The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.

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Who was the most destructive human monster in the last hundred years? Adolf Hitler may be the first that comes to mind. He plunged dozens of nations into a global war that decimated cities, enslaved nations, targeted Jews and other minorities, and resulted in fifteen million combat fatalities and forty-five million civilian deaths.

Josef Stalin matched Hitler stride for stride in brutality and nearly kept pace in the body count, racking up an estimated twenty million civilian deaths in labor camps, forced collectivization, famine, and executions between 1927 and 1953.

Not to be outdone, China’s Mao Zedong – an admirer of Stalin – preyed voraciously on his own countrymen. At the end of his Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward (also known as the Great Leap Famine), and a variety of purges, Chairman Mao authorized an estimated forty-five million Chinese deaths.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao are etched in history, not for their lofty visions of a new world order, or their intoxicating rhetoric, or their sheer force of will, but for the magnitude of destruction they imposed – in large measure on their own people and property. 

As horrifying as these tyrants are, they are little more than pale projections of the ultimate destroyer: the evil one, who prowls the earth like a roaring lion (1 Pet. 5:8). From the beginning, Satan has distinguished himself as a destroyer. He invades the serenity of the garden, where God and humans meet for intimate fellowship. He wrecks man’s relationship with God, with one another, and with the created order. The whole world lies barren and wanting today because of him. 

Satan’s thirst for destruction is perpetually unquenched. Where new followers of Jesus blossom, the destroyer seeks to stunt their growth. Where marriages flourish, he seeks to sabotage the covenants of faithfulness. Where healthy churches emerge, he seeks to infect their leaders with pride and pettiness. 

The destroyer is the antithesis of God, who created everything very good – including Satan. And yet the evil one has risen up in opposition to the Lord. He wants to take God’s place as the central focus of human worship. He wants to devastate as many lives as possible, for they reflect the image of God. He wants to demolish the institutions God has established – marriage, family, community, nation, church – because they shape God’s good purposes for us. 

The destroyer vies for sovereignty in a world he did not create. And if he can’t have the world, he plans to destroy it – to poison it through deception, hatred, hostility, arrogance, and death. Of all the names for the evil one, the destroyer perhaps best captures his purpose in an ongoing rebellion against the Creator. He simply carries out a scorched-earth policy against God and against those made in God’s image.

Nowhere does the Bible explicitly call Satan the destroyer, with the possible exception of Revelation 9:11, which we examine shortly. Even so, Satan cuts a wide swath of ruin from the very beginning. While Augustine and others commonly refer to what happened in the garden as “the Fall,” Jacques Ellul more recently cast it as “the Rupture,” in which God’s created order was split asunder. As Frank Thielman notes, “from the time of the woman’s encounter with the deceitful serpent in the garden, Satan has been on a rampage against God’s people.” Perhaps Graham Cole captures it best when he describes Satan as “the malevolent spoiler.”

Let’s begin with the apostle John’s description of Apollyon – the destroyer – in Revelation 9, and then widen our study to additional New Testament passages, most notably John 10:10 and 1 Peter 5:8.

Revelation 9:1-11

The fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth. The key for the shaft to the abyss was given to him. He opened the shaft to the abyss, and smoke came up out of the shaft like smoke from a great furnace so that the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the shaft. Then locusts came out of the smoke on to the earth, and power was given to them like the power that scorpions have on the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green plant, or any tree, but only those people who do not have God’s seal on their foreheads. They were not permitted to kill them but were to torment them for five months; their torment is like the torment caused by a scorpion when it stings someone. In those days people will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.

The appearance of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. Something like golden crowns was on their heads; their faces were like human faces; they had hair like women’s hair; their teeth were like lions’ teeth; they had chests like iron breastplates; the sound of their wings was like the sound of many chariots with horses rushing into battle; and they had tails with stingers like scorpions, so that with their tails they had the power to harm people for five months. They had as their king the angel of the abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he has the name Apollyon (emphasis added).  

The Hebrew Abaddon means “destruction,” and the Greek Apollyon may be rendered “destroyer.” Bible commentators differ as to whether Apollyon is Satan, a powerful demon under Satan’s control, a personification of the abode of evil spirits, or someone else. 

