I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Revelation 9-12.

As the fifth and sixth trumpets sound, each announces a new terror upon the earth.   There is significance to John’s descriptions of the first and second terror, but what I find most telling is that John writes that those who did not die also di not turn from their evil deeds.  Watching the world around me, I see the mindset which leads to such behavior.  In the 1980s, when the AIDS crisis first reared its ugly head and little was known about how it was transmitted, people resisted the idea that people should avoid the behaviors which had been shown to turn the chance of contracting the disease from improbable to likely.  I use that as an example, yet I see people do the same thing on a smaller scale with other things as well: they are unwilling to turn from their sins to God even when the terrible consequences of their sins are obvious.<br>

Between the sixth and seventh trumpets, John recounts an episode which is clearly influenced by the writings of Ezekiel.  First John was given a scroll to eat, which was sweet in his mouth but, unlike the scroll which Ezekiel ate in his vision, sour in his stomach.  Then, also reminiscent of Ezekiel, John measured the Temple.  Neither of these similar elements are intended to mean the same thing as they did in Ezekiel, just as the four horsemen earlier in this letter did not carry the same meaning as the four horsemen in Ezekiel.  Rather they borrow symbolism from those earlier uses to give them deeper symbolic meaning than another image might convey.