Revelation was written during the last part of the first century, when Christians were persecuted and threatened with death. John wrote Revelation to encourage Christians to persevere under the hardships of Roman control. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Revelation 9:1-21.
1 Then the fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and then I saw a star which had fallen from heaven to earth. he key to the shaft of the abyss. 2 He opened the shaft of the abyss, and smoke arose from the shaft as smoke from a great furnace, so that the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. 3 Out of the smoke emerged locusts upon the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. 4 But they were instructed not to harm the grass of the earth nor any plant nor any tree, with the exception of the people who do not have the seal of God upon their foreheads. 5But they were ordered not to kill them but to torment them for five months (their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a person.)
6 And in those days people will seek death but not be able to find it; they will desire to die, but death will elude them. 7 The appearance of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were something like gold crowns; and their faces were like human faces, 8 with hair like that of women, and their teeth were like those of lions; 9 they had thoraxes like iron breastplates, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of many chariots with teams of warhorses rushing into battle. 10 They have tails with stingers like scorpions, so that with their tails they have power to harm people for five months. 11 As king they have over them the angel of the abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he has the name Apollyon. (1)
12 The first woe has passed. There are still two woes to come. 13 Then the sixth angel sounded (2)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 were released, who had been held ready for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, to kill a third of humankind. 16 The number of the troops of cavalry was twice ten thousand times ten thousand (3); I heard their number. 17 And this was how I saw the horses in my vision: the riders wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur; 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 humankind 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; their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they inflict harm. 20 The rest of humankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands or give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. 21 And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their immorality or their thefts.
This ends our reading of God's word. Each of these verses uses an old testament verse or two or three. The images of ravenous locusts, falling angels or messengers, and punishing locusts all draw from the pictures the prophets used to describe what will happen if the people in power don't turn to God and change their ways regarding the peasant citizens.
But today, instead of quoting the verses from the old testament, I'm going to speak more generally.
How can I preach on Revelation to begin with? I'd rather preach on prayer, on God's love, on one of Jesus' hard parables, on how we know if it is the holy spirit at work in our lives. But I wanted to do this series on Revelation because it is a book that scares people. Here's an example from a forwarded e-mail about the chapter we just heard. “The Euphrates appears [in Revelation] with one of seven angels whose blaring trumpets warn that the Final Judgment is near. ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates ,' a voice commands the sixth angel of God, whose compliance unleashes agents of death who ‘had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year and were released to kill a third of [hu]mankind.' Then comes the clincher. In Chapter 9, Verse 11 -- yes, that's 9:11 -- John says the leader of an army of locusts released to fight humankind is named Abaddon in Hebrew, Apollyon in Greek. Both words mean Destroyer, one of several meanings for the name ‘Saddam.'” (4)
The Euphrates River does indeed run through Iraq , although it also runs through Turkey and Syria . But the verse numbering 9:11 is not particularly significant. The chapters were assigned by Stephen Langton, before became Archbishop of Canterbury. The verses came from Stephanus, a Parisian book printer who worked five hundred years ago. According to his son, his father assigned the verse numbers while riding on horseback from Paris to Lyons . One man (Von Soden) complains complained, “The verse divisions …frequently do not do service to the sense of the text. There is no consistent method at work in this system. The verses sometimes coincide with a single sentence, and sometimes they include several sentences; sometimes a single sentence is divided into two verses, with the result that the reader is led to consider the second verse while forgetting the point of view of the first verse. Especially objectionable is the way in which words introducing a direct quotation sometimes belong to the preceding verse and sometimes to the verse in which the quotation is found.” (5)The chapter and verse numbers were not part of the original biblical texts.
And then, what about ‘apollyon' meaning ‘destroyer,' just like Saddam does? According to one dictionary, t he name Saddam means "one who confronts" in Arabic. (6)
A
pollyon is related to the name for the Greek and Roman god Apollo. The emperor Nero was worshiped as a god, and was considered related to Apollo. Remember that the book of Revelation was written at a time of great Christian prosecution under Nero or Domitian. Nero was not kind to his own people; he murdered his mother and two of his wives.
