But the rest of the people, the ones not killed in these plagues, certainly did not repent from the works of their hands, so that they will not worship the demons and the idols: the gold ones and the silver ones and the copper ones and the stone ones and the wooden ones, all these not able to see nor to hear nor to walk around.
And they did not repent from their homicides, nor from their drugs or sorceries, nor from their porn, nor from their robberies.
Revelation 9:20-21
As I read through these last two verses of Chapter Nine, I wanted to understand the “why.” Why did they not repent?
And as I mulled over that question, I began to see something interesting. Look at verse 20, the first line (it is all one sentence in Greek, too).
Two Thirds of All People Survived
One third of earth’s inhabitants died from the increasingly bizarre and horrific plagues that came with each angel’s trumpet blast. But here’s the kicker—two thirds did not!
Two thirds of the world’s population survived five months of demonic torture (or perhaps the Spirit’s convicting power), and hordes of frightening creatures bent on their destruction. Ask any survivor what something like this might do to a person.
- Re-evaluate life philosophies, values, and priorities.
- Process the suffering and see what wisdom can be gleaned.
- Become awakened and alert to the world around, not only to reality, but what lies beneath reality.
- Choose relationships carefully, looking for integrity, trustworthiness, faithfulness, goodness, and love.
Certainly, survivors are also often traumatized and scarred by their experiences, and John’s description of each of his trumpet visions is profoundly disturbing, to say the least. Survivors from such a holocaust would surely be shattered.
The Survivors Did Not Repent
By using the word “repent,” John implied these people understood the connection between their worship of their own images and the demonic power that fueled it, and the time of cataclysmic adversity and misery they had just endured.
The painful conviction of their wrongful allegiance to dark spiritual powers and their own manufacture had no effect.
In this tournament of wills, in this battle of plagues, once again pertinacious human will refused to bend to the indomitable will of God. It is Pharaoh and God, all over again.
Why would God continue this contest? Why steadily increase the heat and pain when the Pharaohs of this world will never, ever, ever repent?
Perhaps one reason is that all may see—all the angelic host, all those who do put their faith in God through Christ, all the spiritual realm which has sided with Satan, and all humankind which has also thrown its lot in with them—that God’s desire is for none to perish. All are given far more than enough opportunities to turn to the Lord for redemption and restoration.
This, too, is the Lord lavishing love.
The Power of Pain
It may not seem so. How in the world could what had just happened in the last couple of chapters be construed in any way as an expression of love? Most would say it is not. Most would say it is an expression of God’s judgement against sin. But if that were the case, then all would have died. Instead, most survived so that they might turn away from their attachment to the very forces of evil, and empty works of their own hands that were slowly destroying them.
What if we could see the cancer that eats away at our insides, or the plaque building up in our brains or veins? What if we could feel the agony of a dying liver? What if we could watch our hearts leaking? Would that help us repent of unhealthful lifestyles?
In a sense, God converted the hidden decay and erosion to humankind’s souls by these things, into physical pain and horror. It is the last-recourse effort to shake awake an otherwise dying world.
The Idols of Their Own Making
A great deal of care went into explaining the people’s idolatry. Did you notice that? John could so easily have written, “They emphatically did not repent of their demon and idol worship.” Instead, John leaned into something a number of the prophets before him had leaned into. These idols were completely inert, the impotent manufacture of human hands.
The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
Psalm 135:15-18 (NRSV)
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but they do not speak;
they have eyes, but they do not see;
they have ears, but they do not hear,
a nose, but there is no breath in their mouths.
Those who make them
and all who trust them
shall become like them.
Though they were made of precious metals, select stone, and valuable wood – all raw resources with intrinsic value – human rendering converted these resources into completely useless items.
Oh there was a power source. A dark force of evil, focused on humanity’s corruption and collapse, pretended to present itself as being at humankind’s service. Incantations, potions, ever more shadowy rituals, all human efforts to corral and command spiritual power appeared to be effectual.
“The works of their hands,” that is the key phrase.
It signifies people suffering under the sorely misguided notion that we can rule the spiritual realm as well as our own physical realm. In John’s vision, he saw the survivors of God’s trumpets—the soot scattered from the heavenly altar of incense—double down on their own power. They seemed to think they would beat God in this battle of wills, they would conjure up their demons and they would continue to serve the works of their own hands.
And what were those works? The precious resources of earth, nonrenewable resources, fashioned into useless things that would never produce what humans want from them. Things that can never empower, never enable, never bring the eternal and infinite goodness and life that people long for. This frantic manufacturing, which produces waste and emptiness, plays perfectly into evil’s reprobate objectives for humanity and the beautiful world God created for us.
Addictions: Misplaced Attachment
Now look at that second line, the last sentence of Revelation 9, “And they did not repent from their homicides, nor from their drugs or sorceries, nor from their porn, nor from their robberies.”
Here are those words in Greek:
Φόνος | phonos means bloodshed and its adjacent words of murder, homicide, and slaughter.
Φάρμακον | pharmakon, the word we get “pharmacy” from, denotes anything of a chemical nature, such as a medicine, potions, poison, drugs, or even dyes or paints. Pharmakon is also associated with enchantments and spells, and it is easy to see why. Drugs would create an altered state of mind, and poisons—especially subtle ones—would bring about otherwise mysterious death.
Πορνεία | porneia, the word we get “pornography” from, has a necessarily sordid sense to it, often associated with brothels and prostitution (both male and female). Technically, though, porneia encompasses all forms of illicit sexual encounters, a definition that has changed from era to era and culture to culture.
Κλέμμα | klemma refers to what is stolen, or the equivalent, so fenced goods, fraud, and even deceptions used as stratagems of war (perhaps with the idea of stealing victory from the foe). It is not the root word for kleptomania, though, which connotes a compulsion to steal, rather than klemma which means a choice to steal.
Each of these evils represents the God-given longing for acceptance, love, and belonging being twisted into a lust that becomes an addiction. Why addiction? Because no matter the cost, the one caught in its grip does not let go, let alone wrench free.
Only a higher power, such as the divine power of God, can liberate the addict once ensnared. And that is the rub for the people John described. They presumably knew God was giving them a very painful opportunity to be bought back from their enslavement to each of these things. God would redeem them from their misplaced attachment to the works of their hands, and the spiritual forces that seemed to be in their power.
But they would not have it.
