The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining:
Read Chapter 2
Clement Of Alexandria
AD 215
The holy apostle of the Lord, reprehending the Greeks, will show you, “Because that, when they know God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but [they] became vain in their imaginations, and changed the glory of God into the likeness of corruptible man, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator.” And verily this is the God who “in the beginning made the heaven and the earth.” But you do not know God and worship the heaven, and how shall you escape the guilt of impiety? Hear again the prophet speaking: “The sun shall suffer eclipse, and the heaven be darkened. But the Almighty shall shine forever: while the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, and the heavens stretched out and drawn together shall be rolled as a parchment skin [for these are the prophetic expressions], and the earth shall flee away from before the face of the Lord.”
Shining. The cloud of locusts intercepts the light; or, people in distress think all nature is in confusion. (St. Jerome; Ezechiel xxxii.; Jeremias iv. 23.)
Aloysius (13.) saw locusts in the air for the space of twelve miles; and among the Cossacks, clouds of them may be found six leagues in length and three in breadth. They frequently occasion a famine in Ethiopia. (Calmet)
