Revelation 9:4

And it was said unto them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only such men as have not the seal of God on their foreheads.

Should not hurt the grass ... Locusts which do not eat grass and other green vegetation cannot possibly be literal locusts; a figurative meaning is demanded.

But only such men as have not the seal of God ... Our studies in Revelation 7 revealed this "seal" as the blessed Holy Spirit in the lives of God's people. If the German nation had been following their New Testament, they would have found it impossible to buy the locust of "Aryan supremacy"; and if Jim Jones' congregation had possessed the slightest knowledge of the Bible, they would have recognized him from the first as a fraud and a deceiver. The locusts of this fifth trumpet are presented as being able to hurt "only such men" as those who are walking without God and contrary to the truth. All evil, unscriptural "locusts" have the power to hurt. The "locust" doctrine of the transmigration of souls made it a sin to kill rats; and a bubonic plague wiped out half of Europe; the "locust" doctrine that land, air, water, and fire are "sacred" blocked Hans Victor Reisser's efforts to wipe out malaria in the Orient. He was prohibited from treating the ponds and water courses with kerosene to kill the larvae of mosquitoes. One of the great seductive elements in all "locust" lies is that people imagine that they are safe in believing anything!

Ladd's deduction in this verse that "the plague falls only upon the wicked, and that Christians exempt from it,"[28] is only partly true. Christians are indeed exempt from accepting ideas and slogans contrary to the word of God; but, when some monstrous error has worked itself into a massive world upheaval, as in the Nazi terror, Christians are in no sense physically exempt from the debacle that follows, even though they are spiritually exempt in the sense of Luke 21:16-19. "A plague from which those whose way is through tribulation are exempt can hardly be a physical one."[29] Thus the plague of locusts is a plague of lies, false theories, evil philosophies, selfish proverbs elevated to the status of law, etc. Both of the woes in this chapter are primarily against the world; "but it is true that the church also suffers, but not in judgment."[30]

[28] George Eldon Ladd, op. cit., p. 132.

[29] W. Boyd Carpenter, op. cit., p. 575.

[30] Charles H. Roberson, op. cit., p. 63.