the worship owed to God inevitably breaks every other commandment, for false worship corrupts the whole of life. This doctrine summons the believer to root out every idol of the heart—money, pleasure, reputation, self—and to give God alone the supreme love and trust He deserves (1 John 5:21; Matthew 22:37). It also explains the world’s moral decline as the fruit of its idolatry and magnifies the grace that delivers us “from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9).

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Reformed Theology

Revelation 9, read through Reformed eyes, is a profound display of the sovereignty of the Lamb over the powers of darkness within the unfolding of the covenant of grace. The Reformed interpretive tradition, represented by scholars such as G.K. Beale, William Hendriksen, Vern Poythress, John Calvin, and Geerhardus Vos, reads the chapter not as a literal forecast of hybrid insects and modern armies, but as a Spirit-given, symbolic vision—deeply rooted in the Old Testament—portraying the demonic judgments that God permits and governs in the present age.

The hermeneutical foundation is the recognition that Revelation speaks in the symbolic idiom of Old Testament prophecy. Beale, in his magisterial commentary, demonstrates that nearly every image in chapter 9 is drawn from Joel, Exodus, Genesis, and the Psalms, and must be interpreted against that scriptural background. The locusts are Joel’s army of the day of the LORD (Joel 2:4–5); the smoke is the smoke of Sinai and Sodom; the serpent-tails are the brood of Eden’s serpent. Hendriksen, in More Than Conquerors, reads the trumpets (like the seals and bowls) as recapitulating the same period—the whole interadvental age—from different angles, so that chapter 9 portrays the demonic afflictions that recur throughout church history under God’s sovereign permission, rather than a single future episode. Poythress, in The Returning King, stresses the pastoral and symbolic intent: the visions are given to comfort and warn the church, not to satisfy curiosity about end-times mechanics.

At the center of the Reformed reading stands the truth that these demonic judgments are entirely under the Lamb’s control. The recurring divine passive (“was given,” “were told,” “were allowed,” “released”) declares that Satan and his hosts are God’s leashed instruments. This accords with Calvin’s doctrine of providence: nothing happens by chance; even the devil “can do nothing unless God wills and assents to it” (Institutes 1.14.17; 1.17.11). The destroyer Abaddon is a parody of the divine warrior, but a parody wholly subordinate to the true King. The trumpet judgments proceed from “the golden altar before God” (v. 13), in answer to the prayers of the saints—a thoroughly covenantal vision in which God moves history in response to the cries of His people.

The chapter also embodies the Reformed doctrines of election and preservation. The sealing of God’s people before judgment (7:3; 9:4) is the covenantal mark of those “the Lord knows” (2 Timothy 2:19), and their exemption from the locusts’ torment displays the perseverance of the saints—kept by the power of God (1 Peter 1:5; WCF 17). Conversely, the impenitence of the survivors (vv. 20–21) illustrates total depravity and reprobation: judgment hardens the reprobate, as the same sun melts wax and hardens clay. Vos’s redemptive-historical method illumines the chapter’s place in the historia salutis: the trumpet woes are eschatological warning judgments in the overlap of the ages, signs of the serpent’s bounded rage in the era between the cross (where he was decisively defeated, Colossians 2:15) and the consummation (where he is finally destroyed, Revelation 20:10).

Confessionally, the chapter echoes the Westminster standards’ teaching on providence (WCF 5), the fall and demonic powers (WCF 5.4), human inability (WCF 9.3), perseverance (WCF 17), and the righteousness of God’s judgments (WCF 2.1; 33). The typology runs from Egypt’s plagues and Joel’s locusts to their antitype in the demonic judgments of the present age, all under the Lamb. The Reformed conclusion is worship and confidence: the believer beholds in Revelation 9 a world of demonic terror governed in every detail by the pierced hands of the risen Christ, who seals His own, judges His enemies in righteousness, and marches history infallibly toward the new creation.

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Dispensational Theology

The Dispensational interpretive tradition, represented by scholars such as C.I. Scofield, Charles Ryrie, John Walvoord, and J. Dwight Pentecost, reads Revelation 9 with a consistently literal-grammatical hermeneutic and within a futurist framework, and that approach deserves to be presented fairly and accurately. For the Dispensationalist, the trumpet judgments of Revelation 8–9 describe literal future events during the seven-year Tribulation period, after the rapture of the church and before Christ’s earthly millennial reign.

Dispensationalists hold that the church-age believers have been removed in the rapture (often connected with Revelation 4:1) before the Tribulation begins, so that the judgments of chapter 9 fall upon a Christ-rejecting world during Daniel’s seventieth week (Daniel 9:24–27). On this reading, the “seal of God” protecting people from the locusts (9:4) is given to the 144,000 sealed Israelites of chapter 7—a literal number from the literal twelve tribes—who are divinely preserved through the Tribulation. The Israel/church distinction is fundamental: the sealed are national Israel, and God’s program for Israel resumes during this period after the church’s removal.

Regarding the fifth trumpet, Dispensationalists differ on details but generally take the locusts as literal demonic creatures released from a literal abyss. John Walvoord, in his commentary on Revelation, argues that these are real demonic beings, supernatural in nature, loosed to torment unbelievers for a literal five-month period—an unprecedented demonic invasion permitted by God in the end times. Ryrie likewise understands the abyss as the actual prison of demons and the locusts as demonic agents of torment. The fallen star (9:1) is often identified as Satan or a high-ranking fallen angel given the key to the abyss. Abaddon/Apollyon (9:11) is taken as a literal demonic ruler, possibly Satan himself or a chief demon over the abyss.

Regarding the sixth trumpet, Dispensationalists understand the four angels bound at the literal Euphrates River (9:14) as real (likely demonic) angels released to mobilize a vast army. The “two hundred million” mounted troops (9:16) is frequently taken as a literal number; some older interpreters speculated it could refer to a great eastern army (sometimes linked to the “kings from the east” of 16:12), though many recognize the cavalry as demonic or supernatural rather than merely human. The fire-breathing, serpent-tailed horses (9:17–19) are understood as either literal demonic creatures or, by some, as symbolic descriptions of advanced future weaponry, though the more consistent literalists prefer a supernatural-demonic reading. Pentecost, in Things to Come, situates these judgments within the detailed prophetic program of the Tribulation, emphasizing their literal futurity and their role in God’s escalating judgments before the second advent.

Dispensationalists rightly emphasize, with the text, the sovereignty of God over these judgments (they are permitted and limited), the reality of demonic powers, and especially the sobering unrepentance of mankind (9:20–21), which they read as confirming the depth of human depravity even under direct, supernatural judgment. They stress that the Tribulation judgments, though terrible, are God’s gracious warnings designed to bring some to repentance even as the majority harden—a point on which Dispensational and Reformed readers substantially agree. The chief differences from the Reformed reading lie in the literalness of the demonic locusts and Euphrates army, the placement of these events in a distinct future seven-year Tribulation, the rapture of the church beforehand, and the identification of the sealed with national Israel. Both traditions affirm God’s absolute sovereignty over demonic judgment, the certainty of divine wrath against impenitent sin, and the tragic hardness of the heart that will not repent—truths that summon every reader, whatever the interpretive framework, to flee to Christ before the door of grace is shut.

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Bibliography

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