The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

"Mr. Henry Dana Ward, at the time a New York merchant, later an author and
Episcopalian minister, wrote:
"'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 to understand falling stars to mean falling stars. . . . Truly the stars of heaven fell
unto the earth as in the Apocalypse. The language of the Prophet has always been received
as metaphorical; yesterday it was literally fulfilled.'--Journal of Commerce, Nov. 14, 1833.
"We quote the following account from The American Cyclopedia, Vol. XI, page 431:
"'The year 1833 is memorable for the most magnificent display on record. This was on the
night of Nov. 12, and was visible over all the United States and over a part of Mexico and
the West India Islands. Together with the smaller shooting stars which fell like snowflakes
and produced phosphorescent lines along their course, there were intermingled large fireballs,
which darted forth at intervals, describing in a few seconds an arc of 30º or 40º.
These left behind luminous trains, which remained in view several minutes, and
sometimes half an hour or more. One of them, seen in North Carolina, appeared of larger
size and greater brilliancy than the moon. Some of the luminous bodies were of irregular
form, and remained stationary for a considerable time, emitting streams of light. At
Niagara the exhibition was especially brilliant, and probably no spectacle so terribly grand
and sublime was ever before beheld by man as that of the firmament descending in fiery
torrents over the dark and roaring cataract. It was observed that the lines of all the
meteors, if traced back, converged in one quarter of the heavens, which was Leonis Majoris;
and this point accompanied the stars in their apparent motion westward, instead of
moving with the earth toward the East. The source whence the meteors came was thus
shown to be independent of the earth's relation, and exterior to our atmosphere.'
"Prof. von Humboldt devotes fifteen pages of his work, Personal Narrative, to this
phenomenon; and declares that it was visible over an area of eleven million square miles.
"M. Beupland, a French savant, who witnessed it in Humboldt's company, says of it:
'There was not a space in the firmament equal to the extent of three diameters of the moon
that was not filled at every instant with bolides and falling stars.'"
Symbolic fulfillments
In the symbolical fulfillments we notice as first in order that of the "great earthquake." We
must not confound this earthquake with that recorded in Rev. 16:18. In a literal earthquake
the surface of the earth in a great section of country is violently disturbed--mountains,
hills, valleys, forests, and rocks being removed out of their places. The fulfillment can be
found only in violent civil, political, and religious agitations and changes. The inevitable
conclusion is that the French Revolution, beginning in 1789, is referred to. It was the
French government that more than any other for centuries upheld and carried out the
Papal decrees of persecution of the saints, and as in the visions, we now reach the end of