THE STONE PROPHET IS THE WILDERNESS—NO WAR FOR FOUR YEARS—THE GREAT STRUGGLE TO COMMENCE IN 1882—PRUSSIA ANCIENT ASSYRIA—ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND EGYPT TO BE ALLIES—THE FUTURE HISTORY OF THE WORLD—THE PHILISTINES THE SOUTHERN IRISH—WHO THEIR GREAT ANCESTOR WAS, ETC.

“The great, the mighty God, the Lord of hosts, is His name. Great in counsel, and mighty in work; for Thine eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men; to give every one according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings; which has set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, even unto this day.”—Jer. xxxii. 18–20.

Egypt is intimately connected with Palestine in providential history, both past, present, and future. No student can have a proper knowledge of the Jewish and Israelitish nation unless he be familiar with the early civilisation and power of Egypt. From this land went forth the Caphtorim to settle Palestine, led forth by the great and good Melchisedek, after he had built the Pyramid. Under his reign they first settled Palestine, built and made Jerusalem their capital. On the death of Melchisedek they lost their allegiance to God, they became an idolatrous people, and were rejected by Jehovah as His special agents. They are known in after history under the name of Philistines, which simply means the followers or subjects of Philitis—a name which the early historians of Egypt gave to the builder of the Pyramid, which was none other person than Melchisedek. By the Israelites they were driven out of Palestine, and finally settled in the South of Ireland, as Irish historians allow.

Another member of the family of Shem was called—namely, Abraham, from whom came God’s chosen people—Israel and the Jews. They also had to sojourn in Egypt, and they, too, were sent to Palestine, and graffed on to the purpose of God, where the Philistines had been broken off.

“Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor?” (Amos ix. 7).

Egypt has played a noble part in the providence of God through Melchisedek, Abraham, Joseph, and Moses. Even the blessed Jesus is said to be called from this land. “Out of Egypt have I called My Son.” The Egyptians gave to the world the first translation of the Hebrew Bible, and it was for centuries the stronghold of Christianity after the destruction of Jerusalem. The best of the Christian fathers were Egyptians, and in the coming struggle, the great war, which will begin about 1882, again Egypt will become conspicuous with England and Prussia. For the Prussians are the Assyrians as the English art the Lost Tribes of Israel. Bismarck may manoeuvre as he please, and be as pro-Russian as Dr. Storrs, yet when the time comes he and his people will fall in with the providential purpose, and become an ally with Israel-England; and timid and bankrupt Egypt will then come forth to take her place once more among the nations of the earth as an independent Power. Hear what the prophet Isaiah says in chap. xix.: “And the Lord shall smite Egypt, He shall smite and heal it, and they shall return even to the Lord, and He shall be entreated of them, and shall heal them. In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians shall come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance.”

“In that day” refers to this day, now at hand. To this the Great Pyramid is witness. For in verses 19 and 20 of this chapter we read: “In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt.”

The word translated pillar is from the Hebrew word Matzaybhah, and means a large structure—some monument that is pre-eminent. The Hebrew word Ammood is translated pillar also, and corresponds to the English word pillar much better.

The word altar, in Hebrew, means lion, carrying with it the same meaning as pre-eminence. And is not this Pyramid preeminent? and is it not the lion of monuments, pre-eminent as being the oldest, pre-eminent as being the highest, pre-eminent as being the largest, pre-eminent in location—being central to all the land surface of the earth, pre-eminent in construction, unlike any other buildings, except such as have been modelled after it, pre-eminent in orientation—that is, being exactly East, North, West and South.

Perfect orientation men in past ages and countries have tried to express in temples, churches, observatories, and monuments, yet none have succeeded so well as the Pyramid builders.

The famous Uranibourg Observatory, built by aid of the European Governments, under the skilful supervision of the learned Tycho Brahe, was found to be five minutes of a degree askew in its orientation when finished.

A few years ago our Government determined to have one perfect point of orientation, fixing upon Mount Agamenticus in the State of Maine. They, at a great cost, and time, and labour, concluded their work, and found they were in error somewhere about the four-hundredth part of a second; although they tried to solve the problem by three distinct processes—namely, differences of zenith distance, absolute zenith distances, and by transits in prime vertical.

How then came these ancient architects so early in the world’s history and progress to build so skilfully? How were they able some 4,000 years ago to find the poles, and determine the latitude and longitude so precisely? Answer, ye godless scientists, and tell us how these monkey-men were so skilled. How did they know without your instruments and instruction which parallel of latitude to choose so as to be on that line which would mark the half-way of the world’s surface between the equator and the poles?

And why did they lay bare and make smooth the lime-stone table rock on which they built close to its Northern edge? Why press so closely to the brink of the hill on the North side when there was plenty of room on the South side?

Truly this witness of God is against you. In this building are “signs and wonders” even to this day, and as surely also are the eyes of Jehovah open upon all the ways of the children of men.

Know ye not that the accumulated forces and results of centuries have been bequeathed to the present generation as a legal heritage for culture and profit?

