13 The sixth Angel trumpeted. I heard a voice speaking to the sixth Angel from the horns of the Golden Altar before God: 14 "Let the Four Angels loose, the Angels confined at the great River Euphrates." 15 The Four Angels were untied and let loose, Four Angels all prepared for the exact year, month, day, and even hour when they were to kill a third of the human race. 16 The number of the army of horsemen was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard the count 17 and saw both horses and riders in my vision: fiery breastplates on the riders, lion heads on the horses breathing out fire and smoke and brimstone. 18 With these three weapons - fire and smoke and brimstone - they killed a third of the human race. 19 The horses killed with their mouths and tails; their serpentlike tails also had heads that wreaked havoc. 20 The remaining men and women who weren't killed by these weapons went on their merry way - didn't change their way of life, didn't quit worshiping demons, didn't quit centering their lives around lumps of gold and silver and brass, hunks of stone and wood that couldn't see or hear or move. 21 There wasn't a sign of a change of heart. They plunged right on in their murderous, occult, promiscuous, and thieving ways.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Revelation 9:13-21
Commentary on Revelation 9:13-21
(Read Revelation 9:13-21)
The sixth angel sounded, and here the power of the Turks seems the subject. Their time is limited. They not only slew in war, but brought a poisonous and ruinous religion. The antichristian generation repented not under these dreadful judgments. From this sixth trumpet learn that God can make one enemy of the church a scourge and a plague to another. The idolatry in the remains of the eastern church and elsewhere, and the sins of professed Christians, render this prophecy and its fulfilment more wonderful. And the attentive reader of Scripture and history, may find his faith and hope strengthened by events, which in other respects fill his heart with anguish and his eyes with tears, while he sees that men who escape these plagues, repent not of their evil works, but go on with idolatries, wickedness, and cruelty, till wrath comes upon them to the utmost.