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The first five woes announced by the
trumpets have passed. Before we go any further, it needs to be
pointed out that these woes on the enemies of God's children did not
occur in a progressive step by step fashion over the Roman Empire.
They overlapped and ran concurrent with each other to a large degree. There
were earthquakes, famines, plagues and other natural disasters
throughout the history of the Roman Empire and they happened at
random times over diverse territories. One of the next major contributing factors to
the decline of the Roman Empire was unsuccessful wars against their
enemies. Their enemies were constantly attacking their borders
and their most bitter adversaries were the Parthians to the east.
The Roman empire tried to conquer the Parthians but were never
successful at it. Part of the reason the Roman Empire could
not subdue them was because of their own internal civil wars.
Their internal conflicts kept them from a concerted effort to
finally overtake them and destroy them.
In 53 BC, the Roman general
Marcus Licinius Crassus invaded Parthia in search of
desperately needed gold to fund Roman military
campaigns. The Parthian armies used both their light
archery and heavy armored calvaries to hand Crassus
a decisive defeat at the Battle of Carrhae.
After the battle, the victorious Parthians fed
Crassus molten gold as a symbolic gesture of his
greed. This was the beginning of a series of wars
that were to last for almost three centuries.
In 39 BC, following a successful battle against the
Parthians led by Marc Antony the
Euphrates River became the border between the Roman
and the Parthian Empire. As we will see in
this vision, the Euphrates river plays a role in the
vision of the 6th trumpet.
As we look into this
vision, let's keep in mind that this is still part
of the seventh seal. Each seal picturing in a
graphic way a progression of scenes beginning with
the coming of righteousness, followed by the coming
of evil and then the forces of evil at war with
righteousness and now with the seventh seal,
revealing the divine retribution of God upon the
enemies of the Christians. Even when God has
had enough and begins doing those things which will
bring the empire down, his highest priority is still
the salvation of the lost. The sixth trumpet
announcement is another tool at the disposal of God
with which He afflicts the Empire thereby chiseling
away at its ability to remain in power.
Revelation 9:13
"And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the horns
of the golden altar which is before God"
The golden alter here is likely the same one from which the angel in
Revelation 8:3 offered the prayers of the saints with much incense
to God.
Rev 9:14
"one saying to the sixth angel that had one trumpet, Loose the
four angels that are bound at the great river Euphrates."
At the time of the Revelation, the Euphrates river was the eastern
boundary between the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire. The
Parthians were Rome's greatest enemy at the time of the writing of
the Revelation.
The Parthian Empire is a fascinating period
of Persian history closely connected to Greece and Rome. Ruling from
247 B.C. to A.D. 228 in ancient Persia (Iran), the Parthians
defeated Alexander the Great's successors, the Seleucids, conquered
most of the Middle East and southwest Asia, controlled the Silk Road
and built Parthia into an Eastern superpower. The Parthian empire
counterbalanced Rome's dominance in the West. Parthia at one time
occupied areas now in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia,
Azerbaidzhan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan,
Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel.
The Euphrates River is mentioned by name in
this vision. This would certainly suggest that the actual
river is in view here. Being mentioned before the horsemen in
this vision appears to mean that this river is going to be the area
or the direction from which the sixth plague on the empire will
come. The Parthian cavalry was world renowned and dreaded for
their war tactics from horseback. The Roman Empire, eager to
push its borders further and the Parthians likewise desiring to
conquer more territory were bitter enemies. The Euphrates
River became a hotly disputed border between the two with each
empire seemingly digging in their heels and refusing to retreat any
further.
We see a parallel in this vision with the
sixth bowl of wrath in Revelation 16:12, where the Euphrates river
was effected in such a way as to prepare the way for the kings of
the east. The kings of the east were the Parthians.
Vassal kingdoms made up much of their territory and each one had its
king and to say there was no love lost between them and the Roman
Empire is a profound understatement.
