Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #2 of Revelation, chapter 9, and we are going to be reading Revelation 9:1-2

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. 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.

In our last study we saw how the Bible speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ as having the keys that open and none can shut and that shut and none can open.

We also find, in Revelation, chapter 1, that God tells us in Revelation 1:18:

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.

This is very important because we read in Revelation 9:1 that this star that fell from heaven was  “given the key of the bottomless pit,” and now, according to Revelation 1:18, the Lord Jesus Christ possesses “the keys of hell and of death.”  If you remember, back in Revelation, chapter 6, when we were studying the four horses, we saw that the “pale horse” identified with Judgment Day, and God says in Revelation 6:7-8:

And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

We went through this passage and we saw that God likens Judgment Day, our present period of time, to the rider on the pale horse and his name was “death, and Hell followed with Him.”  Now why would the Bible do that?  Why would God link together “death” and “Hell” with the period of Judgment Day?  Well, as we are seeing here in Revelation 9, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is spoken of as the “great star” who fell from heaven, has the key to the bottomless pit and then it says in verse 2 that He opens the bottomless pit; and then Revelation 18 tells us that He has the “keys of hell and of death.”  In effect, what Christ has done is that He has loosed “Hell” and “death” upon the earth in the Day of Judgment, so that the world begins to take upon itself the characteristic of hell and death; or to say it another way, the earth begins to take upon itself what is true of the “bottomless pit” is now true of the earth, because once the bottomless pit was opened, notice that it says in verse 2, “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.” 

The smoke is rising or coming up and it is affecting the world; the sun is that which shines down upon the world; the air is that which people breathe, on a physical level in the world.  So, the smoke came up out of the pit and now has turned the world into a smoking furnace and that was the condition of the pit.  Hell, which was beneath (and the Bible often speaks of descending into hell), has risen and come up to where earth is and where the people of earth live.  That is because the people of the earth are under the wrath of God. 

We are going to take a little time and concentrate on this and, hopefully, we will understand it very well.  This is actually an extremely important teaching which God is giving to us and it will also affect other doctrines and other understanding later on, concerning the true believers, because once the earth takes upon itself the condition of “hell and death” (which it has), where are the believers?  The believers are on the earth, living through the Day of Judgment.  Therefore, it is as though believers are living in a place that has taken on a condition of “hell and death.”  That is very unusual, is it not?  And this really leads into some very interesting developments concerning God’s final end time plan to bring about the resurrection and the end of this world.

But, right now, let us just think about our verse in Revelation 9:1.  We saw that the Lord Jesus is typified by this star that fell from heaven; the earth is now the object of the wrath of God, and to Him, was “given the key to the bottomless pit,” and that would be the “keys to hell and to death.”   So the Lord Jesus is the only one that possesses this key; Satan has nothing to do with loosing “hell and death” upon the earth.  Satan is a fallen angel; he is a rebel himself, whom God is judging and God is not using him at all to open up the “bottomless pit.”  That is what we want to think about now: what is that “bottomless pit”? 

Let us start with that word “bottomless,” and this is a Greek word that is translated only as “bottomless” here.  There are two separate Greek words: “bottomless” is one word and “pit” is another word.   Now in other places where the Greek word translated as “bottomless” in Revelation 9:1 is used, we will find it translated as “deep” two times and it is translated as “bottomless pit” (both words) several times, but here in Revelation 9:1, it is only translated as “bottomless” and then another word is added for the word “pit.”

The word “bottomless” is Strong’s #12 and it is translated as “deep” in Luke 8:30:

And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep.

Now this is the Greek word “abussos” translated as “bottomless,” and it is the word from which we get our English word “abyss.”  This legion of demons that entered into this man was fearful that the Lord Jesus might cast them into the “abyss,” or into the “deep,” or into the “bottomless pit.”  Yet, at this time, Christ did not do that; He allowed them to enter into the herd and then that herd ran violently down into the sea; and that is a picture of what the Lord will do to the demons and He did do, very shortly thereafter, with Satan at the cross.  But it is a word, here, that on a physical level is identifying with the sea and, yet, spiritually, there is something else in view.  In Romans, chapter 10, the word is also translated as “deep,” where it says in Romans 10:6-7:

But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)

Here, this is the word “deep” and it is the same Greek word, Strong’s #12, that is translated as “bottomless” in Revelation 9:1 and “bottomless pit” in some other verses in the Book of Revelation.  Here, it is describing the Lord Jesus Christ going down…and, remember, it was said that He was “in the heart of the earth” for three days and three nights, which typified Him paying the penalty for the sins of His elect from the foundation of the world and it also typified the demonstration He performed when He entered into the human race and when He went into the Garden of Gethsemane that Thursday evening; and Thursday evening, Friday evening and Saturday evening were the “three nights” and Friday, Saturday and early Sunday morning were the “three days.”  So when it says, “Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.),” God is linking the word “deep” to the word “dead” or “death.”  That identifies also with “hell and the grave.”  So this is an important joining together of ideas, showing that this word “deep” identifies with “death.”

