Heres another view The traditional rendering of Amos 7:1 reads as follows:"Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me; and, behold, he informed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings." Amos 7:1 (KJV)Our English Bible takes its translation from the Masoretic text, a 9th century source. However, an earlier translation of the Old Testament into Greek, known as the Septuagint, embodies a different rending of Amos 7:1:"Thus the Lord showed me, and behold a swarm of locusts were coming, and behold, one of the young devastating locusts was Gog, the King." Amos 7:1 (LXX)The identification of Gog as the king of the locusts would have profound implications. Proverbs 30:27 reveals that "the locusts have no king," implying that the "locusts" of Amos 7 are not intended to be natural locusts, but an idiom for something else. We encounter a similar passage in Revelation chapter 9 where locusts there are described as having a king, and are clearly demonic in nature. "And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man. During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them. The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women's hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails and stings like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon." Revelation 9:3-11Abaddon a Hebrew word signifying: ruin, destruction (Job 31:12); place of destruction; the Abyss, realm of the dead (Job 26:6; Proverbs 15:11); it occurs personified (Revelation 9:11) as Abaddon and is rendered in Greek by Apollyon, denoting the angel-prince of hell, the minister of death and author of havoc on earth. The Vulgate renders the Greek Apollyon by the Latin Exterminans (that is, "Destroyer"). The identity of Abaddon with Asmodeus, the demon of impurity, has been asserted, but not proved. In Job 26:6, and Proverbs 15:11, the word occurs in conjunction with Sheol. So now we have Gog, ruler of the land of Magog (Russia), king of the locusts, leader of the Russian led in invasion of Israel, associated with the angel-prince of hell, Satan! So clearly this Russian led invasion is actually another attempt by Satan to thwart the plan of God[/B]
