Why Is Locust Attack Happening
Experts attribute the current deep invasion of locusts to the fact that while rabi crops have been harvested, kharif sowing is yet to begin. The low availability of crops is leading the swarms to devour leaves on trees, and vegetable, fruit and cotton crops, and move deeper into India in search of fodder.
Are The Locusts Demonic
Some argue that these locusts are demonic because they will come out of the abyss. However, I disagree with the idea that the locusts are demonic. Heres why:
And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
The fifth trumpet locusts are tools used by God to punish the wicked of the earth. If you would like to learn more, I have an article about Apollyon/Abaddon, the leader of the locusts.
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Billions Of Cicadas Will Ascend Upon The Northeastern United States As Another 17
The eighth biblical plague that tortured Egypt was a plague of locusts.
As described in Exodus 10:5, And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field.
Flip the aforementioned they from locusts to cicadas, and thats actually a pretty apt description of what residents in some parts of Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia will experience next month when the soil warms to 64 degrees and billions of cicadas rise from the ground to mate. Fortunately, cicadas cant chew so they dont devour our plants and trees. If they manage to avoid predators long enough they suck up plant sap but not enough to any real damage.
This particular group of insects has a 17-year-life cycle that begins underground and culminates in the air as they swell and swarm and scream and sing, issuing deafening cries as the males desperately seek mates. This current 17-year-cycle, which began in 1999, begins to end next month, reports Cicada Mania.
As billions of insects emerge, they can reach a density of 1.5 million cicadas an acre in some areas.
The adults live above ground for four to six weeks, and the only thing that interests them is mating and laying eggs .
But theres the noise.
Oh, the noise.
Anyone who has experienced a swarm likely remembers the noise.
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What Specific Bible Verses Talk About Locusts
Revelation 9:1-6 ESV And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.
2 Chronicles 7:12-15 ESV Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place.
Why Is This Important For Christians To Know
Evil hearts swarming together harm a body of believers spirituality. A swarm of locusts is hard to ignore once its causing damage, but its development is easier to nip in the bud. Our faith is a kind of biological control, like using fungus to destroy locusts bodies. It is possible that through Gods grace and our care for His creation we will be given back the years the locusts have eaten. Our soul, spirit, and earth may be restored.
Solomon uses locust imagery when he prays at his temple dedication:
When famine or plague comes to the land, or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, or when an enemy besieges them in any of their cities, whatever disaster or disease may come, and when a prayer or plea is made by anyone among your people Israelbeing aware of the afflictions of their own hearts, and spreading out their hands toward this templethen hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Forgive and act deal with everyone according to all they do, since you know their hearts , so that they will fear you all the time they live in the land you gave our ancestors I Kings 8:37-40.
Betty Dunn hopes her articles in Crosswalk.com help you hold hands with God, a theme in her self-published memoir Medusa. A former high school English teacher and editor, she works on writing projects from her home in West Michigan, where she enjoys woods, water, pets, and family. Check out her blog at Betty by Elizabeth Dunning and her website, www.elizabethdunning-wix.com.
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What Do These Insects Mean For The End Times
Old Testament plagues take new forms in the 21st century. The COVID pandemic has the characteristics of a plague. Instead of swarming locusts destroying crops, an infectious disease attacks our bodies and has killed over 300,00,000 people on earth as of early 2021.
Health and environmental crises require us to diligently care for ourselves and our aging planet. The book of Revelation graphically depicts health and environmental devastation in the end times: boils on people, waters turning to blood, drought, darkness, a global earthquake . . . In an article titled Apocalypse Now: Floods, Tornadoes, Locusts: Is violent weather around the globe a sign of a coming Apocalypse? by Susan Donaldson James for ABC News , she writes, God’s wrath seems at work these days, as the heavens and Earth have unleashed earthquakes in China, a cyclone in Burma, killer tornadoes and record floods across the U.S. and even a plague of locusts in New England. The article Apocalypse Now claims that Though tsunamis, hurricanes and heat waves may not be a punishment from God, history teaches that events in the physical world trigger upheaval in society. Civilizations have risen and fallen over drought, famine, and water wars.
