I am posting chapters from my sister's book, "The End is Near. End Time Bible Prophecy Anyone Can Understand."
continued from last post...
continued from last post...
The last three trumpets are referred to as the three
woes because they are extremely horrible.
Fifth Trumpet,
First Woe: Locust
“Then the fifth angel sounded, and I
saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth; and the key of the
bottomless pit was given to him. He
opened the bottomless pit, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke of
a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the
pit. Out of the smoke came locusts upon
the earth, and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have
power. They were told not to hurt the
grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And they were not permitted to kill anyone,
but to torment for five months; and their torment was like the torment of a
scorpion when it stings a man. And in
those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and
death flees from them.” They have as
king over them, the angel of the abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in
the Greek he has the name Apollyon. The
first woe is past; behold, two woes are still coming after these things.” Rev. 9:1-6, 11, 12
You have probably heard
the term, “All hell is breaking loose.”
Well, that is a good description of what happens under the fifth
trumpet. A fallen star, an angel who
follows Lucifer (see Rev. 12:4), is shown releasing smoke and locust from the
bottomless pit. God had kept Satan and
his demons under control and had put certain limits on their activities, but
now they are loosed to wreak havoc upon the earth. But those who belong to God and have his seal
will be spared from direct attacks from Satan and his angels.
The first school of thought says that since the first
four trumpets are literal renderings of what is going to happen, there is no
reason to think the fifth trumpet is anything other than literal. If that is true, then for the first time in our
study of prophecy we see a time period that is NOT symbolic. Five months is the literal duration of this
plague.
When Jesus was on this
earth, he went to the Gadarenes one time and there he met two demon-possessed
men. As Jesus was casting the demons out
of these men the demons begged to be allowed to enter and possess some pigs
that were nearby. Jesus allowed them to
do so and the pigs went insane, jumping into the sea and drowning. (see Matt. 8:28-32) Here with the fifth trumpet we see something
similar but with different results.
Demons are allowed to possess locust but instead of going insane they
torment mankind for five months, driving them insane. They are led by the demon of the abyss named
Abaddon and Apollyon. These names
translate into the word Destruction and can refer to Satan himself or perhaps
one of his lieutenants.
There are three restrictions put upon the
locusts: they cannot attack those
bearing the seal of God, they cannot eat grass, trees or any green thing, and they
cannot kill. The descriptions of these
locusts wearing armor and having teeth like lions (Rev. 9:7-10), etc, simply
indicates that they are indestructible.
No matter what man does, he cannot stop these locusts from
tormenting. Try to imagine living for
five months where every time you walk out the door swarms of locust attack
you. They invade your home, surround
your car, and crawl all over you whenever they can. Would you not feel like you were going
insane? It would be horrible torment.
The other school of
thought
says that with the fifth trumpet we switch from literal descriptions of what
will happen under the first four trumpets to a symbolic description. Why is it symbolic rather than literal? Because locusts do only one thing when they
swarm: eat. They eat everything in
sight, but here they are told not to hurt any green thing. They are told to harm only people, and only
those who do not have God’s seal on their foreheads. Also, these locusts have a king reigning over
them, but Prov. 30:27 clearly states that locust have no king. So the conclusion is that the locust stands
for something else that will torment people.
But
what form do these attacks take? And
does the torment they inflict last five literal months or 150 years (30 x 5 =
150, see Appendix 2)? If the events
described under the fifth trumpet are primarily symbolic, then it is assumed
that the five months is symbolic also and therefore means 150 years. Now we must find out what kind of demonic
activities have been, or will be, occurring for that amount of time. Demons are not going to simply show up at
your door and start tormenting you.
Satan is much more clever than that and he disguises his attacks so that
they appear harmless. But they are not
harmless, and people do not realize that until they have been sucked in and
start experiencing the torment Satan had planned for them all along.