The First Woe -Locust - Those Tormenting Locusts

 What battle instructions did 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 those 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 will by no means find it, and they will desire to seek to die but death keep fleeing from them." - REVELATION 9:4-6. 

Notice that this plague is not directed first against  the people or prominent ones among them- the 'vegetation and trees of the earth.'  (Compare Revleation 8:7.)   The locusts are to hamr 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.  (Ephesian 1:13, 14)  Thus, the tormenting utterances of those 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 get there!  Truly, it has been  a case of "the blind leading the blind"!  - MATTHEW 15:14.

The tormenting lasts for five months.  Is that a relatively short time?  Not from the point of view of a literal locust.  Five months describes the normal life span of one of these insects.  Therefore, it is for as long as they live in that modern-day locusts 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-as though by unfaithful Israelites who would be scattered 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 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 a second woe that third of the men are killed. - REVELATION 1:10; 9:12, 18; 11:14. 

Next time: The First Woe - Locusts - Locusts Equipped for Battle

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