A celebrated astronomer and meteorologist, says:—
“Those who were so fortunate as to witness the exhibition of shooting stars on the morning of Nov. 13, 1833, probably saw the greatest display of celestial fire-works that has ever been since the creation of the world, or at least within the annals covered by the pages of history.
“In nearly all places the meteors began to attract notice by their unusual frequency as early as eleven o'clock, and increased in numbers and splendor until about four o'clock, from which time they gradually declined, but were visible until lost in the light of day. The meteors did not fly at random over all parts of the sky, but appeared to emanate from a point in the constellation Leo, near a star called Gamma Leonis, in the bend of the Sickle....
“The extent of the shower of 1833 was such as to cover no inconsiderable part of the earth's surface, from the middle of the Atlantic on the east to the Pacific on the west; and from the northern coast of South America to undefined regions among the British possessions on the north, the exhibition was visible, and everywhere presented nearly the same appearance. This is no longer to be regarded as a terrestrial but a celestial phenomenon, and shooting stars are now to be no more viewed as casual productions of the upper regions of the atmosphere, but as visitants from other worlds, or from the planetary voids.”—Prof. Olmstead, of Yale College.
“No philosopher or scholar has told or recorded an event, I suppose, like that of yesterday morning. A prophet 1800 years ago foretold it exactly, if we will be at the trouble of understanding stars falling to mean falling stars; or ‘hoi asteres tou ouranou epesan eis teen geen,’in the only sense in which it is possible to be literally true.”—Henry Dana Ward, in Journal of Commerce, Nov. 14, 1833.
Not only here in Matthew 24 is attention directed to these signs as premonitory of the coming of Christ. The Lord through the prophet Joel says:—
“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come.”
Under the sixth seal, as given in Rev. 6:12-17, we have the following language:—
“And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and 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. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.”
That the fourth and fifth seals apply to the papal persecution there can be no reasonable doubt. If so, then the great earthquake with which the sixth seal opens would be that of Lisbon, in 1755, which agitated the greater part of the earth and destroyed many thousands of lives, 60,000 in Lisbon alone.