The plague announced here with the sixth
trumpet appears to be the incessant attacks of the Parthian Kings
across the Euphrates and into Roman territory. It was a
significant drain on Roman resources to defend this border from
attack and served to contribute to the erosion of Rome's power.
Rev 9:15
"And the four angels were loosed, that had been prepared for the
hour and day and month and year, that they should kill the third
part of men."
The number 4 was symbolic of the world in which we live so these
four angels may have represented the enemies of the Romans on a
worldwide scale. The Parthians, while bitter enemies of the
Roman Empire were not its only adversaries. The Romans faced a
number of other great enemies besides the Parthians, such as the
Germans which included the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths. It
was the Visigoths who paved the way for the final downfall of the
Roman Empire defeating and sacking the city of Rome in 410 A.D.
It is significant to note that the Germanic tribes which invaded the
Empire from the west were horsemen just like the Parthian Cavalry.
Being prepared for the precise time period
stated simply means that God had them prepared beforehand to do His
exact bidding at the time of His choosing. The third part of
men killed does not literally mean that exactly a third of all
mankind perished in this plague, rather it means that a lot of
people perished in this judgment doubtless being represented by the
slain on both sides of the conflict.
It does not say in this announcement that
the saints of God are excluded from this plague. This is a
picture of war and good people die as a consequence of it. The
saints of all time can take great comfort in the assurance that all
the faithful who die will be counted with the victorious and will
inherit the rewards and promises of those who die in Christ.
Revelation 9:16
"And the number of the armies of the horsemen was twice ten
thousand times ten thousand: I heard the number of them."
This army of horsemen numbered 2 times ten thousand times ten
thousand which is 200,000,000. If we take this number
literally and give space for each man to be on a horse the area of
land which this would encompass would be roughly a strip of land 1
mile wide and 200 or so miles long giving each horse and horseman an
area 4 feet wide and 8 feet long.
This number is not to be taken literally.
In fact it is so fantastic a literal number that one should almost
be aware of the fact of it's figurative representation simply from
the sheer enormity of the numbers involved. To put such a
number in perspective, if each horse ate 10 pounds of grain a day
that would be 2 billion pounds of feed every single day. That
would be roughly 45,000 loads of feed from a full sized modern day
grain trailer pulled behind an over the road truck every single day.
If each horse drank 5 gallons of water every day we are looking at a
billion gallons of water every day. It would take a good sized
river to furnish that kind of fresh water and we need to keep in
mind that they are going to need to fit 200 miles of horses one mile
wide along the banks of this river just to give them a chance to
drink. And if this isn't enough, we still have not fed the
horsemen. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that there is
an estimated 303,000,000 people, men, women and children in the
United States in 2008. The number of horsemen in the vision if
they were literal would have been two thirds of the total population
of the United States. When dealing with numbers of this magnitude, we need
to be realistic about them. There simply were not enough
resources and capability in that day and time to even consider
mobilizing such a force at one time. In the first century, this number was symbolic of
a sufficient number to carry out God's retribution on the Roman
Empire.
While the Parthians were the enemy behind the
Euphrates River, in consideration of the fact that the Roman Empire
had many more enemies than just them, being represented by the
number which symbolized the world in which we live and considering
the vastness of the number used to represent these horsemen, it is
entirely likely this number represented the sum total of all the
horsemen of all the enemies of Rome through all the centuries
leading up to its downfall. The first readers would probably
have been aware of that fact based on the sheer size of the number,
knowing instantly that there were not even that many horsemen and
horses in any one cavalry in any one kingdom at any one time in
history.
Revelation 9:17
"And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on
them, having breastplates (as) of fire and of hyacinth and of
brimstone: and the heads of lions; and out of their mouths
proceedeth fire and smoke and brimstone."
A large factor making the Parthians such a formidable foe was their vicious and
effective methods of horsemanship warfare. The Parthians had
perfected horseback warfare to the degree that they were a deadly
foe whether charging forward or in retreat. They were proficient
horseback archers with the skills to shoot enemies with arrows even
from behind them. They also originated the fully armored type
of horseback soldier known as the
Cataphract. These horses and riders were heavily armored and
made them especially difficult to defeat, especially for the Roman
foot soldiers.
