Weird Stuff in the Bible

Apollyon and the Abyss
Revelation 9

Introduction
There’s a popular teaching in Christianity that there are only three named angels in the Bible. 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 (Daniel 8:16), Michael the archangel (Daniel 10:13), and Lucifer the fallen angel (Isaiah 14:12).
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 invade the earth in the end times, and it includes this detail:
(Verse 11)
They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.
So who is this guy Apollyon? 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 those questions—who Apollyon is, where he’s from—and believe it or not, how learning about this location of the Abyss will bring you to a deeper understanding so many other passages in Scripture—and even the Gospel itself.
If that sounds like a good time to you, turn with me to Revelation 9, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

Tartarus
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 an important Underworld Spirit.
Our Bible has been greatly demythologized by modern scholars, and I would say even our Bible translators. I talked about this a little bit last week by bringing up Tartarus, which almost every Bible translation will translate as “hell.” But that’s not accurate; Tartarus is the Abyss, which is distinct from hell.
In Greek mythology, Tartarus is a word for the deepest part of the Underworld realm. Tartarus is the basement of the Underworld. And Tartarus is where these ancient beings called The Titans are locked away. The Greek poet Homer said Tartarus 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 will help you to 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 the Titans were locked away in Tartarus. The Book of Enoch and the Bible says that the Watchers are locked away in Tartarus.
But probably to distance itself from Greek mythology, Bible translators don’t translate Tartarus as Tartarus in II Peter 2:4. They call it “hell.” That’s why I say your Bible has been demythologized.
One more interesting thing in Greek mythology is that Tartarus is name for both a location and an entity. There is both a spiritual location AND a spiritual being named Tartarus. Let me quote here from Wikipedia’s page on Tartarus: “Tartarus appears in early Greek cosmology, such as in Hesiod's Theogony, where the personified Tartarus is described as one of the earliest beings to exist, alongside Chaos and Gaia (Earth).”
So Tartarus was both a person and a location in the Greek. Keep this 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 see if there’s parallel for them in the Bible. Because that will actually help us to understand our Bibles better.
The Book of Enoch also makes it clear that Tartarus is an abyss, and he describes it as a bottomless pit. And this is why your Bible will sometimes translate the Hebrew Sheol as “the pit” and the Greek abussos as “the bottomless pit” or “the Abyss.” The Bible translators are rightly understanding what this is when they describe it that way. The Abyss and Tartarus are the same. And Revelation 9 teaches us that there’s an angel in charge of this pit. An angel with a name.
Now, I have no ax to grind with GotQuestions.org. It’s a fantastic website and I’d say generally reliable. But it’s demonstrably wrong about there only being three names angels in Scripture. There’s also this guy named Abaddon today. AKA Apollyon. And there are some more that I’ll tell you about next week.
So what I’d like to do is explore Revelation 9 with you all today, and see what we can learn further about this Abyss, as well as the Angel in charge of it.