One likely, looming catastrophe is that increased rainfall and moisture resulting from global warming will create conditions in which insects such as locusts thrive.
Frequent Question: What Does Bible Say About Locusts
Now, of the ten plagues, the eighth one was that of locusts. Moses warned the Pharaoh that God will send so many locusts that they will cover each and every tree of the land and eat all that is there to be eaten. Every time the Pharaoh refused, a fresh plague was inflicted upon his kingdom.
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Many Repeat Myths About Revelation
If there was a prize for the most misunderstood source for bad predictions, it would go to the Book of Revelation. It may be the Bibles ultimate crossover no other books imagery and language has so penetrated popular culture.
Even people who have never read the Bible are familiar with its references: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Red Dragon, 666 and the seven bowls of plague.
Revelation is filled with such contagious imagery that one theologian who has studied its text calls it a multimedia book whose popular images operate like an infectious disease.
They break off from the larger text and circulate like little viruses in our culture that hook on to other things and thats when they really take off and spread, says Timothy Beal, author of The Book of Revelation: A Biography.
Beal says many people quoting Revelation get the meaning and the symbolism wrong.
Almost none of the people talking about Revelation have really sat down and read it, he says. Many people, for example, believe that the Rapture when its believed that Jesus returns at the end of the age and all Christians, dead and alive, will rise up in the air to meet him is in Revelation.
Not true, says Beal.
There is no explicit mention of the Rapture in Revelation. There are references to the concept in scriptures like 1 Corinthians 15:52, which says, For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
Nope, Beal says.
What Role Did Locusts Play In The Egyptian Plagues
Most famously, locusts played a starring role when Moses took on Pharaoh in Egypt. One of the 10 plagues Moses called down upon the Egyptians was locusts. The Israelites had been enslaved for generations under cruel Egyptian Pharaohs. In the time of Moses, it was Gods plan to free them from slavery, but Pharaohs heart was hard.
God used the 10 plaguesblood, frogs, gnats/lice, flies, livestock pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and death of the firstbornto move Pharaohs heart to free the Israelites. God turned their water to blood and filled the land with frogs and biting gnats. The people endured and Pharaoh remained embedded in his hardness, so God sent a pestilence that killed their livestock, boils that afflicted their bodies, and then hail that destroyed much of their food supply. Pharaoh was still unrelenting, so God sent locusts to eat whatever the hail had not destroyed. They were the clean-up crew focused on leaving not a twig or leaf for food for Pharaohs people.
God has no problem demonstrating that He is God over all the universe. There is no one greater than He.
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Apocalypse Now: Floods Tornadoes Locusts
Is violent weather around the globe a sign of a coming Apocalypse?
But things went downhill from there.
God’s wrath seems at work these days, as the heavens and Earth have unleashed earthquakes in China, a cyclone in Burma, killer tornadoes and record floods across the U.S. and even a plague of locusts in New England.
In Cedar Rapids, Iowa today, floodwaters forced the evacuation of a downtown hospital after residents of more than 3,000 homes fled for higher ground. A railroad bridge collapsed, and 100 city blocks were underwater.
“We’re just kind of at God’s mercy right now, so hopefully people that never prayed before this, it might be a good time to start,” Linn County Sheriff Don Zeller said this week as record floods hit the Midwest. “We’re going to need a lot of prayers and people are going to need a lot of patience and understanding.”
And then comes the Apocalypse, the final judgment of man and destruction of the world by fire.
Biblical imagery is all over the news these days even including a story last week of a New York baby being enwrapped by a snake in its crib, harking back to evil lurking in the Garden of Eden.
Most theologians and scientists don’t take seriously warnings that the end of the world is nigh. But many reputable scholars do lend some credence to the notion that the world is in for some kind of disaster, be it meteorological, ecological or geopolitical.
“There is a certain end of the empire anxiety,” he said.
Why Invoking Doomsday Scenarios Can Be Harmful
Invoking end-times biblical passages may actually bolster some peoples faith by giving meaning to events that seem cruel and arbitrary.
