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Context No. 1055 of 4322 · Revelation

Context · Reflection

Revelation 9:12-21: in context

12The first woe is past. Behold, there are still two woes coming after this. 13The sixth angel sounded. I heard a voice from the horns of the golden altar which is before God, 14saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Free the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates!” 15The four angels were freed who had been prepared for that hour and day and month and year, so that they might kill one third of mankind. 16The number of the armies of the horsemen was two hundred million. I heard the number of them. 17Thus I saw the horses in the vision and those who sat on them, having breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the horses’ heads resembled lions’ heads. Out of their mouths proceed fire, smoke, and sulfur. 18By these three plagues, one third of mankind was killed: by the fire, the smoke, and the sulfur, which proceeded out of their mouths. 19For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails. For their tails are like serpents, and have heads; and with them they harm. 20The rest of mankind, who were not killed with these plagues, didn’t repent of the works of their hands, that they wouldn’t worship demons, and the idols of gold, and of silver, and of brass, and of stone, and of wood, which can’t see, hear, or walk. 21They didn’t repent of their murders, their sorceries, their sexual immorality, or their thefts.

The sixth trumpet sounds, and a terrible judgment is released, an army of demonic horsemen, fire and smoke and sulfur, killing a third of humanity. It is a frightening, symbolic vision of devastation. But the detail that carries the most weight comes at the end. The rest of mankind, those not killed by these plagues, still did not repent of the works of their hands; they would not stop worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, and they did not repent of their murders, their sorceries, their immorality, or their thefts.

The horror of this passage is not mainly the plagues; it is the response to them, or the lack of one. Even after devastation on this scale, the survivors did not repent. That is the truly frightening thing, and it exposes a stubborn truth about the human heart: suffering alone does not produce repentance. We sometimes imagine that if judgment were severe enough, if the consequences hit hard enough, people would surely turn back to God. This vision says otherwise. A third of humanity dead, and the rest cling to their idols and their crimes, unmoved. Hardness of heart can survive almost anything; a heart set on its idols will keep worshiping wood and gold even amid catastrophe. It is a warning against assuming that pain will do the work only grace can do. What finally turns a heart is not the size of the disaster but the mercy of God softening it, and a heart that will not be softened by mercy will not be softened by judgment either. The passage should make us pray to be people who repent at God's kindness, before it takes anything harder.

Do I imagine that only enough hardship would turn me back to God, when this vision shows hardness surviving even catastrophe, and will I let his mercy soften me now instead?

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