Apollyon and the Abyss

0:00There's a popular teaching in Christianity that there are only three named angels in the Bible, and I've heard this a million times. I've probably even taught it before myself. Gotquestions.org states, only three angels are identified by name in the Bible, Gabriel, Michael the Orchangel, and Lucifer the Fallen Angel. Now, unfortunately, this common belief is wrong. The Book of Revelation blows this idea apart, especially if we're including fallen angels. Revelation 9 tells us about a swarm of freaky locusts that are going to invade the earth in the end times, and it includes this detail. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, his name in Hebrew is Abadon, and in Greek, he is called Apollion. So who is this guy Apollion? Why does he have two names? And what is the bottomless pit? I find this to be weird, and I'd like to explore why it's in the Bible. And our study today will answer all of those questions, who Apollion is, where he's from, and believe it or not,

1:03how learning about this location of the Abyss will bring you to a deeper understanding of so many other passages in Scripture and even the Gospel itself. So if that sounds like a good time to you, turn with me to Revelation 9, and let's get weird. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore Scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing, or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we're going to be talking about the underworld and a very important underworld spirit. So our Bible has been greatly de-mythologized by modern scholars, and I would even say our Bible translators. I talked about this a little bit last week. I was bringing up Tardarus, and how almost every Bible translation will translate this word as hell. But that is not accurate. Tardarus is the Abyss, and that is distinct from hell. So in Greek mythology, Tardarus is a word for the deepest part of the underworld realm. Tardarus

2:08is the basement of the underworld. And Tardarus is where these ancient beings, who were called the Titans, are locked away. The Greek poet Homer said that Tardarus is as far below Hades as the Earth is below the sky. Now I wouldn't say that we should necessarily study Greek mythology as a way to learn spiritual truth. However, understanding the Greek culture is going to help you understand your Bible, especially your New Testament, since it was written in Greek. There are a number of parallels between Greek mythology and the Bible. For example, the Greeks believed that the Titans were locked away in Tardarus. The Book of Enoch and the Bible say that the Watchers are locked away in Tardarus. But probably the distance itself from Greek mythology, Bible translators do not translate Tardarus as Tardarus in 2nd Peter 2.4. They call it hell, and that's why I say your Bible. This is one example of a place that's been demythologized. One more interesting thing in Greek mythology is that Tardarus is both the name for a location and an entity. There is a spiritual

3:13location and a spiritual being named Tardarus. Let me quote here from Wikipedia's page on Tardarus. Tardarus appears in early Greek cosmology, such as in Hisad's Theogony, where a personified Tardarus is described as one of the earliest beings to exist, alongside chaos and Gaia. Gaia is Earth. Tardarus was both a person and a location in the Greek. Keep that in mind as we move forward. Again, I'm not building any doctrine today on Greek mythology, but I want to take some of these ideas and I want to see if there's a parallel for them in the Bible, because that will actually help us to understand our Bible's better. The Book of Enoch also makes it clear that Tardarus is an abyss, and he describes it as a bottomless pit. That's why your Bible will sometimes translate the Hebrew word sheol as the pit, and the Greek word abusas, it'll translate it as the bottomless pit or the abyss. Well, the Bible translators are rightly understanding what this is

4:16when they describe it that way. The abyss and Tardarus are the same. In Revelation 9 teaches us that there is an angel in charge of this pit, an angel with a name. Now, by the way, I've got no axe to grind with gotquestions.org. I think it's a fantastic website, and I generally say it's reliable, but it is demonstrably wrong here about how there's only three named angels in scripture. There is also this guy who is named Abaddon, a.k.a. Apollion, and there's some more that I want to tell you about next week. So anyway, what I want to do today is explore Revelation 9 with you all, and let's see what we can learn further about this abyss as well as the angel in charge of it. So in Revelation 9, this is discussing the end of the world, okay? Judgments are falling upon the earth. This is apocalyptic type of stuff. And I'm not trying to push a particular like in times eschotology on you today. I'm going to try to keep this as general as I can. But in Revelation, what you do observe is there will be some kind of action that takes place in heaven, and then that

