p. 1 | Signs of the Advent by Voice of the Prophets

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 23, 1863

Signs of the Advent.

By Voice of the Prophets

THE substance of the following article was published some years ago. We re-publish it as very appropriate to the present time,—especially to those who have lately turned their attention to the investigation of prophecy.

One of the marks of hypocrisy in the Jews of our Lord's day, was, that in the midst of his numerous and astonishing miracles, performed in their midst and before their eyes, they came to him and asked of him a sign:—"Master, we would see a sign from thee." "O ye hypocrites," said the Saviour, "ye can discern the face of the sky; how is it that ye cannot discern the signs of this time?" How much like the present generation! In the midst of a flood of light, and some of the most astonishing wonders of the world, how perfectly blind are men to the fact, that just these signs were foretold to precede the great and terrible day of the Lord! But thanks be to God, there are some left who have faith enough in God's word to believe that when he promised signs of the second advent of the Saviour, he will be as faithful to fulfill them, as he was in the case of his first advent. There are many, however, and some of them profess themselves believers in God's word, too, yea and teachers of that word, who are ready to scoff at us when we point at the very things in real life, or as matters of authentic history, and profess to believe them a fulfillment of God's word. But we are not to be scoffed out of our faith; a more powerful instrument than ridicule will be requisite to drive us from it.

Some of the predicted signs I design to notice, and inquire if they have been fulfilled.

1. "There shall be scoffers in the last times." 2. Pet. iii, 2. This is one of the first signs laid down by Peter. "Knowing this first, that there shall come," &c. To guard the church against them, he wrote both his epistles. "This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you, in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, that ye may be mindful of the words spoken before by the holy prophets; and the commandments of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour." He foresaw what an effort would be made to cast the prophecies into the shade, and persuade the people and the church, that the prophets gave no light on the second advent; that Daniel only predicted the overthrow of Antiochus, and, in the ninth chapter, came down to the destruction of Jerusalem; the greater prophets foretold the Babylonish captivity and return, the birth and death of Christ, together with the glory of the gospel dispensation, and occasionally alluded to some local circumstances of their own day. And so also of the minor prophets. Do we hear and witness any such effort to throw the doctrine of Christ's coming into the shade, in our own day—"Saying where is the promise of his coming?" 1 Thess. v, 3; "When they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them." They are now saying it most emphatically. Universalists do it openly and unequivocally. Many evangelical (professedly so) ministers and Christians, like the Jews of old, are ready to say, "his blood be upon us," or, we take the responsibility to say he will not come * for a thousand years at least. This doctrine of a thousand years' peace and universal holiness before the coming of the Lord, is itself a most effectual anodyne to a sleeping church and perishing world.

2. "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations, and then shall the end come." Matt. xxiv, 14.

This sign is fulfilled. There is no known nation which has never, to a greater or less extent, had the gospel preached to them. The late Rev. J. O. Choules, author of a voluminous work, a History of Missions, from the apostolic age down to the present day, being asked some twenty years ago if he knew of any nation which never had received the gospel, replied that he did not; but he thought the promise implied something more than its being barely preached in each nation.

But when it is preached in all the world, for a witness to all nations, "THEN SHALL THE END COME." There is no such thing as a millennium after it is preached in all the world. Why cannot the church see this? That end, then, must be just upon us.

3. The signs foretold in Luke, twenty-first chapter. This chapter is parallel to the twenty-fourth of Matthew; and as the events appear more consecutive and distinct, I shall follow this account, and examine it, rather than that of Matthew.

Luke xxi, 6, 7; "As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. And they asked him, saying, Master, but when shall these things be? and what sign will there be when these things shall come to pass?"

In answer to these questions, Christ proceeded to tell them (from verses eight to twenty-four) what signs there would be which should precede the destruction of Jerusalem. The language is so plain that it cannot well be misunderstood. "Let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains." "For there shall be distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." All these predicted events have most certainly come on the Jews and Jerusalem. That devoted city is yet trodden down of the Gentiles; therefore, the prophecy has not yet expired. This, then, is my answer to those who would contend that the prophecy ended with the destruction of Jerusalem; it is not so, for it is yet in the course of fulfillment. In order to show that the prophecy ended then, it must be proved that Jerusalem ceased then to be trodden down of the Gentiles.

"Times of the Gentiles" is the period of their triumph over the church, holding it in bondage. It is shadowed forth by the metallic image of Daniel, second chapter, beginning with the Chaldeans, and ending with the Romans, in the entire destruction of the Gentile governments of the earth, and the setting up of the kingdom of God to fill the whole earth. Then, in verse twenty-five, and onward, follows a prediction of the signs that should indicate the kingdom of God at hand, with the same certainty that the budding of the fig-tree indicates approaching summer.

Verse 25. "There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon." What these signs are, we learn from other parts of the Bible. Matthew, in referring to the same signs, says, "the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light," Joel ii, 31; that "the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall be turned to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come."

Has the sun been darkened in these days, as predicted by Joel and the Saviour? It has; and that within the memory of some now living. I refer to the dark day of A. D. 1780, May 19th. That was a day of supernatural darkness. It was not an eclipse of the sun, for the moon was at the full. It was not owing to a thickness in the atmosphere, for the stars were seen. The darkness began about nine o'clock A. M., and continued through the day, and also into if not through the night. Such was the darkness, that work was suspended in the field and shop, beasts and fowls retired to their rest, and houses were illuminated at dinner-time. Such a day of darkness has never been known, so far as I can learn from history, since the crucifixion of our Saviour. There have been several such events since, in different countries. Many can produce evidence of such an appearance before 1780, I will thank them most heartily for the information.

