The Great Pyramid is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing. It is one of the oldest structures on the face of the earth and arguably the best built. Its mortar joints are consistently 1/50 of an inch, which is incredible craftsmanship, considering that of the over two million stones that make up the Pyramid, there is no stone weighing less than a ton, most weighing about two and a half, and some as much as 20 tons! The Pyramid covers over 13 acres and is solid masonry, not hollow or earth-filled like the Central American pyramids.
The Great Pyramid here demonstrates the remarkable character of its placement on the face of the Earth. Joseph Seiss and others have demonstrated that the Pyramid lies in the center of gravity of the continents. It also lies in the exact center of all the land area of the world, dividing the earth's land mass into approximately equal quarters. The north-south axis (31 degrees east of Greenwich) is the longest land meridian, and the east-west axis (30 degrees north) is the longest land parallel on the globe. There is obviously only one place that these longest land-lines of the terrestrial earth can cross, and it is at the Great Pyramid! This is incredible, one of the scores of features of this mighty structure which begs for a better explanation.
The Pyramid is at the earth's center
While being the oldest structure on the face of the earth, the Great Pyramid is the most accurately oriented, being laid out almost exactly due north, south, east, and west. Modern man's best effort, the Paris Observatory, is six minutes of a degree off true north. The Great Pyramid is only three minutes deviant and E. Raymond Capt claims that is due mainly to subsidence. Many architects and engineers who have studied the Pyramid's structure contend that, with all our vaunted technological prowess, we could not build the structure today. Does the theory of evolution run in reverse?
Two Schools of Pyramidology
There has been a running controversy between two groups of serious students of the Great Pyramid since Herodotus, the "father of ancient history" revived its study two thousand years after it was built. The first group believes that the Pyramid is a divine revelation, and the second group doesn't. While this latter group might be willing to conjecture that the apparent geometric marvels of the Pyramid are the result of knowledge lost with Atlantis or other highly advanced but now destroyed civilization, they will not accept the possibility that God used prophets to direct the building of the Great Pyramid in the way that God directed Noah to build the ark.
Proponents of the divine inspiration school have included John Greaves, apparently Sir Isaac Newton, John Taylor, Scotland's Astronomer Royal C. Piazzi Smyth, Joseph Seiss, J. Ralston Skinner, David Davidson, and James and Adam Rutherford. Those who have been skeptical of this perspective, but avid students of some form of Great Pyramidology include William Flinders Petrie, Sir J. Norman Lockyer, the "pyramid power" people including Antoine Bovis, Karl Drbal, G. Patrick Flanagan, and most modern tabloid and/or high glossy treatments of the mystery of the Pyramid including Time-Life's
Mystic Places, the work of Erich von Daniken, and Humphrey Evans, William Fix, Kurt Mendelssohn, Max Toth
and
Peter Tompkins. The present work is confident that the Great Pyramid's Architect was the Creator and that its builder was the Egyptian pharaoh Cheops, also called Khufu. Cheops was directed by shepherd-prophets who, like the biblical prophets, were men who received a special calling and anointing from God.
Shepherd-Prophets
Consider these facts. The Pyramid was built in Egypt, notorious for its idolatry and polytheism. Yet Pharaoh Cheops became "arrogant towards the gods" during his reign and shut up the temples, cast out the images, and compelled even the priests to labor in the quarries. Herodotus says that the Pyramid was thirty years in building, the first ten years building prepatory works, with crews of 100,000 working on three-month shifts, and that after this thirty year period Cheops reverted to worship of the Egyptian gods. What strange power could cause such a radical thirty year break in the polytheistic habits of the Egyptians?
Herodotus extensively interviewed an Egyptian priest about the building of the pyramid and he attested that a noted stranger abode in Egypt at the time of Cheops, a shepherd, to whom rather than to Cheops the Egyptians attribute this edifice. The Egyptians call him "Philition" or "Philitis." Josephus also quotes Manetho, an Egyptian priest and scribe, who says there was a period in the Egyptian past when, by peaceable means, some "shepherd kings" had the Egyptian rulers "in their hands." Manetho said that some say they were Arabs. Seiss, with characteristically sound scholarship and reasoning, makes a case that the biblical Job was the Arabian who directed the Pharaoh in the building of the Great Pyramid. Seiss points out that the image of a pyramid is "unquestionably" the subject when God addresses Job out of the whirlwind in Job 38:
"Then the LORD answered Job from the storm. He said: 2 "Who is this that makes my purpose unclear by saying things that are not true? 3 Be strong like a man! I will ask you questions, and you must answer me. 4 Where were you when I made the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. 5 Who marked off how big it should be? Surely you know! Who stretched a ruler across it? 6 What were the earth's foundations set on, or who put its cornerstone in place 7 while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted with joy?"