5:18will correlate with a problem that is unleashed like a plague down on the earth. And so in Revelation 9, we are in the middle of something that's called the trumpet judgments. It will say that an angel blows a trumpet, and that upon doing so, some new horror is unleashed upon mankind. And Revelation, chapter 9, it has one of the worst ones yet. Revelation 9, 1 begins, and the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. There's so much we could pick apart just in that verse alone. And we will a little bit here. So this is the fifth trumpet judgment, a star fallen from heaven to earth is shown. And the word star is a biblical code word, especially in the book of Revelation, for an angel. So this is a star that has fallen, and it could make you question, is this a good angel or a bad angel? Well, I would argue that this angel is a bad one, because the terminology of a fallen angel

6:20that implies an angel who fell from grace, much like Jesus had said about Satan. He fell like lightning from heaven. The Greek, for the word fallen right here, is in the perfect tense, and that means it's a completed action. It means he had already fallen before this chapter began. So this angel, this guy who does not like God, he's given a key to the bottomless pit. The bottomless pit here is a busos in the Greek. This is one of the nine times that the abyss is mentioned by this word of busos in the New Testament. And so it's translated in the ESV as bottomless pit. If you read that same verse in the NIV, it says the star was given to the the star was given the key to the shaft of the abyss. And so the fallen angel will open the abyss and let something out. Now, we're going to read about what that was in a second, but I just want to make some observations as we go through this chapter, okay? An observation number one today, spiritual gates can be opened

7:21with keys. All right? In the New Testament, we read about keys, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the key of David, the keys of death hell in the grave. And I've often puzzled like, what are these keys that it talks about? And the answer was maybe a little more obvious than I realized, okay? To quote pirates of the Caribbean to gentlemen, what do keys do? Keys unlock things. Okay, I had to play the clip because that line just always cracks me up, okay? Keys unlock things, spiritual keys unlock spiritual doors, spiritual gates. And to be given a key is to be given authority, okay? The Greek word for key is clase, the definition of clase on Bible study tools.com. It says a key since the keeper of the keys has the power to open and to shed. And so I would say that we Christians that we since we've been given the keys of the kingdom, we have an authority and a duty to one, bring people to heaven and two, bring heaven to earth.

8:27And so to possess a key gives you authority. This fallen angel as a judgment on mankind, he has given authority to open up a portal to the abyss. And this is something really terrifying. Let me read what happens next. Revelation 9, 2, 3, 4. He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. And so these are locusts, but they aren't literal locusts, okay? The chapter goes on to describe them and they're really not like any creature that we have on earth right now. And they're not going to be some kind of aircraft or technology, something that's going to be invented by mankind, okay? These are spiritual beings, but they're like locusts with scorpion tails. These are monsters from the underworld, all right? If I can do another movie quote, if you've seen Thor Ragnarok, you might remember

9:29a character named Korg, okay? Korg cracks me up just about everything that he says. These locusts are not real locusts, but more like freaky locusts. So apparently the abyss has these freaky locusts all locked up inside. And it's interesting just as Christians should bring heaven to earth, the fallen angels they want to bring the underworld to earth. And most Bible studies on this chapter, they'll really focus on the locust themselves and how these locusts are given power to torment mankind for a period of five months. This is the end times, okay? I'm going to skip all that this time because I'm more focused, I'm more interested today in someone else who shows up at the end of this section. So Revelation 9 verses 10 and 11, it says they have tails instincts like scorpions and their power to hurt people for five

10:30months is in their tails. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit or the abyss, his name and Hebrew is Abadon and in Greek he is called a polyon. And so right here we see that the freaky locusts have a freaky leader. He is called their king and he's also described as the angel of the abyss. Now is he the same angel who was given a key to open the abyss at the beginning of the chapter? It's possible, but I don't think so. The angel in Revelation 9-1 was fallen from heaven to earth. He went from being a heavenly realm spirit to an earthly realm spirit. And that's the same trajectory that all the fallen angels take. The angel in Revelation 9-11 is of the abyss. And so that would make him an underworld realm spirit. And so I don't think that a polyon unleashes the abyss, I think a polyon himself is unleashed by this fallen angel. And truly this is all happening in God's sovereignty. Okay, God is allowing these horrible things to take place

