Open, if you will, the book of history with me and flip back the dusty pages of time to an earlier world; a more innocent era; a time and place where the innocent intellect is ripe
for razzle dazzle. There is no Internet, alas! There are no televisions or even radios or iPods. Horse and buggy reign supreme and streets are unpaved and men unshaved. Women wear corsets and high-button shoes. It is a society awash in word of mouth, rumour and innuendo. News travels at turtle speed and the daily newspaper brings the world to your breakfast table with provincial commentary and local prejudice.
In this world of long ago the common man looks forward to an uncertain future where the number 1900 A.D. seems like a distant dream instead of moldy remembrance.
This is a land of ordinary homespun people. God is in their soup. Talk of god is in the air they breathe. Prayer is more common than a hiccup. The King James Bible is the cemet that
holds the edifice of daily life aloft with its majestic prose and lilting, poetic remonstrance.
It is a polite society with manners, customs and rituals that keep men separate from women except by appointment and decorum. Deeply pious parents and stone-hard grandparents oversee the mating of the species with chaperones and courting venues inescapable and ubiquitous.
Can you see in your mind's eye this milieu? Can you imagine this world of your great-grand parents? Will you take a few steps into this shimmering vision of long ago with me? There is something I wish to show you. Come...........
America, like a flourishing oak tree, sends its roots deep into the soil of religious fanaticism.
It isn't called fanaticism, however.
It is thought of as godly duty.
Each man, woman and child in this time and place find themselves born into a society steeped in religious language and imagination. You might say that all of daily life is framed in the
context of passages written in and read from that self-same King James bible. There are demons and angels everywhere. There is a god in heaven who rules with a mighty hand. There is the sweet Jesus of song and prayer standing outside the courtyard waiting to come in and change the world at a moment's notice. And all the rest of the world is only a blur of little consequence; a bothersome buzz of insects who fill daily life on the margins of peripheral vision.
There is only one focus for the person who inhabits this time and place and that is the coming of the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ!
The certainty of this event is assured by the preoccupations of those reciting scripture at every meal; breakfast, lunch and dinner are seasoned with the prayers and preambles of His coming. It is only a matter of time....
As with most expectations that promise changes in your world this promise of the second coming of Jesus Christ can only be felt, understood and craved if it is kept palpably alive by fervent discussion. Anticipation is a dish best served hot. Two thousand years of cooling can spoil such a tasty dish for certain!
Enter the hero!
There is always a hero when spirits falter and one's mind wanders; when daily living begins to sag like the backyard hammock and cares of the world begin to steep your dreams with common worry like a tea bag in hot water. The Hero brings your deepest longings to the surface and makes your heart pump alive again with desire for change.
Charles Taze Russell....he found a way to dress up the old dreams and blow the dust off of quiet anticipations. He found a gimmick, a gizmo, an artful dodge to prop up the
side of the revival tent that had gone flat with delay. Russell erected his totem pole, painted it with bright colors and clanged and banged out a stirring tribal dance that caught the ear of even the most jaded and dispassionate among the populace. His gimmick was CHRONOLOGY. It was a window to the new world.
The Plan of God was sweeping changes wrought by miracles and confined to epoch, eras and dispensations marked on a chart like a roadmap to heaven!
Russell had what every citizen craved: DATE CERTAIN!! You could see it, feel it, taste it, touch it and smell the fragrant aroma of Jesus' coming like a fresh-baked apple pie out of grandma's oven! The DIVINE PLAN could be verified by an outside source! Even secular non-believers could look to this confirming data and see for themselves that it was no fluke of man's imagination. What could be more convincing than THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZA?
Now was the time! Here was the place! It didn't even require belief or buy-in. It was coming like a freight train and the whistle could be heard blowing on the other side of the horizon. THE GREAT PYRAMID had been placed by God himself to prove what Pastor Russell was saying was absolutely true and unchangeably correct!
And now, dear friends and gentle readers...the proof itself I present to you: THE PYRAMID INCH!!
What? You say, you don't know what I'm talking about? You don't know what a PYRAMID INCH is? How can you be so ignorant, my friend? Had it not been for the convincingly palpable magnificence of the PYRAMID INCH the vast crowd of believers and frightened non-believers wouldn't have gotten roused into an uproar about the Second Advent of Jesus!