"And in the moon." At the time of the dark day, May 19th, 1780, there was a full moon, or nearly so [the moon fulled the 18th], yet the night was as dark as "Egyptian darkness." "The moon [did] not give her light."

The following extract from Gage's History of the

Town of Rowley, Mass., on "the dark day" of May, 1780, will set this point in a clear light.

DARK DAY OF MAY NINETEENTH, 1780.

Mr. Gage says, "The sun rose clear, and shone for several hours; at length the sky became overcast with clouds, and by ten o'clock, A. M., the darkness was such as to occasion the farmers to leave their work in the field, and to retire to their dwellings; fowls went to their roosts; and before noon lights became necessary to the transaction of business within doors. The darkness continued through the day; and the night, till near morning, was as unusually dark as the day."

Rev. Mr. Tenney, of Exeter, N. H., quoted by Mr. Gage, in some speculations on the cause of the darkness, forwarded to "The Historical Society," in which he says that "no satisfactory solution of it has yet appeared,"—in remarking upon the following evening, says, "the darkness of the following evening was probably as gross as has ever been observed since the Almighty fiat gave birth to light. I could not help conceiving at the time that if every luminous body in the universe had been shrouded in impenetrable darkness, or struck out of existence, the darkness could not have been more complete. A sheet of white paper held within a few inches of the eyes was equally invisible with the blackest velvet."

"The moon to blood." The following extract of a letter from Mr. Beadle, at Aleppo, and published in the Missionary Herald, June, 1842, p. 234, will illustrate this point. It is an account of an earthquake at that place in 1822. He says, "On the night of the earthquake there was something peculiar in the atmosphere, the moon appearing as red as blood. This greatly alarmed the inhabitants, who were continually crying out, 'Now we shall hear the trumpet sound, and the dead will rise! the day of judgment has arrived!'"

The following description of the forementioned earthquake is from the same writer:

"About ten o'clock the earth began to move, as if it had been placed upon the waves of the sea. This rapidly undulating motion continued for some seconds but produced no serious injury. Some walls cracked, but resumed their places when the earth rested. A moment after the undulating motion ceased, came the dreadful shock. It was strictly vertical, seeming to strike directly beneath the city. The confusion and ruin which succeeded that awful moment are beyond all description. The crash of falling houses, the shrieks of the dying and wounded, husbands calling for wives, and wives searching for husbands, children, entreating help from parents, and parents vainly seeking lost children, mingled with prayers and groans in many languages, presented a scene of suffering and woe, from which the mind turns instinctively away."

"The first impulse of the surviving inhabitants seemed to be, to rush to the gates of the city. Many were crushed in their flight, and those who were permitted to reach a place of comparative safety outside the walls were compelled to pass over mangled and dead bodies, and fly amid 'ten thousand deaths on every side.'"

"And in the stars." The sign in the stars is, that "the stars shall fall from heaven as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs when shaken of a mighty wind." Rev. vi, 13, and Matt. xxiv, 29. Has such a phenomenon taken place? The remembrance of the shower of meteors, on the night of Nov. 13, 1833, is fresh in the minds of the present generation. The scene could not be more truly described than it is by the Revelator. Such a scene I find described as having occurred in 1779, on the 12th of November, and as having been visible from South America to Germany and Greenland. From where they were witnessed in South America, on the coast of Brazil, to Weimar, in Germany is 10,000 miles, and from the same place to Herrnhut, in Greenland, 7,000 miles. This was the earliest shower of meteors, of any considerable magnitude, I can find on record. This was about six months before the dark day. There are several instances of the kind on record since that. Indeed, the 12th and 13th of November seem to be their anniversary. But, it is objected, meteors are not "stars." I would ask the objector, then, what was it which went before the wise men and guided them to the place of the Saviour's birth? Was it a fixed star? Can one of these fiery orbs fall on the earth and not destroy it? Certainly not. Then they must be meteors.

But admitting it to refer to the fixed stars, will not the conflagration of some of those bodies within a few years, as recorded by astronomers, answer the prediction? The signs have most certainly appeared in the stars.

Recapitulation.

1. The sun has been supernaturally darkened from morning to night: in some places it being cloudy, and the sun entirely invisible, and in others it being visible, but having the same appearance as when totally eclipsed; and the stars being visible. I have both these accounts from many living witnesses, in different parts of the country; it being cloudy in the north and clear in the south of New England.

2. That the moon, although it fulled the 18th, the day before the dark day, and must have arisen soon after sunset, gave no light at all. Also the bloody hue of the moon has appeared.

3. That signs in the stars have appeared, whether it be understood of the showers of meteors, or of the burning of the fixed stars.

Observe:—Each of these events has made a deep impression on the world that it presaged the great and terrible day of the Lord; some in each time believing it had come, others that it would soon come. It was thus on the dark day, when the moon was turned to blood, and during the shower of meteors. To the people generally, at the time they were witnessed, they were a sign. If they do not fulfill the prophecy, it cannot be fulfilled; for if it is ever done, it must be by just these appearances. If this does not accomplish the prediction, the repetition of the same thing again would not do it, but rather produce infidelity by the commonness of the phenomena. I must, therefore, believe the signs to have already appeared.—Voice of the Prophets.