Locust of Revelation (First Edit)

When researching the end times, one thing that seems to jump out when reading the book of Revelation is the manifestation of the locust. I have decided to check this out and see just who the Bible says these locust are. If they are such a major problem in the end times, I wanted to know if these locust were in fact little critters, or if they were something completely different. Considering that these things play such a major role in the last days, and the fact that there are so many theories and opinions on who or what they are, surly the Bible does not leave us to our own imaginations as to the identity of these beings. I think I have discovered something pretty amazing.

Joel 2: 25

So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,

The crawling locust,

The consuming locust,

And the chewing locust,

My great army which I sent among you.

From the book of Joel, we can clearly see that the Locust are a great army sent to bring some of YHWH’s wrath. I say this because YHWH says himself that He sent this great army. I would even say that this is army is led by the antichrist himself. I believe this is quite plausible considering that many times in the Old Testament that YHWH says He will stir up the Medes against Babylon. The Medes are a group of people that bring terror to Babylon in the last days. So, in my opinion, based on everything I have read in the Bible, this army of locust are led by the antichrist.

Joel 2: 1- 11

Blow the trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm in My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; For the day of the Lord is coming, For it is at hand: A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness, Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains. A people come, great and strong, The like of whom has never been; Nor will there ever be any such after them, Even for many successive generations.

A fire devours before them,

And behind them a flame burns;

The land is like the Garden of Eden before them,

And behind them a desolate wilderness;

Surely nothing shall escape them.

Their appearance is like the appearance of horses;

And like swift steeds, so they run.

With a noise like chariots

Over mountaintops they leap,

Like the noise of a flaming fire that devours the stubble,

Like a strong people set in battle array.

Before them the people writhe in pain;

All faces are drained of color.

They run like mighty men,

They climb the wall like men of war;

Every one marches in formation,

And they do not break ranks.

They do not push one another;

Every one marches in his own column.

Though they lunge between the weapons,

They are not cut down.

They run to and fro in the city,

They run on the wall;

They climb into the houses,

They enter at the windows like a thief.

The earth quakes before them,

The heavens tremble;

The sun and moon grow dark,

And the stars diminish their brightness.

The Lord gives voice before His army,

For His camp is very great;

For strong is the One who executes His word.

For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible;

Who can endure it?

Matthew 24: 29

Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

“A people come”, here we see that the Joel 2 army is a group of people. This people are also called locust. All this is taking place just before the Sun and moon go dark and the stars no longer give their light. This is the very terminology we read from the book of Matthew. The tribulation is brought on by the Joel 2 army. This army is a people group that are evil, but YHWY will use evil for good. These locust are also described in the book of Revelation.

Revelation 9: 7-11

The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months. And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon.

This passage literally tells us that these locust looked like horses prepared for battle, with men riding these horses, and the men had crowns. They were wearing iron vests, and they sounded as many chariots and horses as they moved. To top it off, their king was the ANGEL from the bottomless pit. The only angel I know that rules the bottomless pit is Satan himself. All this is eerily similar to the Joel 2 army.

After reading this, I decided to search through all the bible to find mentions of locust. Here is a list of several instances in which locust are mentioned in reference to something specific.

Judges 6: 1, 5

The Israelites did evil in the eyes of YHWH, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.

They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it

Here we see that seven year mark mentioned again. The seven years issue is mentioned in another blog and is outside of the scope for this blog. However, the Midianites seem to be the ones referred to as the locust in these verses. The Midianites also seem to have an innumerable amount of soldiers and camels. Could this be similar to the 200,000 horsemen?

Judges 7: 12

Now the Midianites and Amalekites, all the people of the East, were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the seashore in multitude.

Again we see the Midianites in reference to locust and being without number. So something we need to do is find out who the Midianites are.

Jeremiah 51: 14

The Lord of hosts has sworn by Himself: “Surely I will fill you with men, as with locusts, And they shall lift up a shout against you.”

Jeremiah 51: 27

Set up a banner in the land, Blow the trumpet among the nations! Prepare the nations against her, Call the kingdoms together against her: Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a general against her; Cause the horses to come up like the bristling locusts.

Joel 1: 4

What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten; and what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten.

