Revelation Chapter 9

The Revelation of Yahshua Christ

Chapter 9

IX 1 And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star from heaven fallen to earth, and to him had been given the Key of the bottomless pit. 2 And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke ascended from the pit like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air had become darkened from the smoke of the pit. 3 And from the smoke locusts came out into the earth, and authority had been given to them like the scorpions of the earth have authority. 4 And it had been spoken to them in order that they do not injure the grass of the earth nor any green thing nor any tree, except those men who do not have the seal of Yahweh upon their foreheads. 5 And it had been given to them that they should not kill them, but that they shall be tested for five months, and their torment is as the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. 6 And in those days men shall seek death yet they shall not find it, and they shall desire to die yet death flees from them.

Howard Rand and Bertrand Comparet have both identified this passage as a depiction of the rise of Mohammedism and the Arab conquests of the formerly White regions of Mesopotamia, the Levant, and the northern coast of Africa. I believe that they were absolutely correct. As an aside, it is also evident that Mohammed is the “little horn” of Daniel Chapter 8, This little horn is not to be confused with the little horn of Daniel Chapter 7, which we shall see when we get to Revelation Chapter 13 refers to the Emperor Justinian. So it may be seen that just as Daniel in Chapters 7 and 8 prophesied of Justinian, and then of Mohammed, so does the Revelation in Chapters 8 and 9. At Daniel 8 this is what it says in part, which I believe correlates with this passage in the Revelation:

Daniel 8:9-12, 21-25: “9 And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land. 10 And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven [meaning the Children of Israel]; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them [the Mohammedan conquests]. 11 Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. 12 And an host was given him against the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground; and it practised, and prospered. [The taking away of the “daily sacrifice”, I believe, represents a change in religion described in Daniel's own terms – in this case from Christianity to Mohammedism. Now to skip to verse 21:] 21 And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king. 22 Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power. [As we have seen it prophesied elsewhere in Daniel, and as happened in history, Alexander's kingdom was split into four pieces upon his death.] 23 And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. [The Arabs of Islam were conquerors under the guise of religion, and used by Yahweh as a scourge against our race.] 24 And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. 25 And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes [Mohammed claimed to be greater than Christ – and muslims still make that claim.]; but he shall be broken without hand.” [Something we wait for the fulfillment of even today.]

“2 And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke ascended from the pit like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air had become darkened from the smoke of the pit. 3 And from the smoke locusts came out into the earth, and authority had been given to them like the scorpions of the earth have authority.“

Arabia is renowned as a land of locusts. The locust eggs stay under the desert soil until it rains, and then they begin to hatch and swarm. (See the Earth Observatory website hosted by NASA which has much information concerning this.) This helps us identify who these people are and where they come from. Egypt and Arabia were one of the four portions of Alexander's empire, from where the Ptolemy's ruled until Roman times. The “latter time of their kingdom” is just as well a reference to the Greek rulers in general as it is to the Ptolemy's themselves, and the Greeks are still the rulers of the east in the Byzantine period.

The scorpions of the earth are a reference to the Canaanite Jews. This can be seen at Luke 10:18-19 where Yahshua Christ said “I beheld the Adversary falling as lightning from heaven! Behold! I have given to you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy, and no one shall by any means do you injustice.” The serpents and scorpions were not to be taken literally in that passage, but as metaphors for certain people, which we see are of the Adversary, or Satan.

“4 And it had been spoken to them in order that they do not injure the grass of the earth nor any green thing nor any tree, except those men who do not have the seal of Yahweh upon their foreheads. 5 And it had been given to them that they should not kill them, but that they shall be tested for five months, and their torment is as the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. 6 And in those days men shall seek death yet they shall not find it, and they shall desire to die yet death flees from them.”

That a day in prophecy can represent a year is evident in many places in Scripture. Here are a few evidences of the validity of such an interpretation:

Numbers 14:34: “After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.”

Ezekiel 4:5-6: “For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6 And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.”

The 5 month period of the locusts seems to represent the approximate 150-year period of Islamic conquest over the Byzantine lands. This period began around 622 AD when Mecca was entered by Mohammed and was eventually conquered, process which ended in 632 AD. Within two years of Mohammed's death, his followers began their conquests outside of Arabia, first taking Syria, Persia and Palestine. In 652 AD they already began attacking Sicily, and Arabs occupied parts of the island then for an extended period. By 670 they controlled the entire Middle East and began attacking even Constantinople itself. From this time they began conquering Northern Africa, and by 711 they are crossing into Spain. In 726 and again in 740 they captured Syracuse on Sicily, but never took the entire island until the 9th century. In 736 the Arabs took Georgia north of the Caucasus Mountains. In 751 they even defeated Chinese forces in a battle near the Talas River in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. By 762 Baghdad was created as the capital of the Abbasid caliphs, and Islamic conquests are virtually finished. Yet it is evident that the main period of Islamic conquest lasted about 5 prophetic months, or nearly 150 years. Until 1060 AD, when the Turks began to take Anatolia from the Byzantines, Arabs competed mostly among themselves, in lands they had already occupied to some extent, such as the taking of Crete and southern Italy – portions of which some Arabs had long occupied - in 820 and 827 AD.

