The loosing must not be confounded with the preparation of the four angels. If they had been “prepared for the hour and day and month and year,” we might have been led to look for their contemporaneous existence during all that period; which would have made any effort at exposition a hopeless failure.
As we have seen, the two periods of five symbolic months of years pertaining to the fifth trumpet, terminated with the divesting of the Caliph-Angel of the Abyss of all temporal power, which had enabled him to “torment” and “injure,” or destroy, the catholic worshippers of the daemonials and idols, for 300 years. Since that notable event, A.D.
The All Seeing Spirit, in ch. 9:20, intimates that the “plagues” of the first and second woes were designed to abolish, or punish, the worshipping of daemonial things, and idols or images.
In the English Version of Apoc. 9:20, ta daimonia, in very improperly rendered “devils.” In my translation I have merely transferred it from the Greek, leaving it for explanation as a symbol.
In the twentieth verse, the Spirit refers to hoi loipoi ton anthropon, “the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues.” The to triton ton anthropon, the third of the men were killed by the plagues.
It will be in place here to remark, that “these plagues,” as they are fitly termed in verse 20, will be terribly operative in the destroying of the body of the beast, and in the binding of the dragon, and casting of him into the abyss (Dan. 7:11).
“Fire, hyacinth, and sulphur, ” and “fire, smoke, and sulphur, ” are symbolical of gunpowder, which is composed of charcoal, saltpetre, and sulphur.
But what he saw and smelt were not mere holiday salutes. He saw and smelt them in the battles which extinguished the political existence of “the third” — to triton. There were not only color and smell, but death also, in “the fire, and the smoke, and the sulphur;” for “by these three,” saith he: “were killed the third of the men by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the sulphur bursting forth out of their mouths.
But, there were characteristics pertaining to the armed equestrian myriads seen in vision by John, that Habakkuk did not see in the Chaldean hosts.
“And thus I saw the horses in the vision; and those sitting upon them.” The description which follows exemplifies the “thus.” He saw the equestrian millions in vision. What a host to contemplate! He beheld them embattled, and vomiting forth fire and smoke, and deadly missiles.