Who are the Midianites?

The Midianites were descendants of Abraham.

Genesis 25: 1-2, 5-6

Abraham had taken another wife, whose name was Keturah. She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah

Abraham left everything he owned to Isaac. But while he was still living, he gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them away from his son Isaac to the land of the east.

This verse here is also very interesting, considering Abraham sent all of his sons from the concubines away to the land of the EAST.

Revelation 16: 12

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East.

I have always heard that these kings of the east were China, but I no longer agree with that considering all the research from the bible that I have done. The kings of the east or much more likely to be kings of Islamic nations. I also believe that these kings of the east are the ten kingdoms with the seven kings we call the first beast of Revelation. 

According to Biblehub.com this is who they are.

Descendants of Midian, a nomad race in Arabia, numerous, and rich in flocks, herds, and camels, Isaiah 60:6. The original and appropriate district of the Midianites seems to have been on the east side of the Elantic branch of the Red Sea, where the Arabian geographers place the city Midian, Acts 7:29. But they appear to have spread themselves northward, probably along the desert east of Mount Seir, to the vicinity of the Moabites; and on the other side, also, they covered a territory extending to the neighborhood of Mount Sinai. See Exodus 3:1 18:1 Nu 22:25,31 Jud 6:1-8:35. In Genesis 25:2,4, compared with Genesis 25:12-18, they are distinguished from the descendants of Ishmael, though elsewhere we find the two people intimately associated, so that they are called now by one name and now by the other. See Genesis 37:25, compared with Genesis 37:36. Their capital city was called Midian, and its remains were to be seen in the time of Jerome and Eusebius. It was situated on the Arnon, south of the city Ar, or Areopolis.

The Midianites were idolaters, and often led Israel astray to worship their gods. They also not infrequently rendered the Hebrews tributary, and oppressed them. See Numbers 22:1-41 25:1-18 31:1-54. Often when the Israelites had sown, and their harvest was nearly ready to be gathered in, the Midianites and Amalekites, children of the eastern desert, came down like locusts in countless swarms, with their cattle and tents and camels, to devour and carry off the fruits of the ground, and not only rob but destroy their owners. And often did the Jews, lacking the strength or the faith or the leadership necessary for effectual resistance, seek refuge in mountain-dens and caverns till the invaders retired. Gideon was their deliverer in one such period of oppression, Jud 6:7. The modern Ishmaelites still follow the ancient practice, and their violent incursions, robberies, and murders might be described in the same terms that were used with reference to their fathers by the historians of old.

The modern Ishmaelites are our Islamic nations of the world. They are doing the very things they have always done.

John 10:10

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

The word thief in the Greek is kleptēs. Here is the definition according to Strong’s Concordance.

A.      an embezzler, pilferer

I.                    the name is transferred to false teachers, who do not care to instruct men, but abuse their confidence for their own gain

False teachers that abuse their confidence for gain. This too seems to fit Islam.

Considering that the Muslim community are waiting for their Mahdi to return before all infidels are destroyed. The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a 2014 interview, promised a world free of infidels and nonbelievers with the coming of the Islamic messiah, Mahdi, a 9th-century descendant of the prophet Mohammad whom the Shiites refer to as the 12th Imam.

Isis is part of the Sunni, the larger of the divisions of Islam. The Sunni believe in the Caliphate system. The Caliphate system is now lead by the leader of Isis. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “In June 2014 an insurgent group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS] and the Islamic State [IS]), which had taken control of areas of eastern Syria and western Iraq, declared the establishment of a caliphate with the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as caliph.” Granted, outside radical Islam, Baghdadi as the caliph has been rejected, it is still quite interesting that the Caliphate system has reemerged in Islam. That all being said, Islam is the second largest religion in the world, only behind Christianity. Islam has roughly 1.6 billion members, among the two groups, Shia, and Sunni. Taking that into consideration, if they were to believe that their Mahdi had returned, they would no doubt join together and an army of 200, 000 horsemen would not be too hard to imagine. Especially considering that they would be out to destroy all the infidels at the order of the Mahdi, or Antichrist.

Now here is something that really jumped out at me and could change our thinking on the locust of Revelation, and could directly link them to, in my opinion, Islam.