Revelation 9:13-21 - Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary

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CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Revelation 9:13. Sixth angel sounded.—This woe is an invasion of foreign nations coming out of the East, and causing everywhere ruin and disaster.

Revelation 9:14. Loose the four angels.—These are the angels of invasion. No actual reference to the Euphrates must be sought for, but what the Euphrates symbolises. Rivers do not actually hind angels. The Eaphrates was the great military barrier between the great northern and southern kingdoms. It may symbolise the providence which kept Eastern delusions and fanaticisms from passing over to the West. When the barrier was broken a flood of evils poured into Europe. But it cannot be said that this reference to Euphrates is satisfactorily explained.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Revelation 9:13-21

The Second Woe-Trumpet.—The aim of the plague is to exhibit the death-working power of false thoughts, false customs, false beliefs, and to rouse men to forsake the false worships, worldliness, and self-indulgence, into which they had fallen (Revelation 9:20-21). The enemy against whom these foes are gathered is the great world, lost in false thoughts, luxurious ways, dishonest customs—that world which, in the very essential genius of its nature, is hostile to goodness and the God of goodness. But the hosts which come against this sin-drowned world are not merely plagues, as famine and pestilence; they are plagues which are the result of the world-spirit, and are, to a great extent, therefore, the creation of those who suffer. For there are evils which are loosed upon the world by the natural action of sin and sinful customs. We should notice that the historical basis of the Apocalypse is the past history of God’s chosen people. The Apocalypse shows us the same principles working in higher levels and in wider arena. The Israel of God, the Church of Christ, with its grand opportunities, takes the place of the national Israel. (But its experiences are similar, and each set of experiences helps us in the understanding of the other.) The people who are victorious by faith at Jericho lay themselves open, by their timid worldliness, to the dangers of a Babylonish foe. The plague which falls on the spirit of worldliness does not spare the worldliness in the Church. The overthrow of corrupted systems bearing the Christian name is not a victory of the world over the Church, but of the Church over the world. The history of Israel is in much the key to the history of the world.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter.

Related Commentaries of Revelation 9:13

Revelation 9:13-21

13 And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,

14 Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.

15 And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour,b and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.

16 And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

18 By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.

19 For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.

20 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:

21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.