Startling Events | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 21, 1878

Startling Events.

FOR some years it has been believed by many well-informed astronomical observers that the period from 1880 to 1885 will be one of a marked character in the lives of the planetary bodies. Some five or six years ago, we published a series of articles bearing on the situation, and which embodied all that was then known on the subject. The matter is again making its appearance in various forms. One of these is a forthcoming translation of Dr. Lowenthal's “Theory of the Universe,” and which is about to be brought out by the publishers of The Occident, a Jewish periodical issued in this city. In the work of Dr. Lowenthal there is to be found, among a vast amount of other matters, the facts of the curious theory referred to. In a periodical entitled The Science of Health, its editor, Dr. Knapp, says:—

If there is anything in 'astrological criology' we are approaching one of the most pestilential periods of earth's history. Since the commencement of the Christian era, the perihelia of the four great planets of the solar system—Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune—have not been coincident. But this is about to occur, and there will soon be 'lively times for the doctors.' The theory is that when one or more of the large planets is nearest to the sun, the temperature and condition of our atmosphere are so disturbed as to cause injurious vicissitudes, terrible rains, prolonged drouths, etc., resulting in the destruction of crops, and pestilence among human beings and domestic animals.

The same authority also argues that during the period of the perihelion of the planets there is always a marked increase in the death rate. Dr. Knapp goes back for twenty centuries in tracing the history of epidemics, and claims to have verified the theory as to the coincidence of planets in perihelion, and the existence of great physical disturbances and destructive epidemics. In the sixth and sixteenth centuries, three of these planets were in perihelion, and these periods were characterized by the development of the most pestilential eras that the Christian world has ever known. Now, however, for the first time in forty centuries, the perihelia of the four great planets, Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune, will be coincident. If the coincidence of two planets produces such marked results, if the coincidence of three of them, as has happened twice in two thousand years, has left an indelible impress of devastation upon the human race, what dire consequences may not be apprehended when all four of these colossal bodies unite to bring to bear upon this poor little earth their malignant influence? Any person who has reached the age of a score of years will be able from memory to verify the fact that the last ten or fifteen years have been filled with actual or premonitory symptoms of disturbance.

Enormous tidal waves have been thundering along our ocean coasts, tossing about ships as if they were straws, battering down rocks which had withstood the storms of centuries. Islands have gone down in the ocean, sinking like a plummet, and leaving scarcely a ripple to mark the place of their disappearance. The bottom of the sea has been thrust up here and there, as if pushed up by an earth convulsively panting with fear at the impending cataclysm. On land the symptoms are not wanting to indicate already serious disturbance. Areas have been desolated by tornadoes, and town after town has been obliterated so that their former location was scarcely recognizable. Tremendous rainfalls, borne on the wings of hurricanes, come at short intervals, deluding valleys, changing chattering brooks into roaring torrents, leveling hills and filling hollows, and carrying everywhere irresistible destruction.

The Chicago fire of 1871 is an event without parallel since the sixteenth century, at which time three of these planetary monsters sentineled the sky in closest conjunction with the great center of the system. It has never been accounted for, and never will be unless one seek an explanation in external and unusual atmospheric conditions. The Boston fire partook of the same extraordinary character. In both, the flames fed upon stone as upon inflammable oils, and bore down everything, devoured everything before it a fashion utterly unlike any previous record of its actions. There is the same swelling in the tide of epidemics that has been seen in the rising strength of errant natural forces which have suddenly, as it were, been loosed for destruction. The yellow fever epidemic of the present year seems to have risen in accord with no known law, to have extended without reference to precedent, to have yielded to none of the usual effective remedies, and to have devastated and destroyed without hindrance or limit. The sinister echos of the footsteps of cholera are heard resounding along the shores of the Mediterranean, as if the demon were about to commence his voyage around the world.

It is not long since a most destructive famine prevailed in China; and it is but lately that there terminated an era of starvation in India which is said to have destroyed not less than a million human beings! All these things have occurred. They may be the mutterings, the advance drops of the coming storm, or they may be simply unusual developments from conditions not extraordinarily affected. They may have come from causes limited to our planet, and stimulated by local combinations into unusual activity. Again, they may be what some astronomers claim them to be, the forerunners of the cataclysms which are to be precipitated on the earth by the conjunctive perihelia of the four great planets now rapidly nearing the sun. Whatever the cause, and whatever the indication, these tremendous events of the last fifteen years should enforce one lesson upon the people. Speaking of these perihelia the Science of Health says:—

They will be at their nearest approach to the sun in or soon after 1880, so that for a few years, say from 1880 to 1885, the vitality of every living thing will be put to a severe and trying ordeal. Some persons think they can see, by the signs of the times, evidences of the great disasters in the immediate future. The excessive heat, the unexampled cold, the prevalence of flood and disasters at sea, the general failure of the potato crop, the widespread chill-fever among human beings, and the equal prevalence of the epizootic among animals are mentioned as among the premonitions of the rapidly approaching perihelion. 'To be forewarned is to be forearmed.' Accidents excepted we know very well that the persons of more vigorous constitutions and more hygienic habits will have the better chance to survive whatever adverse influence the extraordinary perihelia will occasion. It is well known to all physicians that, in all pestilences, plagues, typhus, smallpox, cholera, murrain, etc., the intemperate, the dissipated and those whose sanitary condition was bad, furnished the victims.

This means that people should put their house in order. Cities should clean their streets and alleys and get themselves ready for the worst. Individuals should live temperately, and in every way prepare themselves for the ordeal. It may not come; but in case it shall not, the world will be all the stronger and healthier for having prepared for it.—Chicago Times.