Revelation 9:20,21

Revelation 9:20-21. The vision is over, but the guilt of the world which was now under judgment has to be set forth with greater fulness, in order that we may better understand the evil of sin and the justness of the judgments that overtake it. And the rest of men which were not killed in these plagues repented not. ‘Men' here are obviously the ungodly, the same as those of Revelation 9:4, or as those spoken of in chap. Revelation 8:13, in the words ‘they that dwell on the earth.' By the works of their hands it is generally agreed that we are to understand not their course of life but the idols mentioned immediately afterwards. As a natural consequence of not repenting of their idol-worship these men also repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. Four sins are mentioned, implying universality, and leading our thoughts to both Jew and Gentile. Nor does even the mention of ‘idols' entitle us to confine the obstinate hardness of heart spoken of to the heathen. Idolatry is chargeable against all the enemies of God, whether Jew or Gentile (comp. 1 John 5:21). Again we see that the ‘sealed,' upon whom this plague certainly does not fall, must belong to both these divisions of mankind.

We may here pause for a moment to make one or two general remarks upon the sixth trumpet. In general characteristics it greatly resembles the fifth, but the climax of the Apocalypse may be easily marked in the progress from the latter to the former. Not only are the horses of the sixth trumpet more powerful than the locusts of the fifth, but the terribleness of the one is much greater than that of the other. To quote the words of an old commentator (Bishop Forbes of Aberdeen), ‘the horses are said to have heads of lions to denote open rage and professed cruelty, whereas the locusts covered their lions' teeth with faces of men and hair of women.' Their destructive energy too is more fatal, for the power of the locusts ‘to hurt' (Revelation 9:10) becomes in them a ‘power to kill.' In other respects no distinction need be drawn between the two trumpets. Special forms of judgment visiting the earth at different periods of its history can hardly with propriety be sought in them. The judgments which they represent are peculiar to no people or age. They are rather those judgments of a general kind which always have followed, and always will follow, sin. These spring in every form from the same causes, and are designed to promote the same ends. The misery with which earth is filled, whether from war or pestilence or famine, whether showing itself in poverty or crime or death, is to be traced to one and the same root, that evil of the human heart which leads men to reject the revelation of the love of Him who willeth not that any of His creatures should perish, who would stanch all their wounds and heal all their sorrows. Upon this we are to fix our thoughts, not only under the last two, but under all the trumpets, noting only further, as we do so, that the longer mercy is despised the greater is the judgment which follows, and that the later messengers of Divine wrath are more dreadful than the earlier.