Dark Day

Twenty-five years were to elapse before the coming of the next impressive sign of the second advent—the dark day of May 19, 1780. In the intervening years tension increased between England and the American colonies, until the war for independence began, April 19, 1775, at Concord and Lexington. For the next eight years America was busy prosecuting the war. Only a week before the dark day the American forces suffered a major loss when Charleston, South Carolina, fell into the hands of British troops.APAY 171.3

While the unifying influence of the Great Awakening and the leadership of a large majority of the clergy did much to draw the colonies together, the period preceding and during the Revolution was not one of spiritual prosperity. “At the time that the Thirteen Colonies achieved their political independence, and in spite of the efforts of the churches for more than a century and of some marked religious awakenings, only a minority of the population had membership in any religious body.” Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, vol. 3, p. 190.APAY 171.4

But even in such a time the dark day made a profound impression on many men and women. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College for twenty-one years, later commented: “A very general opinion prevailed that the day of judgment was at hand.” Quoted by John W. Barber in Connecticut Historical Collections, p. 403.APAY 172.1

References to the occasion are multiplied, but statements of those who saw the dark day as a fulfillment of Bible prophecy are limited. However, the prophetic significance of the day was not passed by unnoticed. In 1781 Samuel Gatchel, deacon of the Second Congregational Church, at Marblehead, Massachusetts, wrote a tract bearing the title, “The Signs of the Times: or Some Expositions and Remarks on Sundry Texts of Scripture, relative to the remarkable Phenomenon, or Dark-Day, which appeared in New-England on the Nineteenth of May, 1780.” Gatchel maintained that the dark day was a fulfillment of Joel 3:15, which predicted a darkening of the sun and moon. Joshua Spalding, pastor of the Tabernacle Church at Salem, Massachusetts, in his book, Sentiments, Concerning the Coming and Kingdom of Christ, Collected From the Bible, and From the Writings of Many Antient, and Some Modern, Believers (1796), commented: “‘We have seen wonderful and alarming phenomena of darkness of the sun and moon.’” Quoted in L. E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3, p. 233. These signs, he believed, indicated that the glorious advent might soon take place.APAY 172.2