Apollyon
So in Revelation 9, this is discussing the end of the world. Judgments falling upon the earth. Apocalyptic type of stuff. And I’m not trying to push a particular End Times theology on you today, so I’ll try to keep this as general as I can. In Revelation, you will often see some kind of action take place in heaven, and that will correlate with a problem that’s unleashed down on earth.
In Revelation 9, we are in the middle of the Trumpet Judgments. It will say that an angel blows a trumpet, and upon doing so, some new horror is unleashed on mankind. And Revelation 9 has one of the worst one yet.
Revelation 9:1
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.
Wow. So much we could say from this verse alone. So this is the fifth Trumpet Judgment. A star fallen from heaven to earth is shown. And “star” is a biblical code word for an angel.
This is a star that has fallen. So it could make you question: is this a good angel or a bad angel? I would argue that this angel is a bad one, because the terminology of a fallen angel implies an angel who fell from grace, much like Jesus said Satan “fell” like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18). The Greek for “fallen” here is in the perfect tense, which signifies a completed action. It means he’s already a fallen angel before this chapter begins. [citation: Walvoord Revelation commentary, pages 157-158]
Here’s another parallel in the Book of Enoch—and I cite this because Enoch was a popular book amongst the Jews at the time the New Testament was written, so the vocabulary it uses is helpful for understanding Biblical terminology.
Enoch’s 86th chapter begins by talking about the fallen angels; it says, “And again I saw with mine eyes as I slept, and I saw the heaven above, and behold a star fell from heaven…” Enoch was writing about a fallen angel right there, so we see some consistency there with biblical language.
So this angel—who does not like God—is given a key to the bottomless pit. The bottomless pit here is abusssos; one of the 9 times that the Abyss is mentioned by this name in the New Testament. It’s translated here as bottomless pit in the ESV. If you read that verse in the NIV,
it says
The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss.
This fallen angel will open the Abyss and let something out. Now we’ll read about that in a second, but I just want to make some key observations as we go through this chapter.
Observation #1 - Spiritual gates can be opened with keys.
In the New Testament, we read about keys. The keys of the Kingdom of heaven. The key of David. The keys of death, hell and the grave.
I have often puzzled over what these keys are. The answer was maybe a little more obvious than I realized. To quote Pirates of the Caribbean 2: “Keys unlock things.” (I had to play the clip because that line always cracks me up)
Spiritual keys unlock spiritual doors. Spiritual gates.
To be given a key is to be given authority. The Greek word for key is kleis (pronounced clace). The definition of kleis on BibleStudyTools.com says “a key; since the keeper of the keys has the power to open and to shut.” So I would say that we Christians have authority and a duty to (1) bring people to heaven, and (2) bring heaven to earth.
To possess a key gives you authority. This fallen angel, as a judgment on mankind, is given authority to open up a portal to the Abyss. This is something terrifying.
Revelation 9:2-4
2 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. 3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth.
So these are locusts, but they aren’t literal locusts. The chapter goes on to describe them, and they are not like any creature we have on earth right now. These are not going to be some kind of aircraft or technology that will be invented by mankind. Locusts with scorpion tails. Monsters from the Underworld.
Let’s do another movie quote. If you’ve seen Thor: Ragnarok, you might remember a character named Korg, “This whole thing is a circle, but not a real circle. More like a freaky circle. The only thing that makes sense is that it doesn’t make sense."
These locusts are not real locusts, but more like freaky locusts. So apparently the Abyss has these freaky locusts all locked up inside. Just as Christians should bring heaven to earth, the fallen angels want to bring the Underworld to earth.
Most bible studies on this chapter of Revelation will focus on the locusts themselves and how they are given power to torment mankind for a period of 5 months in the end times. I’m gonna skip that this time because I’m more interested in someone else who shows up at the end of this section.
Revelation 9:10-11
10 They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. 11 They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit [the abyss]. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.
So we see that the freaky locusts have a leader, called their king; and he is also described as the Angel of the Abyss.
Now, is he the same as the angel who was given a key to open the Abyss at the beginning of the chapter? Possibly, 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 being an Earthly Realm spirit; the same trajectory as the other fallen angels. The angel in Revelation 9:11 is “of the Abyss,” so that would make him an Underworld Realm spirit. So I don’t think that Apollyon unleashes the Abyss; I think Apollyon himself is unleashed by this fallen angel.
And truly, this is all happening within God’s sovereignty, as God is allowing these horrible things to take place across the earth to afflict mankind and try to cause as many people as possible to repent before the literal end of the world takes place.
So Observation #2 for today - 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. In Hebrew: Abaddon. In Greek: Apollyon.
Observation #3 - Principalities can be known by different names in different languages.
His name in Greek is Apollyon. This is the only place we see the word “Apollyon” in the Bible, but reportedly, Apollyon means “Destroyer.” Greek is the language and culture of the New Testament era. As we mentioned before, Greek mythology- the idea of this wide pantheon of gods and goddesses- was pretty popular in those days. So is there a parallel here between Greek mythology and the Bible?
Well, Greek mythology doesn’t have an Apollyon, but it does have an Apollo. Apollo was the son of Zeus in Greek mythology and a very important being in that religion.
Is Apollyon meant to be the same being as Apollo? There are actually some manuscripts of Revelation that read “Apollo” instead of “Apollyon” right here. So possibly, but I would say this: I think it’s also likely that Apollyon is the same being as Tartarus in Greek mythology. And to explain that, let’s delve into this word Abaddon.

