What Does Apollyon Mean?
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Back in the 1970s-1980s, the Cold War dominated the political and social landscape. The “superpowers” of the United States and the Soviet Union vied for land or resources with vastly different worldviews. Nuclear weapons made the conflict further unique. By the early 1980s, the US and USSR had amassed enough missiles that the world was bound in fear over the possible push of a button. The whole earth could be decimated and destroyed within a few hours.
These two nations didn’t fight directly, only in secondary skirmishes or other means (hence why we called it the Cold War). But it had a massive impact. The news gave statistics on who had more nuclear missiles. Soviets were the de facto villains in movies and TV shows. Musicians played rock music influenced by the 1960s peace movement, crying out for an end to the madness. Films depicted the horrors of what would happen if that nuclear holocaust happened. Schoolchildren were taught to hide under our school desks in an emergency.
The constant threat of destruction hovered over our nation—over our families, communities, and history. All of it gone in a flash and mushroom cloud. How could we escape this terrible apocalypse? How could we survive? Could we have peace?
The Bible isn’t silent about destruction. In fact, one being in the New Testament is named “destruction,” and that dark angelic being is Apollyon.
Where Does the Bible talk about Apollyon?
Revelation is considered apocalyptic literature, the only full-length apocalyptic text in the Bible. Others existed around the same era but weren’t included in the Biblical canon for various reasons. Other books in the Old Testament, especially Daniel, have apocalyptic sections and deal with the “end times,” but none so thoroughly and directly as Revelation.
Revelation is full of symbols and events about the world’s future destruction, yet sees the destruction in a redemptive sense. The heaven-sent destruction punishes people sinning and rejecting God. Redemption comes for people following God, who are transformed and translated to a new heaven and new earth (Revelation 21, 22).
During all that happens in Revelation, a name is given for the dark angel in charge of the place of destruction. In Revelation 9:11, the being’s name is listed as Apollyon. Revelation also gives the Hebrew version of the name, Abaddon, which also means destruction.
Abaddon appears a few times in the Old Testament as a place of destruction. Abaddon is generally associated with the world of the dead or the underworld, called Sheol in Hebrew (sometimes translated as hell or the grave in English texts). In Job 26:6, Job questions the wisdom and spirit of his friends, asking where they got their wisdom from? Maybe the dead? “The underworld is naked in God’s presence, and the place of destruction”—Abaddon—“is uncovered.” Job goes on to talk about how God is in control of the sky and rain and is the creator of all things, in contrast to the wisdom of his friends.
Proverbs 15:11 states the hopelessness of keeping anything from the God who judges: “Even death and destruction”—Sheol and Abaddon—“hold no secrets from the Lord. How much more does he know the human heart?”
What Language Does the Word Apollyon Come From?
The Apostle John, one of the original 12 disciples of Jesus, wrote Revelation near the end of the first century AD. Rome was the most powerful empire on earth, its control stretching into Europe, Asia, and Africa. The common language was not Latin, but Greek (left over from the Roman adoption and appropriation of Greek structure and systems). The New Testament is written in the common languages, mostly Greek but also Aramaic, a Semitic language. Since Greek was a common, unifying language, one that most people would be able to speak and the literate could read, John wrote the Revelation of Jesus Christ in Greek.
Apollyon, therefore, is a Greek version of the word “destruction.” Apollyon comes from the active participle apollymi, which means “to destroy.” Along with Greek being the common language, the most widely read version of the Jewish scripture was the Septuagint (the Greek translation of what we call the Old Testament). Greek was the Roman Empire’s whole language; so it made sense to translate those scriptures into Greek for Jews and Gentiles all over to read. The Septuagint provided the basis for the earliest versions of our collected canon of the Old and New Testaments, especially the King James Version. Since then, older Hebrew manuscripts have helped us better translate the Old Testament.
The common Jew or Gentile would have read the word Apollyon in the Septuagint (which explains why John gives both terms). However, it would have been odd for a reader of the Old Testament since Abaddon was normally a place, not a person. In Revelation, destruction is personified as an angelic being. A demon.
What Does the Apollyon Represent?
