Creatures from Hell emerge from the Smoke...
v. 3. From the smoke, or when the smoke clears, behold, “locusts!” And the locusts are given power. Power like a scorpion has power. Painful. Dangerous. Can hurt. Can kill. And so many!
Here, Joel (2:2) talks of a great “people”, though many Bible versions use the term “army”. It is a gathering of individuals that are called locusts in Revelation and that act like locusts in Joel. But the inference is that in neither place are they little grasshoppers that suddenly went off for a trip through some fields. Remember that the locusts of Joel, the real ones, are only a backdrop, an illustration of what this end-time army will be. John calls them “locusts.” Let’s see…
Notice that they are “great and strong, the like of whom has never been” in Joel, and “power was given to them” seems to be the parallel of John.
v. 4. If I have correctly identified John’s locust army with Joel’s, verse 4 seems in contradiction to Joel’s account at this place. Joel says that a fire comes before the locusts, and a flame burns after the locusts… and nothing shall escape them. But John sees that the “locusts” are told not to hurt any green thing, and rather to focus on hurting unregenerate men.
I will offer an explanation, but do not wish to bind anyone to it. If I have called it wrong, at least I have been able to show you a close similarity in these two judgments, and hopefully inspire you to dig a little deeper.
My explanation is this. There are seven trumpets. If, as is very possible, they happen in rapid succession or nearly simultaneously, Joel’s passage and John’s could be fulfilled by looking at the trumpets immediately before and immediately after the fifth sounding:
Immediately before seem to be all four of the first trumpets. Notice the fraction 1/3 linking these four events. All at once, a huge portion of the waters, the land, the atmosphere, are destroyed, and part of this destruction is the burning of the earth. That is, “a fire devours before the locusts.” (Joel 2:3)
And then look at the trumpet right after this one. A second army comes on the scene, from the East, immediately following the first, riding on horses out of which come fire and brimstone… in other words, behind the locusts a fire burns! (Joel 2:3)
Preceded and followed by fire, the locusts themselves do not have to do that sort of damage. Their job is to bring pain to people. It looks as though they are preparing the way for the army following, by paralyzing millions of men who would normally be men of war.
In Joel’s vision he may indeed have seen fire before and fire after, and assumed it was locusts causing it, but the text of Joel cannot be forced to say that. “Nothing shall escape them” because they will paralyze men so adequately that they will be destroyed by the onslaught from the East. (Again, a topic we cannot cover here.)
v. 5-6. As we have seen, they will not even be killing people, but rather, slowing them down, so that they are powerless to respond to what is coming. The “sting” in their “tails” will incapacitate their victims for 5 months. I see men writhing with sweat in their beds, raging fevers, poisoned by the locust-creatures. Like when a man is stung by a scorpion. They will want to die, it will be so awful. But they will not die. Not from the sting. They will just be set aside…
Emedicine health, online, relates that “a person experiencing a serious reaction [as is true in only a few of the worst of scorpion bites] may develop severe symptoms throughout the body. Severe symptoms include widespread numbness, difficulty swallowing, a thick tongue, blurred vision, roving eye movements, seizures, salivation, and difficulty breathing. These symptoms constitute a medical emergency. Death may occur…”
And that is just an ordinary Earth creature. These creatures from the pit, we can only imagine.
Joel (v. 6) also sees people writhing in pain, faces drained of color.
v. 7 (Revelation) matches so well with Joel 2:4, that I want to try to hold on to the connection between these two passages. Both passages state that the appearance of these “locusts” is really more like horses . Horses prepared for battle, says John. War horses, says Joel. A striking similarity indeed.
Joel goes on to tell in more detail what an army of war horses sounds like. Like chariots. Cars. Vehicles. They are literally leaping over the mountains, he says. John joins with him in Revelation 9:9, where the sound of their “wings” was like the sound of chariots, of many horses rushing to battle.
Let’s stop. We are not talking about real locusts. We are not talking about real horses. We are not talking about people. All the comparisons are there to help us make a discerning deduction about what is coming. Awful, awful assembly of creatures, released from Hell, tormenting men, able to climb and jump around mountains, as loud as our loudest airplanes and helicopters. Are they indeed able to fly also, since they are called locusts? One would think so.
Joel mentions here another noise they resemble: a flaming fire. Once again see that these locusts are not said to be producing fire, only sounding like fire. And they sound like a human army too. Ghastly sight. Ghastly sounds.
Now a look at the heads of these “locusts.” It says they appeared to be crowns like gold. Many have speculated about this entire description that what we are looking at is nothing more than a helicopter. I have bought into this possibility myself, and will buy out of it in a few paragraphs, but it is indeed inviting to see this crown of gold as nothing more than the shimmering of helicopter blades in full motion. I do not rule out that something akin to helicopter technology is meant here. You will soon see that a modern helicopter doesn’t paint the whole picture.
v. 7-8. Faces like men. Hair like women. Well, the broad windshield of a helicopter gives one a full view of the person operating the machine. It is not difficult these days to imagine that a woman or two could well be doing the navigating here.
Teeth like lions is where things begin to slow down in the imagery. We are, after all, talking about a destructive creature or device. Locusts must always be our point of reference. And even more to the point, Joel brings out that their damage, like locusts also, is done on the ground, not in the air. Let’s go back to Joel.
These creatures run. They climb like men. They march in formation, perfectly, without so much as touching one another, ever. They are very agile, moving here and there but never hit by enemy fire(Joel 2:7-8).
Back to Revelation. Teeth like lions, we still haven’t interpreted. Whatever it is, it is the mechanism whereby these “things” can rip away anything that blocks them from entrance to wherever they want to go. They are unstoppable. As locusts.
