The great pyramid passages and chambers

8 Consequent upon the work of Professor Smyth, many able minds have been awakened to search into the various problems presented by the Great Pyramid. Some of these investigators have claimed not only that it embodies great scientific truths, but also that it sets forth symbolically and by measurement the Divine plan of salvation,that, in fact, it is Messianic. Among the supporters of this view was Professor Smyth himself ; but the chief one has been C. T. Russell, Pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle, N.Y. Previous to his study of the Great Pyramid, he had discovered many wonderful truths in the Scriptures regarding the plan of salvation, truths which revealed the harmonious co-operation of Divine wisdom, justice, love and power, and therefore exalted his conception of the character and purposes of the creator and sustainer of the universe. With his mind clarified by the knowledge thus gained, he was enabled to discover symbolic and prophetic features in the Great Pyramid, which had necessarily been hidden from previous Pyramid students.

9 The jcint-authors of Great Pyramid Passages, having discovered in the years 1904, 1905, various beautiful confirmations of the prophetic features of the Divine plan as explained by C. T. Russell in the second and third volumes of his Scripture Studies, set themselves in April of the year 1906 seriously to investigate the various claims made by him in his article on the Great Pyramid at the end of the third volume, and, thanks to the knowledge which they had previously gained, they were not long in coming to the conclusion that these claims were well founded.' Accordingly, seeking the Lord's continued guidance, they at once decided to investigate the subject further, and were rewarded as day by day first one, and then the other, discovered fresh beauties in the symbolic and prophetic teaching of this marvellous structure. In the course of five or six weeks most of the Pyramid features described in the first and second volumes of Great Pyramid Passages were discovered. For various reasons publication has been delayed until now. Chief among these is the fact that in the summer of 1909 the joint authors made a2 personal visit to the Great Pyramid in order to investigate it at first hand, especially for the purpose of taking photographs, measuring the Descending Passage and Subterranean Chamber, and examining the Girdles in the First Ascending Passage, first described by Waynman Dixon, C.E. At the end of this volume will be found several letters from Egypt and Palestine, most of them originally written by one of the authors, but since revised, re-arranged and enlarged by both.

10 With this introduction, our attention might now be directed to several items of general interest connected with the Great Pyramid. There are in all about thirty-eight pyramids in Egypt, all of them situated on the western side of the Nile on the border of the Libyan portion of the great Sahara Desert (Plate I), and all of them square-based, with four triangular sloping sides meeting at the top in a point over the centre of the base. But of these, only about seven of the largest are of importance; the remainder are much smaller, and are of such inferior material and workmanship, that they collapsed long ago into rounded ruins, with the result that they are now no longer recognizable as pyramids.

'A few of these confirmations of C. T. Russell's interpretation of the Scriptural prophecies were kindly published by him in the Watch Tower for Nov. 15th 1904, and June 15th 1905. It is proposed to describe them all in the first portion of Vol. I. of Great Pyramid Passages.

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