Seiss says that since YHWH's object is to convince Job of his incompetency to judge of and understand Him, it is as if the Almighty is saying: You laid the foundations of the great structure in Egypt, but where were you when I laid the foundations of the far greater pyramid of the earth? You laid the measures of the pyramid in Egypt, but who laid the measures of the earth, and stretched the line upon it? You fastened down in sockets the foundations of the pyramid in Egypt, {the Great Pyramid is built on four sockets} but whereupon are the foundations of the earth fastened? You laid the pyramid's completing capstone amid songs and jubilations, but who laid the capstone of the earth when the celestial morning angels sand together, and all the heavenly sons of God shouted for joy?
In our day the idea of shepherds being special agents of God in the building of a monumental structure would be ludicrous in the extreme. Such is our age. The fault line of commentators referred to above is sharp, because the difference between faith and unbelief is the difference between light and darkness. The Bible says that God revealed to shepherds some of the most important information ever given to humankind:
Luke 2:8-15: That night, some shepherds were in the fields nearby watching their sheep. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them. The glory of the Lord was shining around them, and they became very frightened. 10 The angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I am bringing you good news that will be a great joy to all the people. 11 Today your Savior was born in the town of David. He is Christ, the Lord. 12 This is how you will know him: You will find a baby wrapped in pieces of cloth and lying in a feeding box." 13 Then a very large group of angels from heaven joined the first angel, praising God and saying: 14 "Give glory to God in heaven, and on earth let there be peace among the people who please God." 15 When the angels left them and went back to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, "Let's go to Bethlehem. Let's see this thing that has happened which the Lord has told us about."
Abraham was also a shepherd, like Job, wealthy with flocks and herds. How is it that he was brought to the attention of the pharaoh of Egypt and the King of Gerar in his travels? Was it simply that Sarah, his wife, was so pretty? The Jewish records say that Abraham was learned in the science of astrology and with his elaborate knowledge of the heavens and their meanings he attracted the attention of these kings. We know from the biblical record that God communicated with the shepherd Abraham many times, several times using the "stars" as a teaching vehicle. YHWH Himself directed Abraham's eyes toward the heavens, indirectly corroborating the Jewish oral tradition that says Abraham was a gifted astrologer:
Gen 15:5 "And he brought him forth abroad, and said, 'Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them': and he said unto him, 'So shall thy seed be.'"
The eye of faith sees it as a real and distinct, not vain and imagined, possibility that the Pyramid was directed by shepherds guided by Divine wisdom. Such faith offers a sufficient explanation of what would otherwise be the dilemma posed by the advanced knowledge and technology exhibited by the Pyramid. It is with those who do not accept the Divine authorship of the Pyramid with whom the burden rests for a better explanation.
The Place of the Pyramid in the Bible
There is a biblical reference to the Great Pyramid which is instructive:
Isa 19:19-20 "At that time there will be an altar for the LORD in the middle of Egypt and a monument to the LORD at the border of Egypt. 20 This will be a sign and a witness to the LORD All-Powerful in the land of Egypt. When the people cry to the LORD for help, he will send someone to save and defend them. He will rescue them from those who hurt them."
Notice that there is a reference to an "altar" and a "monument" that will be in Egypt. The location of this "altar" and "monument" is sketched in terms which seem to be contradictory; it will be at the "border" of Egypt at the same time it will be in the "middle" of Egypt. The apparent contradiction offers a chance to pinpoint the identity of this "monument" since few candidates would be able to be both the "border" of something, and also its "middle."
Note the horizontal line below the bottom of the delta quadrant.
The Pyramid is at the center AND the border of Egypt
This represents the border between the two countries making up ancient Egypt: Lower Egypt (the delta) and Upper Egypt (the South). The Great Pyramid is at the border of Upper and Lower Egypt. Yet this is also the center of the land of Egypt if the two ancient countries be viewed as one, a single Egypt. Note also that the Pyramid is at the center of the natural quadrant formed by the regular curvature of the delta. It is also at the center of present Egypt in that Cairo is the capital of the country and at the center of its business and cultural life. It is also at the border of ancient Egypt in still another way.
The Great Pyramid is sometimes called the "Great Pyramid of Giza". "Giza" means "border', thus indicating in still another way that the Pyramid is associated with a "border". The name "Giza" is probably drawn from the fact that anciently the borders of Egypt were considered to extend as far as the watered, green areas all along the Nile. The desert outside this fertile strip was not really part of the country. Thus the division line between fertile strip and desert is the natural "border" of Egypt. It is along this "border" that the Pyramid is situated. Thus by two separate sets of triple confirmation, the Great Pyramid answers the apparent riddle of being at both the border and center of Egypt. To find any other object or concept fulfilling this prophecy's specifications would be extremely unlikely. The Biblical standard of proof, given at Deuteronomy 19:15 and affirmed in the New Testament (at Matt. 18:16 and 2 Corin. 13:1) has been met:
"One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established." (Deut. 19:15)
The Pyramid is certainly a "pillar" as the text calls for, and also an "altar" in the sense of being a witness to the Lord. This sense for "altar," as a structure of witness and not for offering sacrifices, is used several times in Scripture, such as this reference in Joshua 22:
26 Therefore we said, Let us now prepare to build us an altar, not for burnt offering, nor for sacrifice: 27 But that it may be a witness between us, and you, and our generations after us,
An interesting occurrence of gematria also helps pinpoint the Great Pyramid as God's special revelation. Here is the Hebrew of the Pyramid text, Isaiah 19:19, 20:
The Hebrew of Isaiah 19:19,20
Gematria is the science of finding meaning in the numerical value of words. In the Hebrew language each individual letter has a numerical value. Thus every word has the numerical value of the sum of the value of its letters. If one adds up the numerical value of all the Hebrew characters in the Great Pyramid text the value is 5449. This is the height in inches of the Great Pyramid!
