13 Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, 14 saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” 15 So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind. 16 The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number. 17 And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the colour of fire and of sapphire and of sulphur, and the heads of the horses were like lions' heads, and fire and smoke and sulphur came out of their mouths. 18 By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulphur coming out of their mouths. 19 For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound.
20 The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshipping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, 21 nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
The demonic pretensions of modern society are surely reflected in this horrific imagery. It has been left to our age to witness the terrifying fulfilment of what to former times must have seemed an idle and fantastic tale. And perhaps the most terrifying thing of all is that the irruption of demons from the pit, this emergence of a gruesome army, with its terrible and ter- rifying breastplates and blasting forth of fire, is the fruit of a God-rejecting civilisation. It is the civilisation that has refused to repent that has produced such a monstrosity. Civilisation, as such, has thrown up this awesome manifestation of demonism. Reference was made in an earlier Note to the vision in Daniel 7 of the beasts coming up out of the sea - the sea there standing for humanity. That is the pitch to which civilisation comes in its revolt against God - it produces these monsters which will be its own destruction. It needs no great discernment to apply this in topical ways today. It is our own civilisation - our so-called Western, Christian civilisation, in its rejection of God and the gospel - that has given birth to the monsters that walk the earth today. Communism, this totalitarian blasphemy, is a production of modern civilisation. It is almost a commonplace now for Churchmen and Church Councils to declare that Communism is God's judgment on the Church for her failure to be Christian. This is ex- actly in line with what John indicates in this terrible chapter.