Modern end-times prophets saw that the Soviet Union was going to take over the middle east, and be a part of the judgment day. But Revelation is a warning, not a prediction. When it says in verse 2 that the sun is darkened, we have to remember that when the sun is dark, it means the plants cannot grow. Mt. Vesuvius erupted in the first century, before Revelation was written. The ash blocked the sun and caused a local famine. Locust plagues also block the sun, as well as eat all the plants around. So a darkened sun is a sign of catastrophe. The locusts in our chapter reveal the wicked's hunger and emptiness of heart.
Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza likens these verses to science fiction books and movies. “Present day futuristic accounts portraying atomic warfare, ecological devastation, or scientific cloning do not intend to predict or accurately describe the future. Rather, they offer a fictional projection of what might be if the industrialized nations do not halt their military expansion or their technological exploitation of the earth. The terrible visions of such literature that portray a totally manipulated and dehumanized future seek to shock us out of our current lethargy. They are based on our present knowledge of the destructive potential of nuclear power, and they envision the word possibilities for devastation. Their rhetoric seeks to spur us on to cut military spending and to stop nuclear deployment.” In the last ten years, I've noticed that in movies, the solution to destruction is more efficient and better violence. If we want to beat the evil villain, we need more advanced and better weapons.
So lets go back to Revelation 9. In the last verse, it says: “The rest of humankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands or give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their immorality or their thefts.” Even though the people saw that the result of their lawlessness and their disregard for human life was suffering, torment, and death, they did not stop. The demons and idols were not just statues; the people who worshiped them were not simply saying a prayer in front of a carved figure. Worshiping the idols led the people to murder, evil deeds, immorality, and robbery.
It's important for me to make that distinction because I just got back from a conference where we talked about what it means to be a Christian in a multi-faith world. Revelation does not mean condemning to eternal torture any Hindu or Buddhist or Catholic who says a prayer or meditates in front of a statue. It does not mean you are going to suffer all these torments if your heart is not right with God.
Revelation comes in the tradition of the prophets who tell us harm will come to our world if we do not follow God's laws. And by God's laws, I mean the ones that say “Love God with all you heart, soul, strength, and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.” I am spending my summer sermon time on Revelation, because as Christians I think we ought to look at what's in it. Some of it is scary, but I don't think following Christ is primarily about fear. In one of my classes, a woman from Indonesia talked about her mother. Her mother was born Buddhist, but did not practice it that her daughter could remember. Lain told us “My parents never agreed with my marriage because I married a Christian, and became one myself. My father died, and my mother lived with us. I had this burden to share my faith with her.
I said, ‘Mom, I know you're going to die. I want you to know you don't have to be afraid.' Her mother-in-law asked a minister to come, and the daughter prayed as her mother was dying. Two days before she died, she said to her daughter, “Lian, I'm so glad you are here. You helped me a lot.” Lian said “It's not me, it's God.” The mother said, “I was hearing voices.” Lian said “That's good. The minister baptized her mother, and gave her communion. Lian told her mother “Jesus is waiting for you and you are going to a good place.” Her mother died peacefully. Lian told this story to Cynthia Campbell, a theologian and seminary president, who said simply “thank you.”
We may not understand the entire Bible, we may not be theologians, we may be confused by the book of Revelation, but we can still witness to the truths we know. God loves us. Christ calls us to follow him. And the spirit will give us the power to do that. Amen.
( 1)Translation by David Aune, Revelation 6-16, p. 448
(2) NRSV, blew
(3)NRSV, 2 hundred million
(4)Broadway, Bill. “ Direst of Predictions For War in Iraq :End-Time Interpreters See Biblical Prophecies Being Fulfilled,” Washington Post Saturday, March 8, 2003; Page B09
(5)Fuller, Daniel P. “Chapters and Verses -- Late Comers.”
(6)http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Saddam_Hussein
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