Revelation 9:1-6. The fifth angel blows his trumpet and a star falls from Heaven to earth holding the key to the shaft to the bottomless pit. He opens the shaft and smoke like that of a great furnace is released and darkens the sun and air. Locusts are also released but they are told not to harm any plants, nor the people with the seal of God upon their foreheads, but only to torture the unsealed for five months, and not to kill them. "And in those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death will fly from them."

I have had this reading before and I blogged about how even the forces of evil (here the hell-locusts) are constrained by God and used for His purposes. I want to focus on the last line - how men will yearn to die but death will flee from them. This, too, is God's mercy. It is a means to get people to repent and turn back to God.

We are all going to live forever, either in Heaven or in Hell. Those in Hell will wish they could die, to escape the torture, but they will not be able to, there is no escape from Hell. So in the end times, when time is short, God will give mankind, or those who have not repented and turned to Him and are therefore marked with His seal, a foretaste of this suffering.

This is not because God wants to punish us, it is because He wants to save us from eternal suffering. Note that He does not let the locusts kill anyone, because then they really would be eternally tortured. And there is a deadline of five months, although the tortured do not know this. Escape is still possible, and that is what God is hoping for.

How much easier would be for all of us, though, if we would learn from our lesser sufferings so that it will not get to this point?! God knows us too well, though, He knows that many will need this kind of suffering in order to repent.