The heads of lions represented great strength. The armor
they wore was dependant upon the role they played. The archers
were lightly armored for speed while the Cataphracts were armored
both rider and horse. The single most devastating weapon that
could be used at a distance was fire. The invading horsemen
would burn everything in their path to the degree required to secure
victory. Incendiary devices were standard weapons of war.
Burning arrows were used to set flammable structures on fire.
Military engineers of the day dedicated themselves to finding ways
of ensuring that the fires burned long enough to catch. Liquid
fire was used as early as 429 BC when the Spartans used burning
charcoal saturated in pitch and sulfur to burn the walls down in the
seige of Plataea. A century
later Aeneas Tacticus mentions a mixture of sulphur, pitch, charcoal
packed in wooden vessels, ignited and thrown onto the wooden decks
of enemy ships. Arrows were dipped in flaming mixtures of
liquid pitch and sulphur and then fired at the enemies, burning
everything flammable in their path. This was all taking place
centuries before the Parthians started invading the Roman Empire
across the Euphrates River. This type of warfare had been
around for a long time and the Parthians knew exactly how to wage
it. It should be noted that brimstone is the ancient name for
a sulphurous substance.
Revelation 9:18
"By these three plagues was the third part of men killed, by the
fire and the smoke and the brimstone, which proceeded out of their
mouths."
Fire, smoke and brimstone in conjunction are always figures for
divine judgment in scripture. Sodom and Gomorrah were
overthrown by fire and brimstone raining down on them from heaven
(Gen 19:24). The Psalmist wrote "Upon the wicked he [God] will
rain snares; fire and brimstone and burning wind shall be the
portion of their cup (Psalm 11:6). In warning wayward Israel
of God's forthcoming judgment Ezekiel wrote, "And with pestilence
and with blood will I enter into judgment with him; and I will rain
upon him, and upon his hordes, and upon the many peoples that are
with him, an overflowing shower, and great hailstones, fire, and
brimstone" (Ezekiel 38:22).
Whether all this fire and brimstone was literal
or not, we can look back at old testament scripture and plainly see
that some of it was and given the ancient use of fire as a weapon,
we can easily infer that it was used many centuries preceding the
writing of Revelation. This terrible form of warfare took a
heavy toll on the Romans. Countless millions of people
obviously perished as a result. There can be little doubt as
to the literalness of the terrible consequences that came about as a
result of these attacks upon the Roman Empire.
Revelation 9:19
"For the power of the horses is in their mouth, and in their
tails: for their tails are like unto serpents, and have heads; and
with them they hurt."
Twice now it is mentioned that these terrible plagues are issuing
from the mouths and tails of the horses. Fire, smoke and
brimstone do not come from the literal mouths and tails of horses.
But horses with riders who can shoot flaming arrows dipped in
burning pitch and sulphur and who are capable of accurately firing
these weapons facing either forward or backwards on their mounts are
certainly going to give the impression that the fire is coming both
from the mouth or tail areas of the horses.
The image here is more of terror, panic and loss
of life than it is of literal fire and brimstone. While we
have a plausible explanation for all three plagues, we need to focus
on the results and the objective more than anything. Many
people were dying because they refused to repent. God's
primary purpose here was to bring people to repentance.
Natural disasters, disease and internal corruption had not done the
job. Now it's time for a more direct approach.
Revelation 9:20
"And the rest of mankind, who were not killed with these plagues,
repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not
worship demons, and the idols of gold, and of silver, and of brass,
and of stone, and of wood; which can neither see, nor hear, nor
walk:"
The men who were not killed (worldly or evil men) still did not repent
even though they were seeing their empire slowly disintegrating
before their eyes. The righteous are not under
consideration in this vision. God wants all men to be saved
but these refused to repent. The whole purpose of this judgment
upon the Roman empire was to bring the unrighteous repentance.
