This doesn’t look like a big deal but if you get a million of them together there could be exciting times. My friend John Kissinger, the Project manager for Project 24 was up at Wamba as I mentioned before and the locusts are on the move.
The Biblical image of locust is that of destruction and judgement. One of the plagues unleashed on Egypt were locusts and in the last book of the Bible a locust plague is described in terrifying details that turn it into a nightmare. The locusts come and devour and destroy.
In the book of Joel, God talks about replacing what the locust devoured just before the beautiful prophecy that took place on Pentecost. God would send his Holy Spirit on His people.
I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the
destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. “You shall eat in
plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt
wondrously with you.
And my people shall never again be put to shame. You shall know that I am in the
midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God and there is none else. And my
people shall never again be put to shame.
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and
your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days
I will pour out my Spirit.
And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns
of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the
great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And it shall come to pass that everyone
who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.
There are articles written about the blessings of the harvest that would be enhanced by God after the locusts years and of course that a good interpretation. God would restore what was lost and multiply the gathered harvest. Sermons are preached that talk about the old prosperity Gospel and in the context of tithing and giving there are always threats of the locust to get folks to get to the harvesting,
Luther took to commenting and translating the minor prophets and he makes it very clear that all the prophets pointed to the coming Christ and to his kingdom. Their prophecies about the end of the world could not and should not ever be explained outside of the context of that Kingdom. One could clearly see that the prophecies were related to their days and times but they were preached to bring some psychic peace and even joy and get people ready for the Messiah. As one of the biographers of Luther wrote, “prophecy was not independent soothsaying nor an apocalyptic declaration, but was closely related to
the event of Christ.”
