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You think things are bad? They are about to get much worse. According to John in Revelation 9 the first "woe" is past; two other "woes" are yet to come, each far worse than the last. The devastation now is starting to reach a crescendo. In his vision John sees four things: a golden altar, four angels, a demonic army 200 million strong, and a defiant unrepentant world.
It was at the golden altar of incense that an angel offered the prayers of the saints; now from this same altar a voice commands four angels be set free. These are fallen angels. Holy angels would not be bound. We might even say they are angels of mass destruction. Each is charged with leading part of a vast army to be released at a precise time, with a special purpose: to kill, not just torment, a third of the world's population.
Is this a literal army of 200 million beings? Note the emphasis is made not on the riders, but the horses. The description doesn't describe war horses or advanced modern tanks. And to point to some nation such as China that claims to have 200 million soldiers, is to miss the message John is trying to convey. The deadly power of these horses is in their mouths, and tails, not in their legs. Fire, smoke, and brimstone pour out of their mouths and their tails are like biting serpents. They can attack from the front and the back. I suspect they are a demonic army, headed by these four fallen angels against a defiant, unrepentant world.
The image of an infinite wave of demonic hordes invading westward from the Euphrates River would have undoubtedly stirred up the deep-seated Roman fears of a potential Parthian invasion. Though John was not prophesying the future conquest of Rome by the Parthians, he was nevertheless taking the political anxieties of the Roman world and using them to help us visualize a scene of horror. John's readers would have known that the Euphrates was traditionally the place of Israel's enemies. The Old Testament prophets warned that God would use the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians from "beyond the river" or "from the north" to bring divine judgment to the world. However, when the veil is lifted, Rome's demise is not due to a military invasion from enemies on its external eastern border but rather from the inner moral corrosion of its leading citizens.
This second "woe," which is also the sixth judgment, reminds me of the tenth and most devastating Egyptian plague, the death of the firstborn, the attempt by Pharaoh to overwhelm Israel's escape with his chariot army, and his unrepentant response to God's judgments. First-century Jewish reflections on the exodus event suggest another purpose of the plagues: to bring Pharaoh and the Egyptians to repentance (Philo, Life of Moses 1.95; cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 2.293-95). But, tragically, instead of repenting, Pharaoh "hardened his heart" against God. John sees this tragedy of hardened hearts repeated in the human response to the seven trumpet plagues. Nonbelievers continue to worship idols that can neither see nor hear nor truly help them in their hour of need. As God strips away every idol through the plagues until no alternative sources of security are left, we witness the ultimate expression of pride and human sinfulness: people, even in outright misery, would rather die than turn to God for deliverance.
The fifth trumpet's swarm of countless demonic locusts shares characteristics with the sixth trumpet's demonic armies of 200 million riders. Both armies are composed