The Chronology of the Pyramid
The Great Pyramid has been called "the Bible in stone" because its passage systems reveal geometrically, in line and symbol, the same profound spiritual truths and plan of salvation specific to the Bible, as will be seen as this study unfolds. And just as there are time prophecies of significance in the Bible, the Pyramid's silent geometry reveals a remarkable chronography, prophetic time in stone.
The challenge to deciphering the prophetic scale is deciphering what measure of length equals what measure of time. The key to this scale is given in the Pyramid, in the upper horizontal passage system's first ante-chamber, in what is known as "Enoch's circle." Enoch was translated when he was 365 years old. A circle is a symbol of eternity and Enoch thus "entered eternity" at 365. The circle formed in that first antechamber, defined by the floor and the two hanging walls measures 365.25 inches.
 | The Pyramid speaks with geometry, not words |
The term "inch" is probably ultimately derived from Enoch's name, for he was bestowed with many secrets of knowledge and filled with the spirit of prophecy. Being a student of mensuration, and probably the pre-eminent "father" of that discipline, it is fitting for the "inch", the basis of the English system of measures, to be a memorial of the prophet Enoch. This is rather like Lincoln finding his place on every American penny. Enoch stands as a symbol for the character and faith which must be obtained by those who would pass through earth's final ordeals and be translated at last when the Messiah returns at the end of this present wicked age. With the scale of an inch for a year, the Pyramid yields its chronography.
That a linear measure could represent a time period is alluded to by Jesus Himself in the Sermon on the Mount. The Savior asks at Matthew 6:27, "Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?"
The Greek for "stature" indicates "age-length," not linear length. Jesus is not giving a formula for how to grow a basketball star, of seven-foot-plus stature, but rather is asking, "Which of you by worrying can add one 'cubit' of time to his life-span?" One authority claims that Jesus' association here of a time measure and a linear measure is the only such usage in all of ancient Greek literature. While the point Jesus is making is that worry is fruitless, he is secondarily mixing a metaphor which yields the interesting equation that length can equal age. This simple idea will be plugged into part two of our study of the Pyramid.
The Pyramid's Amazing Chronography
So many fanciful theories abound about the Great Pyramid and its meaning, one could despair of ever reaching sane conclusions about it. It is comforting to reduce speculations to the actual medium the Pyramid undeniably bequeaths: Its silent, unerring geometry and measures. I have just finished reading Richard W. Noone's book 5/5/2000 Ice: The Ultimate Disaster. I felt obligated to read this book before writing the present chapter because, like a tour guide to new visitors, I am claiming to know something about the chronology of the Pyramid, and I want to learn all I can.
I had heard that the premise of the book was that the Pyramid reveals the date May 5, 2000, as some epochal tragedy for the human race, like others that have been experienced in historical times. I am glad to be able to report to other seekers that reading the book is not worth the effort, if sound chronology be the object of search. While there are many interesting interviews with Pyramidologists like Valentine and Tompkins, Egyptologists, and esoteric metaphysicians, and while there are many interesting nuggets spread along the way, the book offers no sound reason to look to May 5, 2000 as any kind of Pyramid-based date. I am led to believe that some people like the power and pride that comes with authorship, like babbling on and on with dazzling erudition, but do not have a commitment to bless their readers with helpful and true facts and reasoned conjectures that will aid in the struggles of this life.
Being told that the Pyramid reveals a major tragedy caused by the growing weight of ice in Antarctica which will tip the earth's axis, causing a major disruption of the planet — on a specific date! — is certainly titillating — isn't it? — but it is not based on any sound exposition of the Pyramid's structure. I should say that I found much the same dynamic in Robert Bauval's The Orion Mystery which carries the subtitle Unlocking the Secrets of the Pyramids and has the single phrase front-jacket blurb "A Revolutionary New Interpretation of the Ancient Enigma." Much ado about very little.
