v. 9. Breastplates like iron. Takes us back to the helicopter/machine description. A steel – plated vehicle impenetrable by normal weapons. Have we not seen all this on the movies of horror? No not really, but we get a little inkling from them. Martians. Machines. War of the Worlds. It’s coming. Really coming here.

v. 10. The scorpion-like “tails” of these monsters are undoubtedly weapons like we have seen jutting out from helicopters, planes, tanks. Guns, loaded with perhaps biological weapons, that spread a virus from one community to another, sickening but not yet killing, all in their pathway.

They operate, not only in the air and in the typical battlefield, but in the city, running across city walls. They even climb into people’s houses through the windows. Horror!

I get the helicopter thing. But these are land creatures too. We’ve seen vehicles that can operate equally well on land and in water. Now we shall see an air/land hybrid.

Perhaps a drone?* No human contact, totally controlled remotely? War games in the most literal of senses? Are there thousands upon thousands of these being manufactured secretly and stored underground in a common location, to be released when God says release?

In Joel again:

Joel’s verse 10 is helpful for those who still may be hung up about the fact that it is not the locusts who bring the fire before and after their own destruction (2:3). Here in 2:10 we suddenly see an earthquake, and signs in the heavens. These things too are not caused by the locusts, but happen at a very close time to them.

We have only now to see who (Who) is in charge of all this.

Verse 11 in both chapters gives an answer.

Joel: This is the Lord’s army! This is the Lord executing His Word, fulfilling His promises, judging evil that righteousness will prevail! “The day of the Lord is great and very terrible…”

John – or his accompanying angel - prefers to tell us the name of the “angel of the abyss”, the one who was called down from the heavenlies to open the bottomless pit. He is their head, their king, we are told. This leads us to believe that when 9:1 speaks of an angel “falling” to the earth, we are to take literally that fall, as in Satan’s fall from his glory.

Nevertheless, I do not believe this angel, this king of the monsters, is Satan himself, who is occupied on the earth filling up the man “antichrist”. Satan is not omnipresent. Rather, one who has been appointed by Satan to destroy is before us. He is given a name here. It is not Satan, or the serpent, or the devil, or Lucifer, names we would readily have identified with our mortal enemy. No, his name is Abaddon (Hebrew “destruction”) or Apollyon (Greek, “destroyer”). As head of an army of locusts that destroy people’s health, their homes, and who knows what else, it is an apt title.

Conclusion

I am about finished. A bit exhausted, in fact, in seeing these horrible things up close. Imagine Joel or John having received even more first-hand the information I have presented to you. Joel lived through the destruction of grasshopper-locusts, and saw their evolution into a creature of end-time horror. John was escorted by an angel practically into their faces. His description is terrifying, but builds on the original given to the prophet of Judah.

There can be no mistake. I cannot find other words to describe how calamitous the final years of this planet before Christ’s coming will be. One third of civilization wiped out. Charred woodlands. Burnt fields. Men and women and children crying out for help from a disease that will paralyze them for half a year. Military might showing its muscle and gut to the point of, well, no return except His return.

And thank God for His return. Revelation 9 is not the end of the Book. But it’s in there. Locusts that look like horses that look like people that run and climb and fly and march and terrorize. The locusts are coming.

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*As in these articles, found online…Drones: Locust and cicada warfare…

“Drones will hunt in packs, as US Navy unveils LOCUST prototype launcher.” http://www.rt.com/usa/250233-us-drones-navy-locust/

Drone technology is getting ever more deadly. The US Navy has released a video detailing LOCUST – the new tool allowing multiple drones to coordinate and swarm the enemy autonomously. It’s designed to protect large US vessels nearby.

The concept was detailed by the Navy last year, which only this month allowed the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to demonstrate what LOCUST – or the Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarming Technology program – can do. They’re touting the tool as a new era in autonomous warfare.

LOCUST is essentially a system that can launch swarming UAVs to overwhelm the enemy and provide the marines and sailors operating them with a massive tactical advantage, ONR explains in the press release.

“The recent demonstrations are an important step on the way to the 2016 ship-based demonstration of 30 rapidly launched autonomous, swarming UAVs,” program manager Lee Mastroianni says.

“This level of autonomous swarming flight has never been done before… UAVs that are expendable and reconfigurable will free manned aircraft and traditional weapon systems to do more, and essentially multiply combat power at decreased risk to the warfighter,” he adds.

The program acts in several stages: first, a tube-based launcher will fire a swarm of UAVs from a ship, aircraft, or any surface, for that matter – owing to the device’s small footprint. Once airborne, the drones share information and coordinate an offense or a defense, each drone playing its allotted part.

ONR says the technology is revolutionary in its heavy advantage over remote-controlled UAVs. But safeguards are always needed, so human personnel will be standing by to take over if necessary.

The added benefit of the new drone program, and drones in general, is their ability to save greatly on costs for the US military. The emphasis on autonomy on the battlefield will become even greater over the next 10-15 years, according to the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert’s outline of the strategy.