November 13, 1833 is a popular date across the gamut of Seventh-Day Adventist prophetic literature. With no exception is the Adventist prophetess, Ellen G. White, who they believe was divinely inspired and that her interpretations of scripture correct inaccurate ones.
According to the SDA Church—the stars fell from heaven on this date—which supposedly fulfilled the prophecies of Revelation 6:13 and Matthew 24:29. This is in tandem with another date of May 19, 1780, where they claim the sun was darkened which fulfilled the other part of this prophecy.
In the June 13, 1935 issue of the Adventist Review, they assert that in 1833 the greatest meteor shower on record took place. This is corroborating what Ellen G. White stated in her book The Great Controversy, where she says Revelation 6:13 and Matthew 24:29 “received a striking and impressive fulfillment in the great meteoric shower of November 13, 1833. That was the most extensive and wonderful display of falling stars which has ever been recorded.”
In Spiritual Gifts, Vol. II, she says she was shown a vision in the spring of 1858—in Lovett’s Grove, Ohio— which was a repeat of most of what she had been shown 10 years prior and was prompted by the Lord that she must write it out. It was this vision that then prompted the writing of the 1888 Great Controversy—a work she also claimed was “barricaded by a thus saith the Lord.”
Something did happen on this day in November 1833—what is historically known as The 1833 Leonid Meteor Storm. Nasa documents for us that this storm that year was very intense and the event that led to the first formulation of a theory on the origin of meteors.
But what do the verses in Revelation and Matthew say? Not that meteors will fall from heaven, but the stars. If one is to take this literally—as the SDA Church has tried to do—the stars did not fall from heaven. According to NASA, “a meteor is a meteoroid that comes close enough to Earth and enters Earth’s atmosphere, then vaporizes and turns into a meteor—a streak of light in the sky. Because of their appearance, these streaks of light are sometimes called ‘shooting stars.’ But meteors are not actually stars.”
In 1866, it was discovered what caused the 1833 Leonid Meteor Shower. It was the result of a comet. Two scientists, Ernst Tempel and Horace Tuttle, discovered in 1866 that a comet was what caused this event to take place, with the comet being nicknamed the Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. They discovered that this comet passes the earth approximately every 33 years. This means, what happened in 1833 was not unique or new. There is a documented list of its passing earth all the way back to 1366 AD. Rather far from being the greatest recording of falling “stars” in history.
Ellen G. White claimed that “whatever contradicts God’s Word, we can be sure proceeds from Satan.” This vision contradicts the Word of God because God didn’t reveal that these two passages of scripture were fulfilled in 1833. We’ll let you connect the dots.
