Chapter Twenty-Two -The First Woe - Locusts

Those Tormenting Locusts

What battle instructions did those locusts receive? John reports:  "And they were told to harm no vegetation of the earth nor any green thing nor any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.  And it was granted the locusts, not to kill them, but that these should be tormented five months, and the torment upon them was as torment by a scorpion when it strikes a man. And in those days the men will seek death but they will by no means find it, and they will desire to die but death keeps fleeing from them." -Revelation 9:4-6. 

Notice that this plague is not directed first against the people of prominent ones among them-the 'vegetation and trees of the earth.' (Compare Revelation 8:7)  The locusts are to harm only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads, those in Christendom who claim to be sealed but whose record belies that claim.  (Ephesians 1:13, 14)  Thus, the tormenting utterances of these modern-day locusts were directed first against the religious leaders  of Christendom.  How these self-assuming men must have been tormented at hearing it publicly announced that not only were they failing to lead their flocks to heaven but they themselves  would not get there?  Truly, it has been a case of 'the blind leading the blind'! -Matthew 15:14. 

The torment lasts for five months. Is that a relatively short time?  Not from the point of view of a literal locust. Five months describes then normal life-span of one these insects.  Therefore, it is for as long as they live that the modern-day locust keep stinging God's enemies. Moreover, the torment is so severe that men seek to die. True, we have no record that any of those who were stung by the locusts actually tried to kill themselves.  But the expression helps us to picture the intensity of the torment-as though by the relentless assault of scorpions. It is like the suffering foreseen by Jeremiah for those unfaithful Israelites who would be scatter by the Babylonian conquerors and for whom death would be preferable  to life. - Jeremiah 8:3;  see also Ecclesiastes 4:2, 3. 

Why is it granted to torment these ones in a spiritual sense, and not to kill them?  This is an initial  woe in the exposing of the lies of Christendom and her failures, but only later, as the Lord's day progresses, will her deathlike spiritual state be fully publicized. It will be during the second woe that a third of the men are killed. -Revelation 1:10; 9:12, 18; 11:14. 

Next time: Chapter Twenty-Two -The First Woe-Locusts - Locusts Equipped for Battle

From the book of Revelation