Is an eclipse a sign of the end times?

The external signs here named will precede the day which is still unfulfilled. It is vain to apply verses 30, 31 to the first advent. "I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth" is evidently another character of things. "And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of Jehovah come." There will be a remarkable outward manifestation of divine power before the judgment is executed. God always sends a testimony before the thing itself. He does not strike before He warns. It is so in His dealings with us every day. What Christian has a chastening upon him before he is admonished of the Spirit of God? There is always a sense of wrong, and a lack of communion sensible to the spirit before the Lord inflicts the blow which tells of His watchful love over our careless ways. He gives the opportunity, if one may say so, of setting ourselves morally right; and if we do not heed the teaching, then comes the sorrow. And so it is here. These wonders cannot but attract the mind and attention of men, but they will not really be heeded. Infatuated and under judicial hardness, they will turn a deaf ear to all, and so the great and terrible day of Jehovah will overtake them like a thief. But God at least will not fail. He had foretold that so it should be, and His people will take heed. There will be a remnant enabled to see, and pre-eminently, as we know, from among the Jews, though by no means limited to them, as we learn from the second half of Rev. 7 and the end of Matt. 25. There will be still the witness of "all flesh" prepared for the glory of Jehovah about to be revealed.

If we turn now to another scripture, we shall find other details connected with the appearing. After describing the tribulation, our Lord proceeds: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory," etc. (Matt. 24:29-30.) The prophet Joel spoke in like manner: "And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come." (Joel 2:30-31.) There will be thus signs above and below to herald the appearing of Christ, when He comes with ten thousands of His saints, "when every eye shall see Him, and they [also] which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him." (Rev. 1:7.)

But again, compare the judgments under the sixth seal with the following passages in the prophets: — "I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of Jehovah come" (Joel 2:30-31). Again, "All the hosts of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and all their hosts shall fall down, as the leaf falls off from the vine, and as the falling fig from the fig-tree… For it is the day of Jehovah's vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion" (Isa. 34:4-8). And once more, "The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low, and Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day; … and they shall go into the holes of the rocks and into the caves of the earth, for fear of Jehovah and for the glory of His majesty" (Isa. 2. 17, 19). In these prophecies we have almost identically the language used in the Revelation. And what is the period which each of these passages describes? The judgments preceding and accompanying the coming of the day of the Lord, and the deliverance of Israel. It is to this epoch, then, that the Apocalypse refers. Jesus Himself, in alluding to the same period, uses similar language, — language obviously intended to remind his disciples of the words of the prophet. "Immediately," He says, "after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the land mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matt. 24:29-30). I give this passage, though before quoted, in order to show how strikingly the words used by our Lord and the Apocalypse correspond with the prophetic writings of the Old Testament — an agreement which would be deceptive, and indeed incredible, did the language in all cases not refer to the same event. The prophecies from the ancient writers and words of our Lord relate obviously to the time immediately preceding the glorious advent of the Messiah to execute judgment and establish righteousness, to break the nations with a rod of iron and to deliver the godly remnant of his people from their misery and oppression. Surely, then, it is impossible to doubt that such also is the time described in the Revelation.

Let the Christian reader, then, have it settled in his heart, on the clear authority of holy Scripture, that the grand and specific hope for him ever to cherish is the coming of Christ for His people. This hope may be realized this very night. There is nothing whatever to wait for — no events to transpire amongst the nations — nothing to occur in the history of Israel — nothing in God's government of the world — nothing, in short, in any shape or form whatsoever, to intervene between the heart of the true believer and his heavenly hope. Christ may come for His people tonight. There is actually nothing to hinder. No one can tell when He will come; but we can joyfully say that, at any moment, He may come. And, blessed be His name, when He does come for us, it will not be with the accompanying circumstances of terror, wrath, and judgment. It will not be with blackness and darkness and tempest. These things will accompany "the day of the Lord," as the Apostle Peter plainly tells the Jews in his first great sermon, on the day of Pentecost, in which he quotes the following words from the solemn prophecy of Joel, "And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath: blood and fire and vapour of smoke: the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before" — what? the coming of the Lord for His people? Nay; but before "that great and notable day of the Lord come."

And here I may notice a phrase, frequently found in the Old, and occasionally in the New, Testament — "the day of the Lord." In the Old Testament the coming of the day of Jehovah or the Lord, though once or twice used of some special national judgment, is generally employed to describe that fearful time when "the loftiness of man shall be bowed down" (Isa. 2:12-22); when "the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood" (Joel 2:31); when Jehovah "will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle;" and will "go forth and fight against those nations" (Zech. 14:1-3). Now these and other passages in the Old Testament sufficiently identify the coming of the day of the Lord with the period described in the gospel, when "there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;" when they shall "see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory," and when Israel is bidden to lift up her head, for her "redemption draws nigh" (Luke 21:25-28).

