Will Catholics still be on earth when the bottomless pit opens in Revelation 9?
Robert Sungenis answers yes: Catholics will still be on earth, because Revelation 9 describes the loosing of Satan immediately before the second coming. He reads the Apocalypse as seven parallel sections, each covering Christ's first coming to his second, so that Revelation 9 and Revelation 20 recount the same event told two different ways.
A viewer asks whether Catholics will still be on earth when the star opens the bottomless pit in Revelation 9:1-2.
Answer
Yes, they will still be here; that is the loosing of Satan, which happens right before the second coming of Jesus. You have to understand that the Apocalypse is written in seven sections: chapters 1 to 3, 4 to 6, 7 to 9, 10 to 11, 12 to 14, 15 to 19, and 20 to 22. Each section covers the same span of time, from Christ's first coming to his second, told in different ways. This passage is in the third section, at the early part of chapter nine, where Satan is loosed from the bottomless pit, and you find the very same event in chapter twenty, where an angel binds Satan in the bottomless pit and then he is loosed after a while. So Revelation 9 and Revelation 20 are describing the same thing in different ways; that is the artistry of John.