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 as torment by a scorpion when it strikes a man. And in those days the men will seek death but will no means find it, and they will desire 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 the 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 the foreheads, those in Christendom who claim to be sealed but whose record belies that claim to be sealed but. (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.

Next time: Chapter Twenty-Two/The First Woe - Locusts - Those Tormenting Locusts

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