Sign #1: November 1, 1755,
"Lo, there was a great earthquake."
Source: Source: Encyclopaedia
Britannica (1961 ed.), Vol. 7, p. 848.
Probably the most famous of all
earthquakes is that which destroyed Lisbon on Nov. 1,
1755. There were three great earthquakes (the first was
the largest) at 9:40 A.M., 10 A.M. and at noon. The main
shock lasted six to seven minutes, an unusually long
duration. Within six minutes at least 30,000 people were
killed, all large public buildings and 12,000 dwellings
were demolished. It was a church day, and great loss of
life occurred in the churches. A fire followed which
burned for six days. A marble quay at the riverside
disappeared into the river bottom laden with people.
Alexander von Humboldt stated that the total area shaken
was four times that of Europe.
Source: G. A. Eiby, About
Earthquakes (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 141, 142.
By far the most spectacular
earthquake of earlier times was that of Lisbon, in 1755.
This has some claim to be regarded as the greatest
earthquake on record. If it is possible to believe
reports, the felt area, which was certainly more than 700
miles in radius, extended from the Azores to Italy, and
from England to North Africa. A source of confusion in
the reports of this shock, which makes it difficult to
judge the real extent of the felt area, was the
widespread occurrence of seiches,...wave movements in
ponds and lakes....
Oscillations of this kind were
observed in France, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, and
England, and reports of the movements even came from
Norway and Sweden, at a distance of nearly 1800 miles
from the epicentre. In those countries, however, the
shock was certainly not felt....
In 1755, the damage to Lisbon
itself was very great. At that time, the city had about
230,000 inhabitants, nearly 30,000 of whom were killed,
according to conservative estimates. Great numbers of
people were in the churches, for it was All Saints’
Day, and the time of the first Mass. The shock was
followed by a tsunami (tidal wave:) about twenty feet in
height, and by fire.
The disaster shocked all Europe,
and the moralists and the wiseacres were not slow to make
capital of it.
Sign
#2: May 19, 1780, "And the sun became black
as sackcloth of hair."
Source: The Boston Gazette and
the Country Journal, May 29, 1780, p. 4.
About eleven o’clock the
darkness was such as to demand our attention, and put us
upon making observations. At half past eleven, in a room
with three windows, 24 panes each, all open towards the
south-east and south, large print could not be read by
persons of good eyes. About twelve o’clock the
windows being still open, a candle cast a shade so well
defined on the wall, as that profiles were taken with as
much ease as they could have been in the night. About one
o’clock a glin of light which had continued
‘till this time in the east, shut in, and the
darkness was greater than it had been for any time
before, Between one and two o’clock, the wind from
the west freshened a little, and a glin appeared in that
quarter. We dined about two the windows all open, and two
candles burning on the table. In the time of the greatest
darkness some of the dunghill fowls went to their roost:
Cocks crowed in answer to one another as they commonly do
in the night: Woodcocks, which are night birds, whistled
as they do only in the dark: Frogs peeped In short, there
was the appearance of midnight at noonday.
Source: Samuel Williams (a
Harvard professor), Memoirs of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences: to the End of the Year 1783 (Boston:
Adams and Nourse, 1785), Vol. 1. pp. 234, 235.
[p. 234] People were unable to read
common print determine the time of day by their [p. 235]
clocks or watches dine or manage their domestic business,
without the light of candles. In some places, the
darkness was so great, that persons could not see to read
common print in the open air, for several hours together.
Source: Timothy Dwight, quoted
in Connecticut Historical Collections, compiled by John
Warner Barber (2d ed.; New Haven: Durrie & Peck and
J. W. Barber, 1836), p. 403.
The 19th of May, 1780,
was a remarkable dark day. Candles were lighted in many
houses; the birds were silent and disappeared, and the
fouls retired to roost. The legislature of Connecticut
was then in session at Hartford. A very general opinion
prevailed, that the day of judgment was at hand. The
House of Representatives, being unable to transact their
business, adjourned. A proposal to adjourn the council
was under consideration. When the opinion of Colonel
[Abraham] Davenport was asked, he answered, "I am
against an adjournment. The day of judgment is either
approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no
cause for an adjournment: if it is, I choose to be found
doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be
brought."
