Revelation 9:6, commentary and pictures

In those days men suffer torment so extreme that they long for death as relief yet cannot obtain it, with death fleeing from those who desire to die. The tormentors are forbidden to kill their victims during the appointed period, so they afflict without destroying life. The verse stands within the fifth trumpet, which is the first woe, portraying the rise and conquests of Mohammed and his followers sweeping from the desert like locusts against an apostate church. Its five months are 150 prophetic days for 150 literal years, from July 27, 1299 when the Ottomans were consolidated under Othman to July 27, 1449, during which they tormented the Greek Empire without power to overthrow it. Those periods with the sixth trumpet have been fulfilled, closing in 1840 with the loss of Turkish independence, with the seventh trumpet and the coming of Christ to follow soon.

Place in Trumpet Prophecy

The verse belongs to the sounding of the seven trumpets found in Revelation 8 and 9, which together present the seven trumpets and are expounded together as one prophetic subject. It is part of that seven-trumpet prophecy found in Revelation 8 and 9.

It stands within the fifth trumpet, which is the first woe, in the description of the Saracens and Turks as historical instruments of a false religion that scourged an apostate church. That fifth trumpet symbolizes the conquest of Mohammed and his followers as their new religion swept everything before it and spread across three continents. The last three trumpets form a distinct group of three woes apart from the first four, with the fifth and sixth angels giving the account of the first and second woes. Those trumpet woes extend to the end of the age as a time of great peril and declining piety, not a period of worldwide conversion or peace and blessing before Christ comes.

The seven-trumpet prophecies are symbols of war and of the invasions that swept over the Roman Empire, portraying political events marked by war and revolution. They portray the means by which the Roman Empire was overthrown and finally ruined, with the fifth and sixth trumpets concerning the crushing of its eastern division. They present the history of earthly nations in conflict with one another during the gospel dispensation, fulfilled through barbarian incursions into the Roman Empire over many centuries, including the breakup of the Roman kingdom. The series extends through Revelation 8 to 11, beginning in Revelation 8 and continuing through chapter 9, and spans to the judgment and the coming day of reward and retribution and the coming of Christ. It is one of the great lines of symbolic and literal prophecy converging to the second coming, showing the end of earthly rule is near and the world is in the closing years of the present age, culminating when the kingdoms of the earth become Christ's kingdom and the final phase of the gospel goes forth. The verse is part of the sounding of the trumpets in Revelation 8-11, a work performed by angels, and is counted among the plagues of Revelation 8, 9 and 16. Its place in that trumpet sequence distinguishes the symbolic angelic trumpets, whose prophetic days are years, from the literal trumpet at Christ's return.

Meaning of Seeking Death

In those days men will seek death and will not find it, will desire to die, and death will flee from them, portraying terror, anguish and extremity of suffering in which the afflicted long for death as relief but cannot obtain it. The locusts torment people rather than kill them, for during the five-month period they are forbidden to kill their victims, so men suffer but are not killed. This describes the severity of the torment inflicted by the locusts, whose sting is like that of a scorpion.

Under prolonged torment the afflicted become weary of life and wish for death, yet are not killed, left in constant danger with only brief, uncertain repose from repeated attacks. The picture is illustrated by the scorpions of the Holy Land and by locusts in their year of visitation still devastating the country as in the time of Joel, so that before them the land is as the garden of Eden and behind them is a desolate wilderness. The locusts are symbols of a devastating power, winged and flying, pictured like horses and like mounted warriors, properly termed destroyers in their warfare both in effect upon the people and in mode of warfare. The Greek word for them is the same word used for the locusts eaten by John the Baptist, while unlike Joel's literal devouring pests they stand in a highly figurative prophecy for earthly governments, here the Saracens and Turks.

Historically the seeking of death also reflects the Arabs' eagerness for death in battle, desired because they expected forgiveness and a glorious heavenly reward, which made them fearless. Their religious zeal made death in battle an object of hope and desire. It also expresses the misery of nominal Christians under Muslim conquest who outwardly abandoned their faith but found the change galling and almost unbearable. They were unwilling either to die for their faith or to pay the tribute required to retain it, and had no escape from the painful choice except through a sacrifice they would not make; for them, seeking death without finding it expressed this misery.

Historic Power Identified

The fifth trumpet symbolizes the conquest of Mohammed and his followers as their new religion swept everything before it, marking the rise and spread of Mohammedan power across three continents. That power is identified as the Saracens, the Arabs, the Turks, and the Ottoman power, issuing from the desert like locusts from smoke. The fifth-trumpet prophecy depicts this rise and expansion as locusts assigned a period of tormenting men rather than killing them, in which men suffer but are not killed. This torment belongs to a prophetic period of 150 years under organized Ottoman government, beginning after Othman consolidated the separate Mohammedan tribes into a kingdom near the end of the thirteenth century.

