The Fifth Trumpet of Revelation: The First Woe
Before the fifth trumpet sounded, John saw another angel who warned, “Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!” The final three trumpets, or “woes,” are the last three warnings for Roman Catholicism. If the church did not change its ways, God would bring his judgment upon it.
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Eighty-one years elapsed from Alaric’s 395 AD Gothic revolt against the Romans until the collapse of the Western Empire in 476. The King James Bible only dedicated 252 English words to define the sights and sounds of the first four trumpets in Revelation. Comparatively, it required 551 words to meticulously describe the fifth trumpet and 1,020 for the sixth, as if God wanted to emphasize the significance of the three woes relative to that of the four earlier trumpets. The last three trumpets represent transformations that caused major political and religious ramifications throughout history. Also, with Ravenna and the Western Roman Empire now fallen, God’s judgments would exclusively focus on the Eastern Roman Empire for the first time.
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The Military Leader
Revelation 9:1-2
1 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.
Like Attila two trumpets prior, the fifth trumpet opens with a falling star. This initial clue suggests a leader who believed himself to be divine, as his fall from Heaven mirrors Satan’s fall. This man receives a key, which he uses to open the pit of Hell. When he opens it, so much smoke is released that the sun is shielded, making it difficult for John to see. We can surmise from this imagery that the smokescreen created by this agent of Satan is symbolic of spiritual chaos, as he would shade many from the light of God. Unlike the leaders represented by the four earlier trumpets, this man had a dual role—military commander and spiritual leader.
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God’s Commands to the Army of Locusts
Revelation 9:3-6
3 And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
4 And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.
5 And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
6 And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
Limitations are placed on the army of locusts in verses four and five. The extent of their damage is restricted to those who do not have God’s seal on their foreheads. The word “hurt” in this context means a spiritual damnation, as there are several examples of the same word usage throughout Revelation. The church in Smyrna was promised they would not be “hurt of the second death” if they overcame their challenges. After Constantine’s conversion in the sixth seal of Revelation 7:2-3, four angels were given the power to “hurt the earth and the sea,” but only after God had protected the true Christians. Just as the spiritual damage those four angels caused did not affect faithful Christians, the military that the locust army represented was important, not for the physical death it caused, but for the spiritual death.
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In this trumpet, God explicitly protects the grass, “any green thing,” and the trees, just as he protected the earth, sea, and trees while his angel sealed Christians in Revelation 7. The green color of vigorous plants symbolizes life and growth. This suggestion is the same for Christians—those of us who are spiritually alive and growing will be protected, but those who are not alive in Christ will be spiritually damned.
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Verse five provides the length of the conflicts, as the army is limited to tormenting men for five prophetic months—or one hundred fifty years—before it settles down. During this period, the third part of men would “seek death, and shall not find it.” The inaccessibility of death in this trumpet tells us the locust army might kill individuals, but it would not conquer the final piece of Rome’s empire—the Byzantine Empire.
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Description of the Locusts
Revelation 9:7-10
7 And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.
8 And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.
9 And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.
10 And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.
The locusts and scorpions are evidence of the army’s location of origin. The locusts were “like unto horses prepared unto battle,” implying an army relying on cavalry. This inference is reinforced in verse nine, which says, “The sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.” Locusts and scorpions signify a desert-based army, particularly one from Arabia. Interestingly, in Exodus 10:13, the eighth plague brought upon Egypt was an east wind that carried locusts from Arabia.[1]
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The east wind of Exodus 10:13 brought locusts from Arabia to Egypt.
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The French orientalist Count Volney described the swarms of Arabian locusts in his Travels Through Syria and Egypt, writing, “The inhabitants of Syria have remarked that locusts are always bred by too mild winters, and that they constantly come from the desert of Arabia.”[i] The sixteenth-century Moorish diplomat and author Leo Africanus and the eighteenth-century Dutch author Cornelis de Bruijn confirmed similar experiences with locusts when writing of their travels to the region.[ii] Recently, massive swarms of locusts plagued the peninsula for three years following high levels of rainfall in 2018.[iii]
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The symbol of a scorpion also draws comparisons to the Arabian Desert. In a passionate monologue recorded in Deuteronomy 8, Moses advised the Israelites not to forget all God had done for them. In his speech, he detailed how God brought them out of the Arabian Desert when they escaped Egypt. Moses named some of the hardships they had faced while wandering there— a list that included scorpions.[2]
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In John’s vision, the locusts wore “crowns like gold” on their heads. He used the same Greek word for crown as he used in the first seal: στεφανοι, or stefanoi, which means “wreath, chaplet, especially the conqueror’s wreath or a crown of victory.” Another definition is “that which encircles, surrounds.”[iv] This Arabian army often wore turbans adorned with chains and gold-inlaid or gilded helmets—crowns like gold, not crowns of gold.[v] These locusts also wore iron breastplates, which was typical for medieval armies.