Bauval is ruffled that his theories on the pyramids are not welcome among the Egyptologists. They hold that the pyramid builders had a solar religion, he thinks it was stellar. They will not admit of a link with the pyramid locations and the order of stars in the heavens while he insists on such linkage. They have no explanation for why the Dynasty of Cheops built such exquisite pyramids when the dynasties before and after simply show no ability for such craftsmanship, and yet when Bauval offers a possible explanation they are sure it cannot be right. And so on. There is a desire to want acceptance from "experts" who he knows are not really experts.
Bauval must make up his mind as to whether he wants the accolade of blind academics or if he is content to let his research lead him where it will, the experts notwithstanding. One must remember the heavy entrance requirement one pays to be an "Egyptologist:"
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go all the way through graduate school in some field related to Egyptology (an intellectual and pecuniary hurdle beyond most common people) and (now for the big one...)
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accept the prevailing theories and assumptions that characterize the coursework along the way.
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Paying such a price carries an impossible toll on any free-thinker, or anyone who believes in a sovereign God. If Bauval will not pay the price — and why should he? — then he had best lay his conclusions before readers who can judge the merits of his investigations. It is incredible Bauval lists not one footnote to Velikovsky in his entire treatise. Immanuel Velikovsky rocked the astronomical and Egyptological establishments in the 1950's with the publication of his works Ages in Chaos and Earth in Upheaval. His vast and intricate scholarship undercut the foundations of the astronomical and Egyptological establishments. Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapely put pressure on Velikovsky's New York publisher to stop publication of the book. His pressure — representing the combined pride of these establishments — was able to scare away the publisher, but another publisher — Doubleday — had the courage to go with Velikovsky and his radical but erudite and profound ideas became public.
The reason it is incredible that Bauval does not mention Velikovsky — who, for the record, was an agnostic Jew, not a Bible thumping creationist, for instance — is that Velikovsky shows the entire edifice of Egyptology as it exists as a discipline today is false. The accepted chronology of Egypt — and its crosslinks with Israel in such events as the Exodus — is shown by Velikovsky to be off by centuries, and in hopeless contradiction to itself in many places. Velikosky's evidence is primary historical research. As a rational human being with no ax to grind, I accept almost all of Velikovsky's scholarship. In saying this, I am in rebellion against the prevailing orthodoxoy and would be blacklisted and shunned by the Egyptologists that Bauval and others are hoping to get noticed by. It would be a suicide note if any Egyptologist today attempted to embrace Velikovsky in public scholarship.
So I choose to go with the clear-seeing rebel — Velikovsky — and don't give it a second thought that I am totally outside the blessing of the Egyptological establishment. I am not with Bauval in seeking for their notice or recognition. I hope they see the light and shed their skin but I'm not holding my breath. I am used to being outside the flow of the establishment as one who believes in an all-loving sovereign God who is the creator of the Universe and not an unknown, impersonal, chance-bound force that somehow allows the accident of evolution to occur. With renewed personal resolve, let me venture forth to unfold some of the Pyramid's chronological treasures, revealed, let it be reminded, in unerring stone geometry which is as ancient as any writing available to the human race. Moses' penning of Genesis came a thousand years after the Pyramid's message had been tooled in stone.
In an appendix to Peter Tompkin's popular book, The Secrets of the Great Pyramid, is an appendix about ancient Egyptian measures. People can marvel at how "advanced" this system of measures is. But the very concept of "advancement" implies that the roots of the Egyptian science were gleaned from former "lower" civilizations which were before the Egyptian. But that is simply not the case. The Bible makes it abundantly plain that Noah's son Ham was the father of Egypt. Noah was the recipient of the advanced knowledge that had come into the world through revelation to the patriarchs before him, especially through Enoch and Adam. Noah used much of this advanced knowledge in construction of the ark, which he built according to the divinely ordained cubit, the basis of the ark's design. The cubit is mentioned also in the book of Revelation:
(Rev 21:17) And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.
It is mentioned as the unit used by angels. The cubit is a measurement standard from out of this world, used by angels in Heaven. How interesting that the cubit shows itself to be a more rational and scientifically accurate standard than the metric system! When the French savants who invented the metric system chose a standard for that system, they took the one ten millionth part of a meridian from the North Pole to the equator through — where else? — Paris. Ta da! The meter is born...
The problem with this is not only that the meridian through Paris is different than all other meridians, but is also subject to change as the topography changes. On the other hand, the sacred cubit is the one ten millionth part of the earth's semi-polar axis, a radius from the center of the earth to the North Pole. This semi-axis does not vary as would a meridian, whether through Greenwich or Paris. If the ancient Egyptians designed the cubit based on the earth's semi-polar axis, and the French scientists — cream of the crop of the Age of Enlightenment, the flower of modernity — did so based on a Parisienne meridian, one has to wonder if evolution is running in reverse. Of course it is more likely that the Creator is the One who designed the cubit to be in direct relation to the planet for which it was meant to be a standard.
