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If the people expected to recognize and accept the Messiah do not do so, the Baptist warns of even greater woes for them.
REVELATION 9:1–12
1 And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given
to him the key of the bottomless pit.
2 And he opened the bottomless pit: and the smoke of the pit arose, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the
sun and the air were darkened with the smoke of the pit.
3 And from the smoke of the pit there came out locusts upon the earth. And power was given to them, as
the scorpions of the earth have power:
4 And it was commanded to them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor
any tree: but only the men who have not the sign of God on their foreheads.
5 And it was given unto them that they should not kill them; but that they should torment them five
months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man.
6 And in those days men shall seek death, and shall not find it: and they shall desire to die, and death
shall fly from them.
7 And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle: and on their heads
were, as it were, crowns like gold: and their faces were as the faces of men.
8 And they had hair as the hair of women; and their teeth were as lions:
9 And they had breastplates as breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings were as the noise of
chariots and many horses running to battle.
10 And they had tails like to scorpions, and there were stings in their tails; and their power was to hurt
men five months. And they had over them
11 A king, the angel of the bottomless pit; whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek
Apollyon; in Latin Exterminans.
12 One woe is past, and behold there come yet two woes more hereafter.
These verses describe an angel blowing the fifth trumpet. When the trumpet sounds, John sees a star fall from heaven onto the earth. The star has a key to the bottomless pit and uses it to open the pit. Smoke issues from the pit, enough to darken the sky, and a swarm of locusts come out. They have stings like scorpions. They are told to sting people who are not marked with God's seal. They are not to kill these people. They are only to torment them for five months.
Many authors try to find a line-by-line interpretation of these twelve verses. Most of them compare the locusts to fallen angels that tempt humans to sin. These fallen angels had been confined to the bowels of the earth; now they are released. They will flood humans with a new wave of diabolical inspirations. Humans who do not recognize God's ways will not know how to choose. This new wave of temptation is permitted both as a punishment and as a means to make more obvious to humans the folly of abandoning God's ways. Some authors have tried to identify more concretely this plague of locusts. The loosening of the restraints God placed upon the fallen angels is still proposed. Different authors have tried to identify a particular event and some particular person as the trigger that released the locusts.
A commentary popular in Catholic circles cites the events of the Reformation as the unleashing. Martin Luther is cited as the trigger. Father Herman B. Kramer argues this approach in The Book of Destiny (see Bibliography). A commentary, popular with Protestant Evangelicals, places all these events in the future, just after the proposed rapture of the Church. Hal Lindsey popularized this approach in: There's a New World Coming, The Late Great Planet Earth, and other titles. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins also popularized the futurist approach in The Left Behind Series. Both approaches assume that Revelation predicts events in the distant future (from John).The events I describe as the fulfillment of the four winds and two of the three woes occurred approximately forty years after John the Baptist predicted them. A short term fulfillment seems to me more believable than one projected twenty centuries later. Judea was the nation descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through whom the Messiah was promised. The Judeans were supposed to recognize and accept the Messiah, but many did not. It seems logical that those who did not accept the Messiah would experience the disasters the Baptist predicted.
When John the Evangelist penned the final wording of Revelation (in A.D. 96), some disasters I described had already taken place. John saw them. Perhaps he incorporated the Baptist's visions into the final text to warn our Gentile nations that we will face similar disasters (if we are not prepared when Christ comes the second time) as Judea faced (unprepared) when Christ came the first time.
A star falls from heaven upon the earth. The high destiny inherited by Judea, a destiny to recognize the promised one and focus on heaven, on what God can do, descends toward earth, attracted to what humans can do. This subverted destiny then draws upon lower forces. As a result, the powers of hell are unleashed. Those Judeans not recognizing Christ did not understand how God could will anything less than political independence of the chosen people. So they strove to be independent. This political desire to be free nurtured some human centered ambitions that were plainly against God's Laws.
