by Mike James

With so much media emphasis on the Covid-19 pandemic these days, many of us may not be aware of another issue pertaining to the “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” (Revelation 6) rearing their ugly heads in the news. I’m talking about famine. The third horseman mentioned in Revelation 6:5-6 is the black horse representing famine. Earlier this year swarms of desert locusts began spreading in countries from East Africa to South Asia. The locusts have been destroying crops and pastures at a terrible pace. I don’t believe Covid-19 and the locusts in Africa are the riders of Revelation 6, but we need to be mindful of how these scourges are impacting the world. The future tribulation will have similar scourges with much greater intensity.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is warning the worst is yet to come. By June the locust swarms could grow by a factor of 500. A second wave of locusts has descended in the region 20 times larger than the first wave. Heavy rains in March helped the swarms increase in size. Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen, and Iran have been hit hard.  

Chinese agricultural experts have visited Pakistan to help with the locust outbreaks. About 100,000 ducks are going to be sent to Pakistan in the second half of this year to try to fight the locust outbreak. According to Lu Lizhi, a senior researcher with the Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the ducks are “biological weapons” that can be more effective than pesticides. Even though Pakistan borders China, the Chinese are probably safe due to the Himalaya Mountains between the two countries.

The desert locust includes 20 different species of grasshoppers that become friendly with each other and form swarms. The swarms can cover 90 miles in a day. Desert locusts can only lay their eggs in moist sand, so big storms in the region over the past couple years has helped. The locusts can breed like crazy. About 1,000 eggs can fit in a single square meter of sand.

The latest outbreak got going due to two cyclones in May and October of 2018 that hit the Arabian Peninsula. This allowed two generations of the locusts to form into swarms. Each generation can be 20 times bigger than the previous one. “The main problem is that these exceptional rains occurred in an area where there’s a lot of insecurity, wars, and so on, so the initial stages of the upsurge of the outbreaks were not detected in time,” says entomologist Michel Lecoq, former director of the French Agricultural Research Center for International Development.

Due to the heavy rain, the baby locusts are born into a lush environment with plenty of food. They eat everything in sight and move on for more. Their bodies bulk up on the food and they turn color from brown/green to electric yellow and black. The color change is due to them eating toxic plants. With all those locusts everything is eaten.

I don’t believe these locusts were sent from God to cause famine in the world today. I think they are just a natural consequence of the nature God has set in place in the world. God, of course, can cause locusts to come over any land, but we need to check Scripture before we start thinking these locusts were sent directly by God.

The best place to turn is Exodus 10. This was the eighth plague and it was a God-induced event. We know this by reading verse 4, where it says if Pharaoh does not let the people go locusts will come the next day. Only God can bring locusts out of nowhere. The locusts in Africa are naturally occurring. Further, verse 5 tells us they will cover the ground so it cannot be seen. That’s not something happening today. Finally, in verses 13-15 it is very apparent God supernaturally brought those locusts to Egypt. The Scriptures make it clear God would never bring that many locusts on the earth again. But He will allow a different kind of locust at the time of the end.

Revelation 9 tells us there will be “locusts” on the earth near the end of this age. But these are entirely different locusts than the ones on the earth today or in the time of Moses. Now there may be real locusts causing famine in the time of the end, but the locusts in Revelation 9 are an entirely different matter. Notice, in Revelation 9:1-3, that a star fell from heaven and it went into the bottomless pit from which these special “locusts” came. Stars are mentioned as some type of angel in Revelation 1:20 and Revelation 12:4.

Unlike normal locusts, these locusts will not harm the grass, plants, or trees (Revelation 9:4), but they will harm those who are not sealed by God. They will torture these people for five months (Revelation 9:5). Could these locusts be demonic in some way? That’s possible, because in Luke 8:31 the demons were fearful of Jesus sending them into the abyss. But they could have been fearful for their future in the abyss too.

The leader of these locusts is named Abaddon, or Apollyon (Revelation 9:11). This word means “Destroyer” in both Greek and Hebrew. Could the angel of the abyss (Revelation 9:11) be the same as the star (angel) of Revelation 9:1? Could it be the same as the angel in Revelation 20:1? Could this “Destroyer” be the same “Destroyer” doing God’s bidding on the night of the Passover (Exodus 12:23)? Or the “destroying angel” mentioned in 1 Corinthians 10:10, which references an event in Numbers 16? Hard to say for sure, but if you want no part with the “locusts” of Revelation 9, make sure you are sealed by God.

Sources: Second African Swarm of the Year Twenty Times Bigger Than the First, Matt Simon, Wired.com, 4/18/2020.

100,000 Chinese Ducks to Combat Locusts, Midnight Call, April 2020.

www.msn.com, 27 February 2020

www.smithsonianmag.com, 22 March 2013

Who Is Abaddon/Apollyon? Wayne Croley, https://www.prophecyproof.org/who-is-abaddon-apollyon/

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Editor Frank E. Gaebelein, Volume 12, 1981.