""They all happened""
In order for ALL MANKIND TO GET STUNG by the flying scorpions whose sting is so severe men cry out to die, someone,SOMEWHERE, would have recorded it,and ALL OCEANS AND RIVERS TURNED TO BLOOD.
You have no case
Zero
Of course these events happened. I've found that all futurists have the same thing in common - they are NOT historians. The other major problem you have is not understanding figurative language, especially in Revelation. I strongly urge you to read the relative portions of Josephus "War of the Jews" if you want to see Revelation come to life. Start in Book 3. Here's a free link:
https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/flavius-josephus/war-of-the-jews/book-3/
As for the two events you mention, the scorpions and the waters turning to blood, here's how they were fulfilled. Let's take them in the correct order. First, it wasn't ALL the oceans and rivers. It was a THIRD. Stick with the text.
Rev 8: 8 Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. 9 And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
Mountain is a word frequently used in the Bible to symbolize a kingdom or city since cities were often built on mountains for military defense (Psalms 2:6; 48:1; Isaiah 66:20; Jeremiah 51:25; Joel 3:17). For example, the city of Jerusalem is often called the “Mountain of the Lord” throughout the Bible.
Sea represents the Gentile nations (Daniel 7:2-3; Revelation 17:15, Psalm 65:7; 144:7; Isaiah 8:7-8; 17:12; 60:5; Jeremiah 47:1-2; 51:55-56; Ezekiel 26:3). Because sea and Abyss, the afterlife realm of the dead, are synonyms, sea simultaneously signifies both foreign nations and the Abyss, the afterlife realm of the dead.
This symbol of a mountain being cast into the sea is a common metaphor in the Bible used to represent two complimentary messages. Foreign nations and their armies represent the sea or Abyss, the realm of the dead, because these armies cause so much death when in the act of war and military conquest. Thus the city or mountain victimized by foreign military aggression is sometimes depicted in the Bible as a mountain descending into the Abyss, the land of the dead, when attacked by aggressive foreign powers. Jeremiah 51:25, 42 is a prominent example of this symbolism. In these verses,
mountain represents a city or kingdom and
sea represents its foreign conquerors and the Abyss simultaneously:
“I am against you, you destroying mountain [Babylon], you who destroy the whole earth,” declares the Lord. “I will stretch out my hand against you, roll you off the cliffs, and make you a burned-out mountain. . . . The sea will rise over Babylon; its roaring waves will cover her.”
When the city of Babylon fell in 539 B.C. the city was not overcome by literal flood waters just as the mountain city mentioned in Revelation 8:8 was not literally thrown into a literal sea. Rather, in Jeremiah 51:25, 42, Babylon, the destroying mountain, is punished by the rising sea representing the foreign armies of the Medes and Persians. Here foreign conquest and the resulting death toll are presented as the sea or Abyss flooding over Babylon. Not surprisingly floods are also a metaphor of death and foreign conquest (Isaiah 8:7-8; 17:12; Jeremiah 46:7-8; Daniel 9:26; 11:10; 11:40; Joel 2:9; Nahum 1:8). The mountain cast into the sea in Revelation 8:8 conveys a similar message of death by way of foreign military conquest. Interestingly, Revelation 8:8 was fulfilled in a similarly figurative manner during the Jewish War. However, vs. 8 and 9 were fulfilled much, more literally than you might think based upon this comparison above.
The cities of Joppa and Taricheae were situated on the coast of the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee respectively. Upon the arrival of the Roman military, the Jewish rebels of these two cities retreated out to sea. There the rough waves and heavy winds at the coast of Joppa drowned many people. Their ships were also destroyed as they struck each other and the rocks along the coast. Many people fell into the water and according to Josephus were “dashed to pieces” against the rocks “insomuch that the sea was bloody a long way[.]” The city of Taricheae did not fare better. Upon fleeing to the Sea of Galilee, the rebels of Taricheae were killed by the Romans. Concerning their deaths at sea, Josephus writes:
One might then see the lake all bloody, and full of dead bodies, for not one of them escaped. And a terrible stink, and a very sad sight there was on the following days over the country; for as for the shores, they were full of shipwrecks, and of dead bodies all swelled.”