The Saracens and Turks acted as historical instruments of a false religion that scourged an apostate church, with the fifth trumpet or first woe describing their work in connection with the breaking of the everlasting covenant and the transgression of divine laws and ordinances. God permitted the Mohammedans to fall upon professed Christians in Europe as a scourge to punish their idolatry, with judgments falling on apostate powers and their adherents in the setting of persecuting powers that deceive the world and oppose God. The prophecy concerns the Mohammedan religion's inroads into territories under papal rule, and singles out Turkey because the Ottoman Empire represented a major false religious system and played a role in the history of God's people. The woes are political judgments that ultimately led to the subversion of the eastern empire.

The bottomless pit or abyss opened at the fifth trumpet is confined to the earth or a part of the earth, not a location beyond the earth. It is understood as the wastes and deserts of Arabia from which Mohammedan doctrines emerged, literally a desert waste, void, or uninhabited land. The opening of the abyss with locusts coming out is the action of the Mahometan power. The fallen star is the fall of the Persian emperor Chosroes, which paved the way for Mohammedan triumph after Persia and Rome exhausted each other in war, and the smoke from the abyss is the false religion of Mohammed.

The torment without death was the harassing, annoying, worrying warfare and raids of the followers of Mohammed against Eastern Rome, directed principally against the presumptuous priests and followers of the apostate church of Rome. God's true people having God's seal were not purposely included in the destruction. The locust description portrays the appearance of mounted Saracenic warriors, and the five months are prophetic time, 150 days for 150 literal years, from July 27, 1299, when Othman the first king entered the Roman territory of Nicomedia and the torment began, to 1449, during which Eastern Rome was continually tormented.

The verse describes the second part of the history of the Mohammedans down to the close of their independence, their history under an organized government when they tormented the Greek Empire yet were not able to overthrow it. The period began when Othman organized and founded the Ottoman Empire and first entered the territory of Nicomedia on July 27, 1299, and continued one hundred and fifty years. The figurative expressions of their warfare in those days were fulfilled both in their effect upon the people and in their mode of warfare, and in this warfare they were properly termed destroyers. The torment is distinct from the destroyer's work, for the destroyer's target is the Eastern Roman Empire, the last remains of Rome, not people as such. The fifth trumpet together with the sixth trumpet marks the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire and the rise of a power that continued to rule the territory associated with the king of the North, noting events connected with Eastern Rome and its downfall, with the sixth trumpet ceasing to sound in 1840 and the seventh trumpet or third woe commencing in 1844 at the termination of the 2300 days.

Prophetic Time Periods

The time periods of the fifth and sixth trumpets are reckoned by the year-day rule in which each prophetic day represents a year, as shown by the prophecies of the fifth and sixth angels. The symbolic angelic trumpets are thus distinguished from the literal trumpet at Christ's return. The calculation was held to end on August 11, 1840, when the predicted loss of Turkish independence occurred. The five months of torment are 150 prophetic days for 150 literal years. They began when Othman consolidated the separate Mohammedan tribes into a kingdom, organized and founded the Ottoman Empire, and first entered Roman territory at Nicomedia on July 27, 1299, and they ended July 27, 1449. During that period of organized government the Ottomans tormented the Greek Empire and Eastern Rome yet were not able to overthrow it or destroy its political life, having power only to torment and not to kill.

The torment without death was harassing, annoying, worrying warfare and raids by fanatical Mohammedan warriors, mounted Saracenic warriors issuing like locusts from smoke, directed principally against Eastern Rome and the presumptuous priests and followers of the apostate church, while God's true people having God's seal were not purposely included. The figurative expressions of their warfare were fulfilled both in effect upon the people and in mode of warfare, and in this warfare they were properly termed destroyers whose target was the Eastern Roman Empire, the last remains of Rome, not people as such. The sixth trumpet's hour, day, month, and year is 391 years and 15 days, reckoned as 15 literal days plus 1 literal year plus 30 literal years plus 360 literal years. It ended August 11, 1840, when Turkish independence ended and Ottoman supremacy departed under intervention by the European allied powers, and the sixth trumpet ceased to sound. That chapter which contains the verse thus concludes with the passing of the Turkish Empire under the control of the European powers, with the sixth trumpet placed before the seventh and closing in 1840 with loss of independence.

The 1840 fulfillment involved the Sultan's war with Mehemet Ali Pacha of Egypt, Arabia and Syria in 1838-1839, in which the Sultan's army was destroyed and his fleet taken to Egypt, leaving him conscious of his own weakness and unable to settle the difficulty himself. He voluntarily surrendered the question into the hands of the great Christian powers of Europe, England, Russia, Austria and Prussia, who in 1840 agreed to interpose, arrange the differences, coerce Mehemet into obedience, and impose an ultimatum, so that Turkey continued only on sufferance of the powers by acceptance of their ultimatum. Together the fifth and sixth trumpets span 541 years and 15 days, from the Turkish first invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire on July 27, 1299, to August 11, 1840. At the end of the 150 years in 1449 the Greek emperor Constantine sought the Turkish Sultan's consent to take the throne, the second woe of the sixth trumpet began, and the four angels bound in the Euphrates were loosed to change tormenting into destroying, with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 providing the subsequent historical setting. The Euphrates is the Ottoman or Turkish Empire, and the four angels are its four chief sultanies of Iconium, Aleppo, Damascus, and Bagdad.

