The fifth messenger blew, and I saw a star that had fallen out of the sky onto the earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless place. He opened the shaft, and smoke came up out of it like the smoke of a huge furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the shaft. And out of the smoke locusts came onto the earth, and they were given power like the power scorpions have on the earth.

They were told not to damage the grass of the earth, or any green plant, or any tree — only the people who do not have God’s seal on their foreheads. They were not allowed to kill them, only to torment them for five months, and the torment they cause is like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes. In those days people will look for death and will not find it. They will long to die, and death runs away from them.

The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were what looked like gold wreaths, and their faces were like human faces. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. They had chests like iron breastplates, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of many chariots and horses charging into battle. They had tails like scorpions, with stingers, and the power to hurt people for five months was in their tails. They have a king over them: the messenger of the bottomless place, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he goes by the name Apollyon.

The first trouble has passed. Look — two more are still coming after it.

The sixth messenger blew, and I heard a single voice from the horns of the gold altar in front of God, saying to the sixth messenger, the one holding the trumpet: “Release the four messengers who are tied up at the great river Euphrates.” So the four messengers were released — the ones who had been held ready for this hour and day and month and year — to kill a third of humanity. The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number.

And this is how I saw the horses in the vision, and the ones riding them: their breastplates were the colour of fire and of hyacinth and of sulphur, and the heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and out of their mouths came fire and smoke and sulphur. A third of humanity was killed by these three plagues — by the fire and the smoke and the sulphur coming out of their mouths. The horses’ power is in their mouths and in their tails, because their tails are like snakes: they have heads, and they use them to injure.

And the rest of humanity, the ones not killed by these plagues, still did not change their minds about the things their own hands had made. They did not stop bowing to demons, or to idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. And they did not change their minds about their murders, or their drug-making, or their sexual immorality, or their thefts.