His findings were not well received in the scientific community that largely decided to ignore him. In 1759, a drought threatened Přímětice's farmers, who now took action against their priests' attempts to control the weather and consequently destroyed the first "weather-machine". This led to a dissent between Diviš and his "unruly flock", that only ended when the church superiors advised Diviš to stop his experiments. He was advised to unmount his second "weather-machine" which he had then for security reasons mounted on the tower of his church, and hand it over to the Louka abbey.