The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 334

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 splendor 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

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