The Altar of the Abyss – 3
And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. He opened the shaft of the Abyss, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Revelation 9:1-2
The fifth trumpet aligns with both the Feast of Trumpets, and Deuteronomy. It is the summoning of armies on Day 5, swarms of birds and fish filling sky and sea as glorious clouds. The Altar of the Abyss, in this case, is now an evil twin of the Altar of Incense, a demonic response to the ascension of Christ and His new government.
This “de-ascension” of Satan mirrors (chiastically) his fall in the third trumpet. Like Christ, he was given a key. His throne-coming was also accompanied by clouds of smoke, but instead of a sweet-smelling aroma it was the sulphur of Sodom. As the fire of Pentecost came from the Altar of Incense in heaven, its evil twin, a Babylonian furnace (Daniel 3) bore an army of unholy mighty men in a false Pentecost. Preaching the Word of God raised up monsters. In this case, they arose from the Jews’ deconstructed Altar under the Land and the Sea in the Abyss—the deep. The flaming mountain that Jesus cast into the Sea was wounded, but not dead. These Judaisers would torment and devour “men” (Adams = Jews) for five months, the period between Pentecost and the Trumpet warnings of the final epistles. Revelation alludes to Joel to describe them. They are like soldiers from a new Babylon.
With a showdown between the true and false altars, the victory of Elijah on Mount Carmel would be repeated. Again, the self-mutilating false prophets would be slain by the sword and their bodies washed into the nearby Sea. TAOTA
