Revelation 9:1,2

Chapter 9 - Fifth trumpet brings first woe

  And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

2 And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

The fifth angel sounds his trumpet and a star falls from heaven. This star has the key to the bottomless pit. Stars sometimes have a double reference to angelic beings in the scriptures. This star is called  "him"  so it is an angel. The angel was given the key to open up the place under the earth where fallen angels are bound (2 Peter 2:1-10). Some think this angel is Satan and others think it is another angel. I think this angel still has the key when he locks Satan in the bottomless pit for a thousand years after the tribulation is over (Revelation 20:1-2). Therefore, the angel is from God and is not Satan.

It is too soon for Satan to be cast out of heaven permanently since the Beast he incarnates when he is cast out of heaven comes out of the pit months after the time of this fifth trumpet. The Beast comes out of the pit just prior to the seventh trumpet just before he kills the two prophets who have completed their 1,260-day testimony (Revelation 11:7).

If this was actually the time when Satan and his angels were cast out of heaven by Michael and his angels there should be a description of more than one star falling from heaven. This angel appears to be on an assignment and does not appear to be an angel being banished from heaven.

Although it is clear that this star is a personality, I do not think we can say that the comet had nothing to do with opening the pit in a physical sense. Physical and spiritual events can be interrelated. Mankind being limited to four dimensions cannot understand the mystery of how the physical and the spiritual are interrelated (Matthew 16:19; Matthew 18:18). These physical judgments on earth are the end result of spiritual prayers. We read in the last chapter that a censor containing the prayers of the saints was filled with fire by an angel. This angel cast the censor upon the earth and then these physical judgments came.  

When the comet hits the earth it will penetrate the crust of the earth and open the bottomless pit. We see this physically happens on earth by the description of the great smoke that comes out of the pit that darkens the skies. The opening of the bottomless pit provides a way out for devils or demons that have been bound in the pit (by gravitational forces perhaps?).