Who Is Apollyon? The Destroyer in Revelation 9
In Revelation 9, John identifies Apollyon as the angel who rules over the terrifying beings released from the bottomless pit. He tells us this angel’s name and what he does, but he does not explain his background. I think we need to resist the temptation to fill in those gaps. We can understand Apollyon’s place in the passage without inventing a biography for him, and the judgment itself deserves more attention than some of the speculation surrounding his identity.
The Fifth Trumpet and the Abyss
The fifth trumpet sounds during the future seven-year Tribulation. To understand where it falls in Revelation, we need to follow the judgments that precede it. In chapter 6, the Lamb begins opening the seals of the scroll, and the opening of the seventh seal leads into the trumpet judgments. The first four trumpets strike parts of the earth and sea, the fresh water, and the heavenly lights. An angel then announces three coming woes. The fifth trumpet begins those woes with the opening of the bottomless pit, from which smoke rises and darkens the sun and air. The smoke recalls the plagues and other Old Testament descriptions of judgment.
Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit.
John describes the star as already fallen when he sees it; he is not watching it fall at that moment. The key is given “to him,” so we are dealing with someone who can receive a key and use it, rather than a piece of rock falling from the sky. Scripture sometimes uses stars to represent angelic beings, which helps explain the description. John does not name this figure, however, and we cannot identify him as Satan or Apollyon merely because he is associated with the abyss.
Whoever this figure is, he has to receive the key before he can open the pit. He is allowed to release its inhabitants as part of this judgment; he has not forced his way in. Earlier in Revelation, Christ has already declared His authority over death:
I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.
The One who conquered death has not been overpowered by the beings described in chapter 9. The pit opens because God permits this judgment on a rebellious world, and releasing its inhabitants does not put them beyond His authority. Jesus’ dealings with demons show what His authority over these beings involves.
The bottomless pit, also called the abyss, is a place of confinement. During Jesus’ earthly ministry, the demons in the afflicted man understood that He could send them there. They pleaded with Him:
And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss.
The demons had been tormenting a man, but they knew they could not prevent Jesus from imprisoning them if He gave that command. Their pleading acknowledged His authority over them. Revelation 20 describes a future confinement in the abyss, after Christ returns, and this time the prisoner is Satan himself:
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years;
Satan will be confined there throughout Christ’s thousand-year reign, unable to deceive the nations. Since an angel can bind him and put him in that prison, we should not imagine that Satan governs the abyss independently of God. The beings released at the fifth trumpet are no more free to disregard God’s commands than Satan will be free to escape his imprisonment.
The Horde and Its Angelic King
John describes the released beings as resembling locusts, but their instructions are the opposite of what we would expect from a locust infestation. They must leave the vegetation alone and direct their attack toward particular people:
They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And they were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months.
I understand these to be supernatural beings, not ordinary insects. They are permitted to inflict dreadful suffering, yet they cannot attack indiscriminately or kill the people they torment. John goes on to explain in Revelation 9:6 that people will want to die but will be unable to do so. We should not let the restrictions make us underestimate that agony. The torment is severe, even though God limits whom these beings may harm and ends their assignment after five months.
The reference to God’s seal takes us back to Revelation 7, where 144,000 servants from Israel’s tribes are sealed before the destructive winds are released. The seal identifies them as His own, and Revelation 9 expressly exempts the sealed from this torment. That does not mean the 144,000 are the only people saved during the Tribulation. Revelation 7 also describes a great multitude from every nation coming out of that terrible period.
As John describes the horde in Revelation 9:7–10, he repeatedly uses the word like. The beings resemble horses prepared for battle, but their faces look human. Their hair is like women’s hair, and their teeth are like lions’ teeth. They wear what look like iron breastplates, and their wings sound like chariots charging into battle. He is using comparisons to describe what he sees, and we need to keep those comparisons together. Selecting one feature because it resembles a modern weapon does not establish that John was describing that machine.
After describing the beings and their attack, John identifies their ruler:
And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon.
The Hebrew name Abaddon carries the sense of destruction or ruin. In the Old Testament, the word appears alongside references to death and the grave. Its Greek counterpart, Apollyon, means destroyer. Both names suit the destructive role of the angelic king John identifies over the horde.
The word angel means messenger; it does not, by itself, tell us whether a being is faithful or fallen. John identifies Apollyon as the angel of the abyss without explaining how he came to occupy that position. We also need to distinguish ruling the horde from opening the pit. John names Apollyon as king over the released beings, but he leaves the key-holder unnamed and does not tell us that Apollyon performed that earlier task.
I do not identify Apollyon with Satan either. When Revelation identifies Satan in the later account of his imprisonment, John is explicit:
He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years;
Here we have the dragon, the serpent of old, the Devil, and Satan all identified as the same being. John makes no corresponding identification between Satan and Apollyon in chapter 9. A connection with the abyss is not enough to supply one.
Apollyon should not be confused with the Angel of the LORD, whom I understand in the relevant Old Testament passages to be the Son appearing before He became human. Such an appearance is called a Christophany. The designation “angel of the bottomless pit” is not the Old Testament title “Angel of the LORD,” and John does not identify Apollyon as the preincarnate Son. The study on angels examines these different beings and their roles more fully.