By the way, back in the Book of Jonah, since the Lord Jesus did refer to Jonah as being in the whale’s belly for three days and three nights and that so, too, would the Son of man be in the heart of the earth, we find in Jonah 2:1-6:

Then Jonah prayed unto JEHOVAH his God out of the fish's belly, And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto JEHOVAH, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O JEHOVAH my God.

This was when Jonah was in the midst of the whale’s belly, and notice the language that the Bible uses when it says, “out of the belly of hell cried I,” and that is joined together with the next phrase in verse 3: “For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas.”  Then we see the idea of “eternity” in verse 6: “I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever.”  This is joining the idea of the “abyss,” or the “deep,” as we read in Romans 10:7, with “hell and the grave.”  And, also, in Romans 10:7, “death” was also joined together with that idea and that is what we read of the Lord Jesus Christ: He has the “keys of hell and of death.”  He, Himself, experienced “hell and death” when He died as the Lamb, from the foundation of the world, for the sins of His people; He died and, therefore, He went into “hell and the grave,” and then He arose again from the dead and “was declared to be the Son of God” via the resurrection from the dead (and that was also from the foundation of the world).  And since He was declared to be the Son through the resurrection from the dead, then as the Son, He created this world and the universe.  So the Lord Jesus Christ has personal experience with the “deep” or with the “bottomless pit.”

That “bottomless pit” comes into view again in the Book of Revelation, in Revelation, chapter 20.  Here, it is found twice.  This is, again, Strong’s #12 and it is only translated as “bottomless” in our verse in Revelation 9:1, but here in Revelation 20, in verses 1 and 3, that one Greek word is translated as two English words: “bottomless pit.”  It says in Revelation 20:1:

And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.

Now who would that be?  It is the Lord Jesus Christ and Revelation 3:7 and Revelation 1:18 confirm that – there is no question about it.  The Lord Jesus is the angel coming down from heaven, just as He is typified as a star coming down from heaven in Revelation 8 and Revelation 9.  It goes on say in Revelation 20:1-2:

…, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon…

This means that Christ “arrested” Satan or stopped him from performing his activities without restraint, which he had been able to do prior to this without certain restraints.

…And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,

Here is a reference to what happened to Satan at the cross and a little bit later, we are going to think about why this happened at the cross, but right now it is enough for us to know that this is a reference to the binding of Satan at the cross because he was defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ; and now God had a plan to evangelize the world and to use the churches to reach many more people of the nations through the Gospel going out through the churches into all the world.  In order to accomplish this, God’s plan included the binding of Satan to prevent him from stopping the plan of God. 

Of course, Satan would continue to exist; he would continue to go about as a roaring lion; he would continue to infiltrate the churches and turn some of them into the synagogues of Satan.  He would be very active in that way, sowing tares amongst the wheat, but this binding meant that He could not stop the spread of the Gospel as he was previously able to do and he could not hinder God from accomplishing His purpose in saving the “firstfruits” or the “144,000.”  So Satan was limited now in his activities for “a thousand years.”  It was not a literal thousand years.  We know that. 

You know, some people say, “Well, it was not until after May 21, 2011, that you started to say it was a spiritual judgment.  You were not saying that before then.”  That is because we did not have that information before; we did not realize it.  Likewise, if we were living at the time from 33 A.D. to 1033 A.D. and we had read this verse that Satan would be bound for a thousand years, you had better believe that we would have been on guard, watching around the year 1033 A.D., looking for the loosing of Satan.  But nothing would have happened.  Nothing would be different than 1032 A.D. or one hundred years before that.  Nothing happened at all and that taught the believers, over the course of history, that this “thousand years” could not be a literal thousand years; it must be a figurative period of time. 

So there is nothing wrong with learning things “after the fact.”  Sometimes we cannot help it.  We are finite creatures; we have feet of clay.  It sometimes takes going past a certain point, in order to come to a better understanding; and God just factors all those things into His plan of revealing truth to His people.  So after the literal “thousand years” has come and gone, there is no other solution but a “figurative” or “spiritual” representation of a “thousand years.”  

