SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS by Prof. George W. Rine

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 25, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 43.

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS

By Prof. George W. Rine

A Simple Question and Its Answer

A FEW days before His passion and crucifixion Jesus, with His disciples, repaired to the Mount of Olives. In behalf of the universal Christian church, the disciples asked Him this simple but momentous question: "What shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?" Matt. 24:3. The gist of the Master's answer is pointedly recorded by Luke, as follows: "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars." Luke 21:25.

Here the disciples address to their divine Teacher a simple, sensible question. He, in turn, honors their question with a simple, pertinent answer. How clearly this fact shows that Jesus did not regard their question as at all irrelevant or uncalled-for. The very clearness and directness of the answer prove that our Lord must have regarded the information it conveys as of supreme moment to His church.

The Prediction

"There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars"—signs of His coming and of the end of the world—the Master explicitly affirms. He who is Light does not leave His children in the dark as to the nature of these celestial signs. Signs of such transcendent meaning must be recognized and identified when given, by those for whose benefit they were ordained. The Saviour's vivid word-picture as to the character of these signs is given in verses 29 and 30 of Matthew 24, and is as follows: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven."

That these awful celestial phenomena would be divinely given as "signs" of our Lord's coming in His glory and in His kingdom, was foretold by the Spirit of Christ through the prophet Joel, in these graphic terms: "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come." Joel 2:31. After Christ ascended to the Father, He declared in respect to the same "signs," in His revelation given through the beloved disciple John: "The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; 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." Rev. 6:12, 13. The context shows indisputably that these sublime phenomena are harbingers of "the glorious appearing of . . . our Saviour Jesus Christ."

The Fulfilment

With great precision our Lord foretold just when the signs in the heavens should be given. Note again His words: "Immediately after the tribulation OF THOSE DAYS shall the sun be darkened," etc. In the same discourse Jesus had already told His disciples that "the elect" would be subject to unprecedented tribulation during a period of specified "days." These are His words: "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved; but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened." Matt. 24:21, 22.

Observe that Christ repeatedly speaks of the tribulation of "those days." He unmistakably refers to the days of that long period of persecution inflicted upon His true worshipers, by the Papacy during the Dark Ages and after, extending over a period of more than 1,200 years. All who have a knowledge of the history of the Christian era, know that the most terrible persecution that the saints ever suffered was that inflicted by the Church of Rome, from about the middle of the sixth century to near the close of the eighteenth century. Under the benign influence of the great Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, the rigors of the papal persecutions gradually softened, until after the temporary suppression of the Jesuit Society, in 1773, when physical persecution ceased entirely.

Now, there is no fact more widely and better known than that the sun was supernaturally darkened, and that the moon was turned into the appearance of blood a few years "after the tribulation of those days." These miraculous phenomena, exactly fulfilling our Lord's circumstantial prediction, both as to character and time, did occur on May 19, and the night following, 1780. Historical testimony corroborative of this fact is overwhelming in mass and unimpeachable in kind.

The Great "Dark Day"

Referring to the 19th of May, 1780, the eminent English astronomer, Herschel, wrote: "The dark day of North America was one of those wonderful phenomena of nature which will always be read of with interest, but which philosophy is at a loss to explain." Here we have a deliberate admission from the greatest astronomer of his time that the most advanced knowledge and science of this world is powerless to account for this extra-normal solar phenomenon.

In a work entitled, "Our First Century," Dr. R. M. Devens says: "Almost, if not altogether alone, as the most mysterious and yet unexplained phenomenon of its kind in nature's diversified range of events, during the last century, stands the dark day of May 19, 1780—a most unaccountable darkening of the whole visible heavens and atmosphere in New England—which brought intense alarm and distress to multitudes of minds, as well as dismay to the brute creation, the fowls fleeing, bewildered, to their roosts, and the birds to their nests, and the cattle to their stalls." He further informs us that thousands of the people of that day were fully convinced that the end of all things terrestrial had come. He says, too, that the extent of this darkness was so great that the exact territorial limits could never be positively ascertained.

Mr. William Perrine recently made a thorough and methodical investigation of the original records of the "Dark Day," and gave a summary of his findings in the Ladies' Home Journal, for July, 1905. He tells his readers that where the darkness was seen in the full effect, it was appalling. In some places all the light of day seemed as if it had been blotted out. At other places only a few rays were discernible, and these imparted to the trees and grass and houses a murky, yellow hue. The unnatural darkness began to creep in about ten o'clock in the morning; it soon deepened into an oppressive gloom, and hour after hour, and long after the time for the setting of the sun, the blackness continued to envelop a vast region. Schools were dismissed, and men and women stopped working, for it was impossible to tell the time on the clocks or to move about without danger of collision. In every house and shop candles were lighted, yet a sense of half-suffocating gloom weighed upon the people and filled them with awe or terror. In some towns people who went on the streets were lost at the noonday hour in trying to find their way home.