11:33across the earth to afflict mankind and to try to get as many people as possible to repent before the literal end of the world takes place. So observation number two today. All right, observation number two, the abyss has a principality in charge. And we're given his name. In fact, he has two names or rather we're told what his name is in two different languages. So in Hebrew, Abadon, in Greek, a polyon. Observation number three, principalities can be known by different names in different languages. So his name in Greek is a polyon. This is the only place in the Bible. We see the word a polyon, but reportedly it means destroyer. So Greek is the language and the culture of the New Testament era. As we mentioned before, Greek mythology, this idea of like a whole wide pantheon of gods and goddesses. This was pretty popular in those days. Is there a parallel here

12:33between what Greek mythology says and what the Bible says? Well, Greek mythology doesn't have an a polyon. It does have an Apollo. Apollo was the son of Zeus in Greek mythology. He's a very important being in that whole religion. Is a polyon meant to be the same as Apollo? There are actually some manuscripts of revelation that do read Apollo right here instead of a polyon. So it's possible, but I would say this. I think it's also likely that a polyon is the same being as Tartarus in Greek mythology. And so to explain that, let's delve into this word Abadon. So Abadon is the Hebrew name for the angel of the Abyss. And if that word sounds a little familiar, it actually does come up a few times in the Old Testament. There's six times to be exact. So with the one reference there in the New Testament, that's seven times total in your Bible, that you see the word Abadon. So when Abadon shows up in the Old Testament, usually he sounds like a location

13:38rather than an entity. All right, we'll talk about that, but here's the places where we read about Abadon. Job 266. Sheol is naked before God, and Abadon has no covering. So everything in the underworld is laid bare before God. He sees all that goes on down there. And a similar thing is said in Proverbs 1511, sheol and Abadon light open before the Lord, how much more the hearts of the children of man. Another place is Job 31. Job is saying that if he had committed some grievous sin, something like adultery or murder, then he might have deserved everything that happened to him. He says in Job 31 versus 11 and 12, for that would be a heinous crime. That would be an iniquity to be punished by the judges. For that would be a fire that consumes as far as Abadon, and it would burn to the root all my increase. So he's saying if I had been like a murderer, I would have deserved to lose everything from where I was at the top, all the way down to Abadon, the lowest part of the underworld.

14:38Psalm 88, 10 and 11, it says, do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you, is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abadon? So again, once again, Abadon is spoken of as a place, it's a location in the realm of the dead. And Proverbs 2720 is one more place where it speaks of Abadon as a place that never gets filled up. It says, sheol and Abadon are never satisfied and never satisfied are the eyes of man. So that was five of the references to Abadon in the Old Testament, speaking of it as a location in the underworld. But we also get this in Job 28 verses 23-22. From where then does wisdom come and where is the place of understanding? It is concealed from the eyes of all living and concealed from the birds of the air. Abadon and death say we have heard a rumor of it with our ears. So right here we have Abadon personified.

15:41Abadon is spoken of as an entity and death as well. That verse right there has death with a capital D. And I'm going to talk more about death with a capital D next week. So is all of this just poetic language or is there really an entity named Abadon? Well, we know from the book of Revelation that yes, there is an angel in charge of the abyss and his name is Abadon. So scripture seven references to Abadon, five of them reference it as a place and two of them as a spiritual being. So observation number four today. Locations that are under a principalities control can be identified by that principalities name. And that's called an eponym and eponym. This is when one thing is named after another thing. And so we could say that the principality of Abadon he is eponymous with the domain that he governs. And you kind of see this in the Bible frequently like when it speaks of Jacob

16:44or Israel. Sometimes it's used to speak of the person who fathered the tribes. Sometimes it's used to speak of the nation itself. The land of Edom that's often times called Esau. Okay, talking sometimes the word Esau means the person, the brother of Jacob. Sometimes it means the whole nation that came from him. So you learned something new today, the word eponym. Actually, we've learned four new things today. So let me recap them. Observation number one, spiritual gates can be opened with keys. Observation number two, the abyss has a principality in charge. Observation number three, principalities can be known by different names in different languages. And observation number four, locations under a principality's control can be identified by that principality's name. Okay, so those are four very clear, very simple extrapolations from the text of scripture. Now let's deal with this question. What is in the abyss? Well, other than the ruling angel in