7 And the likenesses of the locusts are like horses having been prepared for war, and upon their heads as crowns like gold, and their faces as faces of men, 8 and they had hair as hair of women, and their teeth were as of lions’, 9 and they had breastplates as breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings as a sound of many chariot-teams of horses running into battle, 10 and they had tails and stingers like scorpions, and their power is in their tails to injure men for five months. 11 They have over them a king: the messenger of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon but in Greek he has a name, Destroyer. 12 One woe has departed. Behold, there come yet two woes after these things!

This is a poetic description of the Arab hordes. Apollyon is a Greek word which means destroyer. This is how we should view Mohammedism, even to this very day – as a destructive force to our Christian Civilization.

13 And the sixth messenger sounded the trumpet, and I heard one voice from the four horns of the golden altar before Yahweh, 14 saying to the sixth messenger, he having the trumpet: “Release the four messengers who are bound by the great river Euphrates!” 15 And the four messengers had been released, who had been prepared for that hour and day and month and year, that they should kill a third of the men. 16 And the number of the armies of the horsemen is two hundred million. I heard the number of them. 17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and those sitting upon them, having fiery-red and hyacinth and yellow breastplates, and the heads of the horses as heads of lions, and from their mouths came out fire and smoke and sulfur. 18 From these three plagues a third of the men had been killed, from the fire and from the smoke and from the sulfur coming out from their mouths. 19 For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, and their tails like serpents, having heads and with them they injure.

Again, both Howard Rand and Bertrand Comparet correctly identified this second woe as a description of the Turkic invasions of Byzantine lands. This is the release of those bound by the Euphrates, which is metaphorical and not a literal reference, so that the Turkic hordes – already converted to Mohammedism by the Arabs in the 7th and 8th centuries - can begin to cross from the east. This process began in 1055 AD, when the Seljuk Turks captured Baghdad. Eventually they came to control nearly all of the formerly Arab lands, under the Ottoman Empire, but that is not our concern here. They began to move on Christian lands around 1064 AD when they began to clash with Byzantine troops in Asia Minor. In 1067 they attacked Caesarea and then Iconium in central Asia Minor. Although initially repulsed, within thirty years they controlled all of Anatolia. This ushered in the period of the Crusades, but wherever the European nations were able to recapture lands for Christendom, the results were only temporary. Furthermore, the Norman raids of the Balkans and southern Italy and their sacking of Constantinople in 1204 weakened efforts, rather than helping them. By the 14th century the Turks occupied the Balkans, and occupied or subjected many of the Black Sea nations. In 1453 Constantinople, surrounded by lands already fallen to the Turks, finally also fell to them. Looking at Byzantine resources in this period, compared to Turkic resources, it is amazing that the city held out as long as it did.

Going back to the text of the passage being discussed here, verse 15 from the King James Version reads in part “for an hour and day and month and year”, rather than “that hour and day and month and year”. The Greek may read either way, yet the interpretation need not change. If we interpret this time period by the prophetic time scale of a year for a day, this would add up to around 391 years and 15 days. The Turkic conquests of Anatolia began around 1067 AD, and their conquest of the of Eastern Roman Empire ended with the taking of Constantinople in 1453 AD, a that is a total of 393 years, very close to the 391 years of this prophecy. The army of two hundred million men in verse 16 need only represent the number of invaders over this nearly 400-year period.

Even more interesting, and a clear identifier of the fulfillment of this prophecy, where at verse 17 it says “And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and those sitting upon them, having fiery-red and hyacinth and yellow breastplates, and the heads of the horses as heads of lions, and from their mouths came out fire and smoke and sulfur”, this seems to be a poetic description of cannon. Constantinople was the first major city in history to have been taken with the help of cannon. Sadly, it was a Christian gun-maker, Urban of Hungary, whom the Turks hired to build the cannons, 70 of them. In his book, Marvels of Prophecy, Howard Rand has a picture of one of these cannon which sat as a war souvenir on the banks of the Thames in Britain. [I do have an image of one of these which I will post along with this document on Christogenea.]

This particular cannon is shaped just like a lion, including its limbs, and the mouth of the lion is the mouth – or muzzle - of the cannon, while its tail looks like a long serpent up its back, where the fuse was lit, just as John described.

20 And the rest of the men, those who had not been killed by these plagues, did not even repent from the works of their hands, that they do not worship demons and idols, things of gold and things of silver and things of copper and things of stone and things of wood, things which are able neither to see nor to hear nor to walk. 21 And they did not repent from their murders nor from their drugs nor from their fornication nor from thefts.

When the Catholic religion – by which the true Christian religion is not meant - is compared to the ancient Greco-Roman pagansim, we see that there is not much difference. The Catholics paganized Christianity, by transferring the ancient pagan gods and goddesses into the false conception of “saints”, thereby actually worshipping demons, and by their idolatry in the making of statues representing these things. The anti-Christian practices of pharmakeia – the use of drugs, and fornication – which is race-mixing, were also prevalent in Byzantium and Rome. They still are today, and we who remain of our race will never understand these things until we study our bibles and understand our history.