The Pyramid theories that CT Russell based his beliefs on were taken from a Presbyterian professor, the Lutheran Rev. Seiss used this earlier work for his study.
The Rain Men who saw faces in clouds.
C T Russell the retro apostate. From the WT 1879
by Aussie Oz 15 Replies latest watchtower bible
-
-
agonus
I stand partially corrected. Was it Bullinger by chance?
-
agonus
Bullinger and Seiss were both proponents of the "Gospel in the Stars" thing.
What about Russell? Anybody know if he ripped that one off too? I'm pretty sure Bullinger regarded Alcyone/Pleiades as of some importance.
-
designs
The Presbyterian was John Piazzi Symth.
-
thetrueone
It is not surprising, then, that a few years later George Storrs published a series of major articles on the Great Pyramid and its prophetic significance in the "Herald of Life and the Coming Kingdom", the official organ of a small Adventist movement, the Life and advent Union which Storrs had helped to found. Obviously, the Union was influenced directly by Smyth's "Bible Examiner" article. Pyramidology was taken up by the leader of what was to become a fairly large, better-known religious group, Charles Taze Russell, the first president of what is now the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society and the founder of the International Bible Students and their spiritual descendants, Jehovah's Witnesses.
It is quite probable that Russell came to accept pyramidology because of the influence on him of such men as Dr. Joseph Seiss and George Storrs. Following their lead, he announced that God had placed the Great Pyramid as a sign in Egypt on page three of the September, 1883 issue of "Zion's Watch Tower". Yet he did not stress the importance of pyramidology until 1897 when he published Volume III of his famous Studies in the Scriptures entitled "Thy Kingdom Come". With a full chapter devoted to the Great Pyramid in this work, Russell, went beyond Taylor, Smyth, Seiss, Storrs and others. He began to teach that the Great Pyramid was the "divine plan of the ages in stone." Interestingly, he submitted his ideas to Smyth for examination and received the latter's approval for them.
John and Morton Edgar, two Scottish brothers, became faithful members of Russell's Bible Students and pursued pyramidology with a passion. John, a professor of gynecology at Glasgow, published a number of works on the Great Pyramid until his death in 1912. Morton, who had collaborated with him, continued his studies and published several books on the subject during the following decades. Only after Charles T. Russell's successor, Judge Joseph F. Rutherford denounced pyramidology as unscriptural and of the devil in 1928, did Bible Students connected with the Watch Tower Society abandon it. Hence their spiritual heirs today, Jehovah's Witnesses, are hardly aware of its existence.A little off topic but I thought it might be interesting to look and see what was inside the mind of C T Russell.
-
elder-schmelder
What issue is this in?
elder-schmelder