Basic HTML Version
The Stars of Heaven Fall, May 23
The stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall
be shaken.
Matthew 24:29
.
In 1833, ... the last of the signs appeared which were promised by the
Saviour as tokens of His second advent. Said Jesus, “The stars shall fall
from heaven.” And John in the Revelation declared, as he beheld in vision
the scenes that should herald the day of God, “The stars of heaven fell
unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is
shaken of a mighty wind.” This prophecy received a striking and impressive
fulfilment in the great meteoric shower of November 13, 1833. That was
the most extensive and wonderful display of falling stars which has ever
been recorded; “the whole firmament, over all the United States, being
then, for hours, in fiery commotion! No celestial phenomenon has ever
occurred in this country, since its first settlement, which was viewed with
such intense admiration by one class in the community, or with so much
dread and alarm by another.” “Its sublimity and awful beauty still linger
in many minds.... Never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell
toward the earth; east, west, north, and south, it was the same. In a word, the
whole heavens seemed in motion.... The display, as described in Professor
Silliman’s Journal, was seen all over North America.... From two o’clock
until broad daylight, ... an incessant play of dazzlingly brilliant luminosities
was kept up in the whole heavens.”—R. M. Devens,
American Progress
;
or,
The Great Events of the Greatest Century
, ch. 28, pars. 1-5....
Thus was displayed the last of those signs of His coming, concerning
which Jesus bade His disciples, “When ye shall see all these things,
know
that it is near, even at the doors.” After these signs, John beheld, as the great
event next impending, the heavens departing as a scroll, while the earth
quaked, mountains and islands removed out of their places, and the wicked
in terror sought to flee from the presence of the Son of man.
But the day and the hour of His coming Christ has not revealed.... The
exact time of the second coming of the Son of man is God’s mystery.
[152]
154