top of page
Highlighted today: Benefits of Hurricanes, Floods, Tornados, and other Phenomena of Nature
Great Truths and Relevant Prophecies for all
Nations and Peoples during this 21st Century
HOME | REVELATION 21ST CENTURY COMMENTARY | ADDITIONAL PROPHECIES | REBORN | SOCIAL CULTURAL ETHICAL | INTELLIGENCE KNOWLEDGE WISDOM | COMFORT and HEALING | MORTAL to IMMORTAL | WORLD RELIGIONS | BELIEF DISBELIEF | DEITY | VIDEOS | ABOUT | RECOMMENDED SITES | SPANISH SITE EDITORIAL LA PAZ | Documents for Limited Use Smartphones
December 04, 2024
Peace Publishers LLC. Resources in fifteen categories for self-instruction, classes, sermons, and conferences. An original 21st Century Commentary on Revelation is being added. Site administrator and publisher in English and Spanish: Homer Dewayne Shappley, evangelist and author of 2,500-plus documents in both languages. Oversight: Cairo, Tennesse Church of Christ.
EDITORIAL LA PAZ para miles de temas en ESPAÑOL
Translate documents on this site using Google’s Gemini or Microsoft Copilot..
The Fifth Trumpet of Revelation 9
Scene 3
The "locusts” of the 5th Trumpet of Revelation
"torment people who do not have the seal of God."
Another prophecy of Revelation for centuries XX and XXI?
Revelation 9:3-6
3 “Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given authority like the authority of scorpions of the earth. 4 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. 5 They were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torture was like the torture of a scorpion when it stings someone. 6 And in those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.” NRSVA
The formatting of Scenes 1 and 2 is retained.
“Locusts” with the “smoke” from the “shaft of the bottomless pit” swirling about them.
e) How do the “locusts” treat people “who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads?” Significantly, they do not kill them but rather torment them. Revelation 9:5. Most translations read “torment,” a number, “torture,” and some, “cause them pain.”
(1) Why do they torment them? Three theories:
(a) Perhaps because those who do not have the “seal of God,” though they do not follow the “Way” of Christ, do not support all the political-social-economic-cultural-racial-atheistic-secular platform of rulers who are strongly, openly, and aggressively allied in their opposition to God, every god and goddess, practically every semblance of religion, or all religion altogether.
Even in the most corrupt nations of past and present times, there have been, and undoubtedly are today, usually, at least some decent, humble, good, loving, and peaceful human beings, who, despite their indifference toward God, the gospel of Jesus Christ and his loyal church, or their total incredulity, or their endemic spiritual ignorance, do, indeed, deplore the unjust, cruel, sadistic treatment by “locusts” of people who state their opposing beliefs intelligently, respectfully and peacefully. Though they may be silenced by fear, they feel indignant and incensed because of the severe reprisals, torture, and massacres carried out by the “locusts.”
There surely would have been some people of this character in Germany under the tyranny of the Nazis, as also in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics under the ruthless dictatorship of Joseph Stalin and other dictators of that empire. And, also in Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries of the 20th century whose ruling powers persecuted, tormented, and massacred their own citizens who did not support them unconditionally.
(b) Or perhaps the “locusts” torment those “who do not have the seal of God” because they hold them to be human beings of an inferior class not fit to belong to the elite of the “locusts.”
(c) Or maybe because those who “do not have the seal of God” take advantage of the atmosphere of sublimation against God to sow social chaos to such an extreme as to undermine the very foundations of governments and civil order, exposing the deceived nations to the real danger of anarchy, thereby provoking their rulers to severe reprisals.
During 2011, there were great disturbances in Europe, particularly in England -destruction of properties on a large scale, private as well as public. Many buildings and vehicles were burned; businesses were broken into and plundered; there were violent confrontations between rioters and police. All the chaos and lawlessness instigated by gangs and individuals that did not have “the seal of God,” that is, they definitely did not believe in God, or, at the very least, had no valid faith in him.
In the same year, in the United States of America, not a few gangs and loose radicals who did not have the “seal of God” used cell phones and text messaging, or other means of almost instant communication, to organize and carry out attacks on shopping centers or particular stores, robbing and destroying.