The Bible says in eight different places that the Ten Commandments — God's moral standard, just as the cubit (and its corresponding inch) is a linear standard — were written with "the finger of God," not the genius of Moses. It is a distinctly modern idea that humans can make their own standards, whether moral or linear. This is certainly the prevailing ethic in the schoolroom today. Students take it as an a priori, unquestionable law of the universe that truth is what each individual perceives it to be. Alan Bloom tells us that almost every one of his college students believes this.
This would have been unthinkable in ancient Egypt.
John Anthony West, following the work of Schwaller de Lubicz, would have us believe that Egyptians were aware of a singular unity pervading all disciplines, thus breeding a respect in each individual for the sacredness and metaphysical nature of everything, including the science of mensuration. They would not presume to arbitrarily deify a meter-unit they had created. They would instead instinctively trust that the cubit-measure with which they had been entrusted, was filled with significance and wonder, and would humble themselves to plumb the depths of its revelatory signficance. The modern perspective leads to a society where individuals are fixated on questions of cars, houses, brandnames, wealth, idols of their own creation: look at modern architecture where buildings exalt Sears or Prudential or Standard Oil. The ancient Egyptian perspective leads to a fixation on questions like "Am I pure? Am I pleasing to God?"
The Great Pyramid exalts — without gold and jewels — the Creator and His plans and purposes for mankind. No king or pharaoh is buried there. It carries not the name Caesar, nor Sears, but the Creator, who is called in Daniel 8:13 "The Wonderful Numberer." Back to the meter — cubit (inch) comparison. The fact that scientists have only recently calculated the radius of the earth argues for the divine origin of the sacred cubit. Interest is compounded with the fact that the British system of measurement, based on the inch, is directly related to the cubit. Sir Isaac Newton has shown that the sacred cubit contained 25 inches (unlike the more recent cubit whose length is usually given as about 18 inches, or the royal cubit of about 20 inches used in ancient Egypt). Adam Rutherford, in his book series entitled Pyramidology, has laboriously argued that the sacred inch (the 1/25 part of the sacred cubit) is only a hair's breadth different from the British inch. The present work will not differentiate — as Rutherford continually does — between the Pyramid inch (1/25 of a sacred cubit) and the British inch, because it seems to me that the practical accuracy possible in measuring the elements of the Great Pyramid makes frivolous the minuscule distinction between the inches. For practical purposes, the two inches are one. Rodolfo Benavides claims that the English inch and the pyramid inch were the same during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
Kurt Mendelssohn, in The Riddle of the Pyramids, gives the standard litany for those who refuse to see the supernatural in the Pyramid's amazing architecture. He belittles the Pyramidiots who believe the Pyramid of Giza is a divine revelation. The work of Scotland's Royal Astronomer, C. Piazzi Smyth, so influential in extracting meaning from the Pyramid's passage systems and chronology, is ridiculed extensively. Smyth argued strenuously, in partnership with noted astronomer Sir John Herschel, for the existence of the inch as the Pyramid's unit of revelation. The two men led a movement which kept Britain from nationally accepting the metric system in the Nineteenth Century, because its basis is man-centered, not divinely ordained as is the Pyramid's. Herschel sat on the British Standards Commission, but resigned in 1869 because of its gravitation toward the metric system. Mendelssohn admits that Smyth is right to try and ascertain the reason for the Great Pyramid's unique and singular accuracy of construction on the value of pi, a value supposedly unknown to the ancient Egyptians. He writes:
"A pyramid with an angle of elevation of 52 degrees — -51 degrees, 52 minutes to be precise — has the unique geometrical property that its height stands in the same ratio to its circumference as the radius to the circumference of a circle. This ratio is 1/2pi, where pi is a transcendental number 3.14...Khufu's pyramid is the most carefully built of all and accurate measurement of its foundation has shown that this ratio is correctly represented to better than one part in a thousand. This certainly is far too accurate to be dismissed as a coincidence, and a great number of theories, often involving divine inspiration, have been based on this astonishing numerical fact."
Mendelssohn actually thinks he demolishes Smyth's work by suggesting a rather crude explanation for this accuracy. He first admits that the Pyramid exhibits "brilliant constructional skill" and "superb workmanship" and a geometric precision which every modern triangulation only more perfectly confirms. But he couples the recognition of this remarkable engineering with a refusal to admit any advanced scientific or revelational component to its construction.
"We have no evidence that the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom had more than the most rudimentary command of mathematics. Any acceptable solution must therefore have a practical, rather than a theoretical, basis, and that suggested to me by an electronics engineer, T.E. Connolly, fulfills this condition."
Here then, is the basis on which we are to explain the Giza miracle in stone: it must be the work of grunting chimps, aboriginal humans, because
Mendolssohn doesn't think we can doubt the Egyptological historical explanations of the Old Kingdom, and
the speculations of some tech-nerd buddy of his.
