The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 335

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.”
Thus was displayed the last of those signs of His coming, concerning
which Jesus bade His disciples: “When ye shall see all these things,
know that it is near, even at the doors.” Matthew 24:33. After these signs,
John beheld, as the great event next impending, the heavens departing as
a scroll, while the earth quaked, mountains and islands removed out of
their places, and the wicked in terror sought to flee from the presence of
the Son of man. Revelation 6:12-17.
Many who witnessed the falling of the stars, looked upon it as a
herald of the coming judgment, “an awful type, a sure forerunner, a
merciful sign, of that great and dreadful day.”—“The Old Countryman,”
in Portland Evening Advertiser, Nov. 26, 1833. Thus the attention of the
people was directed to the fulfillment of prophecy, and many were led to
give heed to the warning of the second advent.
In the year 1840 another remarkable fulfillment of prophecy excited
widespread interest. Two years before, Josiah Litch, one of the leading
ministers preaching the second advent, published an exposition of
Revelation 9, predicting the fall of the Ottoman Empire. According
to his calculations, this power was to be overthrown “in A.D. 1840,
sometime in the month of August;” and only a few days previous to
its accomplishment he wrote: “Allowing the first period, 150 years,
to have been exactly fulfilled before Deacozes ascended the throne by
permission of the Turks, and that the 391 years, fifteen days, commenced
at the close of the first period, it will end on the 11th of August, 1840,
when the Ottoman power

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