The chapter's prophecy was applied to the downfall of Ottoman power foretold for August 11, 1840, when Ottoman power in Constantinople was expected to be broken. Turkey's acceptance of protection from the European powers at that time was taken as fulfillment of the prediction. That fulfillment strengthened confidence in the prophetic interpretation and the advent movement.

Fulfillment and Future Outlook

The periods foretold under the fifth and sixth trumpets have run their course, for the events appointed for their close have taken place, and with them the fulfillment of Revelation 9 is closed. The sixth trumpet ended in 1840, when the Ottoman sultan surrendered the affairs of his empire into the hands of the European powers, losing Turkish independence. That trumpet prophecy, beginning in Revelation 8 and continuing through chapter 9, had then reached the sounding of the seventh and final angel. The sixth trumpet being near its close, the seventh trumpet or third woe was to sound soon, commencing in 1844 at the termination of the 2300 days, when the kingdoms of the world become the kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ.

Revelation 9 warrants expecting the Ottoman Empire to weaken through disintegration, to remove its capital from Constantinople to Jerusalem, and finally to come to its end, its fall as an independent political power having been predicted for 1840. Turkey is thus singled out in prophecy because the Ottoman Empire embodied a major false religious system and figured in the history of God's people. The Saracen invasions belonging to the same prophecy were a chastening scourge upon apostate Christianity.

The trumpet prophecies are mostly fulfilled in the past and portray political events interpreted in the light of their historical records. They stand among converging lines of symbolic and literal prophecy, including the seven trumpets of Revelation 8 to 11 and the chains of Revelation 8 to 14, reckoned as twelve great lines meeting in the focal center of the second coming of Christ, together showing that the end of earthly rule is nearly over, that the world is in the closing years of the present age, and that Christ's coming is near. They foreshadow severe judgments connected with Christ's second advent and a great catastrophe coming upon the world for which men will be unprepared, pointing to a time of great peril and declining piety rather than to worldwide conversion or a temporal millennium of peace before Christ comes.

The verse belongs to the fifth-trumpet prophecy of the Turkish torment of the Eastern Empire under the Ottoman power, and to the fifth and sixth trumpets together as the history of the rise, spread, and fall of Mohammedanism. In that setting it is placed within the divided kingdoms of the fourth universal empire and the plague of Mohammedanism, within the brief prophecy of the fall of modern Persia and the rise and work of Mohammedanism given with the most exact dates of any prophecy in the Bible, and within the account of the Mohammedan religion's inroads into territories under papal rule. The chapter is connected with Abubeker's command to spare certain religious people and not to kill them.

Doctrine and Practical Application

The trumpet judgments to which the verse belongs are a preceding series of partial plagues with exemptions, standing apart from the seven last plagues which make no exemption and fill up wrath. They are means for arousing mankind amid the breaking up of nations in the controversy between the church and her foes, running from the first advent to the consummation and closing with the downfall of the false and the triumph of the true. With the seven churches, the seven seals, the two witnesses, the dragon of Revelation 12, the beasts of Revelation 13, and the scarlet beast of Revelation 17, they form one of seven great time dramas, and one of twelve great lines of prophecy from Daniel, Revelation and the Gospels that begin in widespread periods of the past but gather their terminals in the time of the end and the second coming to an eternal kingdom of righteousness.

Those sealed on their foreheads are marked as saved from the slaughter that follows. The message of Revelation 9-12 calls the true and loyal out from the mixture of believers and hypocrites in the churches and out from the Babel of confusion before a sham union independent of the word is effected, so that after the salt of the earth is separated and the Spirit consequently withdrawn, those who still adhere to the Bible and keep its commandments are marked for persecution by civil law at the control of the united bodies.

The longing for death that cannot be found shows the most wretched condition among the lost, who go down to perdition with light glaring in their faces and the voice of duty imploring them to turn to life. They knew duty and did it not, and they curse God and the Lamb and the earth and the resurrection morn, ever vainly seeking utter death to escape anguish while condemnation answers only that they knew duty but did it not, bringing a deeper groan. In the same imagery, false prayers that contradict conduct return as tormenting scorpion witnesses against a person on the day of the Lord's appearing.

The same distress of longing for death without finding it is set forth as coming suffering in North America amid famine, captivity, violence and persecution. It describes a time of great peril in the last days when the Lord arises to shake the earth and the storm of wrath comes. It describes calamity so severe that people long for death yet cannot find it, like the calamities of the Dark Ages whose repetition would bring comparable suffering.

The locust torment of the last days is also seen in literal crop-destroying insects — locusts, lice, caterpillars, worms, potato-bugs, and continually appearing new forms such as the pea-louse — forming a great devouring army that destroys yearly more than half the products of the earth and increases rapidly. Their spread as the sealing of the servants in their foreheads nears completion shows the winds of destruction being let loose, with Satan marshaling destructive forces for the last great catastrophe. Against them man with all inventions and devices is as powerless as to turn aside the tornado or the earthquake.

The five months connected with the verse is a fixed measure of time that the true application must meet. The affliction is the scourge brought by the Saracens. The crusades fail that time test and, despite monstrous excesses by part of them, do not fit that scourge.