So there you have it: Swallow whole the historical framework of the Egyptologists and accept the theory of some electrical engineer. In the process make elaborate fun of the Royal Astronomer for Scotland, and one of England's famous scientists. For the record, here is the profound conjecture of our electrical engineer: The Pyramid builders' method was — and here I quote — "to roll a drum and count the number of revolutions." Amazing! Of course Mendolssohn does not explain how these half-ape Egyptians formed a drum with so exact a diameter, nor, apparently does the electrical engineer. My preference, after seeing so many similar efforts to debunk a truth which is as uncompromising and immovable as the Great Pyramid, is to let the rocks themselves cry out. With that, let us listen as the inches speak.
The interior passage systems of the Great Pyramid vindicate the bias of Western civilization, which is amazing considering that Egyptians are Easterners. The major bias of Western civilization that I have in mind here is the foundational axiom that Christianity is the one true and great religion, that its teachings provide eternal values and guidance, and that the lessons of God's dealings with the Jews in the Old Testament and his revelations to believers in the New are instructive to the entire human family. This bedrock perspective, though misapplied, motivated Columbus to venture, the British to unapologetically rule in India and carve up Africa with other European powers, and Crusaders to go forth killing with zeal. It is the ruling governor in the concept of America's "manifest destiny." It has to do with being unashamedly sure that Christianity is the one true religion.
How does the Great Pyramid share this perspective? The meaning of the Pyramid's inner passageways and their associated chronology focus, not on Pharaoh Cheops, his lineage, the history of the previous Egyptian dynasties or the dynasties to come, but upon the general falleness of the human race, the Hebrew Exodus event, the cross of Christ, and the tribulations to rock the planet before His return. It is for this reason that efforts are launched to crush the Pyramid's solemn revelations. Men want to be their own masters, their own judges, their own gods. The passage system of the Pyramids reminds mankind that the Creator of Heaven and Earth has a plan for the human race which He created and its members individually.
Look at the diagram of the
Pyramid's internal passage system. The descending passage, moving steadily toward the pit, represents the course that this world has taken since the fall of the race in its original parents. Men are continually talking of progress — think of all the glories of the internet and modern electronics!! — and yet the world is forever and everywhere filled with war, disease, and the inhumanity of human beings to each other. The glories of Atlantis — whatever they were — were not sufficient to keep it from dying.
The apostle Paul writes this interesting bit of historical interpretation in his letter to the Romans:
Death reigned from Adam to Moses (Rom. 5:14)
At the time of Moses, the world received the revelation of God's Law, the Ten Commandments. Paul is saying that without this law to inform people that, for instance, adultery, stealing and murder are sins against God, they would tend to go on doing them. Their living would be dying. Death would reign. But with the law comes a knowledge of the right. Thus the Ten Commandment law, while it has been vilified by secularists and Christians alike, is a gift from God, pointing the human race toward Heaven, toward a life that is pleasing to God.
It is thus significant that at the point indicated by the Pyramid's chronograph to be the time of the Exodus, the upward passage system begins, breaking away from the descending passage as sharply as the Israelites broke away from Egypt under Moses. This is the exodus point by two different reckonings. If the entrance door is taken as the date of the construction of the Pyramid, at an inch for a year the first ascending passage comes at the time of the exodus, about 1484 B.C., a date in harmony with Velikovsky's work and the Biblical chronology.
Secondly, if the face angle of the Pyramid is hypothetically extended until it meets the first ascending passage, (also hypothetically extended), a zero point, representing the creation of Adam, is determined. At the scale of an inch for a year from this point on a straight upward march toward the Kings Chamber at the angle of the upward passages, the beginning of the first ascending passage is again identified as the time of the Exodus.
Thus the geometric appearance of the first ascending passage — a radical break with the downward course of the descending passage — is in harmony with what it represents: The Exodus. Winston Churchill said the Exodus was the "most decisive leap forward ever discernible in the human story." The chronography is a remarkable vindication and confirmation of the geography.
A further link with geometric appearance and meaning is the fact the there are two huge red granite stones completely blocking the way up the first ascending passage. These two stones powerfully symbolize the Ten Commandment law which was given by God to the Jews at the time of the Exodus. While the law is a holy reflection of God's purity, it is utterly impossible for it to act as a pipeline toward Heaven. The law kills, it does not give life. Who has never coveted? Who has perfectly honored their parents or perfectly kept the Sabbath day? While the law reveals God's perfect moral design, it does absolutely nothing to help fallen men achieve it. Thus the two granite stones, placed at the point representing chronologically the Exodus and the giving of the Law, aptly symbolize the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, blocking the way to Heaven because of the perfection they demand.
The next major geometric point defined by the voice of the Pyramid's inner passage system is the conjunction of three of the passages: the end of the first ascending passage, the beginning of the Grand Gallery and the beginning of the opening to the Queen's Chamber. The Grand Gallery represents a remarkably different architecture and construction than the much lower first ascending passageway. It has a ceiling of 28 feet which helps create the feeling of being uplifted, after coming out of the first ascending passage through which one must crouch to ascend.