Proceeding in the same way, some crime-like organizations, rebellious groups, and undisciplined individuals without a smudge of the
“seal of God on their foreheads” have risen up violently, both vocally and physically, against institutions and agencies of federal, state, and municipal governments, as also some entities of higher learning, commercial enterprises, and even churches.
These same types of convulsions were repeated on an even larger scale in 2020 in large cities across the United States of America. Multitudes of people who definitely do “NOT have the seal of God,” provoked very violent, bloody confrontations with police and other
agencies of the public order, even taking over certain areas of some cities. With injuries on both sides and some deaths.
Reacting to such chaotic manifestations, secular authorities persecute and punish in various ways the instigators and “in your face,” frontline activists.
Then, those who are tear-gassed, hit by rubber bullets, struck by police, arrested, handcuffed, fined, or jailed, together with their vocal sympathizers, feel truly “tormented” by their “persecutors.” Furious, frustrated, angry, indignant, badly treated, discriminated against. The most fanatic willing even to die for their social causes, sexual agendas, political convictions, or any other cause they consider of supreme importance.
Fulfillment of the prophecy in Revelation of “being tormented by locusts those who do not have the seal of God?” In truth, the circumstances fit the parameters of the prophecy to a rather surprising degree. Perhaps they presage similar future events of even wider and more serious reach.
(2) What are the methods utilized by the “locusts” to torment other peoples who are purely secular? Whatever they are, they are represented symbolically by the "stinger" at the end of the tail of the scorpion. Revelation 9:3, 5 y 10. Again, I will be so bold as to speculate a little, thinking that the following “stingers” fit the prophetic scenario.
(a) The mental poison of powerful propaganda against belief in God and his conduct code. Shrewdly concocted and aggressively spread by the “locusts” around the world. Dead set on convincing every human being to ally himself/herself, publicly and officially, with the positions on morality, sexual identity, unconditional inclusion, tolerance without limits, etc., of the secular political state. That they contribute their moral and economic support. And that they openly, unreservedly pronounce themselves in favor of the positions of secularists, humanists, atheists,
and all others in power. On pain of penalties for any who do not comply with the norms, laws, and guidelines of rulers who have been deceived by the “three foul spirits like frogs.” Revelation 16:13-14
(b) The psychological pressure the “locusts” exercise in their infernal determination to persuade all inhabitants of the earth to accept and actively uphold the official doctrine of deceived rulers, to wit: That God does not exist, that the Bible is nothing more than a series of human fables, that the churches, with the exception of those that ally themselves with the deceived secular state, work contrary to, prejudice and undermine the authority of the secular political government.
Including threatening denouncements in public tribunals for every person who does not actively support the completely secular state that invades moral, philosophical, and spiritual realms with agendas that openly and legally favor atheism and humanism, mandating the unconditional acceptance of the alphabet human beings in every organization, be it private or public, including churches
churches and religions of every category. At this late date (the third decade of the 21st century), said alphabet human beings have come up with approximately seventy combinations of letters by means of which they identify themselves.
Additionally, among the “stingers” of the “scorpion people” may be identified: Denial of privileges and liberties, assignment to jobs and positions not in accordance with academic preparation, economic reprisals, threats against family members, etc.
(c) Corporal punishment is a method employed in countries or states opposed to God and his stated purposes and identities for the human race. Forced labor, torture even of the most depraved and barbaric kind, exile, privation of food, water, and sufficient clothing, imprisonment, etc. A subject explored in Part “g)” below.
f) How long does the tormenting by the “locusts” of people who do “not have the seal of God” last? “Five months.” “They were allowed to torture them for FIVE MONTHS.” Revelation 9:5
“Five months” during the period of the “little while.” So then, a relatively short time in light of other periods of time identified in Revelation, for example, the “thousand years.” Revelation 20:1-10. Five prophetical months that do not have to be obligatorily understood as five literal months. Just as neither does the “thousand years” have to be interpreted as exactly one thousand literal years of exactly 365 days each. For, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” 2 Peter 3:8
Reactions of the tormented
to the harassment of the “locusts”
g) How do those who do “not have the seal of God” react to the “torment” of the “locusts?” The answer is found in the text itself on the Fifth Trumpet. “And in those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die,
but death will flee from them.” Revelation 9:6
(1) Not all men and women do that, let it be noted, but only the tormented “who do not have the seal of God.” Genuine Christians who do most positively have “the seal of God” are not in this lugubrious scenario. Neither are the locusts-scorpion-like men and women who do the persecuting and tormenting.
