Dr. Couch, is the figure of "two hundred million" horses and horsemen of Revelation 9:16 literal or figurative?
ANSWER: One of the key rules of hermeneutics is that one assumes something is
literal unless proven or shown to be otherwise. At first glance there is
no reason to believe that the figure is anything but literal.
In chapter 9 John has already set the precedence that these creatures
coming forth from the pit, and from the area of the Euphrates river (v.
14), are demonic. However John uses illustrative language and what is
called "comparative language" in the section, to say that the creatures
"are something like ..." He had trouble describing the terrible-ness of
these being. But indeed they are actual, literal, and certainly real.
John is not simply giving to us some big "allegory" that is wayout from
what is here taking place during the tribulation.
To show this comparative language John uses continually "like, as, as
it were." He uses the two Greek words homoios and hos. Here in chapter 9
he uses these Greek words THIRTEEN TIMES! This is enough to tell us
that what is happening is real but very hard for the apostle to describe
because what he is seeing is so foreign to him!
Yet still, the figure two hundred million remains literal. This is
the number of the demonic beings that come forth from the region of the
Euphrates to torment men on earth during the tribulation. The text
reads "And the arithmetic (Gk. arithmos) is diamuriades muriadon."
Thomas says on the number: "An exact number of two hundred million is
intended." Seiss, the great Lutheran scholar who saw the light and
became a premillennialist, says: "There are such things as supernatural
horses. And here John beholds troops of horses of like unearthly order,
but pertaining to an opposite realm, the infernal cavalry. As there are
infernal locusts, so there are infernal horses; and as the former were
let forth to overrun the world, in the tribulation that is coming, with
their torments ..., so the latter are let forth to overrun the world
with still more terrible inflictions."
Thanks for asking.
Dr. Mal Couch
