though his personal labours were confined principally to the New England and Middle States . For several years his expenses were met wholly from his own private purse , and he never afterward received enough to meet the expense of travel to the places where he was invited . Thus his public labours , so far from being a pecuniary benefit , were a heavy tax upon his property , which gradually diminished during this period of his life . He was the father of a large family , but as they were all frugal and industrious , his farm sufficed for their maintenance as well as his own .
In 1833 , two years after Miller began to present in public the evidences of Christ ' s soon coming , the last of the signs appeared which were promised by the Saviour as tokens of His second advent . Said Jesus : " The stars shall fall from heaven ." Matthew 24:29 . And John in the Revelation declared , as he beheld in vision the scenes that should herald the day of God : " 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 ." Revelation 6:13 . This prophecy received a striking and impressive fulfillment in the great meteoric shower of November 13 , 1833 . That was the most extensive and wonderful display of falling stars which has ever been recorded ; " the whole firmament , over all the United States , being then , for hours , in fiery commotion ! No celestial phenomenon has ever occurred in this country , since its first settlement , which was viewed with such intense admiration by one class in the community , or with so much dread and alarm by another ." " Its sublimity and awful beauty still linger in many minds . . . . Never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell toward the earth ; east , west , north , and south , it was the same . In a word , the whole heavens seemed in motion . . . . The display , as described in Professor Silliman ' s Journal , was seen all over North America . . . . From two o ' clock until broad daylight , the sky being perfectly serene and cloudless , an incessant play of dazzlingly brilliant luminosities was kept up in the whole heavens ." --R . M . Devens , American Progress ; or , The Great Events of the Greatest Century , ch . 28 , pars . 1-5 .
" No language , indeed , can come up to the splendour of that magnificent display ; . . . no one who did not witness it can form an adequate conception of its glory . It seemed as if the whole starry heavens had congregated at one point near the zenith , and were simultaneously shooting forth , with the velocity of lightning , to every part of the horizon ; and yet they were not exhausted--thousands swiftly followed in the tracks of thousands , as if created for the occasion ." --F . Reed , in the Christian Advocate and Journal , Dec . 13 , 1833 . " A more correct picture of a fig tree casting its figs when blown by a mighty wind , it was not possible to behold ." -- " The Old Countryman ," in Portland Evening Advertiser , Nov . 26 , 1833 .
In the New York Journal of Commerce of November 14 , 1833 , appeared a long article regarding this wonderful phenomenon , containing this statement : " No philosopher or scholar has told or recorded an event , I suppose , like that of yesterday morning . A prophet eighteen hundred years ago foretold it exactly , if we will be at the trouble of understanding stars falling to mean falling stars , . . . in the only sense in which it is possible to be literally true ."
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