Ambitious Judeans vied with each other for leadership. They justified any means expedient to attain their goals: betrayal of friends, terror tactics, assassinations, and open rebellion. Like a plague, they preyed upon their fellow Judeans, motivated not by lofty ideals of God, but by what is base and ignoble, from what is dredged from deep within the psyche of fallen humanity: hatred, rivalry, pride, selfishness, cruelty, the very sins devils tempt people to commit. These ambitious Judeans draw their power from the uncommitted. If they win popular support, they can direct the nation. The uncommitted Judeans, those who do not know what to believe, are caught between the Messiah's call and the lure of the world. If they support those opposed to the Messiah, they are headed for disaster. Let us see if historical events bear this out.The year is A.D. 66, autumn. Thousands of Judean refugees flee toward Jerusalem. They come from Galilee and other areas attacked by Vespasian. I wonder what the weather was like on that autumn day. I wonder if the refugees anticipated more than the onset of winter as they made their way. Was an eagle in the sky? Did it cry at them as they passed? If so, did they remember the words of the eagle in John's vision as they trudged on? The eagle in John's vision cried: "Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth . . ." (Rev. 8:13). These people seek refuge in Jerusalem. They will add their sorrows to a city overwhelmed with sorrow. They will bring with them, also, a new political awareness. It will sweep through the Zealot party shifting the party's goals. New leaders will vie for control. Two contenders are Eleazar, son of Simon, and John of Gischala. John previously had opposed Josephus for control of Galilee. The Zealots are not the only ones interested in controlling the city. The Sicarri are powerful in both Jerusalem and at Masada. The Sicarri in Jerusalem are led by Judas the Galilean; the Sicarri at Masada, by Eleazar ben Jairi.
There is also a peace movement by the Judean middle class. The leader is Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai, a Pharisee priest. He will later escape Jerusalem and set up a rabbinical school at Yabneh (Grayzel, p. 195). There he will preserve the Judean heritage for future generations. But the strongest political group is the Zealots. They seized control of the central government, which collapsed under the influx of refugees. Then they tried to depose Ananus, the High Priest and de facto head of government. Then they start a reign of terror to neutralize all influence of the fallen government:
There were, besides these, other robbers that came out of the country, and came into the city, and joining to them those that were worse than themselves, omitted no kind of barbarity; for they did not measure their courage by their rapines and plundering only, but proceeded as far as murdering men; and this not in nighttime or privately, or with regard to ordinary men, but they did it openly in the daytime, and began with the most eminent persons in the city; for the first man they meddled with was Antipas, one of the royal lineage, and the most potent man in the whole city. . . . This caused a terrible consternation among the people; and every one contended himself with taking care of his own safety, as they would do if the city had been taken in war (Josephus, II, pp. 335–6 [WARS IV, III 4]).
To justify replacing Ananus, the Zealots wanted the High Priest chosen by drawing lots. The lot fell to an unsuspecting priest, unconnected to families with prior High Priests. The Zealots easily made him their pawn. As the coming disaster took shape, charismatics warned the Christians to leave the city and go to Perea (Jordan). This was early in A.D. 68, January through March.
Knowing the Zealots would abuse their control of the High Priest, Ananus urged the people to help him regain his position. While Ananus spoke, the Zealots attacked him and his listeners. His enraged listeners then attacked the Zealots. After a bloody street battle, the Zealots were beaten. They sought safety in the Temple's inner courts, surrounded by strong, high walls, so the Zealots could easily defend themselves. They could even withstand a siege because of ample grain supplies and water in underground cisterns. John of Gischala then asked Ananus to call a truce so he could talk the Zealots into surrender. When Ananus sent him, John told the Zealots that Ananus planned to surrender to Rome. He urged the Zealots to ask the Idumeans to help depose Ananus before the Romans come. This appealed to the Zealots.
The Idumeans sent a twenty thousand-man army. Ananus refused to let them enter Jerusalem. That night, some Zealots snuck out of the Temple and secretly opened the gates. The Idumeans resented having been denied entry into the holy city of their common faith (the Idumeans had recently been converted to Judaism). They pillaged the city and killed Ananus and 8,500 of his supporters.
But the rage of the Idumeans was not satiated by these slaughters; but they now betook themselves to the city, and plundered every house, and slew everyone they met: and for the multitude they esteemed it needless to go on killing them, but they sought for the high priests, and the generality went with the greatest zeal against them: and as soon as they caught them they slew them. . . . I should not mistake if I said that the death of Ananus was the beginning of the destruction of the city, and that from this very day may be dated the overthrow of her wall and the ruin of her affair. . . . And I cannot but think that it was because God had doomed this city to destruction as a polluted city, and resolved to purge his sanctuary by fire, that he cut off these their great defenders and well wishers. . . . Now after these were slain, the Zealots and the multitude of the Idumeans fell upon the people as upon a flock of profane animals, and cut their throats; and for the ordinary sort, they were destroyed in what place soever they caught them. . . . Those whom they caught in the daytime were slain in the night, and then their bodies were carried out and thrown away, that there might be room for other prisoners; and the terror that was upon the people was so great, that no one had courage enough either openly to weep for the dead man that was related to him, or to bury him (Josephus, II, pp. 347–8 [WARS IV, V, 2–3]).