Peter Bolt observes in Silencing Satan, “Most theologians agree that the Destroyer and king is the devil, the prince of demons. The name accords well with Satan’s role of introducing death into the world and with the fact that Jesus called him a murderer.” J. I. Packer is one leading theologian who holds this view.

Other Bible commentators, like Merrill Unger, distinguish Apollyon from Satan. They argue that Apollyon is a great demon ruler and an underling of the evil one. Still others argue that Apollyon is the personification of the abode of evil spirits, in much the same way death and hades are personified in Revelation 20:14. Louis Sweet notes in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia : “Since Apollyon is a personification he is not to be identified with Satan or with any other being to whom historical existence and definite characteristics are ascribed. He is the central figure in an ideal picture of evil forces represented as originating in the world of lost spirits and allowed to operate destructively in human life.”

In support of this view, The Lexham Bible Dictionary adds: “The Old Testament personifies Abaddon, making it synonymous with insatiability (Prov. 27:20). Job describes it as having a voice (Job 28:22). Abaddon is mysterious – only God understands it (Job 26:6; Prov. 15:11), and God is not praised there (Ps. 88:11).”

John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress features Apollyon as the most formidable foe that Christian, the story’s protagonist, encounters. By deception and force, Apollyon tries to turn Christian back to the City of Destruction from which he has come. While Bunyan’s work is allegorical, it links to the historic reality of a cosmic battle for human souls, and Apollyon figures prominently in both.

Finally, some commentators suggest the name Apollyon is a play on Apollo, the Greek god of death and pestilence, of whom locusts were a symbol. Roman emperors Caligula, Nero, and Domitian reportedly claimed to be incarnations of Apollo. Therefore, it’s possible John may be taking a veiled stab at the Roman emperors who fancied themselves gods but proved to be evil incarnate. 

While each of these views has merit, it seems best to see the “star that had fallen from heaven to earth” in Revelation 9:1, and the “angel of the abyss” (Abaddon, Apollyon) in verse 11, as the same figure, most likely Satan. Christ has defeated Satan through his finished work on the cross (1 John 3:8). He has foreseen Satan falling from heaven (Luke 10:18), and now he directs the evil one’s fall (Rev. 9:1). 

Christ holds the keys of death and hades (Rev. 1:18). And now he begins to execute judgment on the ruler of this world, who already stands condemned (John 16:11). Satan does not go quietly. Under Christ’s sovereign permission, Abaddon takes the key to the shaft of the abyss and releases a demonic hoard that torments the world’s unbelievers. As G. K. Beale notes, “Neither Satan nor his evil servants can any longer unleash the forces of hell on earth unless they are given power to do so by the resurrected Christ.” 

Even if Apollyon is not another name for Satan, this destroyer most certainly works in concert with the evil one to wreak havoc on the earth. John’s purpose is not so much to identify Apollyon as to foretell a dark period in human history when imprisoned spirits are set free. 

Sheol, death, and grave

Keeping Revelation 9:11 in view, let’s consider a number of Old Testament passages from which John may have drawn. The Hebrew Abaddon occurs six times in the Old Testament. In five of these passages, the word is combined either with sheol, death, or the grave in such a way as to indicate moral distinctions in the realm of the dead. Note these passages, which feature italics for emphasis:

Job 26:5-6 – The departed spirits tremble beneath the waters and all that inhabit them. Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering.

Job 28:22 – Abaddon and Death say, “We have heard news of it [wisdom] with our ears.” 

Psalm 88:11 – Will your faithful love be declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Abaddon?

Proverbs 15:11 – Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord — how much more, human hearts. 

Proverbs 27:20 – Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and people’s eyes are never satisfied. 

The sixth Old Testament reference does not pair Abaddon with another term of the afterlife, but it conveys the same message:

Job 31:12 – For it [sin] is a fire that consumes down to Abaddon; it would destroy my entire harvest. 

So, in the Old Testament, Abaddon means a place of utter ruin, death, desolation, or destruction.

The apostle John may be drawing from these Old Testament verses to depict an underworld haunt of evil spirits. Satan, or a powerful ruler under his authority, rules over it as king. John seems to be describing a personal being, for the apostle describes him as “king,” “angel of the abyss,” “his,” and “he” (Rev. 9:11).

