The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

IV. Regarded as Sign of the Latter Days

Various observers who described the great 1833 meteoric shower regarded it as a forerunner of the last day. Let us now examine some extracts from contemporary prophetic applications. PFF4 297.2

1. EDITOR OF “OLD COUNTRYMAN” PRONOUNCES IT “HARBINGER.”

Henry J. Pickering, ²⁶ New York editor, said of the sixth seal: PFF4 297.3

“We pronounce the raining fire which we saw on Wednesday morning last [Nov. 13] an awful type, a sure forerunner, a merciful sign, of that great and dreadful day which the inhabitants of the earth will witness when the sixth seal shall be opened. PFF4 297.4

“That time is just at hand described not only in the New Testament but in the Old; and a more correct picture of a fig tree casting its leaves when blown by a mighty wind, it was not possible to behold. PFF4 297.5

“Many things now occurring upon the earth tend to convince us that we are in the ‘latter days.’ This exhibition we deem to be a type of an awful day fast hurrying upon us. This is our sincere opinion; and what we think, we are not ashamed to tell.” ²⁷ PFF4 297.6

2. DOUGLASS SAW IT AS TOKEN OF THE TIMES

FREDERICK DOUCLASS, ²⁸ noted colored orator and journalist, but still a slave in 1833, saw it as a sign of the times and later wrote: PFF4 298.1

“I witnessed this gorgeous spectacle, and was awe-struck. The air seemed filled with bright descending messengers from the sky. It was about daybreak when I saw this sublime scene. I was not without the suggestion, at that moment that it might be the harbinger of the coming of the Son of Man; and in my then state of mind I was prepared to hail Him as my friend and deliverer. I had read that the ‘stars shall fall from heaven,’ and they were now falling. I was suffering very much in my mind.... I was looking away to heaven for the rest denied me on earth.” ²⁹ PFF4 298.2

3. EPISCOPALIAN CLERIC VIEWS AS SIGN OF LAST DAYS

Dr. Henry Dana Ward, well-known Episcopalian clergyman of New York (to be noted later), after observing the scene of the starry firmament breaking up, as it were, and the stars falling like flakes of snow, wrote immediately to the editor of The New York Journal of Commerce: PFF4 298.3

“We felt in our hearts, that it was a sign of the last days. For, truly, ‘the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken by a mighty wind. ‘Revelation 6:13. This language of the prophet has always been received as metaphorical. Yesterday it was literally fulfilled. The ancients understood by aster in Greek, and Stella in Latin, the smaller lights of heaven. The refinement of modern astronomy has made the distinction between stars of heaven, and meteors of heaven. Therefore, the idea of the prophet, as it is expressed in the original Greek, was literally fulfilled in the phenomenon of yesterday, so as no man before yesterday had conceived to be possible that it should be fulfilled.” ³⁰ PFF4 298.4

Ward stressed the exact fulfillment of the apocalyptic prediction: PFF4 298.5

“And how did they fall? Neither myself nor one of the family heard any report; and were I to hunt through nature for a simile, I could not find one so apt to illustrate the appearance of the heavens as that which St. John uses in the prophecy, before quoted. ‘It rained fire!’ says one Another, ‘it was like a shower of fire.’ Another, ‘it was like the large flakes of falling snow, before a coming storm, or large drops of rain before a shower.’ PFF4 299.1

“I admit the fitness of these for common accuracy; but they come far short of the accuracy of the figure used by the prophet. ‘The stars of heaven fell unto the earth;’ they were not sheets, or flakes, or drops of fire; but they were what the world understands by the name of ‘Falling Stars;’ and one speaking to his fellow in the midst of the scene, would say; ‘See how the stars fall;’ and he who heard, would not pause to correct the astronomy of the speaker, any more than he would reply, ‘the sun does not move,’ to one who should tell him, ‘the sun is rising[.]’ PFF4 299.2

“The stars fell ‘Even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.’ Here is the exactness of the prophet. The falling stars did not come, as if from several trees shaken, but from one: those which appeared in the east fell toward the East; those which appeared in the north fell toward the North; those which appeared in the west fell toward the West, and those which appeared in the south (for I went out of my residence into the Park,) fell toward the South; and they fell, not as the ripe fruit falls. Far from it. But they flew, they WERE CAST, like the unripe fruit, which at first refuses to leave the branch; and, when it does break its hold, flies swiftly, strait off, descending; and in the multitude falling some cross the track of others, as they are thrown with more or less force. PFF4 299.3

Such was the appearance of the above phenomenon to the inmates of my house. I walked into the Park with two gentlemen of Pearl Street, feeling and confessing, that this scene had never been figured to our minds by any book or mortal, save only by the prophet.” ³¹ Ward then said: PFF4 299.4

“In this narrative I have spoken not of causes, ³² but of appearances, and the appearances according to the impression they made on men.... No Philosopher or scholar has told or recorded an event, like that of yesterday morning. A Prophet of 1800 years ago foretold it exactly, if we will at the trouble of understanding stars falling, to mean falling-stars.” ³³ PFF4 299.5

4. MANY SEE CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROPHETIC FORECAST

The New York Journal of Commerce (November 27, 1833) quoted a report from the Columbia Spy that many thought the last days had arrived, and that in the neighboring township a clergyman reported a large prayer meeting attendance that night. The Republican, of York, Pennsylvania (November 13, 1833), said editorially, “Some refer these things to the ‘falling stars’ spoken of in Revelation.” A correspondent from Bowling Green, Missouri, was forcibly “reminded of that remarkable passage in the Revelations, ... calling to mind the ‘fig tree, casting her untimely figs when shaken by a mighty wind,’ ³⁴ as was likewise the clergyman-scientist Dr. Thomas Milner. ³⁵ And Elijah H. Burritt said later that the fiery scene “suggested to some the awful grandeur of the image employed in the Apocalypse, upon the opening of the sixth seal, when ‘the stars’ of heaven fall.” ³⁶ PFF4 299.6

Thus various laymen and clergymen alike recognized it at the time as a sign of the approaching end, just as other men had, on the basis of prophetic depiction, looked forward to and predicted its appearance. Many, feeling that the 1833 falling of the stars had met the full demands and descriptions of prophecy, were constrained to say that we have indeed entered the “last days.” ³⁷ PFF4 300.1