But people who invoke the terrifying imagery of Revelation in connection with COVID-19 can do more than get scripture wrong. They can damage others psychological health, Beal says.
I had one student who was reading Revelation outside on the waterfront and she fell asleep and woke up in the middle of a thunderstorm. She had an absolute panic attack because she felt like she was in the book, says Beal, a religion professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
Doomsday predictions from the Bible can also lead to another danger doing nothing, Beal says. He believes people who are seized with panic over something like Covid-19 may ignore other chronic issues threatening humanitys survival, such as climate change.
It can lead to a call to inaction, Beal says about misinterpretations of Revelation. That is to say, people will say this is all happening because of Gods plan and its going to get worse before it gets better so theres nothing we can do about it because its Gods will.
But that probably wont stop people from invoking Revelation when a pandemic hits. For centuries its been the go-to book for doomsday prophets warning about the spread of end-times plagues and bizarre weather patterns.
The book of Revelation is not a book about predictions but a book of consolation, Lehner says.
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What Are Locusts In The Bible
A locust is a special kind of grasshopper that adapts its body and behavior to swarm when environmental conditions are rightusually when there’s a lot of rainfall. Then their remarkable transformation in brain, color, size, and attraction to one another draws them into swarms damaging crops over wide areas of land.
A frightening fact about locusts is a 10 to 16-fold increase in locust numbers occurs from one generation to the next. African countries are now experiencing their worst infestations of locusts in decades. Desert locusts in Africa and Asia swarm with as many as 150 million locusts per square kilometer and fly in the direction of the prevailing wind. They may travel up to 150 kilometers in one day. A very small, one-kilometer locust swarm can eat the same amount of food in a day as about 35,000 people. Pesticides and biological control measures have some effect on controlling populations. Locusts live up to one year without population control.
The closest I have ever been to a swarm of locusts was at a Tiger baseball game, in a year there was an infestation of cicadas, a flying insect like a locust. I remember swatting at the large, chirping creatures circling in flight above the bleachers.
What Are Locusts And Where Do We See Them In Scripture
Locusts are grasshopper-like insects who are generally solitary. In some countries, they are a source of protein, boiled with salt or roasted to a tasty crunch. They can go unnoticed in their solitary state for months except by children who marvel at the strength of their legs and their ability to jump to impressive heights. But under certain conditions. locusts can swarm, becoming a frighteningly destructive agent of crop devastation. In this swarming phase, usually brought on by drought, they breed rapidly and travel in large clouds, consuming all vegetation in their path. Locust swarms appear in our times, especially in Africa, India, and the Middle East, although theyre not completely unknown in parts of the United States. According to the BBC, in 2020, locust swarms appeared in dozens of countries at once. When they impact several neighboring countries in this way, we refer to this as a plague of locusts.
Locust swarms are featured in the Old Testament, figuring prominently in the history of the Jewish people. They also appear as essential figures in biblical prophecy both in the Old Testament and in Revelation.
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What Role Do Locusts Play In Revelation
Gods demonstration of plagues against Pharaoh, as dramatic as it was, was only a precursor or foreshadowing of what is to come at the end of days. Revelation prophesies a time when the inhabitants remaining on earth will rise up against God. The people of God will be raptured, and deception will be rampant. Kings and nations will unite against God. Gods wrath is imminent but, just as He did with Pharaoh, God will send dramatic warning events to persuade people to repent and be saved.
The locusts of Revelation, however, are no ordinary locusts. They will not be swarming against vegetation. In fact, they are instructed not to bother with the grass or trees but to, instead, swarm against humans. They are given five months in which to torment people with pain like that of a scorpion bite. The Bible says it will be such agony that people will long for death but not be able to find it.
The locusts from Revelation nine have unique characteristicsas if they were bionic creaturesupgraded from swarming crop destroyers to great storm clouds of terror for humanity. They are, in fact, released by an angel from a great bottomless pit and rise like black smoke from the recesses of a place so terrible, their reigning king is an angel known as Apollyon which means Destroyer.
It is worthwhile that we pray for those who are unsaved that God would use every hardship to soften and not harden their hearts toward the Gospel.