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The Great Controversy
afterward received enough to meet the expense of travel to the places
where he was invited. Thus his public labors, so far from being a
pecuniary benefit, were a heavy tax upon his property, which gradually
diminished during this period of his life. He was the father of a large
family, but as they were all frugal and industrious, his farm sufficed
for their maintenance as well as his own.
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In 1833, two years after Miller began to present in public the
evidences of Christ’s soon coming, 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.”
Matthew 24:29
. 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.”
Revelation 6:13
. This prophecy received a striking and
impressive fulfillment 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, the sky being perfectly serene and cloudless, 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.
“No language, indeed, can come up to the splendor of that magnif-
icent display; ... no one who did not witness it can form an adequate
conception of its glory. It seemed as if the whole starry heavens had
congregated at one point near the zenith, and were simultaneously
shooting forth, with the velocity of lightning, to every part of the hori-
zon; and yet they were not exhausted—thousands swiftly followed in
the tracks of thousands, as if created for the occasion.”—F. Reed, in
the Christian Advocate and Journal, Dec. 13, 1833. “A more correct
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