17:49charge, we do see these locust light creatures with the scorpion tails and these are unleashed on the world. Now, I want you to know you don't need to be concerned about those. Okay, that's an end times thing. We are not in the end times right now. We're not in that period that Jesus called the great tribulation. And something else that we've learned that is in the abyss are the watchers or the sons of God from Genesis six. They are chained away and locked up down there. That story is told in the book of Enoch as well as verified by scripture. Second Peter 2.4 says for if God did not spare angels when they sinned but cast them into hell or tardarus and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. We also know that after the tribulation, after Jesus returns in Revelation 19, we know that Satan will be locked away in this abyss for a thousand years. Revelation 21 and 2, it says, then I saw an angel coming down from heaven holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit in a great chain. And he seized the dragon that

18:49ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan and bound him for a thousand years. So he's not there right now. Okay, Revelation 20 is the future. I know some Christians say that it refers to modern times and they think Satan is locked up right now. But if that were the case, why would the New Testament warn us about him so often? Okay, he is not locked away. He is a very real threat. But someday he is going to be locked away. And then after a thousand years, it says he's thrown into the lake of fire. Now, something else you should know about the abyss, the Greek word abusas according to strong exhaustive concordance. The word abusas can be translated as deep or bottomless. And I believe that this region is the same thing that's referenced in the Old Testament as the deep. It comes up a lot including in the opening verses of the Bible. Genesis 1 says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep.

19:52And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. So we talked about this a few months ago when I kind of started this whole underworld series. When the earth was first formed, it was covered with waters. And these waters are the water of disorder or of chaos. So when the earth was first formed, it was disordered. The process of God's creation is God bringing order out of chaos. And so we talked about all that. And as you read Genesis 1, you read about how the earth was being formed. And the waters were collected down into this place called the sea. And the book of Revelation often uses the sea as a euphemism for the underworld. And so we spent a few episodes unpacking that just a few months ago. Now I said that the deep here is the abyss. And I think I can prove that. Okay, the word for deep in the Hebrew is to home. But in the Greek Septuagint, and that's the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, this is the version Jesus

20:54would have read. The translators use the word abusas in the place of to home. So right here, we actually have the abyss showing up in the opening verses of the Bible. Now here's just something really fascinating with that Greek mythology parallel that I mentioned before. Let me quote from that Wikipedia article once again, Tardarus appears in early Greek cosmology, such as Hisod's Theogony, where the personified Tardarus is described as one of the earliest beings to exist alongside chaos and Gaia, which is earth. Okay, so wait a minute. In Greek mythology, Tardarus is both a location and a person. Well, sounds kind of like how the Bible speaks of Abadon, right? And Greek mythology starts with three things, three three beings, Tardarus, chaos, and earth. Well, let me re-regionist this one too. Okay, the earth, right there is earth, was without

21:59form, and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep or Tardarus, the abyss. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And that's where you have chaos. And so we have all three of those elements in the opening of the Bible. Now, I am not saying Greek mythology is true. And so you can just believe anything that Greek mythology says. All right, I would say that Greek mythology mixes truth with lies because it is used to deceive people. Greek mythology, it might have some true aspects to it. Ultimately, Greek mythology is an attempt by the enemy to write his own version of history. Okay, one more thing that I want to share today. Let's talk about chaos, okay, because that's come up a few times. And a few months ago, I did an episode about the Spirit of Antichrist, which is an underworld spirit. And I taught in that episode about how I believe that Antichrist is Leviathan, which is a multi-headed sea monster that you read about in

23:03Psalm 74. And then it appears again in Revelation 13 as the beast rising out of the sea. And it's interesting that Greek mythology also has chaos as not just a concept, but as a being who was present at the origin of the world. Revelation says that the Antichrist comes from the sea. But then it actually gets even more specific than that in chapter 11, this where it talks about the two witnesses. Revelation 11, 7 says, and when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit or the abyss will make war on them and conquer them and kill them. So the beast right there is the Antichrist, but notice where he comes from. He's the beast from the abyss, okay, bottomless pit in the ESV. But just to confirm that this is the Antichrist, to what's talking about right here, we also see him described in Revelation 178. The beast that you saw was and is not and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction.