Then when we look at how God uses the figure of a “thousand” or “hundred” or “ten” or “ten thousand” in the Bible, we find He uses it to represent the completeness of whatever is in view.  Therefore, this is referring to the complete binding of Satan during the New Testament church age and that actually turned out to be 1,955 years (or almost 2,000 years).  Yet, God speaks of it as “a thousand years.” 

So the angel, or messenger, that came down from heaven, “having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand,” laid hold on the dragon and bound him “a thousand years,” and then it says in Revelation 20:3:

And cast him into the bottomless pit…

And that is the Greek word “abussos,” and it is our word in Revelation 9:1.  Then it goes on to say in Revelation 20:3:

And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.

So, Christ, who has the key and opens and no man can shut and shuts and no man can open, took hold of Satan at the cross in 33 A.D. and “cast him into the bottomless pit.”  Of course, as mentioned earlier, Satan continued to go around the earth as a roaring lion; he was not removed into a place somewhere; it had nothing to do with a place, but it was a “spiritual condition” that had changed, not his physical location.  The Bible is very clear that Satan continued to roam the earth and was never put in some place called “Hell,” or anything like that.  But, rather, a condition prevailed over him that God spoke of as being as though he were in a “bottomless pit” and shut up; it was as if this “chain” that the Lord Jesus Christ has here was wrapped about Satan, constraining him and holding him fast and he could not get free.  He was a prisoner and he would remain so for “a thousand years,” the 1,955 years of the church age, which ended in May 1988 A.D.  Then he must be “loosed for a little season” and that “little season” is a reference to the Great Tribulation period.  We find it says in Revelation 11:6-7:

These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.

(And this is speaking of the “two witnesses.”)

And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.

Notice that the testimony of the two witnesses concludes exactly at the point when Satan’s binding of “a thousand years” concludes; he is bound for a thousand years and then he must be loosed for a little season and in Revelation 7, we see his ascension out of the “bottomless pit” and he, immediately, goes after the “two witnesses,” or the witness of the Word of God within the churches and congregations of the world.  But, now, it is God’s plan to allow Satan victory and he is victorious over them, so he makes war against them, overcomes them and kills them.  That is speaking, again, of the witness of “the law and the prophets,” or the Word of God within the congregations.  The Holy Spirit left the churches and this allowed Satan to win and now he is the “man of sin” that has taken his seat in the temple.  This is the point of Satan’s ascending.

You know, as people try to make this apply to May 21, 2011, they are way off course because this language is speaking of the beginning of the Great Tribulation; it is speaking of a time when Satan is victorious and that is because God allowed him to be; it is a time when the true believers are defeated and the witness of the Word of God is defeated because God desired for this to happen within His plan.  To apply this to May 21, 2011 is just totally incorrect. 

May 21, 2011 was not a day of victory for Satan; it was not a time of defeat for the believers or for the Word of God.  Actually, those things are reversed.  May 21, 2011, at the conclusion of the Great Tribulation, is when Satan’s period of ruling and reigning in the congregations came to an end and he was put down; God has concluded His salvation program and saved the last of His elect and He won the greatest of victories over the kingdom of Satan. 

So these verses in Revelation 11 have nothing to with a defeat for the kingdom of God or for the believers on May 21, 2011 and people continue to misapply these verses because of “outward” things and the way they “felt” on May 21, 2011 and the way people looked at them and they thought, “Oh, this means our witness is dead.”  This has nothing to do with it.  This is speaking of the death of the “two witnesses” in 1988, the “law and the prophets,” and the ministry of the Gospel within the churches and congregations, and only to that.  It does not make any reference, nor does it have anything to do with, May 21, 2011.

Well, we see here, in Revelation 11, that Satan ascends; and in order for him to ascend, Jesus had to open up the pit.  He is the one that cast Satan into the pit; He is the one that shut him up and no man could open.  Therefore, as the Bible says, after the “thousand years” was fulfilled, then he must be “loosed for a little season,” which means that Christ, again, returns and, as it were, put the key in the lock and lest him go free; and he went immediately after the people of God; that is what Satan “naturally” does. 

So Satan himself did not have the key, but Christ utilized the key, and as the Lord Jesus opened the pit and cast him in and shut it up, so, too, He also opened the pit to release him.  Christ is the one with the key, and no one else.

We will continue to look at these interesting things and see how it relates to what we are reading in Revelation 9, in our next Bible study.