Unterrified, and as a Comet burned
That fired the length of Ophiuchus huge
In th’ arctic sky, and from its horrid hair,
Shakes pestilence and war.”
The Great Deluge, described in Holy Writ, came after the appearance of a mighty Comet (Halley’s Comet), so Dr. William Whiston, Sir Isaac Newton’s successor in the Lucasian chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, set forth in a special treatise. The great French astronomer, Laplace, also reached the same conclusion.
This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) likewise foretold the final fall of the Holy City, Jerusalem, in the year 70 after Christ. This Comet was seen by St. Peter. Josephus in his History of the Jewish Wars recorded the nightly appearance of this Comet over the City of Jerusalem just before the war which ended with the destruction of the Holy City.
“Amongst other warnings,” writes Josephus, who saw this Comet with his own eyes, “a Comet of the kind called sword-shaped, because their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen above the city for the space of a whole year.”
Josephus at the time rebuked his Jewish countrymen for listening to false prophets while so clear a sign from Heaven was before their very eyes.
This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) reappeared at a critical period of the rule of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. He first beheld his sign from Heaven in the midst of battle as it blazed overhead in the sign of a Cross. With the help of his mother, the sainted Helen, Constantine was moved thereby to turn Christian.
Constantinople, the great capital of the Orient, which owes its name to this same Emperor Constantine, was lost to Christendom in the year 1453, when the Turks overran the great city with fire and sword. This event, it is recorded, was heralded by another appearance of a Comet. Three years later, when the Turks were about to descend upon Belgrade, another Comet (Halley’s Comet) spread consternation throughout Europe.