Charley answered the question. “Carl, I would like to say no, and I’d like to assure you we’ve seen the worst of it already. But I’m afraid there is more. With Jack’s permission, I’d like to go back to what we were talking about last night. Let’s look at chapter nine.” Each of them flipped back to the text. “Okay,” said Charley, “I’ll read just the first six verses.”

“‘Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit. Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, nor any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.

“‘And they were not given authority to kill them,’” Charley read more slowly now, “‘but to torment them for five months. Their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.’”

Charley looked up from his Bible. “Carl, do you have any idea what this is about?”

Carl shook his head. “I haven’t got a clue.”

“If you realize what we witnessed last night, with a meteor falling from the sky and the destruction that catastrophe has begun to unleash,” Charley said, “I think you begin to get a hint of what’s being described. But the deeper meaning will become clearer in a minute. How about reading verse eleven?”

Carl slowly read the words, “‘And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon.’”

“Who is this, Charley?” Dave Busby asked.

“Abaddon means ‘destroyer,’” Charley answered. “This is another name for the king of demons we call the devil.”

“You mean the one with the red suit, horns, tail, and a pitchfork?” Lori asked in jest.