Locusts

A swarm of mil­lions of locusts descend­ed upon Madagascar’s cap­i­tal of Antananarivo on Aug. 28, slow­ing traf­fic and blot­ting out the skies over the city.

Fully-formed clouds of the insects, which have plagued the African nation for more than two years, whizzed through the city’s streets after an urban heat wave attract­ed the bugs away from their usu­al rur­al surroundings.

“It reminds us of the 10 plagues of Egypt,” said Ronald Miller, a mis­sion­ary work­ing in Madagascar with his family.

Miller cap­tured video of the inci­dent and post­ed it to his Facebook page.

The cur­rent plague began in April 2012, lead­ing to a nation­al dis­as­ter dec­la­ra­tion in Madagascar in November of that year, accord­ing to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The island nation’s gov­ern­ment announced a three-year emer­gency plan in September 2013, when the locusts threat­ened food secu­ri­ty of more than 13 mil­lion peo­ple, almost 60 per­cent of Madagascar’s population.

But while the images are alarm­ing, FAO offi­cer Annie Monard told Voice of America that the locust swarms in the city were caused by unusu­al­ly high tem­per­a­tures, not a new surge in the pest pop­u­la­tion. So far, the FAO and Madagascar’s gov­ern­ment have suc­ceed­ed in con­trol­ling the pests in over 4,600 square miles of agri­cul­tur­al land. Madagascar’s emer­gency plan will con­tin­ue until 2016 and is expect­ed to cost more than $41 million.

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Revelation 9:3 – 10

Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were giv­en pow­er like the pow­er of scor­pi­ons of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those peo­ple who do not have the seal of God on their fore­heads. They were allowed to tor­ment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their tor­ment was like the tor­ment of a scor­pi­on when it stings some­one. And in those days peo­ple will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. In appear­ance the locusts were like hors­es pre­pared for bat­tle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces.