Rutherford's iron-clad devotion to rational truth
CT Russell was not the only wacky pyramidologist
by Awakened at Gilead 20 Replies latest watchtower bible
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still_in74
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AuntBee
A@G: I just read a book called Allies for Armageddon, The Rise of Christian Zionism. I could not believe how much was in there about the history of ideas that were similar to CTR. Especially the views of Bible prophecy, year date theory, date setting, reading current headlines into eschatology, etc. I just thought i'd mention it, as it was an added bonus to what i expected to find in the book! IT would be an interesting project to compile a succinct form of the history of those ideas. Oh yes, it would clearly show how non-unique they were.
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wha happened?
what's with the Toga?
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Doug Mason
When CTR referred to the "pyramid inches" he acknowledged the work of Charles Smyth. The following excerpt provides a background on Smyth. It also shows how this interest in the dimensions of the Great Pyramid was taken to the US.
The following is from "The New Jerusalem: The Extraordinary True Story of how a Secret Society Rebuilt London", Adrian Gilbert, pages 356-362.
Doug
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The development of Victorian Britain as the first great power of the industrial age went hand in hand with the growth of the British Israel movement. As we have seen, as far back as the late middle ages there had been a belief, at least in royal circles, that the British were descended from the lost tribes of Israel. During the nineteenth century these ideas were to be developed from amorphous traditions into a systematized creed. The first prophet of what, to his critics at least, seemed like a new religion was a Scot from Kilmarnock named John Wilson. He commenced his work of evangelizing the nation in 1837 - the same year that Queen Victoria ascended the throne. The following year he began lecturing at the Witness Hall in Aldersgate Street, London. Two years later, in 1840, he published a book, “Our Israelitish Origin”, based on these lectures. It was hugely successful and in 1874 the 'Anglo-Israel Association' was founded, holding its meetings in Wilson's house near St Pancras.
Wilson's message, that the British were descended from the lost tribes of Israel and that this could be proved from the Bible, was in tune with the mood of the period. ...
The British Israel torch lit by Wilson was eagerly taken up by another evangelist for the cause, Edward Hine. A younger man than Wilson, he attended the latter's lectures in his youth and wrote what was to become a best-seller on the subject: "Forty-seven Identifications of the British Nation with the Lost House of Israel, Founded upon 500 Proofs". This remarkable book, which went into enormous detail in analysing the Bible for texts supportive of the identification of the descendants of the lost Israelites with both the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons, sold over 416,000 copies. To put matters on a firmer footing, Hine also began to publish a monthly journal entitled "Life from the Dead". This was followed by a further magazine, "Leading the Nation to Glory", the name of which was later changed to "The Glory Leader". ...
As well as proselytizing in Britain, Hine lectured in America and Canada, where he found equally keen audiences. … The discovery that this new nation was none other than the most recent incarnation of the tribe of Manasseh (Britain was identified as the tribe of Ephraim, Manasseh's brother) did not strike people as incredible. ...
Another prominent British Israelite was Charles Piazzi Smyth, then the Astronomer Royal for Scotland. He too had attended some of Wilson's lectures and was convinced of the truth of what he heard because it chimed with another passion of his: pyramidology. The origins of this movement, which for a time ran in parallel with British Israelitism before being virtually taken over by it, go back to the work of John Greaves and his 1638 survey of the pyramids of Giza....
John Taylor, editor of the "London Magazine", himself a skilled mathematician, computed that the perimeter of the Great Pyramid was exactly 36,653.76 British inches, which could compute to 36,600 pyramid inches - each pyramid inch being slightly shorter than the British measure. To Taylor this implied that the Great Pyramid had been intended to be a species of calendar, with each 100 inches of its perimeter representing one day. On this analysis a full circuit of the pyramid symbolized 366 days, or approximately a whole year. Though the Royal Society rejected his paper on the subject, Taylor published his results in 1864 in a booklet entitled: "The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built? & Who Built It?"
Like others of his time, John Taylor was deeply influenced by the Bible and the apparent need to attribute knowledge relating to measures to divine influence. He died the same year that his book was published but his mantle was quickly taken up by Charles Piazzi Smyth, who had been in correspondence with him for some months prior to his death. Shortly afterwards Piazzi Smyth made his own survey of the pyramids, finding further proof that the Great Pyramid was designed not just as a calendar but as an almanac of the ages. He believed that the lengths of its internal corridors, as measured in pyramid inches, mapped out the course of world civilization, with each pyramid inch representing one year. The role of Britain as 'Israel' was read into the measures of mute stones, especially the Great Step at the top of the pyramid's Grand Gallery. Summing up how the Grand Gallery symbolized the Christian era and the ascent of true Christians to the light represented by the messiah, Smyth felt able to write in all seriousness:
"And who are more particularly, the great national body of these rising, improving, and we may trust approved Christians?
"Some will claim the Church of one nation, and some another; some will argue for spiritual Israel, whether spread among Teutonic people, or mainly confined to the British Isles and America. And who shall decide amongst them?
"None but the Great Pyramid itself. Advance we, therefore, to the great step of 1813 A. D. (i.e. at 1,813 Pyramid inches from the North, or Christian nativity, beginning) of the Grand Gallery, and inquire there what is signified.
"The step marks there, by that date, the most energetic advances made by Great Britain in its latter-day spread of the Bible, and its latter-day preaching of Christianity to all the world. . .
"What manner of people, then, ought not we of Great Britain now, of Israel in ages past, to be at this juncture of our eventful history; saved above all nations by the providence of God in a manner we have never deserved, and for divine purpose in the future, respecting which nothing but the glorious Scriptures of Inspiration can give us any sufficient or saving idea; a halcyon time, when Ephraim shall be united once more with Judah, and both shall be on the Lord's side."Today, given the prevailing scepticism of modern society concerning the existence of God, it is difficult to appreciate the powerful influence the idea that they were really Israelites in disguise had on Britons of the mid- to late nineteenth century. For very many people this was a plausible explanation for the extraordinary providence shown by God to Victorian Britain which gave them a standard of living to be envied throughout the world. It also gave them a sense that building the empire was a national duty, for in this way, in accordance with God's wishes, the Gospel could be carried to all corners of the world.
Smyth's choice of 1813 for the start of his 'great step' had as much to do with his appreciation of recent history as with pyramid measurements.
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The following is provided on the rear of Gilbert's book:In 1666 the Great Fire ravaged much of the capital. After the flames had been put out and the dead buried, London was once more a blank canvas for builders and architects to create a new city - a city which could be rebuilt to reflect its glorious destiny.
For most of the men at the centre of London's reconstruction, including Sir Christopher Wren, were members of the Rosicrucian-founded Royal Society and believed in the mystical wisdom of the ancient world and the millenarianist beliefs of its founders. They were convinced that London had long been the chosen site of the New Jerusalem - the city that would descend from the sky at the second coming as foretold in the Book of Revelations.
In this eye-opening book, Adrian Gilbert, author of "Signs in the Sky", exposes a hidden London, revealing the true significance of such well-known sites as St Paul's Cathedral, the Monument and Temple church. He also introduces us to the men and women who shaped seventeenth century London according to their own beliefs. Combining detective story, archaeological investigation and historical insight, "The New Jerusalem" is a colourful historical portrait of London as we have never seen it before.
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Sarah Smiles
If I remember right! there was a prize pocket of money from some university where at one time Sir Isaac Newton was president and a proud Free Mason. The school wanted people to come up with something new to the science field. People like Smyth and Russell and many more quacks wrote about the Great Pyramids. Why? because Sir Isaac Newton said God’s numbers or measurement were perfect when he gave them to Solomon to build the temple in the bible. Later, these idiots were trying to copy Newton's concept with the Great Pyramid and wrote their proposal of new light. It was just a bunch of Free Masons having some fun and combining their writings and measurements to gain their secret society number, plus make some money on the side! They all lost the pockets money because that is not what the university wanted, and know one will ever know who gain their 3 rd degree that year!
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Cheetos
Me and CT Russel, we go way back I like his writing I think he was a real smart dude.
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Doug Mason
The following is from a paper on Sir Isaac Newton:
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Newton's own prophetic exegesis can be placed firmly within the prophetic school established by the early seventeenth-century Cambridge polymath Joseph Mede. Like Mede, Newton was an historicist, interpreting the symbols of the Apocalypse as representing the broad sweep of history affecting Christians and Jews from the late first century to the second coming of Christ and the Millennium.
Newton also followed Mede in his premillenarian eschatology, interpreting the one thousand years of Revelation 20 as referring to a literal Kingdom of the saints on the earth.
Finally, like Mede and other historicist commentators, Newton takes the "time and times and the dividing of time," three and a half years or 1260 days of Daniel and Revelation as 1260 years, using the day for a year principle. . . . The 1260 years of Daniel begin with the formal acquisition of temporal power by the papacy. For Newton, this time period is represented in the Apocalypse as the 1260 days during which the woman (the Roman Catholic Whore) is nourished in the wilderness (Revelation 12:6), and during which she rides on the back of the Beast (Revelation 17:3), which Newton saw as a symbol of temporal power.
The 1260 days in Revelation 11:2-3 likewise refer to the period of the greatest apostasy (the time when the outer court of the Temple is trodden under foot by the Gentiles), which is the same period during which the oppressed and persecuted saints would preach the true Gospel (represented by the period of the prophesying of the Two Witnesses).
Eventually, the Beast of the bottomless pit kills the Two Witnesses (Revelation 11:7), but after laying dead for three and a half days, the Two Witnesses are resurrected. For Newton, the resurrection of the Two Witnesses and the recommencement of the preaching are coincident with the fall of Babylon, the corrupt church. Near the end of the 1260 years, Newton believed one would see " ... to be preached in all nations by the two witnesses ascending up to heaven in a cloud."
The fall of Babylon and the preaching of the true Gospel signal a brief period that will end in the blasting of the seventh trumpet, which in turn will herald the battle of Armageddon, the coming of Christ, the resurrection, the judgement and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, although Newton seems to have believed that these events would be sequenced over several years subsequent to the 1260-year mark. Thus for Newton, who rejected the Trinity as unbiblical, the 1260 years represent the time in which the true, uncorrupt church would be oppressed by the false, corrupt Trinitarian church of the Great Whore.
This is the period of deepest apostasy, a time when only a tiny remnant upholds pre-Trinitarian theology. Newton believed he was part of this remnant.
(From: "A Time and Times and the Dividing of Time: Isaac Newton, the Apocalypse, and 2060 A.D.", Canadian Journal of History Dec 2003)
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Awakened at Gilead
Thanks Doug for your insightful posts...
COJ also had a list of predictions related to the 1260, in the Gentile Times Reconsidered on p. 33. JWs are neither original nor unique... they have just been more succesful marketing themselves than some of their counterparts.
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johnnyc
I started reading through Russell's work - Bertrand, not CT. Anyway, I came across this quote which I thought was very insightful. "The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell
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still_in74
If I remember right! there was a prize pocket of money from some university where at one time Sir Isaac Newton was president and a proud Free Mason. The school wanted people to come up with something new to the science field. People like Smyth and Russell and many more quacks wrote about the Great Pyramids.
anything more on this?????