Continued from previous 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. The 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.
There are two main schools of thought regarding the fifth trumpet. We will look at both and then we will have to wait for time to tell us which is the correct interpretation.
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 locusts 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 locust do only one thing when they
swarm: they 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.
One way Satan deceives people is through spiritualism. God is so firmly against anything to do with the occult that he said anyone who practiced it was to be killed immediately. (See Ex. 22:18; Deut. 18:10-12) This is because dabbling with the occult opens the door between the physical and spiritual worlds. If we defy God and open ourselves up to the spiritual world, he cannot protect us and we have placed ourselves into Satan’s hands. What a terrifying and dreadful place to be! To fall into Satan’s hands and be tormented by him in whatever way he can think of is the worst torment imaginable. It would be better to suffer physically and have our souls in God’s hands than it would be to spiritually suffer in the unmerciful hands of pure evil.
Just as we can see the beginning of the first three trumpets occurring in the world around us, if we take spiritualism as the meaning of the fifth trumpet we can see it is also occurring now. The rise of spiritualism is often dated as occurring in the mid 1800’s. However, real organization of spiritualism did not happened until the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875. The preamble to the society's bylaws states: "The Title of the Theosophical Society explains the objects and desires of its founder: they 'seek to obtain knowledge of the nature and attributes of the Supreme Power, and of the higher spirits by the aid of physical processes.' In other words, they hope, that by going deeper than modern science has hitherto done, into the esoteric philosophies of ancient times, they may be enabled to obtain, for themselves and other investigators, proof of the existence of an 'Unseen Universe,' the nature of its inhabitants if such there be, and the laws which govern them and their relations with mankind…”
And finally we have Anton LaVey who, in 1966, formed the Church of Satan and in 1969 wrote the Satanic Bible. His is not the only church to worship Satan, many others have sprung up since his bold move to publicly form his church, but his is the most famous.
We do not
know at what time the 150 years began and thus we cannot know when it will end,
but the fifth trumpet promises that the torment of man by demons will culminate
some time in the future.
We have looked at the first five of the seven trumpets and have a pretty good idea of what to expect. The sixth and seventh trumpets are so important and contain so much information that they will each be covered in a chapter of their own.