(2) "...will seek death… will long to die." "...will not find it... death will flee from them." The harassment of the “locusts” is so debased and violent that death would be preferable to their victims. However, though they want to commit suicide, they are deprived even of such an option! Why? Perhaps because…
The means to implement that option is simply beyond their reach.
The “locusts” zealously guard them day and night, not permitting them to take their lives, concerned, maybe, that such an action would compromise or embarrass the state.
If they intent to commit suicide, or actually accomplish it, their family members would suffer even worse torments.
(3) Has this prophecy been fulfilled already or is its fulfillment still pending? According to the thesis of interpretation I am applying, the prophecies of the Fifth Trumpet are for the “little while” that immediately precedes the Second Coming of Christ, an event inextricably linked with the end of the material world and time. This leads me to review, not ancient times nor even premodern times of this Common Era, but more or less the last 150 years, in search of some evidence of the possible fulfillment already of this particular prophecy on the reactions of victims to the torment of the “locusts.”
It does not take me long to see that, in the decade of the 1930’s, an enormous quantity of thick “smoke” begins to rise and spread from some countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, covering vast areas of the world during the Second World War, and continues boiling forth, darkening minds, hearts, and souls, poisoning and killing in not a few nations even to the end of the 20th century.
The densest, most suffocating lethal “smoke” comes out of the following countries and their dependencies: Germany, Italy,
Russia, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, portions of France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
The principal sources of this poisonous “smoke” in Europe are Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union. Their governing authorities under the powerful sway of Satan himself make use of great multitudes of employees and military personal in their infernal resolve to suffocate and subjugate other nations and particular peoples, even worldwide if they could, to the “smoke of the shaft of the bottomless pit” that they make to billow and blow as far as they can by means of their monstrous propaganda and war machines.
And we clearly see that out of the incredible volume of “smoke” they generate come absolutely great plagues of locust-like, scorpion-like human beings who barbarously torment scores of millions of human lives in numerous countries during the 20th century. More than two million of the “locusts” come out in Germany, many of them quickly traveling to other countries conquered by the German military forces. Reference is to the “leaders and members of the Nazi Party, Administrative Personal of the High Command, the Sturmabteilung (SA); the Schutzstaffel (SS), including the Scherheitsdienst (SD); and the Gestapo.” Still more hordes of “locusts” come out in the Soviet Union, outstanding among them those of the military-like, omnipresent KGB.
The sum of the victims of those accursed and extremely cruel, soulless, godless “locusts” of Germany and the Soviet Union numbers in the scores of millions. Multitudes were massacred on the spot. Other multitudes were sent to forced labor camps and death camps where millions were worked to death, starved to death, or tortured to death. A few million survived the terrible “torment” of the sadistic “locusts.” Only God knows how many of those not disposed of immediately would have preferred death to the inhuman treatment they suffered. As evidence of the mental, emotional, and
physical agony they experienced, following are two examples from Nazi Germany.
In Nazi Germany alone, 25,000 people committed suicide during the Second World War.
The Nazi German “locusts” persecuted and killed between 300,000 and 500,000 people within the borders of their own country during the Second World War. Dissidents, the physically, mentally and emotionally impaired, homosexuals, many elderly, the very sick, non-Aryan residents, religious leaders, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Nazi_Germany
The number of victims in some countries conquered by the Nazi German military is astronomical. Regarding Poland and the area inhabited by Ukrainians, the chilling, depraved and purely diabolical goal of Adolf Hitler was to exterminate 85% of the populations and enslave the remainder. Data in that regard is found in various relevant articles of www.wikipedia.org.
The prophecy says: “And in those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.” To what extent it was fulfilled in the victims of those hordes of persecuting, devouring “locusts” during the Second World War, you, dear reader of this document, may decide. What to me is certain is that, in the 20th century, more “smoke from the shaft of the bottomless pit” covered the earth than at any time during previous history. And it is an undeniable fact that out of that “smoke” came literally millions upon millions of human “locusts” that tormented even to death massive numbers of victims.
