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

When I was a teenager my father thought that the description which John gives of the locusts released by the fifth trumpet sounded like a description of the military helicopters used in Vietnam.  The members of the Church I grew up in were convinced that Christ’s Return was imminent. So, they spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the events described here, and in other prophecies of the End Times, applied to what they saw going on around them.  Many of them even thought that they could calculate the date (or a close approximation of it) if they just looked at these passages closely enough.  My father did not believe that was possible, but he did believe that we should look at the prophecies made here and see how they were being fulfilled around us.  My father believed that we should live our lives as if we KNEW that Christ would return tomorrow.  I fail to live up to that, but I believe he was correct.

Now, let’s look at what John writes here.  After the fifth trumpet sounded, people faced great suffering and hardship, but no one died from it.  Followed by the sixth trumpet sounding and a third of mankind died violent, painful deaths.  Yet, no one repented of their sins.  No one looked at the suffering and death and said, “We should change our ways and turn to God.”  While I do not see events in the world right now which match up to these two prophecies, I do see people behaving in a similar manner.  They see great suffering, but no one died, so why should they change their ways?  Then, they see people die, but their response is, “What difference would it make if I change my ways?  It’s not my sin which caused these problems.  It is other people who need to change their ways.”

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