In Revelation 9, angels are blowing trumpets to announce terrors upon the earth. The fifth angel sounds a trumpet and a star falls from heaven to earth. A star falling from heaven usually refers to a fallen angel. That fallen angel was given a key to the bottomless pit and opened it onto the world, darkening the sky and filling the world with smoke and locusts and scorpions. Those locusts and scorpions only harmed those who weren’t saved and were told not to kill but only to torment.
Now that sounds good that they can’t kill people, right? But it’s worse. The locusts and scorpions tormented people to the point that humans wished for death and searched for it but couldn’t find it. The creatures from the bottomless pit had a king over them, the angel in charge of the bottomless pit. John gives that fallen angel a name—Apollyon.
Apollyon is “the destroyer,” and while Revelation gives him that name, many theories exist about what the passage means. Of course, the most famous fallen angel is Satan, and many believe that Apollyon is another term for Satan, the one in charge of all fallen angels. It would make sense that he is given the key to the bottomless pit of death and destruction. However, there are other demons, like there are different levels and names for heavenly creatures. Paul calls these “principalities and powers” in the unseen realm: beings, both good and evil, with areas of influence or control (Ephesians 2:1-3, Ephesians 6:12). Perhaps Apollyon is another high-ranking demon specifically given place over the underworld or the bottomless pit. It’s also possible that the angel that fell from heaven is a different angel than the one in charge of death and destruction, although most agree they are the same.
Other Christians believe that Revelation was primarily written as a harsh criticism of the Roman Empire. There is evidence of this. The Romans were responsible for much of the early church’s persecution. Apollyon seems related to the Roman god Apollo, who supposedly communicated with mortals about their guilt and punishment. The cult of Apollo used the symbol of the locust, which is mentioned in Revelation 9. Roman Emperors Nero, Caligula, and Domitian considered themselves gods in human form. Which god? Specifically, Apollo. John had just experienced the tyranny and exile from Emperor Domitian; perhaps he was expressing that hell and demons ruled the Roman Empire.
Of course, the passage could combine several revelations, as God often does. We could be reading a prophecy about the End Times in the future, with Rome being criticized as an example of contemporary destruction. In reading scripture, there is always the context of the time. However, God’s word is eternal and transcends a specific context, giving us lessons and encouragement at any time.
What Does Apollyon Teach Us Today?
The demon Apollyon may not encourage us, although there is an encouragement within that passage for us: there is hope.
First, we see that this world is headed to destruction. All things in this world will burn in fire in an instant (1 Peter 3:10). We are surrounded by temporary things that always tend to destruction. Scientifically we call that entropy. Everything breaks. We work our whole lives to eat, stay safe, and simply survive. Yet we will one day die no matter what we do. For the whole world, that is a hopeless endeavor. And yet it is true.
Second, this is personal. Yes, destruction is a place—a place that is separate from God. However, death is connected to a person, an actual supernatural being after humanity, just waiting to release torment upon us. The devil (and his angels) are out to “steal, kill, and destroy” (John 10:10). You. Me. Everyone.
“But God…” as they say. The most famous, simple, and complex scripture is, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever would believe in him wouldn’t perish but have everlasting life.”
There’s another option. Third, that destruction sent forth from the underworld wasn’t allowed to harm, in any way, the people marked by God. The horrifying beasts coming from hell and the grave could only torment those “who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads” (Revelation 9:4).
“You must be born again,” Jesus later explains to Nicodemus a few verses after John 3:16. You have to. It must happen to enter the safety of the heavenly kingdom, to have eternal life. We must be born from the eternal to escape the hopeless entropy of this world. Then, the corruption of this world has no power over us.
What does this mean? As Peter instructs in the third chapter of his first letter, the knowledge that the world is headed to destruction motivates how we live: to live right and according to the ways of God. It also provides an urgency for us to plead with others to be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:18-21), to escape destruction, and to have that loving, amazing relationship that lasts for all eternity.
Peace.
Photo Credit: Getty Images/Likozor
This article is part of our larger End Times Resource Library. Learn more about the rapture, the anti-christ, bible prophecy and the tribulation with articles that explain Biblical truths. You do not need to fear or worry about the future!
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