A Rhetorical Analysis Of Revelation 9: 11

1-2: When the fifth trumpet is blown, John sees another vision of “a star from heaven that had fallen to the earth.” Interesting enough, “Jesus uses virtually the same expression to describe Satan’s judgment in Luke 10:18” when He watches the devil and his angels being thrown out of heaven. Revelation 9:11 suggests that this angel of the abyss is the king over demonic locusts, and is referred to as destruction. Satan is given the role of “inflicting punishment on sinful humanity”, but Christ, the one who holds the keys to death and Hades alone, and only Christ has the power to give this key to him. This gives the readers an “ever-expanding definition of the extent of God and the Lamb’s sovereignty” over the entire earth. The “darkening of the sun and other parts of the cosmos” indicates judgment, and this image repeats the allusion of the

This in no way suggests that the Bible is not God’s true and inerrant word, but only suggests that John uses language that he understands. This vision of the locusts, like horses prepared for battle, is “related to Joel’s portrayal of the plague of locusts attacking Israel”, which is originally referenced the Egyptian plagues of Exodus 10. John’s original audience would have understood this reference, and by putting the locusts’ appearance in human terms, and by personifying them with hair, teeth, and the sound of chariots, this scene looks similar to an army preparing for battle. The fact that they have faces of men with crowns of gold on their head “evokes their demonic nature”, and while some writers have suggested that this may evoke the thought of an attack helicopter, more likely this represents the demonic forces at work instead of futuristic technology. The phrase “their teeth were like the teeth of lions” is based on Joel 1:6, referring to the locusts that were like a nation, with teeth “like a