“Wonders in Heaven Above.”
By D. T. T.
“I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke, . . . before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.”—Joel 2:30, 31; Acts 2:19, 20. Who has not watched with awe and wonder the shooting, shifting splendors that so frequently illuminate our northern skies, and sometimes overspread the heavens? Who has not been reminded by them of those glowing prophecies of ancient time, which predict and describe such strange celestial phenomena as the forerunners of the great day of God. It may not be known to many that these appearances are almost peculiar to the present age. The ancients saw them but rarely, if ever; and there is scarcely any record of them in the middle ages. All our knowledge of them, previous to the Reformation, is vague and uncertain. In 1560, they suddenly burst forth in the sky, and became visible at London. It was their first appearance, and the alarm and terror they excited was very great. From this date onward, for a period of one hundred and fifty-six years, they were not seen more than ten times in England or elsewhere. Then in 1716, they flashed out again; but the oldest inhabitant of London had never seen or heard of the like, so seldom had they appeared for a century before. In this country, they were first seen about the year 1720. From this time on, they increased in frequency and brilliancy. Why this is so, science itself cannot tell. But we know that constant changes in the solar system are transpiring, and that all things do not continue as they were, despite the scoffer’s assertion. Consequently, the causes which produce this strange phenomenon could not have existed in the ages gone by, or they would have produced like results, and the aurora would have been witnessed by the Hebrew church. And as science now admits that the auroral flames result from solar action, and are most striking at times when the largest sun-spots are visible, the alarming inference is drawn that immense changes—how vast none can tell—are now going on in the organic structure and nature of that luminary. For more than three hundred years the northern lights have been a mystery and a marvel to the nations. Granted they are electric exhibitions incited by the sun, still the laws that govern their action are a mystery. A “wonder,” a marvel, is something not apprehended easily or naturally. The latest scientific authorities assert that men do not fully understand the aurora. God sees fit to shroud his prodigy in the unknown. He shows “signs in the sun,” and “wonders in heaven above,” before the coming of “that great and notable day of the Lord.” Wise men cannot explain these mysteries, and the world is left to wonder at the works of God. Four hundred years ago, then, men never recorded the aurora as appearing at any time. Luther never saw them—never named them. Now the Encyclopedia informs us that “no period has furnished more brilliant displays of the aurora than the last hundred years.” We are also told that while at Havana, Cuba, only six have been recorded in a century; and at latitude 40° N., only ten are seen annually; yet at 42° the average number is twenty a year, at about 45° it is forty a year, at 50° there are eighty displays every year, while from this to 62° the auroras are witnessed almost every night. Thus it is shown that they are seen in their rarest beauty in those countries where the most civilized and Christian nations reside. The years of their grandest display in these latitudes were 1827, 1835, 1836, 1837, 1839, 1841, 1859, and 1870. That of 1837, on the night of the 25th of January, was the most alarming I ever beheld. Up toward a coronal at the zenith, clouds of red fire rolled and tumbled, until the entire space of the sky, north, south, east, and west, resembled a sheet of flame. I know of Christian ministers and churches who unhesitatingly pronounced it a sign of the day of God. The display of November 14, the same year, tinged all the heavens with blood and flame, creating a false alarm of fire in the city of New Haven, and in other places; and fire-companies, with engines, paraded the streets in much consternation. Sep. 5, 1839, at London, they were seen to assume all the appearance of a tremendous conflagration, putting on a hue of intense brightness, or clothed with crimson, with fiery clouds rolling over and over, and accompanied by myriads of falling stars. All London saw the terrible sight, and the people imagined there was a great fire in the city. Every engine in the vast metropolis was horsed and galloped to the supposed scene of destruction, followed by great mobs frantic with excitement. The exhibition of Oct. 20, 1844, was very wonderful to behold. On that night I saw the knees of terror smite together, and the scoffer seek at once the place of prayer, on viewing with amazement God’s wonders written on the trembling sky. Aug. 28, 1859, they were seen from California east to Russia, and from the West Indies north to unknown regions in British America. Five days later, September 2, the aurora was visible all over the northern hemisphere, in America, Europe, and Asia, being witnessed by millions of people. The brilliant displays of 1870, said to have been more numerous than in any preceding year, were October 14, 23, and 24, visible from ocean to ocean, and from continent to continent in all northern lands. In Italy, the people of Florence and Rome beheld their crimson flashes and said it was a token of more wars and bloodshed in Europe. In the first ten months of 1870, there were witnessed over fifty remarkable displays in our latitudes, where the usual number in the whole year is but forty. No pen or tongue can describe their endless colors, their fantastic forms, their flashing splendors, nor the crimson glories of these celestial hosts arranged in panoplies of light, and marching, and gleaming, and dancing, athwart the heavens in shapes of blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. It seemed as if the visions of Pollok had become a reality, and the celestial concave which had but a little before looked serene, “Now glowed like an oven, with God’s displeasure hot.” And did not science rob them of their terrors, and familiarity with the sight of these mystic flaming wonders prove their harmlessness, the whole world would bow reverently before the marvelous spectacle, and awed by their beauty and grandeur, exclaim with one voice, This is the finger of Deity! There is no resisting the conclusion that these electric coruscations are the strict fulfilment of Joel’s prediction. And if modern science had not become practically atheistical to all divinely-revealed events, it would at once behold the hand of the Maker of the universe in these wonders, and openly acknowledge their relation to the prophetic word, and to the coming day of the Lord. But while scientific men admit their utter inability to explain these magnificent phenomena, they leave God out of the world which he has made, and ignore the working of his hand and the fulfillment of his word. And not only the scientific but the religious press, busy with trifles and occupied with worldly affairs, sees no tokens of divine power and providence, and no signs of prophetic fulfillment in these marvels which are blazoned on the nightly heavens. Alas, the virgins are all asleep, and the midnight hour approacheth! Ho! ye dwellers by the Golden Gate on the shores of the broad Pacific, ye denizens of all the frigid wilds of Siberia, ye who roam beneath a tropical sun, ye who toil beneath a burning southern sky, ye who live and die at Rome, and Paris, and in all the wide, wide world’s thronged haunts, or on its valleys broad; ye sorrowful, ye suffering, ye oppressed, ye dying, look up! Look up and see how beautiful, how brilliant, how sublime are the Bridegroom’s signals on all the starry midnight sky! View his flame-painting on the azure blue, the token alike of his wrath against sin and his love for his chosen in every place and nation! It is the fire-flashing of but one of his servants, the glorious orb of day; what then will be the visible splendor of his myriads of angels of light! Lo, there are the couriers of the King who rideth in chariots of fire on wheels of flame; whose flashing robes are brighter than the crimson aurora, more brilliant than the gleaming lightning, and more dazzling than the noon-day sun. Behold he cometh with clouds—a fiery stream issues and comes forth from before him—a fire devoureth at his feet! The heavens are bowed with the burden of the Godhead, and the mighty, the glorious day, the day for which all other days were made, has broke! My soul, prepare to meet the Judge!—D. T. T., in The Christian.