In the quote above one can appreciate the literal fulfillment of Revelation 8:8-9 with the destruction of ships, the sea turning to blood, and the deaths of those at sea. Not only were the mountains of Joppa and Tricheae conquered by Rome, a foreign army representing the sea or Abyss in Revelation 8:8, but the people of these two cities were quite literally thrown into the sea–the sea of Galilee–and subsequently killed and therefore cast into the sea representing the Abyss, the realm of the dead.
Rev 9:3 Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. 4 They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 And they were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months. Their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. 6 In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.
Interestingly, all the attributes used to describe this locust army were taken directly from constellations that would have been visible the night of Passover, the holiday in which Jesus was crucified and Titus and his army began their five month siege of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The fact that Jerusalem fell after
five months fulfills Revelation 9:5: The locust army was “not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for
five months.” Abaddon and Apollyon is an angel with an obvious human counterpart. Apollyon is a play on words for “Apollo” and “destroy.”
Apollyon is Vespasian’s son Titus, the commander of the Legio XV Apollinaris (the Fifteenth Apollonian Legion). At the start of the Jewish War, Titus was the commander of the 15th Apollonian Legion before being promoted to general over all the Roman legions in Israel at his father’s coronation. Thus Apollyon is an apt title for the former commander of Legio XV Apollinaris (the 15th Apollonian Legion) who destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.
Locusts are an ancient Canaanite and Biblical metaphor for an invading foreign/Gentile army. This point is illustrated in the first and second chapters of Joel where the Babylonian army of the sixth century B.C. is portrayed as a swarm of locusts. This imagery is also found in Judges 6:5, 7:12; Jeremiah 51:14, 27; and Nahum 3:15. The same meaning is, of course, intended in the locust army of Revelation 9. The fact that locusts symbolize soldiers in the Bible is not surprising in light of the similarities between the Hebrew word for “locust,”
hargol, and the Arabic word for “troops,”
hargal. The similarity between these two words in these neighboring languages implies a common origin to both words and the fact that locusts were likened to troops in ancient Middle Eastern cultures. The fact that foreign/Gentile armies are symbolized by locusts is not just found in the Bible, it is also implicit in the Babylonian Talmud where it is said, “The destruction of Jerusalem [during Israel’s first century war with Rome] came through a
Kamza [locust] and a
Bar Kamza [son of a locust].” The reason the Talmud says that Jerusalem was destroyed by locusts is because locusts are a symbol of Gentiles or foreigners. This point is shown in Strong’s Concordance which defines Gentile in the following terms:
#1471 gowy go’-ee rarely (shortened) goy {go’-ee}; apparently from the same root as 1465 (in the sense of meaning); a foreign nation; hence, a Gentile; also (figuratively) a troop of animals, or a flight of locusts[.]”
The fact that locusts represent Gentile or foreign invaders is echoed in this chapter of Revelation as shown below. This locust symbolism is multifaceted. When laying siege to a city, invading forces, much a like a swarm of locusts, will leave the surrounding countryside stripped of food, timber and vegetation in order to feed the war effort. These armies will also often set fire to anything their enemies might find useful as the Romans did when they burned many of the cities and rural areas of Palestine during the Jewish War. Interestingly, locusts “were known to the people of Palestine as ‘burners of the land,’ a phrase derived from the literal meaning of ‘locust.’” Furthermore, when seen at a great distance, an army of several thousand troops even looks like locusts in a field.
There is an old Arab saying paraphrased by Isbon Beckwith in which locusts are described as having “ a head like a horse, a breast like a lion, feet like a camel, a body like a serpent, and antennae like the hair of a maiden.” The locusts of Revelation 9 with their woman’s hair, lions’ teeth, serpent heads and serpent tails are described somewhat similarly.
