Evil Let Loose
EVIL LET LOOSE
REVELATION 9:13-21
If our response is right in the face of calamity, we will repent. Are we humble enough to do so?
The forces in this section are as clearly demonic as in the previous one, though probably physical as well as spiritual warfare is intended. Here again there is an exact indication of time given, in this case of when the disaster is to break out (9:15). Its duration is governed by the time taken to accomplish their task. It should be noted that because the evil done seems to be physical rather than spiritual, there is no mention of God’s people being spared (see also 9:4).
No explanation is given as to who “the four angels” (9:14) may be; that they are bound suggests that they are fallen ones; that they are four—see 7:1—may imply that they represent the fallen angels as a whole, and they may be the otherwise unexplained “cavalry” (9:16). The Euphrates (9:14) seems to play a symbolic part in biblical thinking. It served as a kind of symbolic frontier between civilization and barbarism. Civilization, the world, is on the one hand a gift of God (Romans 13:1), on the other it has been twisted by Satan and evil people into an obstacle to the advance of God’s will and rule. So God has repeatedly allowed the stable world to be rocked to its foundations by the inrush of barbarism. Sometimes it has been like a tidal wave of barbarian destruction, which in due course has ebbed again. Sometimes their way has been prepared by propaganda, as with the inrush of communism, which has often effectively destroyed all desire to resist. It should not be forgotten that human totalitarian systems seek to use Satan to drive out sin. We should be staggered if we could reckon how many lives have been lost through totalitarian systems of various kinds.
Whenever such judgments have come, the result has always been the same. People have never turned as a body from the worship of their false gods, and from their crimes, whether they are crude ones like those mentioned in 9:20f. or the rather more subtle ones of today. If anything, disaster is explained away by saying that the worship of these gods had not been thorough enough. “Sorceries” (9:21) is probably not a satisfactory rendering; it probably refers to drug traffic, either to murder or to create willingness to sin.