Happily for us God has not left Himself without witnesses. Long before God made bare His arm through Moses, and wrought miracles to convince Pharaoh and the Egyptians, He had wrought one miracle, a miracle which would cover the ages; not to be seen by a few only, or last for a day, but to be seen by the millions and last for centuries.

In this Pyramid we have a valuable inheritance. Its finish, its beauty, its magnitude provokes our criticism, and yet must command our admiration. This watchman on the walls of time, this sentinel in charge of the secrets and treasures of the sires of long ago, this prophet in the wilderness in rugged garb, proclaiming the will of Heaven, as then made known, and now manifest, this Daniel who can interpret for us the future, this mile-stone of the ages, we do revere.

By it we are enabled to adjust our chronological dates, rectify history in some of its most important points, and judge more correctly of the attainments of our ancestors; nay, more and better, to form a truer estimate of ourselves and discern the finger of God in the manipulations of men, and an overruling Providence in the rise and fall of nations.

These signs and wonders confirm God’s Word, for they prove inspiration a fact; inspiration of a kind and in the very manner demanded by the unbelieving scientists. Here is a building superhuman, and of course in part supernatural, like the Bible. In this building the human and the Divine blend.

If any deny this, it remains with them to account for it, and show how a people so far back in the world’s history could be so wise and learned; how they could embody so much of the sciences. One thing is certain, if the Divine had nothing to do with this building, then we are left to the conclusion that man was much superior to what the Darwinian theory admits. If void of the Divine, then the development theory is destroyed. If we admit the Divine, then it follows that inspiration is a fact.

The building is there, and it was there in the day of Egypt’s oldest historians. It has been counted as one of the seven wonders of the world.

It did not embody the ideas of the Egyptians in science, astronomy, meteorology, or religion. As their historians allow, it was built by foreigners which they hated.

Nothing idolatrous was carved on it, within or without. It was a witness pure and clean. The Egyptians proclaimed and believed the earth to be square—this building proclaimed the earth round. The builders bevelled the face of the rock in a ratio of eight inches to the mile—the very quantity that science to-day admits to be the curviture of the earth—and accepts in surveying. It was their knowledge of this fact that kept the building sound, without the cracking of a joint, through centuries, though so high. The Egyptians did not use the sacred amma, or cubit, which is about twenty-five of our inches. They used a profane cubit, as Sir Isaac Newton shows.

This sacred cubit was a well and easily established proportion of the earth’s diameter—the very standard now used by the English Government in surveying.

The stones of the Pyramid were twelve feet long, eight feet broad, and five deep, making twenty-five total. The building itself was a five-faced figure. The Egyptians hated five. No wonder that Moses harnessed the Israelites in fives as they left Egypt, or that he should divide his book into five parts.

No wonder that the Queen’s Chamber should be on the twenty-fifth course of masonry, and the King’s Chamber on the fiftieth course, which is the year of jubilee, or deliverance—which year, as indicated in the Pyramid, is the year 1935.

The Egyptians calculated from the moon in their chronology. But this building takes its calculations from the sun circle. The Egyptian year was 354 days, with an intercalary month of thirty-three days added every three years.

The year embodied in the Pyramid was 365 days, five hours, forty-eight minutes, forty-seven and seven-tenths seconds. If a person took a rod of a cubit length, and measured one of the base sides of the Pyramid, he would find this twenty-five inch measure to be contained as often as there are days in the year, with the same fraction in inches as the hours, minutes, and seconds.

Is it impious to ask how these builders knew the solar year so completely? They knew the sun’s circle of 448 years, which completes a circle of time without any excess or deficiency. This they ran into weights and measures as God’s religion does.

The Pyramid, having four sides, would divide this circle into four parts, which make 112 pounds, or a hundred-weight; or, if multiplied by five, the faces of the Pyramid, 448 would give 2,240, or a ton.

In the descending and ascending passages a person must stoop to pass through them, but when the Grand Gallery is reached, they can stand upright, for this gallery enlarges seven times the proportions of the others. The first passages are only four feet high; this is twenty-eight.

The first ascending passage is 1,542 inches in length—the time, taking inches for years, from the exodus of Israel from Egypt to Christ.

Christ brings enlarged liberty. He was symbolised by the ton—the end of weight scale. “When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son.”

Again, thirty-three inches in this gallery is an open sepulchre with fifty-six empty graves in miniature, carved out, telling, again, by a strange coincident, the life years of the Saviour and His resurrection; also the number of those who rose immediately after. For “the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after His resurrection” (Matt. xxvii. 52).

Another remarkable feature is, that at the end of this gallery, the wall bulges forward about four inches, as if it were going to fall in. This gallery, on the floor is 1,882 inches; on the roof, 1,878 inches. This explains to us our very times. The shadow of war—Russia and England appearing as if they would fight every day. But they know not the counsels of God, nor His sublime purpose. Surely, as the text declares, “Our God is great in counsel and mighty in work; and His eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men.” More next Sunday evening, God willing, about His own marvellous witnesses. Let us praise and adore Him.

“And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles, in the midst of many people as a Lion among the beasts of the forest, as a Young Lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.”—Micah v. 7.

Coat of Arms with Lion and Unicorn

“His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns like the Horns of Unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth.”—Deut. xxxiii. 17.