Day: June 25, 2020

Questions

Questions I’ve Been Asked – The Bottomless Pit – Part 4

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Question GIF

Welcome back friends

In this post, we will continue looking at the question of the Bottomless Pit by delving into chapter 9 of the book of Revelation.

So lets get at it!

Rev 9 :11

They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.

Who are “they”?

Verse three describes locusts coming out of the smoke that was released from the bottomless pit, and the following verses describe these “locusts”.

Locust gif

Locusts are a common picture of judgement in the Old Testament. Even as discussed in the previous post, when I referred to Exodus 10:14-15, the darkness was created by the locusts. Joel also describes a locust invasion. I will leave it to the reader to consider if John may be using some of Joel’s writings in these verses.

These “locusts” that come out of the pit have a king over them, the angel of the bottomless pit.

Some of the things to notice about the bottomless pit are

  • There is authority within the “Bottomless Pit”
  • Remember earlier that we found that it took authority to open the bottomless pit.
    • Is the authority within the pit the same as the authority over the pit? (Me thinks not!)

The King of the Bottomless Pit is named. Abaddon

This is very interesting since the Hebrew word that translates Abaddon is G3 Abaddon (ab-ad-down’) n/p.

    • a destroying angel
      • (abstractly) a perishing
      • (concretely) Hades [intensive from H6] KJV: destruction.Root(s): H6 Apollyon

As an aside, it is of note that this angel (Abaddon) is a destroying angel, not necessarily a torturing angel.

If John is considering that the pit represents death, which I think he is, the king of the pit, being a destroying angel, seems to give some weight to the annihilation theory of the existence of the damned.

Of course a little later in our study, death and hell are thrown into the lake of fire (Rev 20:14).

If I am consistent with John, this would mean that death and hell – that is, hades or the grave – are thrown into the lake of fire to experience the second death.

That is amazing!

Death is put to death!

Jesus did much more than I can imagine, did He not?

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Thanks again for coming to visit. I hope you found something of interest in this post and would appreciate a comment, to begin a discussion.