24:10Now a Bible verse can have multiple levels of meaning, okay? The beast of Revelation 17, well, that can refer to a human ruler who was thought to be dead and resurrected in a way that parodies Christ, okay? The beast could refer to the kingdom of the Antichrist like a nation that is thought dead and returns something like Babylon or Rome. And those are some typical interpretations of those words and I'm not saying that they're wrong. I'm not saying you have to throw those interpretations out. But I think there's also a spiritual level to these words where it is speaking of the Antichrist spirit who rises from the bottomless pit. And one more thing I could throw in about the Abyss, it's a description of this region that Enoch observed in his book. And I didn't include this last week. So last week's episode, we were looking at when Enoch took a tour of the underworld and he saw all these various compartments down there. Well, in chapter 21, he sees the Abyss and here is what he says about it. Enoch 21, it says in the MSV, that's the modern

25:11standard version. It says, I went to a place of chaos and there I saw something terrible, no sky above, no earth below, but an empty place, awful and terrible. And so I read that and I'm kind of like, how can it be so awful if it's empty? Okay, like I kind of like my personal space. I don't know about you. But you know, I don't quite know how to understand that line. But this is why the translators of the New Testament, they'll call it the bottomless pit because it's this place right here that has like no floor, no ceiling. And I think it's kind of a limbo. All right, it's just a place of chaos and emptiness. I think Enoch is saying it's a place with no logic to it. Not nothing makes sense here, man. Not anything that doesn't make sense is that nothing makes sense. And it horrified Enoch to look upon it. And it's where a number of spirits are locked away. And sometimes released or someday will be released as a judgment on mankind. So the abyss,

26:12Tardarus, the bottomless pit, the deep Abaddon, these are all names for the same place. A place where the chaos waters were gathered together under the earth that creation, the place where Apollion and the Antichrist will emerge from in the end times. A place where the demons mentioned not even they wanted to go when they met Jesus and Luke 831. It says, and they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss. And I'm going to stop there, guys. This has been like an intense lesson. I know it's probably felt like a fire hose of information. We covered a lot today, but I hope that it really brought together a lot of threads for you as you learned more about Apollion and the Abyss. I hope I've re-mythologized your Bible just a bit for you. And next time on the podcast, we're going to do that some more. So I want to talk about another couple of underworld spirits who are discussed in the book of Revelation as well as in Greek mythology. And so let's talk about that

27:17next time. As next time we will wrap up this underworld series on the podcast, make sure you're subscribed if you're not already. And in closing, I just want to talk about one last piece in the New Testament that we read about, sorry, one last place in the New Testament where we read about the abyss, something I haven't covered yet in this episode, but this one other place comes up in Romans. Okay. So Romans 10 versus 5 through 9. It says, for Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law that the person who does the commitment shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven that is to bring Christ down or who will descend into the abyss that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart that is the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Now guys, I got to confess, Romans is

28:22a tough book for me. Okay. There's a lot of theology in that book and it takes a while to digest it, you know, just about every paragraph you have to stop and contemplate. And even this sentence where it's explaining how the gospel is by faith. I mean, that is a lot to take in. But here's what I found so fascinating is that to make his point, Paul quotes Moses in the book of Deuteronomy and he changes one of the words in a stunning way. Deuteronomy 30 versus 11 through 14 say this. For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you. Neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that you should say who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it. Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it. But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart so that you can do it. So instead of the abyss right there, he says see.

29:25This is another confirmation that the word see could be a code for the underworld. In this case, specifically it's talking about the abyss. Moses said it is not beyond the sea that you should say who will go over the sea for us. Well, Paul takes that quote and he changes it to do not say in your heart who will descend into the abyss. So Paul takes it right there from Moses as referring to the spiritual sea, the underworld, which is why Moses follows that up by saying, I have said before you life and death, blessing and curse, therefore choose life that you and your offspring may live. Moses offered a pathway to life based on the law and Paul presents that same option in Romans for salvation by faith. Faith means not of works. There is nothing you could do to earn heaven. Paul says you don't need to bring Jesus down to earth. God already sent him and you don't need to bring Jesus up from the underworld. God already raised him. God has done all the work. You just need

30:30to confess Jesus by faith and you will be saved. And so if you know that you who are listening today, then you have the keys to the kingdom, the message that will bring people to heaven and bring heaven to earth. The abyss is a big part of archaeology even though it's not something that most of us have studied. It's present in the opening verses of Genesis. It's all through the end times in the final book of the Bible and it's even there to teach us the theology of the gospel. The abyss is not weird. We're weird because we've never taken the time to understand it before. But now we have. Thanks for listening. God bless you for sticking around till the end and we'll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.