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YOUR BIBLE AND YOU
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C h r i s t U n v e i l s t h e F u t u r e
tion. In the distant future He saw a respite coming for His afflicted followers.
Persecution, He said, would decline, as it did following the great Reformation,
the Renaissance, and the spread of a new concept of religious liberty and the
rights of man.
At that time, said Jesus, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall
the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light” (verse 29).
Marvelously, just seven years after the dissolution of an organization that had
been active in carrying on the persecutions of the Inquisition, a mysterious
darkening of the sun occurred. On May 19, 1780, over a large area, the light of
day suddenly faded into the blackness of midnight. This was the famous Dark
Day, of which Noah Webster wrote in his dictionary: “So called on account of a
remarkable darkness on that day extending over all New England… Birds sang
their evening songs, disappeared, and became silent; fowls went to roost; cattle
sought the barnyard; and candles were lighted in the houses” (1869 edition).
This was the day described by the Boston Independent Chronicle on June
8, 1780, in the following graphic language: “During the whole time a sickly,
melancholy gloom overcast the face of nature. Nor was the darkness of the
night less uncommon and terrifying than that of the day; notwithstanding
there was almost a full moon, no object was discernible, but by the help
of some artificial light, which when seen from the neighboring houses and
other places at a distance, appeared through a kind of Egyptian darkness,
which seemed almost impervious to the rays. This unusual phenomenon
excited the fears and apprehensions of many people. Some considered it as
a portentous omen of the wrath of Heaven in vengeance denounced against
the land, others as the immediate harbinger of the last day when ‘the sun
shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light.’ ”
But the enthralled disciples, peering breathlessly into the future as they
listened to the prophetic words falling from their Master’s lips, soon found
themselves gazing upon another amazing scene.
“And the stars shall fall from heaven,” said Jesus, continuing the sequence of
signs of His return.
The stars fall! How could this be Not the fixed stars, of course, but the
meteors that rush into our atmosphere and sometimes give the impression
that the heavens are crashing earthward.
Obviously, a celestial phenomenon on a stupendous scale was to follow the
darkening of the sun. And so it came to pass.