JWTruth.orgDocumented comparison resource
Search

Chronology and 607 BCE · Claim record

In an Author’s Foreword dated 1 October 1916, about a month before his death, Russell wrote that the Great Pyramid ‘has not lost any of its interest to the author’ and that he still believed its structure ‘was designed of the Lord and intended to be a Pyramid and a witness in the midst and on the border of the land of Egypt. (Isaiah 19:19.)’

Claim ID claim-chronology-pyramid-russell-1916-forewordConcerns 1 October 1916Explicit statement
Explicit statement · 1 October 1916 Verified

In an Author’s Foreword dated 1 October 1916, about a month before his death, Russell wrote that the Great Pyramid ‘has not lost any of its interest to the author’ and that he still believed its structure ‘was designed of the Lord and intended to be a Pyramid and a witness in the midst and on the border of the land of Egypt. (Isaiah 19:19.)’ Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (1,595,500 Edition), 1 October 1916The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 August 1922

The organisation’s position or later explanation: Proclaimers (1993), p. 201: ‘For some 35 years, Pastor Russell thought that the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was God’s stone witness, corroborating Biblical time periods.’

Show the evidence (2 sources)
Primary JW publication Verified

Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (1,595,500 Edition), “The Author's Foreword”

1 October 1916 · pp.ii-iii · C. T. Russell · International Bible Students Association

“The Great Pyramid of Egypt discussed in this Volume has not lost any of its interest to the author. … We have never attempted to place the Great Pyramid, sometimes called the Bible in Stone, on a parallel or equality with the Word of God … We do, however, still believe that the structure of this Pyramid, so different from that of all other pyramids, was designed of the Lord and intended to be a Pyramid and a witness in the midst and on the border of the land of Egypt. (Isaiah 19:19.) … It should be read with just as fresh interest as in the first edition, because its lessons have not altered or changed.”

The foreword is signed 'Charles T. Russell. Brooklyn, N. Y., October 1, 1916', about a month before his death on 31 October 1916. In the paragraph immediately before the words quoted here, Russell restates the chapter's symbolic readings one by one — the Descending Passage, the First Ascending Passage, the Grand Gallery, the Step — and says that 'The connection between the top of the Grand Gallery and the spaces above the King's Chamber still represents the spiritual presence of our Lord in the Harvest of this Age, beginning with 1874.' Of the volume as a whole he writes that 'scarcely a word of the Volume would need to be changed if it were written today — 26 years later'.

Scan of original

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The foreword was opened and read in full in this session. Its pages are numbered in roman numerals; page-level extraction shows the pyramid passage beginning on p. ii (which ends ‘… beginning with 1874. ii’) and continuing on p. iii. The signature and date are on p. iv.

Scan provenance. Internet Archive scan. Public domain. Page-level text was extracted from the item's djvu.xml, one block per leaf, and the printed page number read from each page's own running head.

Corroborated by. src-pyr-w-1922-0815-implicit-faith, src-pyr-ss3-1918-descending-3457-1915

Notes. This is Russell's last recorded statement on the subject, in his own words rather than a later summary. Two things should be held together when reading 'its lessons have not altered or changed'. The lessons he lists in the preceding paragraph are the chapter's symbolic readings, and those had not been changed. A measurement in the same chapter, and the date it was said to establish, had been changed between printings. The foreword does not say which of the two he had in mind, and nothing in the printings shows who made the change.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-pyr-ss3-1916-foreword

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-russell-1916-foreword/. 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.