Look when the fifth angel blew his trumpet, that signalled as call for a fallen star ( a fallen angel like Satan / Lucifer?)to rise from the pit of – – – -! To that star was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.
Nothing good came from the abyss that is called the bottomless pit- smoke from its endless fire even darkened the sun and the air. Wow!
And from the smoke came locust with authority like scorpions. My! I am afraid of scorpions, scorpions and centipedes, centipedes because I saw what happened when one bit my father’s foot. I’ll forever not remember how his huge swollen foot couldn’t get inside a shoe for a very long time; scorpions because I heard that they were worse than centipedes. I’ve seen only two in my life- both in Jamaica. The first one disappeared into a hedge before I got to study it from a safe distance. The second one was a pet of this weird man who had taken away its sting., Yes.
So, with my fear of locusts that have the authority of scorpions, capable of eating away expanses of eating vegetation and leaving the earth bare, I shudder at the description and get a grasp of what is written in verse 6, that,
in those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.
The locusts that look like scorpions are described as ferocious, deadly, and having as their ruler one whose name means Destruction.
But, there is reprieve. We read in verse 4 that limits were set as to how much destruction they were allowed. And the environment was preserved.
They were told not to damage the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
Whether real or imaginary, literal or figurative, is the tyranny associated with the fifth angel not enough to drive holy fear into people, if there is such a thing?
For read on. The first woe has passed. There are still two woes to come.
Can things get worse?
I know that God’s love is winning. It attracts would be enemies like me; but is the horror of evil sufficiently frightening to have [people leave it alone? Or are we just to plain sinful?
Lord, help us, I pray.