Pleased with the victory, the Zealots accepted John of Gischala into the ruling circle. By spring of 68, Gischala dominated the party. By spring also, the Idumeans, ashamed of the misery they caused, left the city. When they did, the Zealots imposed a new reign of terror:
. . . After which these Idumeans retired from Jerusalem, and went home . . . while the Zealots grew more insolent, not as deserted by their confederates, but as freed from such men as might hinder their designs, and put some stop to their wickedness. Accordingly, they made no longer any delay, nor took any deliberation in their enormous practices, but made use of the shortest methods for all their executions; and what they had once resolved upon, they put into practice sooner than anyone could imagine. But their thirst was chiefly after the blood of valiant men, and men of good families; the one sort of which they destroyed out of envy, the other out of fear; for they thought their whole security lay in leaving no potent man alive (Josephus, II, p. 350 [WARS IV, VI, 1]).
While the Zealots were strengthening their hold on Jerusalem, Nero was weakening his hold on Rome. Sickened by Nero's abuse of power, the Roman Senate finally deposed him. They sent loyal troops to arrest him. They planned to execute Nero by the "old method;" that is, order soldiers to hang him by the head from a forked branch and beat him to death. Nero fled, but was tracked down. As the soldiers entered his hiding place on June 9, 68, he committed suicide. After his death, the senate could not pull the rival factions together. The Empire began to break apart. Three Generals within a year boasted that they were Emperor. Rival generals defeated them. Vespasian halted his attack in Judea and waited for Rome to stabilize.
Taking advantage of this lull, Simon bar Giora led his men to conquer the towns and villages around Jerusalem. This destroyed Zealot power outside Jerusalem. We now have Simon bar Giora master of Judea and the Zealots master of Jerusalem. Not happy with this, the Zealots sent out an army to destroy Simon. Simon defeated the soldiers and made them retreat to Jerusalem. If Simon felt strong enough, he would have attacked Jerusalem. He chose, instead, to attack the Idumeans. Aided by treachery of Idumean traitors, he and his army fought their way into Idumaea.
His success alarmed the Zealots. They kidnapped Simon's wife to hold as hostage. Simon then withdrew from Idumaea and besieged Jerusalem. He killed or maimed every Judean his army captured. He tortured some, cut off their hands, and sent them back to warn the Zealots that he would do the same to all his enemies if anything happened to his wife. Frightened by this, the Zealots released their hostage. Simon then left and continued his conquest of Idumaea, causing many Idumean refugees to flee to Jerusalem. When he conquered Idumaea, he came back and again besieged Jerusalem.
The Judeans are in a terrible situation now. They hated the Romans. They feared Simon. But even more than Simon, they feared the Zealots:
Now this Simon, who was without the wall, was a greater terror to the people than the Romans themselves, as were the Zealots who were within it more heavy upon them than both of the others; and during this time did the mischievous contrivances and courage corrupt the body of the Galileans; for these Galileans had advanced this John and made him very potent (Josephus, II, p. 362 [WARS, IV, IX, 10]).
John had been supported in his bid for power by the Zealots and now, seemingly in gratitude for their support, he allowed them to do anything they wished:
. . . for he permitted them to do all things that any of them desired to do, while their inclination to plunder was insatiable, as was their zeal in searching the houses of the rich; and for the murdering of men and abusing of the women, it was sport to them (Josephus, II, p. 362 [WARS, IV, IX, 10]).
Some Zealots then tried to oust Gischala. The Judean masses joined in and so did the Idumean refugees. John's men retreated again into the Temple where, because of its impregnable construction, there was again a stand off. Looking for new allies, the Judean people invited Simon bar Giora to help. So in April of 69, Simon and his men entered Jerusalem. But he also was unable to penetrate the Temple. Simon then tried to control the city. When the people resisted, Simon defeated them and ruled by force. He became an even worse tyrant than John of Gischala.
