Revelation 9:11Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

In His great goodness, and according to His hidden yet righteous judgment, God sent before them a messenger worthy to lead them. For by whatever a man is overcome, to that he becomes a slave.

Therefore the Apostle says that they are drawn away by the unrighteous deception of those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth for their salvation. "And for this cause God will send them a working of delusion, that they should believe a lie, that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess 2:10-12).

Thus the character of his deeds corresponds to his name: destroyer. This is the meaning of the Hebrew Abaddon and the Greek Apollyon.

From the smoke of scientific and technological progress, which darkens the sun and air to the point of ecological catastrophe, there comes forth a new techno-ideology. It is new as the well-forgotten old confusion of Babel was new.

It spreads across the whole maddened planet through the militant noise and clatter of the mass media. It exercises a harmful dominion over the minds and hearts of men for a definite time, five months.

This time is needed to prepare a generation unable to be instructed and unwilling to repent before the admonitions that are to come. Yet its destructiveness is obvious to all: to believers, who speak the language of the knowledge of God, and to pagans, who chiefly use the language of Hellenic wisdom.

"They had over them as king the angel of the abyss." The name of the ruler is given both in Hebrew and in Greek, in order to express more fully his character as destroyer.

He is also called the angel of the abyss, the messenger of the kingdom of darkness, and therefore cruel and evil.