In geometric form, the resurrection of Christ is represented. The first ascending passage, beginning with the Exodus, would obviously then represent the Jewish or law dispensation. Thus the two major sections of the upward passage system, the only upward passages in any of the pyramids, represent what has been the basis of Western Civilization: the Judaeo-Christian history and, implicitly, its values. The Grand Gallery's magnificent rise — from four feet to 28 feet! — indicates the surpassing glory of the revelation of God in Christ, the fulfillment of the Jewish shadows, laws, and ceremonies in the Messiah.
Following the same chronographic scale that was used to identify the Exodus point, the beginning of the Grand Gallery pinpoints the exact time of Jesus' death and resurrection!
The Queen's Chamber passage, being horizontal, and thus sort of a parenthetical excursus off of the upward climb of the first ascending passage and the Grand Gallery, represents the reward of Jesus' victory: the title deed to planet earth, and the prophetic assurance that this earth will be made new. When Christ wrestled with the powers of evil in his earthly ministry, the battle was over ultimate control and dominion of planet earth. If Christ would have failed in His mission, the world would be Satan's, and eternal life on an earth made new would be only an illusion. With Christ's sacrificial death and glorious resurrection, the title deed is His. This earth will be made new as an eternal home for all believers. But the tangible, physical passage representing this grand spiritual truth is a horizontal parenthesis because this fallen earth still limps along, cancer-plagued and ecologically debauched. We do not now see the reward of Jesus' victory and labor, except by faith. The Pyramid, the Bible in Stone as Joseph Seiss called it, gives a stone parable to further build the faith of those who believe. That stone parable, translated, is saying something like this:
As you continue in your journey toward Heaven, do not let the cold hearts and deteriorating conditions around you discourage you from the assurance that I have won the victory for you. I have redeemed this fallen planet. Let this great fact give you courage as you press forward in the battle of life. To the secular-minded, this is pyramidiocy.
No exposition of the Queen's Chamber chronograph will be offered at this time, since none of the Pyramid writers has ever indulged such a study. The focus has always been to heed the inches heading up the first ascending passage, the Grand Gallery, and the horizontal approach to the King's Chamber. Since the Queen's Chamber seems to represent the earth in the age to come — the prize won by the sacrifice of the Messiah on behalf of the human race — some scale is probably hidden in the Pyramid which, when revealed, would give the amount of time from the crucifixion of Christ to the beginning of the age to come.
Continuing the assent of the Grand Gallery, the next major geometric feature is the Great Step. Rising about a yard (3') above the floor line of the Grand Gallery, it is the first change in the floor line since the Exodus point at the conjunction of the Descending and Ascending passages. Even where the Grand Gallery begins, at the point representing the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the floor line remains the same as it was for the first ascending passage, representing the Jewish dispensation. The architectural symbolism thus indicates that the work of the Messiah, and His redemption of the human race, did not change the walk, or life-style which God wants for humanity. While the 28 foot high Grand Gallery ceiling represents an increased glory possible for the Christian era, the unchanged floor line indicates that God's plans for Jews who lived in the era before Christ are the same as His plans for Christians who live after Him. Walk straight and honest, be true and pure, and keep headed upward.
But the Great Step represents a change of floor line, a change of direction. What is the time of the Great Step according to the Great Pyramid, and what is its significance, its meaning? Many Pyramid writers have given the date 1844 to this most distinctive aspect of the Pyramid's geometry. This date is derived the same way as the Exodus point and the point representing Christ's resurrection, by counting a year to an inch. But none of the Pyramid writers have offered much of an explanation for that date. Tom Valentine points out that 1844 is a date with some meaning in the Ba'hai faith, but this is rather unsatisfying, especially considering the remarkable conformance of traditional Judaeo-Christian history with the Pyramid. There is one overlooked movement, world-wide in extent, to which the date 1844 stands out with unmistakable singularity. Since this date, marked out by the silent, unerring stone of the Great Pyramid 1000 years before Moses wrote Genesis, marks the gateway to the Pyramid's final horizontal passage as it approaches the King's Chamber, its explanation will begin part III of this work. Since the Pyramid pinpointed the dates of two singular, epochal moments in Judaeo-Christian history, (the Exodus and the Cross) we can be forgiven if we look with some sense of insightful expectation at the timeline of that which lies just before us in time...
Students of this Gigantic Mystery will not want to miss the intersection of the Pyramid's prophetic timeline with the day in which we are living. In a sense, the entire message of the Pyramid, the sweat of every Egyptian stone laborer, the preoccupation of ancient pharaonic dynasties, has anxiously awaited the crowning moment of time in which we live.
we saw many indications that the Great Pyramid of Giza is the monument referred to by the prophet Isaiah, that would be a witness to the Lord "in the midst of the land of Egypt." Its geometric significations, determined by the Great Architect, are intended for the edification of the human race. The Creator used prophets to bring the plans and dimensions of the Mighty Stone Mountain to the notice of the Egyptian rulers and their builders. It is possible — indeed, probable — that both the Egyptian laborers and the divinely appointed messengers were unaware of the bulk of supernatural revelations contained in the Pyramid through its geometry and construction.
