Signs of the Approaching End by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 8, 1915

Signs of the Approaching End

By W. A. S.

Part 4. “The Dark Day” of 1780

We recall that in the vision of latter-day signs given to the prophet John, he saw the “great earthquake” followed by a sign in the heavens:—

“And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.” Rev. 6: 12.

Of this event our Saviour spoke, in giving the signs of his second coming which were to begin to appear following the cutting short of the days of persecution. We repeat his words:—

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light.” Matt. 24: 29.

The Prophecy Fulfilled

True to the order of the prophecy, following the great earthquake of 1755, in Europe, there came, in America, the second sign of the approaching end, the wonderful darkening of the sun, known in history as “The Dark Day,” of May 19, 1780.

This sign appeared at the time indicated in the prophecy, “immediately after the tribulation of those days.” The sun was darkened, and the moon did not give her light. Whatever explanation men may have to offer as to the cause of the phenomenon, the fact remains that when the time of the prophecy came, the sign appeared.

The story of that remarkable day has been often told in poetry and prose, few, perhaps, seeing in it the sign that it was, though many at the time felt that it was a token of the approach of the last days.

The poet Whittier commemorated it in the poem of “Abraham Davenport:”—

“‘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.”

“Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died; Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp To hear the doom blast of the trumpet shatter The black sky.”

The words of the poet are substantiated by the plain prose of the dictionary maker. In the department explanatory of “Noted Names,” Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (edition 1883) says:—

The dark day, May 19, 1780 — so called on account of a remarkable darkness on that day extending over all New England. . . . The obscuration began about ten o’clock in the morning, and continued till the middle of the next night, but with difference of degree and duration in different places. . . . The true cause of this remarkable phenomenon is not known.

Cause Unknown

Further than this last statement no one has been able to go in assigning a cause. At the time, some explained it as due to smoke from forest fires, others to the exceptional rise of vapors and atmospheric dust in the warm spring following the melting of unusually heavy winter snows. But no forest fires before or since ever produced such a phenomenon, and no melting snows or vapors before or since ever had such an effect over a vast area, a region, too, which has never known obscuration of the sun by such fogs as sometimes darken the sky over the limited area of London’s smoking chimneys.

The facts are fully covered by the dictionary’s statement: “The true cause of this remarkable phenomenon is not known.”

What we do know is that the Saviour’s prophecy declared, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light.” And when the time for it came, the sign appeared.

Contemporary Records

Though the comparatively small-sized newspapers of the day were crowded with news of the progress of the Revolutionary War, then raging, no little space was given to reports and discussions of the remarkable darkening of the sun.

A correspondent of the Boston Gazette and Country Journal (of May 29, 1780) reported observations made at Ipswich Hamlet (Mass.), “by several gentlemen of liberal education:” —

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, twenty-four panes each, all open toward the southeast and south, large print could not be read by persons with 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 at night.

About one o’clock a glint of light which had continued to this time in the east, shut in, and the darkness was greater than had been for any time before. . . . We dined about two, the windows all open, and two candles burning on the table.

In the time of greatest darkness some of the 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.

About three o’clock the light in the west increased, the motion of the clouds became more quick, their color higher and more brassy than at any time before. There appeared to be quick flashes or coruscations, not unlike the aurora borealis. . . . About half past four, our company, which had passed an unexpected night very cheerfully together, broke up.

Of the evening following, this writer (then at Salem) wrote:—

Perhaps it never was darker since the children of Israel left the house of bondage. This gross darkness held till about one o’clock, although the moon had filled but the day before.

The Boston Independent Chronicle (of June 8) quoted from Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy:—

During the whole time a sickly, melancholy gloom overcast the face of nature. Nor was the darkness of the night less uncommon and terrifying than that of the day; notwithstanding there was almost a full moon, no object was discernible, but by the help of some artificial light, which when seen from the neighboring houses and other places at a distance, appeared through a kind of Egyptian darkness, which seemed almost impervious to the rays. This unusual phenomenon excited the fears and apprehensions of many people. Some considered it as a portentous omen of the wrath of Heaven in vengeance denounced against the land, others as the immediate harbinger of the last day, when “the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light.”

W. A. S.

(To be concluded)