Question:
I would like to understand the part of Revelation about the locusts coming up on the earth to torment wicked people. I surely want to understand this. I have never heard it explained, but I have read the Bible many times, I love God’s Word, and I believe it and do my best to obey it.
Answer:
The text in question is Rev. 9:1-11.
The book of Revelation is, according to its own statement, concerning “things to come,” a book of prophecy for the future time when Christ returns to bring all the forces of earth under His dominion and set up His everlasting Kingdom of righteousness and peace. The nations of earth will resist His righteous rule, and He will have prepared different methods to force them to comply with His dictates. This is the only way that the earth can come under the total jurisdiction of the new government and the Kingdom of God be a worldwide success for the benefit of all who live.
The book of Revelation is highly symbolic, and we do not know what the locusts and all the individual symbols represent. One message, however, comes through clear and strong: that the forces of Christ will triumph, that all who oppose Him will be destroyed. As far as the exact methods of their destruction are concerned, we do not know.
The last two verses of Revelation 9 show the effects of the punishments described in the chapter, that in spite of all the judgments poured out, still “the rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood:…They did not repent of their murders or their sorceries, or of their sexual immorality or their thefts” (vs. 20-21). Mankind will not willingly give up their “right” to rule themselves, and do as they please.
But notice earlier in the chapter, the order was given that none should be harmed who had “the seal of God in their foreheads.” This should be our great concern, to get this seal in our foreheads, the Word of God and the mark of approval which will designate us as being on the side of Christ and the saints and so be spared when His judgments are poured out upon the evildoers.