Certain it is that there had been “smoke” and “locusts” on the earth previous to the 20th century, even all the way back to the time of Nimrod and his wife Semiramis, the first empire builders. Genesis 10; 1 Chronicles 1:10. But, nothing to compare with the 20th century in terms of quantity, numbers, and victims, as well as the total land mass affected.
Too, there certainly would be a difference, in the capacity for absolute evil, between nations governed by idolatrous rulers and those governed by totally godless rulers publicly and officially opposed to God, any god, any goddess, Christianity, and all other religions alike, even to the mere semblance of religion in their citizens, to the slightest inclination of anyone to be religious in any way whatsoever.
Let us take due note: The ruling elite of the Axis countries of the 20th century were mostly of the latter category. Totally godless rulers!
Following, some data on the Second World War,
focusing especially on Germany and the Soviet Union.
Some global data for the Second World War only:
Military deaths...................... from 21 to 25 million.
Deaths of civilians attributed to military actions, genocides; pogroms, death camps, forced labor camps, the extermination of the handicapped, homosexuals, of advanced age and very sick, non-Aryan people, religious leaders, political dissidents, suicides, etc......... from 29 to 30 million.
Deaths attributed to sicknesses, plagues and starvation related to the war.. from 19 to 28 million.
The total number of deaths was from 70 to 85 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
GERMANY during the Secord World War.
The “locusts” (the oppressors) of Germany. In excess of two million.
The leaders and members of the Nazi Party, Administrative Personal of the High Command, the Sturmabteilung (SA); the Schutzstaffel (SS), including the Scherheitsdienst (SD); and the Gestapo, had an aggregate membership in excess of two million. From the time the Nazi Party began to gain power to its collapse in 1945, the Schutzstaffel (SS) was the principal security, vigilance and terror agency within Germany and the portions of Europe occupied by the Germans. It was the organization responsible for the genocide of approximately 6 million Jews and of millions more of other peoples during the Holocaust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel
The Geheime Staatspolizei, abbreviated GESTAPO, was the official Secret State Police of Germany. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipresent. During the Second World War, the Gestapo played the key roll in the Holocaust. Once the war came to an end, it was declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo
“The Nazi regime sought to suppress any source of ideology other than its own, and set out to muzzle or crush the churches in the so-called Kirchenkampf. When Church leaders (clergy) voiced their misgiving about the euthanasia program and Nazi racial policies, Hitler intimated that he considered them ‘traitors to the people’ and went so far as to call them ‘the destroyers of Germany’" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo#Suppression_of_resistance_and_persecution
“Hitler vehemently despised Christianity, calling it the enemy of National Socialism. According to historian William Shirer, "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler—backed by Hitler—the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists". He also wrote that Hitler "inveighed against political Catholicism in Mein Kempf and attacked both of the Christian Churches for their failure to recognize the racial problem..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims “Political Catholicism” has brought enormous disrepute to Christianity during long centuries. The church true to Christ is not political. It is spiritual. It is “not of this world.” John 18:3
The Example of the Unión of Soviet Socialist Republics
during the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.
(1) When communism triumphed in Russia, atheistic men took the reigns of that country and forged in the fires of violence, repression, suppression, torture, mass killings and war the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The governing powers eventually proclaimed themselves openly and officially against all religion, becoming hostile, intolerant, intransigent and persecuting.
(2) Joseph Stalin came to power in 1927, maintaining dictatorial control until his death in 1953. The name “Stalin” means “man of steel.” That is just the way he was: Inflexible, hard as steel, cold, soulless.
Joseph Stalin
The tens of millions of his subjects who servilely did his will, whether from political convictions or abject fear, were, in effect, like an innumerable horde of evil “locusts” who “flew” within the urban areas and all over the rural extensions of that immense empire, carrying out the orders of the government.