Abaddon
Abaddon is the Hebrew name for the Angel of the Abyss. If that word sounds more familiar, it actually comes up a few times in the Old Testament—six times, to be exact. So with the one reference there in the New Testament, that’s seven times total in your whole Bible. Interestingly, when Abaddon comes up in the Old Testament, it typically sounds like a location rather than an entity. We’ll talk about that. Here are the places where we read about Abaddon.
Job 26:6
Sheol is naked before God,
    and Abaddon has no covering.
So everything in the Underworld is laid bare before God; He sees all that goes on there. A similar thing is said in
Proverbs 15:11
Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord;
    how much more the hearts of the children of man!
Another place, in Job 31; Job is saying that if he had committed some grievous sin, like adultery or murder, then he may have deserved all that happened to him. He says in
Job 31:11-12
11 For that would be a heinous crime;
    that would be an iniquity to be punished by the judges;
12 for that would be a fire that consumes as far as Abaddon,
    and it would burn to the root all my increase.
He says if he had been a murderer, then he would have deserved to lose everything from where he was at the top all the way down to Abaddon, the lowest part of the Underworld.
Psalm 88:10-11
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
    Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
    or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
Once again, Abaddon is spoken of as a place; a location in the realm of the dead.
Proverbs 27:20 is one more place where it speaks of Abaddon as a place that never gets filled up:
(It says)
Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied,
    and never satisfied are the eyes of man.
So that was five of the references to Abaddon in the Old Testament, speaking of it as a location in the Underworld. But we also get this in
Job 28, verses 20 through 22
20 “From where, then, does wisdom come?
    And where is the place of understanding?
21 It is hidden from the eyes of all living
    and concealed from the birds of the air.
22 Abaddon and Death say,
    ‘We have heard a rumor of it with our ears.’
So here, we hear Abaddon personified. Abaddon spoken of as an entity. And Death as well. That verse has Death with a capital D. I’m going to talk more about Death as an entity next week.
So is this just poetic language, or is there an entity named Abaddon? Well, we know from the Book of Revelation that yes, there’s an entity- an angel- in charge of the Abyss known as Abaddon. So in Scripture’s 7 references to Abaddon, 5 talk about it as a place and 2 as a spiritual being.
Observation #4 - Locations under a principality’s control can be identified by that principality’s name.
This is a eponymy (ep-pon-nemy). An eponym (ep-pon-em) is when one thing is named after another thing. The principality of Abaddon is eponymous (ep-pon-em-mus) with the domain he governs.
You also see this in the Bible, for example, when it speaks of Jacob or Israel. Jacob and Israel can be used to speak of the person who fathered the tribes; it can also be used to speak of the nation itself. The land of Edom is sometimes called Esau.
So you learned something new today: the word eponym. Actually, we learned four things today, so let’s recap them:
Observation #1 - Spiritual gates can be opened with keys. (Because keys unlock things)
Observation #2 - The Abyss has a principality in charge.
Observation #3 - Principalities can be known by different names in different languages.
Observation #4 - Locations under a principality’s control can be identified by that principality’s name.
These are four very clear, very simple extrapolations from the text of Scripture.

Abussos
Now let’s deal with this question: what is IN the Abyss? Well, other than the ruling angel in charge, we see those strange locust-like creatures with scorpion tails that are unleashed on the world. You don’t need to be concerned about them; that’s an end times thing; and we’re not in the end times right now, a period Jesus called the Great Tribulation.
Something else we have learned is in the Abyss are the Watchers (or Sons of God) from Genesis 6 who are chained up and locked away down there. This story is told in the Book of Enoch and verified by Scripture.
II Peter 2:4
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [Tartarus] 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, that Satan is locked away in this Abyss for a thousand years.
Revelation 20:1-2
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. 2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years
But he’s not there now. Revelation 20 is future. Some Christians believe Satan is locked away right now; if that were the case, why would the New Testament warn us so often about him? He is not locked away; he is a very real threat. But someday he will be locked away, and after a thousand years, he’ll be thrown into the Lake of Fire.
Now, something else you should know about the Abyss. The Greek word abussos, according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, can be translated “deep, bottomless.” I believe this region is the same as “The Deep” that comes up a lot in the Old Testament, including in the opening verses of the Bible.
Genesis 1(:1-2) says
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
We talked about this a few months ago as I began this Underworld series. When the earth was first formed, it was covered with the waters. These waters are the water of disorder or chaos. When the earth was first formed, it was disordered. The process of God’s creation is God bringing order out of chaos. So we talked about all that. As you read Genesis 1, you read about how as the earth was being formed, the waters were collected down into this place called The Sea. And the Book of Revelation uses “The Sea” sometimes as a euphemism for The Underworld. We spent a couple episodes unpacking that just a few months ago.
Now, I said that “The Deep” here is the Abyss. I think I can prove that. The word for “deep” in the Hebrew is “tehom.” But in the Greek Septuagint—which is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible—the version Jesus would have read—the translators use the word “abussos” for “tehom.” So right here, we actually have the Abyss showing up in the opening verses of the Bible.
Now, here’s something really fascinating with that Greek mythology parallel I mentioned before. Let me quote from that Wikipedia article again:
Tartarus appears in early Greek cosmology, such as in Hesiod's Theogony, where the personified Tartarus is described as one of the earliest beings to exist, alongside Chaos and Gaia (Earth).”
So wait—in Greek mythology, Tartarus is both a location and a person. Sounds kind of like how your Bible speaks of Abaddon, right? And Greek mythology starts with three things: Tartarus, Chaos, and Earth.
Let’s re-read Genesis 1:2
2 The earth [so there’s Earth] was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep [Tartarus/The Abyss]. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters [and there you have Chaos].
We have all three of those elements in the opening of the Bible as well. I am NOT saying Greek mythology is true and that you can believe anything that Greek Mythology says. I would say that Greek Mythology mixes truth with lies because it’s used to deceive people. Greek mythology has some true aspects to it; ultimately it’s an attempt by the enemy to write his own version of history.