Source: John Greenleaf
Whittier, "Abraham Davenport," in his Complete
Poetical Works (Cambridge ed.; Boston: Houghton, 1894),
p. 260.
‘Twas on a May-day of the far
old year Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell Over
the bloom and sweet life of the Spring, Over the fresh
earth and the heaven of noon, A horror of great darkness.
Men prayed, and women wept; all
ears grew sharp To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet
shatter The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ
Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked A
loving guest at Bethany, but stern As Justice and
inexorable Law.
Meanwhile in the old State House,
dim as ghosts, Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut,
Trembling beneath their legislative robes. "It is
the Lord’s Great Day! Let us adjourn," Some
said; and then, as if with one accord, All eyes were
turned to Abraham Davenport. He rose, slow cleaving with
his steady voice The intolerable hush. "This well
may be The Day of Judgment which the world awaits; But be
it so or not, I only know My present duty, and my
Lord’s command To occupy till He come. So at the
post Where He hath set me in His providence, I choose,
for one, to meet Him face to face, No faithless servant
frightened from my task, But ready when the Lord of the
harvest calls; And therefore, with all reverence, I would
say, Let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in
the candles."
Source: Discourse by eyewitness
Elam Potter, delivered May 28, 1780, in Enfield, Conn.,
quoted in The Advent Herald, March 13, 1844, p. 46.
Perhaps some, by assigning a
natural cause of this, ascribing it to the thick vapor in
the air, will endeavor to evade the force of its being a
sign, but, the same objection will lie against
earthquakes being signs which our Lord expressly mentions
as such. For my part, I really consider the darkness as
one of the prodigies foretold in the text; designed for
our admonition, and warning.
[Note: Any suggestion of a
natural cause can in no wise militate against the
significance of the event as a prophetic
fulfillment. The time-honored explanation is that
seventeen and a half centuries before it
occurred, the Saviour had definitely foretold
this twofold sign saying, "In those days,
after that tribulation, the sun shall be
darkened, and the moon shall not give her
light" (Mark 13:24); and these signs
occurred exactly as predicted and at the time
indicated so long before their occurrence. It has
long been pointed out that it is the fact, and
not the cause, of the darkness that is
significant in this connection; as also in the
case of earthquakes, falling stars, and other
events seen as signs of the times. When the Lord
would open a path for his people through the sea,
he did it by "a strong east wind." Ex.
14:21. Was it for this reason any less
miraculous? In like manner, to account for the
remarkable darkening of the sun and moon or of
the falling of the stars as events in nature is
not to discredit them as merciful signs of the
approaching end of probationary time.]
Sign
#3: May 19, 1780, "And the moon became as
blood."
Source: Benjamin Gorton, A View
of Spiritual, or Anti-typical Babylon (Troy [N.Y.]: the
Author, 1808), p. 73.
The second is that of the
moon’s turning to blood; this I have not seen, but,
from information, I have reason to believe it did take
place between 2 o’clock and day break in the morning
of the same night after which the sun was darkened, which
was said to appear as a clotter of blood; and it is the
more probable, as that night, before the moon appeared,
was as dark, in proportion, as the day, and of course
would give the moon an extraordinary appearance-not
suffering her to give her light.
Source: News item from
Providence, R.I., dated May 20, in The Pennsylvania
Evening Post (Philadelphia), June 6, 1780, p. 62.
[Note: This news dispatch refers to
a red moon in certain areas for a three day period.]
Sign
#4: November 13, 1833, "And 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."
Source: Denison Olmsted,
"Observations on the Meteors of November 13th,
1833," The American Journal of Science and Arts, 25
([Jan.?] 1834), 363, 365, 366, 386, 393, 394.
[p. 363] The morning of November 13th,
1833, was rendered memorable by an exhibition of the
phenomenon called SHOOTING STARS, which was probably more
extensive and magnificent than any similar one hitherto
recorded. . . .
Probably no celestial phenomenon
has ever occurred in this country, since its first
settlement, which was viewed with so much admiration and
delight by one class of spectators, or with so much
astonishment and fear by another class. . . .
