1) “Next I saw four angels, standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the world to keep them from blowing over the land or the sea or any tree. Then I saw another angel rising when the sun rises, carrying the seal of the living God; he called in a powerful voice to the four angels whose duty it was to devastate the land and the sea: “Wait before you do any damage on land or at sea or to the trees, until we have put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God” (Rv. 7:1-3).

2) “Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven onto the earth, and the angel was given the key to the shaft leading down to the Abyss. When he unlocked the shaft of the Abyss, smoke rose out of the Abyss like the smoke from a huge furnace so that the sun and the sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss, and out of the smoke dropped locusts onto the earth: they were given the powers that scorpions have on the earth: they were forbidden to harm any fields or crops or trees and told to attack only those people who were without God’s seal on their foreheads. They were not to kill them, but to give them anguish for five months, and the anguish of was to be the anguish of a scorpion’s sting. When this happens, people will long for death and not find it anywhere; they will want to die and death will evade them” (Rv. 9:1-6).