At the hour of nightfall the darkness assumed the shade of pitch. "A sheet of white paper could not be distinguished from the blackest velvet." Dr. Samuel Penny, when several years later he wrote a description of the unearthly phenomenon, declared: "The darkness of the evening was probably as gross as has ever been observed since the Almighty's fiat first gave birth to light." Mr. Perrine naively confesses that "the causes of the phenomenon appear never to have been satisfactorily explained."

There is, however, one explanation, and only one; it is this: Our Lord, in fulfilment of His explicit promise, shrouded the sun in unnatural blackness at the very time that He said He would, as a sign—as one of the promised pledges that His glorious appearing is near, "even at the door." Ah, yes, the phenomenon was the effect of a very definite cause—of the Great First Cause, tracing in the very skies the answer to His own promise that "there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars."

In respect to the moon's being darkened and, at intervals, having the appearance of blood, Dr. Adams testifies: "The darkness was as uncommon in the night as it was in the day, as the moon had fulled the day before. . . . And whenever on this memorable night the moon did appear, as at certain times it did, it had, according to the prophecy, the appearance of blood." Note again: The moon was full that night, yet she yielded no light. Ah! with what startling exactness were the very words of Jesus fulfilled: "AND THE MOON SHALL NOT GIVE HER LIGHT."

"The Stars Shall Fall from Heaven"

There are still living thousands of persons who have the distinction of having been eye-witnesses of the unique and unparalleled star-shower on the night of November 13, 1833. Regarding that memorable night, Mr. Perrine significantly declares: "It may be said to hold the same relation to nights as the Dark Day does to days." During the first hours of the night all was peace and quiet. But suddenly a ray of brilliant light shot across the heavens; before it vanished there came another more dazzling; instantly there began to rush forth, as if from the central part of the heavens, a myriad of flaming stars. With swift and tumultuous onset, darting, swirling, bursting, blazing, the countless streams of light swept through the sky expanse in wild and superb splendor. So intense was the stellar blaze that sleepers who were suddenly awakened sprang to the windows, believing that a conflagration was raging in the neighborhood. Those who went out of their houses found it as easy to read a newspaper as in daylight.

Professor Olmstead, of Yale College, who had the good fortune to be a witness of those stellar pyrotechnics, declared them to be the greatest display of celestial fireworks that has been known since the creation of the worlds. Henry Dana Ward, who with his wife was another eye-witness, said that they felt in their hearts "that it was a sign of the last days." He adds that the stars actually "fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Rev. 6:13. The language of the prophet, Mr. Ward emphatically declares, was that night literally fulfilled.

"And how did they fall?" he asks. His answer is: "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." Mr. Ward takes special pains to impress his readers with the suggestive fact that the stars did not come as if from several trees shaken, but from one. And they did not fall as ripe fruit falls. Far from it; but they flew, they were cast, like unripe fruit, which at first refuses to leave the branch, and when, under a violent pressure, it does break its hold, it flies swiftly, straight off.

Professor Burrit affirms that the phenomenon of the falling stars covered no inconsiderable part of the earth's surface. "They fell thick as the flakes in the early snows of December."

Did not these signs in the sun, moon, and stars, dear reader, begin to come just when Jesus declared they would appear—"immediately after the tribulation of those days"? Have not scientists and scholars generally confessed that these phenomena are not susceptible of explanation by any facts of science known to man? Must we not then, if we believe the prophecies of Jesus, accept these phenomena as the "signs" of the imminence of Jesus' coming and of the end of the world?

Note the special pains which Jesus took to make it easy and certain that we should recognize these "signs" and accept them for the very purpose for which they were given; namely, that we might "know that He is near, even at the doors." It was for the express purpose of enabling us to know these things, that He gave the strikingly-apt parable of the fig tree putting forth its leaves. See verses 32 to 34 of Matthew 24. Then, as if to make it impossible for "this generation" to doubt the genuineness of these signs, He adds: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away."

May He grant us all grace to believe, to watch, to pray, to look for Him, and to receive Him with the joyful acclamation, "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us." Isa. 25:9.