The First Woe

One of the most severe judgments in Revelation is given the title of the "first woe" (Revelation 9:12), a five month period where the Abyss is unlocked and creatures emerging from it under the domain of the Angel of the Abyss torment people without God's seal, the victims unable to die despite longing for it.  Even if the other judgments of this apocalyptic book are fully literal, such as hailstones of 100 pounds falling to the ground (16:21) or violence and disease killing a fourth of the global population (6:7-8), they do not even begin to rival the suffering that would be involved in this first woe, otherwise called the judgment of the fifth trumpet (9:1).  According to Revelation 9:6, "During those days, people will seek for death but will not find it; they will long for death, but death will elude them."

There are many details of Revelation 9 that are unique or otherwise worth noting, such as the reference to the angel of the Abyss named Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek.  The names Abaddon and Apollyon never receive mention again before or after this in the Bible, and Revelation 9 itself does not specify if this angel is a fallen angel that acts out of malice towards humans, uncaring of how God is limiting its expressions of brutality while still directing them towards or a servant of Yahweh acting at his behest as its legions of locust creatures torment most of humanity.  A being that seems to be an allusion to the devil is said to only be intent on the likes of deception and destruction (John 10:10), but God himself is said to eventually destroy the general wicked in hell in the sense of totally removing them from existence (Matthew 10:28).

In light of this, and because it would still be unclear even without the word destroy being associated with both God and seemingly Satan in different ways, it is unclear if the Destroyer that presides over the Abyss is supposed to be demonic or fully angelic.  Either way, there is a more significant truth Revelation 9 affirms that transcends whether the Bible is true or false.  If someone longs to die from great torment but cannot, they are experiencing firsthand the logical fact true independent of all experience that mere death is nothing compared to many forms of agony, especially pain that cannot be stopped.  One human torturing another is objectively more harmful, more cruel, and more dehumanizing than murder alone could ever be.  If this is true of many kinds of person-on-person torture, is Revelation 9 affirming this and saying people deserve worse than death?

Ultimately, this is not at all the case.  When it comes to divine punishments such as the first woe and the likely much worse but still limited suffering experienced in hell before annihilation (Ezekiel 18:4, Romans 6:23, Mathew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:4, and even John 3:16 are key verses on this), even these potentially great torments are distinctly temporary and have nothing to do with things like the worst kinds of suffering associated with sexual abuse, which is always classified as sinful unlike killing or even some mostly minor physical punishments, or the heretical concept of eternal conscious torment for all unsaved beings that has so many in its grip.  Mosaic Law describes the few acts of physical punishments that are Biblically valid and the rigid contexts and limitations they have.  The punishments of Revelation 9 are more severe because they are directly authorized or caused by God.  All of these things are true of Biblical theology and its ramifications at once.

The first woe might seem to both affirm the grand truth that killing is lesser than plenty of tortures and then insist that unrighteous people do deserve worse than death, but it is not eternal conscious torment that the people of Revelation 9 receive, and neither is the Biblically designated fate of the general unsaved.  Their final status is permanent death of the soul after possible durations of suffering to varying degrees, and not endless torture or torture involving the infliction of the very worst sins that would make one deserve hell in the first place, like rape or prolonged, unjustly harsh physical punishments that would go beyond the limited ones prescribed by God in Mosaic Law.  Everything in the Bible from the Torah to Revelation is either consistent with or directly acknowledges that death is far from the worst fate possible, and this is why there are sins greater than murder alone could possibly be.