YOU NEED TO KNOW!
For you see, the PYRAMID INCH was a means to an end and imaginary one at that. It never existed beyond necessity. It was pure invention to accomplish an end. It was a red herring. It was a sham. It was tomfoolery and balderdash. The PYRAMID INCH was flummery no better than the smoke and fire from the sham throne room of the Great and Powerful Oz of L.Frank Baum's creation.
The chronology of the Divine Plan invented the date of the Lord's return. The verification of this date became possible by inventing a number (the pyramid inch) that could be divided into certain distances (inside the Great Pyramid) to produce corresponding dates in history.
Here is how you play the Pyramid Inch game.
You can "prove" your magic number this way.
In ancient times the easiest way to measure things was to use the most convenient measuring tools available that anybody could afford to own: your OWN BODY PARTS!
Yes, you could use your own foot to measure "feet". You could use the width of your thumb to measure an inch (call it by whatever name you like.) The distance between your outstretched middle figner and your nose would be a yard. That's how it works. It was called a RULE OF THUMB for this reason. You would standardize these measurements by taking the King's body parts and using HIS proprietary measurements and making them the fixed certainty by which all other things would conform. That is why it is called A RULER. (King=Ruler, get it?)
Now, back to the Pyramid Inch....
Are you ready for the razzle-dazzle "proof"? Here it comes. It is quite impressive if you don't prepare yourself.
People who measured the Great Pyramid of Egypt frequently found lengths of slightly more than 25 regular inches. What could it "mean"???
The length of a year is 365.25636 days. (25.0265 inches) x (365.25636 days) is approximately the length of one side of the pyramid.
The polar radius of the earth is approximately 3949.89 mi. One ten-millionth of that is apparently 25.0265 inches. Impressed?
There you have it! Did you miss it?
THE ENTIRE PREMISE of measuring the Pyramid and projecting "MEANING" comes from this contrived "co-incidence"!!
Does it take your breath away? It should!!
First of all, how often do you measure accurately within one ten-millionth of anything? The radius of the Earth is.........approximate!
Ancient man had no way of knowing the radius of the Earth.
Consequently, by taking what we have approximated TODAY and exptrapolating it BACKWARDS through time we are "impressed" by something that never happened!
Namely, that ancient builders:
1.Had a unit of measurement accurate within one-ten millionth of an inch.
2.Had knowledge of the earth's radius
3.Had the physical means to trim sandstone with one ten-millionth of that inch.
4.Erected a stone edifice whose SOLE INTENTION was to inform Charles Taze Russell that his Divine Plan of the Ages had the correct time alignment with history!!!
Naturally, all of this appears quite possible when you drag the hand of God himself into it!!
In for a penny; in for a pound. Accept the premise and you are bound to accept the conclusions based on the faulty premise!
Where does this leave us?
Here is the entire purpose of this post:
Basing a belief system on a contrived tool of measurement relies on a sense of proof that only "appears" plausible if you don't investigate it or take the time and trouble to reason your way through it.
Jehovah's Witnesses use another kind of Pyramid Inch today. What is it?
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society uses the date 1914 as proof that Jesus has returned invisibly. The source of their "proof" is another kind of Pyramid Inch.
607 B.C.E. is the other kind of Pyramid Inch.
IT IS MADE UP OUT OF THIN AIR AND HAS NO ACTUAL EXISTENCE EXCEPT AS IT SERVES TO PROP UP A FALSE BELIEF!
Once you are impressed by the events of WWI (world war, famine, pestilence) you are lured into accepting the fantasy connected with it as a "significant prophetic date. Then, you are set up to watch the razzle-dazzle arithmetic of Gentile Times prophecy explanations.
It is all a bunch of hoakum, hooey and flummery.
607 B.C.E. has as much scientific actuality as the Pyramid Inch of Charles Taze Russell.
The average rank and file JW only "thinks" he has seen something marvellous "proved" by using it! But, he is too naive and lazy to go much farther than that sham demonstration.
It is amazing in this time of vast amounts of available information it is still possible to fool 7 million people into believing a date that cannot be confirmed!!
It should take your breath away!!
Point this out to every Jehovah's Witness you meet!
DEMAND THEY PROVE THEIR CASE FOR 607 B.C.E.
Challenge them! They will wilt like dead petunia!
Terry