Later, within the Temple walls, a new mutiny erupted against John of Gischala. This mutiny was led by Eleazar ben Simon. His men seized the Temple's inner courts. This is the first time that the inner courts have been occupied by any of the combatants. For a while, this three sided battle raged around the Temple: the mutineers in the inner courts, John of Gischala's forces in the rest of the Temple complex, and Simon bar Giora's forces surrounding the Temple.
On April 15 in the year 69, General Vitellius took control of the Roman government. He was the third successor of Nero within a year. His unpopularity caused a civil war. A few months later, the armies of the east asked Vespasian to rule. Vespasian agreed but felt he should finish the conquest of Judea. On June 5, he resumed the offensive and easily re-conquered all of Judea except Jerusalem and the three fortifications of Herodion, Machaerus, and Masada. Herodion was ten miles south of Jerusalem near Bethlehem. Machaerus, where John the Baptist was beheaded, was forty miles east of Jerusalem in the mountains of Perea on the other side of the Dead Sea. Masada was a mountain fortress on the west side of the Dead Sea, about forty miles south of Jerusalem.
On July 3, Vespasian accepted the army's offer. He left his son, Titus, to finish the war while he restored order in Rome. He will be crowned Emperor on December 20, A.D. 69. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, during summer and early fall, the forces of Gischala and Bar Giora continued fighting. The fighting caused the city terrible misery. In their mad assaults against each other, these two rival factions burnt and destroyed all the stored grain in the city. Before summer was over, both sides had run out of food. By early fall, the city faced starvation.
. . . he [Gischala] sallied out with a great number upon Simon and his party; and this he did always in such parts of the city as he could come at, till he set on fire those houses that were full of corn*, and of all other provisions. The same thing was done by Simon, when, upon the other's retreat, he attacked the city also: as if they had on purpose done it to serve the Romans, by destroying what the city had laid up against the siege, and by thus cutting off the nerves of their own power. Accordingly, it so came to pass, that all the places that were about the temple were burnt down, and were become an intermediate desert space, ready for fighting on both sides of it; and that almost all that corn was burnt, which would have been sufficient for a siege of many years. So they were taken by the means of famine, which it was impossible they should have been unless they had thus prepared the way for it by this procedure.
*This destruction of such a vast quantity of corn and other provisions, as was sufficient for many years, was the direct occasion of that terrible famine which consumed incredible numbers of Jews in Jerusalem during its siege [Whiston's footnote] (Josephus, II, p. 372) [WARS V, I, 4]).
Think about what the unbelieving Judeans have done. They are at war with the most powerful empire on earth. They had small chance of victory at best. Now they have no chance. With unimaginable madness, those who seek power fought a civil war in their capital while their common enemy conquered the rest of their country. The uncommitted Judeans must have been horrified to witness the destruction of their resources, even their stored grain. This is reminiscent of what Moses long ago said about the blessings God would bestow upon these people if they remain faithful and the curses God would bring against them if they became unfaithful:
If you walk contrary to me, and will not harken to me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you for your sins: And I will send in upon you the beasts of the field, to destroy you and your cattle, and make you few in number, and that your highways may be desolate. And even so if you will not amend, but will walk contrary to me: I will also walk contrary to you, and will strike you seven times for your sins. And I will bring in upon you the sword that shall avenge my covenant. And when you shall flee into the cities, I will send the pestilence in the midst of you, and you shall be delivered into the hands of your enemies, after I shall have broken the staff of your bread: so that ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and give it out by weight: and you shall eat, and you shall not be filled. But if you will not for all this harken to me, but will walk against me: I will also go against you with opposite fury, and I will chastise you with seven plagues for your sins, So that you shall eat the flesh of your sons and of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, and break your idols. You shall fall among the ruins of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. Insomuch that I will bring your cities to be a wilderness, and I will make your sanctuaries desolate, and will receive no more your sweet odours. And I will destroy your land, and your enemies shall be astonished at it, when they shall be the inhabitants thereof. And I will scatter you among the Gentiles, and I will draw out the sword after you, and your land shall be desert, and your cities destroyed (Lev. 26:21–33).
Their leaders acted like locusts and stripped all of them of everything they needed to withstand their common enemy. Bad as the power struggle was, however, it did not kill the nation. It only tormented the nation and wasted its resources similar to a plague of locusts that the unbelievers were warned about in the first woe.
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