9:1-2 How are we to understand the fifth trumpet judgment here?
9:1-2 How are we to understand the fifth trumpet judgment here?
The fifth trumpet judgment and the first woe are synonymous with each other (cp Re 8:13). The fifth, sixth and seventh trumpet judgments will bring down unimaginable punishment on the inhabitants of earth. In the fifth trumpet judgment here hordes of demon locusts are loosed upon the earth to torment the inhabitants for five months.
They will inflict pain upon the people like scorpion bites. The pain will be so terrible that those who are stung will want to die, but cannot. The only humans the demon locusts cannot touch are those with the seal of God in their foreheads.
This is a reference to the hundred and forty-four thousand Jews, who will be raptured to heaven between the seventh trumpet judgment and the first vial, or plague judgment (cp Rev 7:1-8; 14:1-5 with Re 15:1, 6-8).
The star that fell from heaven, to whom was given the key of the bottomless pit, was an angel of God - not a fallen angel, or Satan, as so many in the church believe. God would not entrust the key of the bottomless pit, which is a prison for fallen angels/demon spirits, to another fallen angel, or Satan.
Furthermore, Satan is in heaven at this time - he was not cast out into the earth until Rev 12 (cp Re 12:7-13). Also, a fallen angel would hardly cast his own master - Satan - in chains into the bottomless pit, as the angel with the key of the bottomless pit does (cp Rev 20:1-3).
This is undoubtedly the same angel of God who was given the key of the bottomless pit in Rev 9:1. This angel is not to be confused with the angel of the bottomless pit in Re 9:11, who is a fallen angel (cp Re 9:11).
This also is not Satan, as many others think. This angel will be loosed together with the demon locusts when the angel of God opens the pit. He will direct the demon locusts. This completes the first of the three woes, but the worst is yet to come.