The Biblical Destroyer Pattern
Other passages describe angels carrying out destruction under God’s direction. Comparing them with Revelation 9 helps us understand how He limits judgment, but doing similar work does not establish that these angels are all Apollyon. At Passover, for example, the LORD protected the houses marked with blood by refusing the destroyer entry:
For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you.
The destroyer could not enter a house the LORD had determined to spare. Its occupants had been instructed to apply the blood to the doorposts and lintel, and God honored His promise to them. Psalm 78 later recalls the judgments on Egypt in these words:
He cast on them the fierceness of His anger, Wrath, indignation, and trouble, By sending angels of destruction among them.
The psalm describes the plagues as expressions of God’s anger against Egypt, with these angels acting under His direction. His authority to halt destruction is just as clear in the judgment that followed David’s sinful census. When the angel stretched out His hand over Jerusalem, the LORD intervened:
And when the angel stretched out His hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented from the destruction, and said to the angel who was destroying the people, "It is enough; now restrain your hand."
The Angel of the LORD restrained His hand at the LORD’s command. The remainder of 2 Samuel 24:16 identifies Him by that title, and I understand Him to be the preincarnate Son, as in the Old Testament appearances discussed earlier. His work of destruction does not make Him Apollyon. We can compare the way God directs and restrains judgment in these passages without assuming He always sends the same angel to carry it out.
The restrictions in Revelation 9 likewise show God determining whom the horde may harm, what it must leave alone, and how long its attack may last. Apollyon rules these beings, but he cannot give them permission to disobey God. This judgment belongs within the larger sequence in which the Lamb opens the seals, the trumpets sound, and the bowls are poured out under divine direction. Christ will defeat the beast at His return; Satan’s confinement, eventual release, and final judgment will also occur at the appointed times. The study on The End Times Timeline follows those events in order.
We should not find these judgments less serious because God controls them. They are deliberate judgments against people who persist in idolatry, blasphemy, bloodshed, and deception. Later in the same chapter, Revelation 9:20–21 describes the survivors of the plagues still refusing to repent. Severe suffering does not automatically make someone willing to turn from sin; people can endure terrible consequences and remain defiant toward God. That is a sobering warning for anyone who assumes there will always be another opportunity to put things right.
The Gospel Warning in the Destroyer Pattern
The warning about repentance brings us back to the provision God made at Passover. He spared the households marked with the lamb’s blood because He honored His promise, not because the people inside were naturally better than the Egyptians. God provided a substitute and instructed the families to apply its blood to their doorways. Having obeyed, they could trust His promise when the destroyer passed through Egypt. Their deliverance helps us understand why sinners need Christ.
Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He was without sin and willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for us. Wicked people inflicted the torture and death He endured while bearing our sins in His innocent body and shedding His blood for us. His saving sacrifice was completed through His blood and death; after His burial, He rose bodily from the grave. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus.
Christ died for the sins of the whole world, so the offer of salvation is genuine for every person. People can resist God’s grace and reject the Savior, but everyone who repents and believes in Him is forgiven and born again. If I can explain every detail of the fifth trumpet but have never received Christ, my knowledge of prophecy will not save me. I need the forgiveness He provides just as much as the person who has never opened the book of Revelation.
Those who belong to Christ also need to understand the protection promised in Revelation 9. God exempts people with His seal from this particular torment. He has not promised that every believer in every age will escape suffering. Christ will gather His church before the Tribulation judgments begin, but people who come to faith during that period will face fierce persecution. They may suffer terribly without ceasing to belong to Him, and their enemies cannot overturn His promise to raise them from the dead.
Everyone who is genuinely born again becomes a new creation. The Holy Spirit lives in that person and seals him, so his eternal life is secure in Christ. Obedience is evidence of that new life, not a way to earn or keep salvation. A believer still needs correction and growth, but that is different from refusing to turn from sin. If I refuse and merely call myself a Christian, my claim gives me no reason to assume that I have been born again. Our assurance rests in Christ and gives us reason to obey Him through hardship, rather than assume faith will keep trouble away.
Revelation also describes what awaits those who finally reject Christ. After the Tribulation and the thousand-year reign, the remaining dead will be raised to stand before the Great White Throne. There John records:
And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
Every person begins written in the Book of Life. Those who finally reject the Messiah are blotted out, while believers remain because their sins have been blotted out through Christ’s blood. The other books opened at this judgment record people’s deeds and sins. Anyone absent from the Book of Life is cast into the lake of fire, which Revelation calls the second death. For human beings, this is the final, irreversible destruction of body and soul. There will be no further opportunity for salvation, and it is not a life of endless conscious torment.
My Final Thoughts
I understand Apollyon to be the angelic king John names over the horde from the abyss. I do not identify him as Satan, the unnamed key-holder, or the Angel of the LORD. John gives us enough to understand his destructive assignment without answering every question about his background. We should be willing to stop where the explanation stops instead of treating conjecture as something Scripture has established.
When I teach about these judgments, I need to remember that the people being warned are people who need the same mercy I need. There is no excuse for sounding pleased about the suffering of unbelievers or acting as though knowing prophecy makes us superior to them. God has provided forgiveness through His Son. We should speak frankly about judgment and urge people to receive Christ while they can.