There is, however, no Scriptural foundation for the statement that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit commenced on Pentecost must continue throughout this present age. The Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost. He was poured out once, and nowhere in the New Testament is there a continued or repeated outpouring of the Holy Spirit promised. The difficulty with interpreting this great prophecy of Joel of having been fulfilled on Pentecost and being fulfilled throughout this age is that which follows in the next two verses. Wonders in heaven and on earth, fire, pillars of smoke, a darkened sun and a blood-red moon are mentioned, and that in connection with the day of Jehovah, which, as we have seen is the great theme of Joel's vision. These words have been generally applied to the destruction of Jerusalem, which followed the day of Pentecost. The spiritualizing method has been fully brought into play to overcome the difficulties the 30th and 31st verses raise. The terrible day of Jehovah, it is claimed, is the destruction of Jerusalem. Thus we read in the commentary of Patrick and Lowth: "This (verse 30) and the following verse principally point out the destruction of the city and the temple of Jerusalem by the Romans, a judgment justly inflicted upon the Jewish nation for their resisting the Holy Spirit and contempt of the means of grace." We quote another leading commentator on Joel 2:30, Dr. Clarke. He states: "This refers to the fearful sights, dreadful portents and destructive commotions by which the Jewish polity was finally overthrown and the Christian religion finally established in the Roman empire. See how our Lord applies this prophecy in Matthew 24:29 and the parallel texts." And in verse 31 ("the sun shall be turned into darkness") Clarke says "it means the Jewish polity, civil and ecclesiastical, shall be entirely destroyed." Others give these words the same spiritualized meaning. These learned doctors tell us that Joel 2:30 and 31 relate to the destruction of the nation, and the civil and ecclesiastical polity of the Jews! This is a fair example of the havoc which a Bible interpretation makes, which ignores the great dispensational facts revealed in the Word of God. But inasmuch as the 32nd verse, the last verse in this second chapter of Joel, reveals that there shall be deliverance in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem after these signs and wonders, and the continuation of the prophecy in the third chapter shows the judgment of the enemies of the people Israel, God's ancient people, such interpretations appear at once as fundamentally wrong.

The Lisbon earthquake was the fulfilment, they said, of Revelation 6:12; a darkening of the sun and moon twenty-five years later, of Mark 13:24; whilst a great meteoric shower on Nov. 13th, 1833, Mrs. White coolly tells us, constituted: “The last of the signs … which were promised by the Saviour as tokens of His second advent.”

Verse 25 now goes on to the time of the end. There will be signs literally in the sun, the moon and the stars, though the spiritual significance of these is the most important. The supreme light of the knowledge of God will be darkened through widespread apostasy -- a complete turning away from the Lord. Reflected light (the moon, symbolical of Israel) will be greatly affected; and stars will fall, that is personal apostasy will become rampant. Nations on earth will be torn by distress, with perplexity, and the evidence of this has already begun in our day. The troubled sea and roaring waves speak of the troubled state of all nations, each fighting for what it considers its own rights.

(2) The signs of the end are more briefly given than in the previous Gospels; signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, answered by the roaring of the sea with its billows from below; between them the nations in distress and perplexity; men ready to die for alarm at what is coming on the earth. There seems good reason to believe that these signs are physical, while yet there are corresponding ones in the political sphere, as the book of Revelation clearly shows. At such a time God's mercy multiplies His calls to men to give heed to what He is doing; and such mysterious sympathy of nature with human woes gives all the apparent countenance that there may be to the fables of astrology. In such ways man perverts the goodness of God to his destruction.

The opening of the sixth seal (v. 12) brings us near to the end of the first 3-1/2 years of Daniel's seventieth week. While there will no doubt be physical disturbances such as a great earthquake and the sun, the moon and the stars affected, yet the spiritual significance of these things is of far greater importance. The earthquake (v. 12) speaks of a general convulsion on earth that indicates the shaking of governments by anarchy (Heb. 12:26-27). The sun becoming black speaks of the light of God withdrawn because of gross atheism, for the sun is the supreme source of light to earth, and people's refusal of God leaves them in spiritual darkness (Mal. 4:2). The moon speaks of Israel in the place of responsibility to reflect God's glory, but turned into a state of violence and bloodshed. The stars of heaven stand for those who profess spiritual light (Gen. 15:5), but their falling to the earth in great numbers intimates a general apostasy — a giving up of any heavenly profession and falling to the level of earthly-mindedness. Having no stability, they are easily shaken by the wind of adverse circumstances (Eph. 4:14, Jude 12).