God has gone to great lengths to try to
get the ungodly to think about their fate, stop persecuting
Christians and stop worshipping their manmade idols which were
worthless, lifeless and represented nothing real.
The lifeless qualities of their manmade
idols in this vision are reminiscent of language used in the old
testament to describe them. In Jeremiah 10:1-6, Isaiah 44:9-20
and 46:5-7 we read of God's utter disdain for these things and of
His warning that they are worthless and of no benefit. In
Isaiah 44:20, the prophet wrote that those who follow after such
things "feedeth on ashes".
Revelation
9:21
"and they repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries,
nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts."
This is basically a repeat of verse 20 added for emphasis. By
repeating Himself, God is making sure His readers understand what He
is saying and driving it home by repeating it to them. The
unrighteous who perished from the various woes inflicted upon them
had their fate sealed. But those who survived had a wonderful
opportunity to see the fate that awaited them if they failed to heed
the warning. The unrighteous had it within their power to
avoid everything evil that was happening to them and refused to
change their ways.
This vision completes the three instruments
God would use to bring about the fall of the Roman Empire.
These three instruments were natural calamity, internal disease and
decadence and external invasion by her enemies. These
instruments of God's judgment were already partially at work in the
first century and history shows us that all three of these were
significantly instrumental in the decline and fall of the Roman
Empire.
The text of verse 20 and 21 indicate that
God's judgment in these visions were aimed at the enemies of
righteousness and not at the Christians. The Christians might
suffer in the earthly application of these woes but they would not
suffer the eternal fate of the unrighteous. This vision was
given as reassurance that good shall triumph over evil and that
those who overcome and remain faithful unto death will be victorious
in the end.
Some additional thoughts to consider:
What an application we can make from this
to ourselves today. There is a quote saying this, "Those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Let us
pause and give serious reflection to what we see going on in the
most powerful nation on earth today. Homosexuality and sexual
decadence were an earmark of the behavior of the Romans and what
happened to them? Disease, decay and corruption. The
Romans practiced infanticide as a means of birth control. They
slaughtered their babies. What about abortion today in the
most powerful nation on earth? Consider the natural disasters
that occurred in the Roman Empire and give pause to think about the
storms and earthquakes and other natural disasters going on in the
most powerful nation on earth in these current times. What
about this sixth judgment where the enemies of the Roman Empire
started attacking them and picking away at them bit by bit and piece
by piece. Now what about this most recent enemy of the most
powerful nation of the earth today rising up and causing death and
destruction, depleting the resources at hand which are necessary to
withstand them. We today know what the fate of the Roman
Empire was and why. We can see the parallels going on right in
front of our faces. Will we as a people repent before it is
too late or will history see yet another world power rise and fall
because of Godlessness? And while we are considering these
things, we also need to give attention to how to get this message to
the unrighteous. If the message of hope comes not from us,
then from whence will it come?
Summary Paraphrase
Rev 9:13-21
Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and from the four horns of
the golden altar which stands before God I heard a voice speak to
the sixth angel instructing him to release a plague of horsemen
which had been held back at the great River Euphrates. This
plague which had been prepared beforehand was ready to strike at the
exact appointed time and was liberated so they would destroy about a
third of all mankind in their wake. I was told the number of
the armies of the horsemen and they were two hundred million strong.
In my vision, I saw the horses and those
who sat upon them and their riders were armored with breastplates
red like fire and blue like sapphires and yellow like sulfur.
The horses' heads were powerful as lions and from before them poured
out fire, smoke and sulfurous fumes. Many of mankind
were killed in these attacks. The power of the fiery plagues
looked like it was coming from their mouths and their tails.
And I could see their heads like deadly serpents from their tails
and they wounded people from behind them.
But the rest of humanity who were not
killed in these attacks refused to stop worshipping devils and
manmade idols of gold and silver and of brass and stone, and of
wood, all of which are without life, unable to see or hear or walk.
Moreover, they also refused to stop murdering and practicing
sorceries and sexual immorality.
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