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The Great Controversy
tion, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light.”
Mark 13:24
. The 1260 days, or years, terminated in 1798. A quarter
of a century earlier, persecution had almost wholly ceased. Following
this persecution, according to the words of Christ, the sun was to be
darkened. On the 19th of May, 1780, this prophecy was fulfilled.
“Almost, if not altogether alone, as the most mysterious and as
yet unexplained phenomenon of its kind, ... stands the dark day of
May 19, 1780,—a most unaccountable darkening of the whole visible
heavens and atmosphere in New England.”—R. M. Devens, Our First
Century, page 89.
An eyewitness living in Massachusetts describes the event as fol-
lows: “In the morning the sun rose clear, but was soon overcast. The
clouds became lowery, and from them, black and ominous, as they
soon appeared, lightning flashed, thunder rolled, and a little rain fell.
Toward nine o’clock, the clouds became thinner, and assumed a brassy
or coppery appearance, and earth, rocks, trees, buildings, water, and
persons were changed by this strange, unearthly light. A few minutes
later, a heavy black cloud spread over the entire sky except a narrow
rim at the horizon, and it was as dark as it usually is at nine o’clock on
a summer evening....
“Fear, anxiety, and awe gradually filled the minds of the people.
Women stood at the door, looking out upon the dark landscape; men
returned from their labor in the fields; the carpenter left his tools,
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the blacksmith his forge, the tradesman his counter. Schools were
dismissed, and tremblingly the children fled homeward. Travelers put
up at the nearest farmhouse. ‘What is coming?’ queried every lip and
heart. It seemed as if a hurricane was about to dash across the land, or
as if it was the day of the consummation of all things.
“Candles were used; and hearth fires shone as brightly as on a
moonless evening in autumn.... Fowls retired to their roosts and went
to sleep, cattle gathered at the pasture bars and lowed, frogs peeped,
birds sang their evening songs, and bats flew about. But the human
knew that night had not come....
“Dr. Nathanael Whittaker, pastor of the Tabernacle church in
Salem, held religious services in the meeting-house, and preached a
sermon in which he maintained that the darkness was supernatural.
Congregations came together in many other places. The texts for
the extemporaneous sermons were invariably those that seemed to