There were some dozen soviet state security organizations during the 69 years that the Soviet Union lasted. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronolog%C3%ADa_de_las_polic%C3%ADas_secretas_sovi%C3%A9ticas
“The Cheka, GPU, NKVD, MGB, and KGB. These are just a few of the names and acronyms for the same thing: the terrifying secret police apparatus of the Soviet Union. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Russia’s Communists used repressive violence to quash any semblance of political resistance. During this reign of terror, the various secret police organizations of the USSR are believed to have killed tens of millions of Soviet citizens. Under the reign of Joseph Stalin alone, the closest thing to an academic consensus is that 2.9 million people died in the dreadful work camps (known as gulags) or during forced peasant resettlements. Others argue that Stalin’s reign was far bloodier than this, and there is ample evidence to back up this supposition.
Lavrentiy Beria, was the head of the NKVD during the 1930s and 1940s. During his 15-year reign as the top cop in the NKVD, Beria was responsible for the execution of millions of Russians, including an untold number who were executed in the infamous Lubyanka prison. Under his watch, the NKVD carried out massacres in Poland and Ukraine, including the Katyn Massacre [the massacre by Russians of 22,000 officials of the Polish army].” https://listverse.com/2018/04/16/10-shocking-crimes-of-the-soviet-secret-police/
The KGB sowed terror throughout the country.
“The KGB (Russian: Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), romanized: Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, lit. 'Committee for State Security') was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 4 February 1947 until 3 December 1991.” Employees of the rest of the government dependencies, a great number of the members of the armed forces, active members of the official party, etc., joined with the KGB in the furious resolve to subject every citizen to the imperious will of the state. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB
It is thus that in the vast empire of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, plagued and shaken from one end to the other by incessant persecutions and terror during its short 69 years, there were Russian “locusts” everywhere! They ferociously tormented scores of millions of victims, eliminating great multitudes of them by means of the most inhumane, sadistic measures satanized minds could invent.
Using their massive propaganda machines and sophisticated methods and webs of communication, and recurring without pity to violent and
terrible punishments, those malevolent “locusts” tormented citizens that did not belong to the official party. Innumerable millions of those “inferior citizens” suffered psychological and physical torment in prisons and forced labor camps (for example, the infamous ones set up in Siberia), to such an extreme that they perhaps would have preferred “death,” but could not even commit suicide for lack of the means to accomplish it, also being closely guarded day and night. Many millions died of hunger, cold and physical exhaustion. With perhaps rare exceptions, these unfortunate souls did not have the “seal of God,” that is, they did not follow the gospel as revealed in the New Testament of Christ. God is merciful even to those who have not heard that message of “good news” but, nevertheless, live according to its precepts of love, justice, humility, and basic goodness. Romans 2:14-16; 9:14-15
Esteemed reader, if you are interested in learning more about the sufferings of those millions in the USSR, the books written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a survivor, are highly recommended, especially “The Gulag Archipelago.”
“The hard and often lethal conditions of the Gulag have been testified to by a number of survivors, perhaps the most notable of them being the writer Alexandr I. Solzhenitsin, whose book Gulag Archipelago (1973) was one of the initial first-hand accounts on the soviet camps.” Microsoft ® Encarta
Alexandr Solzhenitsin
In 1978, Alexandr Solzhenitsin, a writer of Russian origin, received the “Doctor Honoris Causa” from Harvard University. The author spent long years in prison and exile in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics due to his anti-Stalin and anti-Soviet opinions; afterwards he was expelled from the country. In his accounts and novels, he describes the reality of the soviet penal system and life in the USSR during the Stalin dictatorship, as well as afterwards. UPI/THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE. Microsoft ® Encarta ®
Text and Document Composition by the author Homer Dewayne Shappley. All rights reserved. The only restrictions on the use of this document are the sale of it in any format and proper identification of its origin.
Este estudio en ESPAÑOL
Scene 4 of the Fifth Trumpet of Revelation 9. The “appearance” of the “locusts” of the Fifth Trumpet.
Category. Revelation: Its Ongoing Relevancy and Fulfillment. Commentary.
Folllowing are two relevant documents.
Revelation 9:1-4. Smoke from the Bottomless Pit comes out of not a few universities, their faculties, and student bodies.
Revelation 10:6. Going out into the FUTURE to the LAST DAY of TIME. Looking back at planet Earth in the 20th and 21st centuries.
bottom of page