The Locust King

The Locust King
By: Pete Garcia

‘The locusts have no king, Yet they all advance in ranks…’ – (Proverbs 30:27)

The book of Revelation has suffered more ridicule at the hands of liberal theologians and skeptics than any other book of the Bible except for maybe Genesis. Yet, even the hardest passages to take in light of this variable age of reason and information we live in, are not as far-fetched as some might think.

In dealing with all the re-visioning the Bible has suffered under the increasingly apostate “Christian” theological circles, I am reminded of the Sadducees in Jesus’ day. It would seem that they put the Pentateuch by Moses above all other OT books. They also rejected the resurrection of the dead and the existence of angels. Most theologians today would like to simply explain away Revelation as symbolic apocalyptic literature, and reduce it down to just a sentence that states: In the end, God wins.

But that’s not what God gave us. He gave us specific details about a period of time that is scheduled to happen here on planet Earth. And even in these details, there are some things that are still a mystery to us. For those of us who take the Bible seriously, and hold to a literal, grammatical, and historical hermeneutical view of God’s word, we still wrestle with passages such as Revelation 9:11.

Many scholars have come to these passages and tried to interpret them in light of our modern weaponry, such as helicopters or robotic drones. While it is tempting to try and superimpose our understanding onto these passages, it simply doesn’t do God’s word the justice it deserves. But that doesn’t mean we can’t know anything about it. So here is what we know and can reasonably determine (or speculate) thus far.

Revelation 9:1-2 – Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit…

The book of Revelation is symbolic in many areas, but the symbolism itself isn’t abstract or nonsensical, its meanings can be found in other parts of the scripture itself. So when we come to part of the scriptures that couldn’t be taken either literally and/or physically, as a star could not physically land on the earth, we look at the Bible to interpret the Bible and then the improbable comes into clear focus.

These passages refer to angels and Satan in figurative terms, but clearly represent a real meaning behind the symbolism (Job 38:7; Isaiah 14:12; Luke 10:18; Jude 1:13; Revelation 1:20; Revelation 12:4). In referring to a ‘star falling to earth’, it is referring to an angelic being coming to the earth as he was referred to as a ‘him’ and he was in possession of the ‘key to the bottomless pit’.

I believe it was Chuck Missler that first noted that a bottomless pit could easily reside within the center of the earth. As the earth is a sphere, and if at the center, every direction from there would be up, by that very nature, have no bottom to it. And as we have seen a dramatic increase in the number and intensity of volcanic eruptions in the last twenty years, it’s not hard to imagine that smoke and ash from a large one (or multiple ones) could darken the skies and blot out the sun and moon for weeks on end all around the globe.

Revelation 9:2-6 – Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth and to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And they were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months. Their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.

So right off the bat, we realize that these are not normal locusts, as they do not originate from smoke-filled pits that resemble great furnaces. Locust eat vegetation (Joel 1:4), but these locust were instructed not to eat the grass or any vegetation, but to inflict torment on those who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. When Moses was instructed by God to stretch out his rod and summon forth the plague of locusts against the Pharaoh, note the scripture’s precise description of the event…

They were very severe; previously there had been no such locusts as they, nor shall there be such after them. For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they ate every herb of the land and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left. So there remained nothing green on the trees or on the plants of the field throughout all the land of Egypt. Exodus 10:14-15

So not only are these not regular insects, but they’re not mechanical or modern weaponry either. They are intelligent, sentient beings who as we will see later, act under the authority of their leader, Abaddon.

What else is of interest is, that John notes that men will aggressively seek death, but can’t find it. Does this mean that they won’t be able to die? I imagine, that if there were any truth to a Zombie Apocalypse, as it’s been commonly called, it would be during this period. If someone puts a gun in their mouth and pulls the trigger, will they continue on grotesquely disfigured? I don’t know, but perhaps part of the selling point of taking the ‘mark of the beast’ in the first place, is on the premise that it does something to the body that prevents death. So then the specific purpose of the torment of these ‘locusts’ is in direct correlation to that.

Revelation 9:7-10 – The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months.

If you want to see what is symbolic in Revelation, and what isn’t, just look for the word “like”. A 1st Century John is attempting to put to words what he is seeing, and to him, this is how they appeared. Because they appear so bizarre, modern theological scholars have struggled with what exactly these might be representative of. They had human faces, breastplates of iron, and wings that sound like chariots when they move. These have caused many to try and put a 21st century perspective to a 1st century description. The only problem is, these aren’t human. The closest we can come to these is found in mythology.

I’ve been around modern military aircraft for the last fourteen years, and I’ve never seen or even heard of anything even remotely resembling this type of supposed equipment. If it does exist, it is buried deep within the bowels of a DARPA complex somewhere. But that still doesn’t explain how robotic or mechanical equipment followed and were led by a fallen angel and came out of a bottomless pit. I believe for the time being, we will just have to take John’s word for it as he saw them.

Revelation 9:11 – And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon.

There was a time in man’s history, when fallen angels intermingled with man in an attempt to corrupt man’s bloodline so much so, that a Messiah could not come from the line of man. These fallen angels were punished severely for crossing God’s divine boundaries:

And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; Jude 1:6

[Doom of False Teachers]

For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; 2 Pete 2:4

We know according to biblical and extra-biblical texts, that there were supposedly 200 “watchers” that intermingled with the seed of man. It would appear at least according to the strict reading of the text that those angels are still confined and will be, until the Day of Judgment. What we don’t know, is how many other fallen angels prior to the Flood, or afterwards, crossed some other Divine barrier-line, and were confined by God to the abyss for such a day as this. We know according to Scriptures, there were angels confined to the abyss, because the Gospel of Luke records as such.

Abaddon, or Apollyon (the Destroyer)…who along with the fallen angels will be released from the abyss during the fifth Trumpet Judgment. Remember that in a single night, one angel wiped out 185,000 Assyrians?

But now (during the 5th Trumpet Judgment), they no longer have their might as angels, but are released as locust-like beings. These damned beings no longer have the power or authority to kill, but only to torment for five months. Why five months as opposed to six or seven? It would appear that their limited time is in preparation for the Sixth Trumpet Judgment because the text tells us ‘one woe is past’, and that the Sixth Trumpet is prepared for an army and supernatural beings, “who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind.” Revelation 9:13-21

Conclusion

While we live in this modern age full of rational ideas and scientific analysis, it’s hard for us to wrap our minds around certain things that we find in our Bibles…particularly, the supernatural. I don’t pretend to understand all the book of Revelation 100%, but I do know that this is my understanding of Revelation 9. I don’t find myself alone in this category, because no one else can know with 100% certainty of it either this side of the Rapture. There are just things that aren’t going to be known until they play out.