The evil forces Abaddon marshals are described as locusts, but with additional images implying power and destructiveness. Yet, they carry out their wicked deeds within the boundaries God has set for them. They are permitted only to torment – not kill – those who lack the seal of God on their foreheads. Further, they are prevented from harming the grass, green plants, and trees. Finally, the clock is ticking as they have only five months to do their worst. 

Other destroyers

We should note that, besides Abaddon, the Bible speaks of other destroyers – divine, human, and animal. For example, Samson is depicted as the destroyer of the Philistines’ land (Judg. 16:24). Evil King Ahab calls the prophet Elijah the one who ruins Israel (1 Kings 18:17). The king of Babylon – perhaps with a double reference to a king and the evil one behind him – is the destroyer of nations (Isa. 14:12). And God vows to repay the Israelites for years of damage that destroying locusts have wrought (Joel 2:25). 

We could cite other references, but it’s interesting that Old Testament writers tend not to distinguish between what God causes and what he permits – that is, between primary and secondary causes. In some cases, the destroyer that God sends may actually be the preincarnate Christ, appearing as the angel of the LORD. This may be the case in Exodus 12, where the destroyer passes over Israelite homes whose doorposts display blood from the Passover lamb (Exod. 12:21-23). In this event, the destroyer acts exactly as Yahweh promised to act himself (Exod. 12:12-13). 

We find another example of the preincarnate Christ as destroyer in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. King David orders a census, for which he is punished. The Lord sends a plague that kills seventy thousand Israelites. The one delivering the plague is a destroying angel, “the angel of the LORD,” who stands between heaven and earth with a drawn sword. 

The image of “the angel of the LORD” wielding a sword is seen elsewhere in Scripture. This angel confronts Balaam, the rogue prophet for hire (Num. 22:23, 31). The angel further appears to Joshua as commander of the Lord’s army (Josh. 5:13-15). And he lights up the sky in the last days as the returning “KING OF KINGS ANDLORD OF LORDS,” a sharp sword protruding from his mouth (Rev. 19:11-16). 

The destroying role of the angel of the LORD is further implied in 2 Kings 19:35-36 and Isaiah 37:36-37, as the angel kills 185,000 Assyrians in a single night. Last, we should note an Old Testament reference to “the destroyer” in the Book of Hebrews: “By faith he [Moses] instituted the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch the Israelites” (Heb. 11:28). 

If the preincarnate Christ sometimes is depicted as the destroyer, this by no means lets Satan off the hook. When Yahweh sends a destroyer, he does so with a purpose: to judge, separate the holy from the profane, deliver a message, or save his people. His actions always are holy, just, and consistent with his omniscience. Whether the Lord demands the lives of seventy thousand Israelites, or destroys “the man of lawlessness” with the breath of his mouth (2 Thess. 2:3, 8), he always serves as the righteous judge.

In stark contrast, Satan destroys for the sheer delight of demolition. His motives oblige him to counter God – to blaspheme his name, reject his authority, resist his decrees, corrupt his good works, poison his waters, sow tares in his wheat fields, blur the lines between holy and profane, twist the truth, and murder the innocents. All the while, Satan conducts a scorched-earth policy, knowing full well he has suffered defeat, yet refusing to concede a single inch of his shrinking kingdom. 

The evil one is the first – and last – destroyer. His ambush of Adam and Eve resulted in the great rupture – separating people from God and from one another, and bringing a curse on the cosmos that continues causing it to groan beneath the weight of sin (Rom. 8:22). But the promised seed of woman serves notice to the evil one that his rebel days are numbered (Gen. 3:15). 

The preincarnate Christ proves to be the consummate destroyer across the pages of the Old Testament. He judges evil, wipes out armies that oppose his covenant people, fights as commander of the Lord’s army, sends arrogant earthly kings retreating with their tails between their legs, and chastens his own people. One day, the returning Christ finally destroys those who destroy the earth (Rev. 11:18), as well as the destroyer (Apollyon) himself. 

Next: Satan: The destroyer (part 2)