Change your ways...or else

"Locusts came out of the smoke onto the land, and they were given the same power as scorpions of the earth.  They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or any tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads.  They were not allowed to kill them but only to torment them for five months; the torment they inflicted was like that of a scorpion when it stings a person.  During that time these people will seek death but will not find it, and they will long to die but death will escape them. 

 

"The first woe has passed, but there are two more to come. 

 

"Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the [four] horns of the gold altar before God, telling the sixth angel who held the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the banks of the great river Euphrates."  So the four angels were released, who were prepared for this hour, day, month, and year to kill a third of the human race.  They wore red, blue, and yellow breastplates, and the horses' heads were like heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and sulfur.  By these three plagues of fire, smoke, and sulfur that came out of their mouths a third of the human race was killed.  The rest of the human race, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, to give up the worship of demons and idols made from gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk.  Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic potions, their unchastity, or their robberies."

 

-Revelations 9

I know some parts of the Bible are never read in Church and this chapter must be one of those selections.  Now it wouldn't be better to die if you are being punished for wrongdoing, unless you have repented.  However, I can't imagine that it would be pleasant to be in the other two-thirds that witness a third of humanity being wiped off the face of the Earth even if it is justified.  I guess we should do our best (pray) to make sure ourselves and our loved ones aren't among the damned.