[p. 365] The reader may imagine a
constant succession of fire balls, resembling sky
rockets, radiating in all directions from a point in the
heavens, a few degrees south-east of the zenith, and
following the arch of the sky towards the horizon. . . .
The balls, as they travelled down the vault, usually left
after them a vivid streak of light, and just before they
disappeared, exploded, or suddenly resolved themselves
into smoke. No report or noise of any kind was observed,
although we listened attentively. . . .
The flashes of light, although less
intense than lightning, were so bright as to awaken
people in their beds. One ball that shot off in the
north-west direction, and explo- [p. 366] ded a little
northward of the star Capella, left, just behind the
place of explosion, a phosphorescent train of peculiar
beauty. . . .
[p. 386] The meteors began to
attract notice by their unusual frequency or brilliancy,
from nine to twelve o’clock in the evening, were
most striking in their appearance, from two to five,
arrived at their maximum, in many places, about four
o’clock, and continued till rendered invisible by
the light of day
Source: Peter M. Millman,
"The Falling of the Stars," The Telescope, 7
(May-June, 1940), 57.
To understand the use of the word
shower in connection with shooting stars we must go back
to the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 1833, when the
inhabitants of this continent [of North America] were in
fact treated to one of the most spectacular natural
displays that the night sky has produced. . . . For
nearly four hours the sky was literally ablaze . . . .
More than a billion shooting stars appeared over the
United States and Canada alone.
Source: Denison Olmsted,
Letters on Astronomy, Addressed to a Lady: in Which The
Elements of the Science Are Familiarly Explained in
Connexion With Its Literary History (1840 ed.), pp. 348,
349.
The shower pervaded nearly the
whole of North America, having appeared in nearly equal
splendor from the British possessions on the north to the
West-India Islands and Mexico on the South, and from
sixty-one degrees of longitude east of the American
coast, quite to the Pacific Ocean on the west. Throughout
this immense region, the duration was nearly the same.
Source: J. T. Buckingham,
"The Meteoric Shower," The New-England
Magazine, 6 (Jan.-June, 1834), 47, 48.
Neither language, nor the pencil,
can adequately picture the grandeur and magnificence of
the scene. . . . It may be doubted, whether any
description has surpassed, in accuracy and
impressiveness, that of the old negro in Virginia, who
remarked "It is awful, indeed, sir, it looked like
ripe crab-apples falling from the trees, when shaking
them for cider."
Source: Garrick Mallery,
"Picture-Writing of the American Indians,"
[U.S.] Bureau of Ethnology. Tenth Annual Report . . . to
the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
1888-‘89 (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1893), p. 723. Garrick Mallery,
"Picture-Writing of the American Indians,"
[U.S.] Bureau of Ethnology. Tenth Annual Report . . . to
the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
1888-‘89 (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1893), p. 723.
The five winter counts
[chronological records in picture writing naming each
year (winter) by an outstanding event] next cited all
undoubtedly refer to the magnificent meteoric display of
the morning of November 13, 1833, which was witnessed
throughout North America and which was correctly assigned
to the winter corresponding with that of 1833-‘34.
All of them represent stars having four points, except
The-Swan, who draws a globular object followed by a
linear track.
Fig. 1219. It rained stars.
Cloud-Shield’s Winter Count, 1833-‘34.
White-Cow-Killer calls it "Plenty-stars
winter."
Fig. 1220. The stars moved around.
American-Horse’s Winter Count, 1833-‘34. This
shows one large four-pointed star as the characterizing
object and many small stars, also four-pointed.
Fig. 1221. Many stars fell. The
Flame’s Winter Count, 1833-‘34. The character
shows six stars above the concavity of the moon.
Fig. 1222. Dakotas witnessed
magnificent meteoric showers; much terrified. The-
Swan’s Winter Count, 1833-‘34.
Battiste Good calls it
"Storm-of-stars winter," and gives as the
device a tipi with stars falling around it. This is
presented in Fig. 1223.
Source: Frederick Douglass,
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (New York: Pathway
Press, 1941), p. 117. (Original edition 1855.)
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 the 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.
We now stand between verses 13 and
14 of Revelation chapter 6. The next event to occur is
the end of the world (verses 14-17).
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