Antichrist
One more thing I want to share today: let’s talk about Chaos. A few months ago I did an episode about the spirit of Antichrist, which is an Underworld spirit. I taught in that episode about how I believe that the Antichrist is Leviathan, which is a multi-headed sea monster that you read about in Psalm 74, and then 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 a being who was present at the origin of the world. Revelation says that the antichrist comes from the Sea, but then it also gets more specific in chapter 11 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 will make war on them and conquer them and kill them,
The beast here is the Antichrist. But notice where the beast comes from: the Abyss (bottomless pit in the ESV). Just to confirm that this is the Antichrist, we also see him described in
Revelation 17:8
The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction.
Now, a Bible verse can have multiple levels of meaning. The beast of Revelation 17 can refer to the human ruler, who will be thought dead and resurrected in a way that parodies Christ. The beast can also refer to the Kingdom of the Antichrist, a nation that is thought dead and returns, such as Babylon or Rome. Those are some typical interpretations of these words, and I’m not saying that they’re wrong or that you have to throw them out. I think there’s also a spiritual level to these words, where it’s speaking of the antichrist spirit, which rises from the bottomless pit.
And one more thing I could throw in about the Abyss—a description of this region that Enoch observed in his book that I didn’t include last week. In last week’s episode, we looked at when Enoch took a tour of the Underworld and saw various compartments down there. In chapter 21, he sees the Abyss, and here is what he says about it:
Enoch 21 says in the MSV—the Modern Standard Version, which I recommend and which is available on Amazon—says this: I went to a place of chaos, and I saw there something terrible: no sky above, no earth below, but an empty place, awful and terrible.
How could it be so awful if it’s an empty place? Personally, I like my personal space. So I don’t quite know how to understand that line, but this is why the translators of the New Testament will sometimes call it a bottomless pit. It’s this place right here with no floor or ceiling, kind of a limbo, a place of chaos and emptiness. I think Enoch is saying it’s a place with no logic to it. [Korg: the only thing that doesn’t make sense is that it doesn’t make sense] It horrified Enoch to look upon it. And it’s where a number of spirits are locked away—and sometimes released as a judgment on mankind.
The Abyss. Tartarus. The Bottomless Pit. The Deep. Abbadon. These are all names for the same place. A place where the chaos waters were gathered together under the earth at creation. The place where Apollyon and the Antichrist emerge from in the end times. A place where the demons mentioned not even wanting to go when they met Jesus in
Luke 8:31
And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss.

Next Time
And I’m gonna stop there, guys. This has been an intense lesson. We’ve covered SO MUCH territory, but I hope it’s brought a lot of threads together for you today as we learned more about Apollyon and the Abyss. I hope I’ve re-mythologized your Bible just a bit for you.
Next time on this podcast, we’re going to do that some more. I want to talk about another couple of Underworld spirits that are discussed in the Book of Revelation, as well as in Greek mythology. Let’s talk about that next time as we wrap up this Underworld series on the podcast.
Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!

Closing Thoughts
And in closing, I want to talk about one last place in the New Testament that we read of the Abyss that I didn’t cover in this episode. It comes up in the book of Romans. Paul writes in
Romans 10:5-9
5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 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); 9 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.
I gotta confess: Romans is a tough book for me. There’s a lot of theology that takes a while to unpack in just about every paragraph. And even this sentence which is explaining how the Gospel is by faith is a lot to take in.
But here’s what I find so fascinating: to make his point, Paul quotes from Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, but he changes a word in a stunning way.
Chapter 30, verses 11 through 14
11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. 12 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?’ 13 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?’ 14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
It’s another confirmation that the “sea” can be a code word for the Underworld—and in this case, specifically, the Abyss. Moses says, “It is not…beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us…’”
Paul takes that and quotes it this way: “Do not say in your heart…’Who will descend into the abyss?’"
Meaning Paul takes it there as Moses referring to the spiritual sea. The Underworld. Which is why Moses follows that up by saying,
(Deuteronomy 30:19)
I have set 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’s done all the work; you just need to confess Jesus by faith, and you will be saved.
And if you already know that, then you have the keys to the kingdom: to message that will bring people to heaven, and bring heaven to earth.
The Abyss is a big part of our theology, even though it’s not something most of us have studied. It’s present in the opening chapter of Genesis. It’s all through the end times in the final book of the Bible. 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 until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.

GotQuestions source: https://www.gotquestions.org/how-many-angels-are-there.html