The Locusts of the Abyss Revelation 9:7-11 7 The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. 8 Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. 9 They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. 10 They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. 11 They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer). For the Revelation, you have to think in terms of metaphor, because a lot of the horrors, the signs and wonders throughout the book are obviously meant to represent other things. The overall story, however is no metaphor. Something horrible is going to take place, brought on by man’s contemptible sin, resulting in God’s final fury against it. God and Jesus are not metaphorical in the book, and neither is Satan. This is what makes the Revelation of Saint John the Divine, who was possibly the Apostle John, such a difficult book to interpret. Some events and descriptions seem more likely metaphorical than literal, while others seem the opposite. John Calvin famously refused to write a commentary on this book, stating flatly that he didn’t understand it. But the infamous Locusts of the End Times, when you think in terms of John not understanding what he was looking at, could very well be a metaphor for helicopters. The crowns of gold could be the sun glinting off the rotor blades or the windshield. The human faces could be the pilots as seen through the windshield, or the windshield itself could look like two big eyes. The hair like women’s hair could be what John thought he saw in the spinning blades in mid-air. The teeth like lion’s teeth could be the popular “jaws” decal some helicopters and planes feature. Breastplates of iron is straightforward enough in this context, but the clincher seems to be “the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses.” Multiple helicopters flying together sound just like that. The stingers in their tails is more difficult to explain, but it could be that John saw missiles and rockets being fired out the front of the helicopters, and the white smoke trail of each shooting out the back. The identity of the angel of the Abyss is impossible to ascertain, but the “jaws” decal some helicopters sport is a popularly American addition. If so, America may be attacked, by a nuclear missile described immediately before the locusts as the star of Wormwood, or Bitterness (radioactivity) blazing like a torch, given the key to shaft of the abyss, out which smoke rises like a gigantic furnace; and America would then be understood to retaliate against the aggressor with helicopters. Or the locusts could be actual locusts made of iron, which is even more horrifying.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 20:13:46 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015