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The warriors not only wore distinctive clothes—they were also physically unique. Revelation 9:9 explains they had the “faces of men” and the “hair of women,” suggesting bearded men with long hair. Pliny the Elder, the Roman author and military commander and a contemporary of John, wrote about the hairstyles of Arabian men in Natural History, “The Arabs either wear the mitra, or else go with their hair unshorn, while the beard is shaved, except upon the upper lip; some tribes, however, leave even the unshaven beard.”[vi]
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Both locusts and scorpions are inherently Arabian, but even the mention of horses is also a cursory reference to one of the oldest equine species, the Arabian horse.[vii] “The teeth of lions” in verse eight also alludes to the Arabian habitat of the lion during the Middle Ages and the fifth trumpet.[viii]
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The Destroyer
Revelation 9:11-12
11 And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.
12 One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.
According to Revelation 9:11, the name of the demonically-inspired great star who led this army is “Abaddon” in Hebrew and “Apollyon” in Greek, both of which mean “destroyer.”[ix] Similar to the name of Mystery Babylon, Abaddon is not the man’s literal name but a figurative one, as providing the leader’s actual name would be uncharacteristic of a prophecy.
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Historical Fulfillment
Only one Arabian of the correct period—closely following the fourth trumpet and the fall of Rome—fits this description: Muhammad, the founder of Islam. In 609 AD, Muhammad told his family he was visited by the angel Gabriel in a cave near Mecca in modern-day Saudi Arabia. Three years later, in 612, he began to preach publicly, proclaiming, “There is only one god, and Muhammad is his prophet.”[x] As soon as Muhammad started preaching in Mecca, he was persecuted by the city’s polytheistic inhabitants for preaching monotheism. This persecution would intensify until he and his followers fled to the nearby city of Medina.
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While residing in Medina, Muhammad united the city’s tribes under his command. In 629, he gathered ten thousand Muslim converts, marched on Mecca, and took the city with little fighting. By the time of his death in 632, Muhammad’s forces controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula. Although his military career was short-lived, his religious beliefs inspired a succession of other Islamic military conquerors.
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Following Muhammad’s death, the first two caliphates expanded Islam’s reach through conquest. By 661 AD, the Rashidun Caliphate had seized the rest of Arabia, Syria, Persia, and Egypt. After the first caliphate’s fall, the Umayyad Caliphate extended as far as the Pacific coast of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula in the west and modern Pakistan in the east.
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Today, Islam and the Qur’an spiritually blind one-quarter of the world’s population, keeping them from seeing the true God—just as the smoke from the pit of Hell shaded the sun in Revelation 9:2. However, for Muhammad to be the correct fulfillment of the fifth trumpet, a corresponding event one hundred fifty years after 612 AD would need to be found in the year 762.
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In 750 AD, the second Islamic caliphate, the Umayyads, collapsed during the Abbasid Revolution. Several years after the Abbasids took power, they began scouting locations to build a new capital. In 762, the caliph al-Mansur commissioned the city along a bend in the Tigris River in modern Iraq near the Euphrates. The name he chose was “Madinat al-Salam,” which means “City of Peace.” After one hundred fifty years, the locust soldiers who had swarmed from the Arabian Desert under Mohammad and created one of the largest empires in history finally settled down at peace in the city known today as Baghdad.[xi]
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These early Muslim conquests ate away at the territory of the Byzantine Empire as the provinces in Africa, Egypt, Judea, and Syria fell into the hands of the Islamic armies. The first woe had substantially damaged what remained of the once-great Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire was hurt for five prophetic months but was not killed.
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Muslim military expansion under the early caliphates, 622-750 AD.
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[1] Exodus 10:13 And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.
[2] Deuteronomy 8:15 Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;
[i] Volney. 1788. “Section V. Of the Locusts.” In Travels Through Syria and Egypt, Vol. I, 306-307. London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson.
[ii] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Local Origin of the First Woe.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. I, by Edward Bishop Elliott, 433. London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley.
[iii] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2022. Desert Locust Upsurge (2019-2021). Accessed May 22, 2024. https://www.fao.org/ag/locusts/en/info/2094/index.html.
[iv] Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott. 1882. “στÎφανοι” In An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon. 745. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago: American Book Company.
[v] Department of Arms and Armor. 2004. “Islamic Arms and Armor.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/isaa/hd_isaa.htm (October 2004).
[vi] Pliny the Elder. 1855. “Arabia.” In The Natural History of Pliny, Vol. II, by John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 91. London: Henry G. Bohn.
[vii] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Local Origin of the First Woe.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. I, by Edward Bishop Elliott, 433. London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley.
[viii] Kinnear, N. B. 1886. “The Past and Present Distribution of the Lion in South Eastern Asia.” In The Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Vol. XXVII, by Bombay Natural History Society, 33-39. Bombay: The Times Press.
[ix] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Local Origin of the First Woe.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. I, by Edward Bishop Elliott, 445. London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley.
[x] Gibbon, Edward. 1974. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V, 375-377. New York: AMS Press.
[xi] Petersen, Andrew. 2011. Baghdad (Madinat al-Salam). September 13. Accessed November 1, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20160916131027/http://islamic-arts.org/2011/baghdad-madinat-al-salam/.
