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Chronology and 607 BCE · Claim record

As late as August 1922 the magazine was still defending the teaching. Answering a convention question about the Leipzig battle monument, it argued that God had 'a good reason' to have 'a monument erected in Egypt, the Great Pyramid'. In the same issue it printed, with a commendatory introduction, a reader's letter from Morton Edgar treating a rival journal's abandonment of the pyramid's testimony as a reason its writers were 'not safe guides to the Lord’s people'.

Claim ID claim-chronology-pyramid-defended-1922Concerns 15 August 1922Explicit statement
Explicit statement · 15 August 1922 Verified

As late as August 1922 the magazine was still defending the teaching. Answering a convention question about the Leipzig battle monument, it argued that God had 'a good reason' to have 'a monument erected in Egypt, the Great Pyramid'. In the same issue it printed, with a commendatory introduction, a reader's letter from Morton Edgar treating a rival journal's abandonment of the pyramid's testimony as a reason its writers were 'not safe guides to the Lord’s people'. The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 August 1922The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 August 1922

Show the evidence (2 sources)
Primary JW publication Verified

The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, “European Tour — Part IV”

15 August 1922 · p.244 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“There would be no reason why Jehovah should have a monument erected in the earth at the end of the gospel age. There is a good reason why he would have a monument erected in Egypt, the Great Pyramid, long before the beginning of the Christian era, and when the time would come that the secrets of this monument should be revealed to students of the divine prophecy, it would be found to corroborate the prophetic utterances and the divine plan”

Part of the Society's own report of its European tour. On p. 243 the report describes a question meeting at the Leipzig convention 'conducted by Brother Rutherford' at which a question was handed in asking whether the Leipzig battle monument, dedicated in 1913, is the monument 'referred to in Isaiah 19:19 and in Revelation 22:1, 2'. The words quoted here are printed on p. 244 under the sub-heading 'NOT OF THE LORD' and introduced as 'Abbreviated, the answer to the question was this'. The report attributes the meeting to Rutherford but does not name the speaker of the answer in so many words. The issue header reads 'Vol. XLIII AUGUST 15, 1922 No. 16'.

Scan of original

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The bound volume was opened and the passage read in this session; wording, issue and page confirmed. The OCR of this leaf is poor in places (for example 'ha' for 'be', 'm' for 'in', 'Gicat' for 'Great'); obvious misreadings of that kind have been corrected and no word has been supplied that is not present in the scan.

Scan provenance. Internet Archive item 'magazines-the-watchtower-and-herald-christ-presence-1922' (bound volume). Public domain. The item's page_numbers.json maps leaf 244 to printed page 244, and the leaf's own text carries the numeral.

Corroborated by. src-pyr-w-1922-0815-implicit-faith

Notes. Six years before the reversal, the Isaiah 19:19 argument that the 1928 articles set aside was being used to rule out a rival monument: the reason given for rejecting the Leipzig monument is that Jehovah already had one, in Egypt.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-pyr-w-1922-0815-leipzig

Primary JW publication Verified

The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, “Interesting Letters — 'Mistakes of Ptolemy, the Pagan Historian' (a reader's letter)”

15 August 1922 · pp.253-254 · Morton Edgar · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“Needless to say, the testimony of the Great Pyramid, the Lord’s “stone witness” in which Brother Russell still declared his implicit faith in his last notice of this monument, in his new preface to Volume III just about a month before his death—is quite against the new (?) chronological views of the Herald. But of course the Herald writers have no use for the Pyramid’s testimony now. They have thrown that aside … The Great Pyramid substantiates the views held by Brother Russell beyond all doubt. … The Herald writers are quite wrong in very many of their interpretations. They are certainly not safe guides to the Lord’s people.”

This is not the magazine speaking in its own voice. It is a private letter from Morton Edgar, a Bible Student writer on the Great Pyramid, which the magazine chose to print under its standing heading 'INTERESTING LETTERS' with the sub-heading 'MISTAKES OF PTOLEMY, THE PAGAN HISTORIAN'. The magazine introduces it on p. 253 in square brackets: 'A private letter from Brother Morton Edgar addressed to a sister in Christ has been handed to us with request to publish; and since it deals with subject-matter of particular interest to the church at this time, we take pleasure in publishing it, as follows'. The letter argues against the rival journal The Herald of Christ's Kingdom on chronology. The last sentence quoted here stands a few lines earlier in the letter than the pyramid passage and is about the Herald writers' interpretations generally, not about the pyramid alone. The issue header reads 'Vol. XLIII AUGUST 15, 1922 No. 16'.

Scan of original

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The bound volume was opened and the letter read in this session on pp. 253-254; wording, issue, pages, heading and signature confirmed, and the printed page numbers read from the leaves' own numerals. The OCR renders a few words imperfectly ('Jcre-miah', 'wiiters', 'chro-nological'); these are obvious and have been corrected without supplying any word absent from the scan. This source carries the weight of a correspondent whose letter the Society printed with approval, not of a Watch Tower article.

Scan provenance. Internet Archive item 'magazines-the-watchtower-and-herald-christ-presence-1922' (bound volume). Public domain. The item's page_numbers.json maps leaf 254 to printed page 254.

Corroborated by. src-pyr-ss3-1916-foreword

Notes. Two things this establishes. First, it confirms from outside the book itself that Russell's 1916 foreword existed and was written about a month before his death. Second, it shows the Society in 1922 printing, with a commendatory introduction, a correspondent who treated abandonment of the pyramid's testimony as a mark of unsoundness — six years before the Society did the same thing itself. The opinion is the correspondent's; the decision to print it is the magazine's.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-pyr-w-1922-0815-implicit-faith

Claim page

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-chronology-pyramid-defended-1922/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.