The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. – Revelation 9:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 28, 2018): Revelation 9

George Washington called death “the abyss from where no traveler is permitted to return.” Death is an ending point. Beyond this place, mere mortals fear to walk. Death is Shakespeare’s “undiscovered country,” yet it is also a country that we are all doomed to discover at some point in our lives. Death is the end of the world that the ancients sought to find by going east or west, yet were always frustrated in their attempts.

John speaks of an abyss or a bottomless pit. Some take this to be a literal bottomless pit, even arguing that it can only mean a pit that has been dug to the very core of the earth, a place where there is no more down, but only up in every direction. But again, we need to be reminded that this is simply what John saw. A pit does not have to be bottomless to appear bottomless. And while some argue that we should not spiritualize John’s words, this is an instance when it seems hard not to.

May I suggest that this abyss is death, an abyss so deep that from this place no traveler is permitted to return. And if that is true, then we turn to the question of the star. There seems to be little question that the star should refer to a person, and many people have been suggested. Part of the key is that John says that he saw the star that had fallen, past tense, from the sky to earth. If the abyss is death or hades, then it is tempting to identify the star as Jesus himself. After all, Revelation begins with Jesus claiming that he holds “the keys of death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18). And Jesus is one of the suggested people who experts have identified as possibly being the identity of this star.

But there is also a struggle with this identification, and the struggle is found later in this reading – “They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer)” (Revelation 9:11). Here the angel of the Abyss appears to be evil, just as John Bunyan imagines it in his book “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Christian, the protagonist of Bunyan’s tale, does battle with Apollyon the Destroyer, the angel of the Abyss in Bunyan’s book.

Some argue that Revelation 9:1 is unrelated to Revelation 9:11, but that seems unlikely. If the two verses are about the same entity, then we have to rule out Jesus as a possible identity of the star. Maybe Satan or one of his lieutenants might be an option. But at the end of the day, this is just fodder for conversation. We don’t know the answers, and most likely will never know, just be able to defend our guesses as we converse with each other.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Revelation 10