There are many theories on how the Pyramid might have been built, but there is nothing more than theory. Nobody knows how they did it, period. It might have been through
| stones being floated into place with water locks, through the use of massive earthen causeways, as it is usually pictured in artists' conceptions, |
| through the blocks actually being "concrete" blocks, poured into place at the site. or, theoretically |
| by angels or alien power. |
Leading engineers in our time have said that we could not build the Great Pyramid today, even with our present laser-cutting technology and high-tech construction techniques. This is one of the Pyramid's mysteries on which I have not expended energy to try and solve. I put my energy instead into trying to discern the meaning of what is there, however it got there!
The Pyramid's message seems to be especially intended for the time in which we live. When Moses looked upon the Stone Mountain did he know it pointed out in time the great exodus event which he spearheaded? When, over a millennium later, Alexander the Great looked upon the grand and imposing stone structure he could not know the glories it pronounced about the Messiah who would come in three centuries and die for the fallen race of man. As we saw in part II., this event was predicted in stone two millennia before Christ died. When Napoleon directed his scientists to study in earnest the mysteries of a monument beyond the reach of their Enlightened rationalism, he could not know that the ticking chronograph of the Grand Gallery was soon to reach the Great Step, indicating in the Pyramid's inch-for-a-year symbolism the year 1844.
It should be noted that these events, notched in the Pyramid's timeline millenia ago — The Exodus, the crucifixtion of Christ, and 1844 — are not only indicated by the inch-year key, but also by a geometric key. The Architect has blended form and "function." Not function in the normal sense of utility, but function in the sense that the major function of the Pyramid, like Bible prophecy, is symbolical.
The Exodus event is marked by geometry which says, "Go upward. Go a different way. Break away from the prevailing downward course of history and events. Exodus..." The first upward passage breaks away from the downward descending passage at the same angle — upward — that the descending passage had been following — downward. It is interesting that if a line of the same angle is drawn on a world map, starting at the Pyramid, the line will go directly through the site where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea at the time of the Exodus! (It is more amazing still that a continuation of the same line crosses through Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, who is the Greater Exodus...)
Peter Lemesurier, author of perhaps the most impressive modern work of relatively wide circulation on the Pyramid,
The Great Pyramid Decoded, says this of this remarkable line:
"The suggestion that this fact could be other than pure coincidence must seem laughable...if...the Bethlehem-line was not accidental, then there can be only one other possible explanation: the Pyramid's architect could see into the future. Such indeed, was the tradition among the ancient Egyptians, as Coptic manuscripts still affirm today: The Pyramid, it was said, contained a record of all that was past and of all things to come."
A further revelation of the coordination of form and function are the two huge granite blocks — the two tablets, if you will — which make ascent in the first ascending passage impossible. Here is obvious symbolism of the law — the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandment law — preventing anyone from going Heavenward, because the law is perfect and no human is. In the words of New Testament theology, coming over two millennia before the Apostle Paul's pen:
"But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident..." -Gal. 3:11
also
"...we are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ...written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart." -2 Cor. 3:3
The upward passage system breaks upward — toward the light, toward heaven — from the downward descending passage. This form fits the places in the New Testament that speak of the law being good. (1 Tim 1:8; Rom. 7:12,14) It is a "schoolmaster" and who, but school children, would see a "schoolmaster" as evil? We need school.
But the two granite blocks (called "plugs" in much of the Pyramid literature) symbolize the inability of that good law to accomplish the good thing: securing us a place in Heaven, the assurance of eternal life. For that, the law is, to quote Paul, "a ministration of death."
The Christ point — the junction of the Grand Gallery, the first ascending passageway, and the beginning of the Queens Chamber passage — also matches with architectural form that which it symbolizes, as we have seen in previous studies. The horizontal Queen's Chamber passage symbolizes the victory spoils of Christ's sacrifice on behalf of the human race — an earth which will be made new in the age to come, redeemed from the curse. The rise of the Grand Gallery ceiling indicates the greater light, privelege, and glory for believers in New Covenant times.
But without question, it is the Great Step, which acts as a transition from the Grand Gallery era of Christianity, to the final Kings Chamber, representing Heaven, which is critical to decipher in our time at the beginning of the 21st Century. Almost every religious group has some teaching about the tribulation, the times of distress, the shaking, the time of trouble, the Great Tribulation, the coming chastisement, or whatever other terms are used. The Great Pyramid is the oldest prophetic voice on this issue on the planet...it has proven itself right with the Exodus and with Christ's crucifixtion. It will prove itself right about its teachings about the coming tribulation...
The GREAT STEP is the transition point between the upward climb of the Grand Gallery and the horizontal walk of the final passage to the Kings Chamber. Notice the great fall in the Grand Gallery ceiling from 28' to a height one must bend down to enter.
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