Pyramid memorial in Pittsburg vandalized and taken down

[carlos]

On 12/9/2021 at 6:24 AM, Loje said:

As Josephine mentioned, we know why it came to be erected but new ones don't.  On a positive note, I'm glad this thread is here.  Better to get the accurate information through us rather than apostates - since this has been a hot topic for years.

And if you think about it, apostates just make a big deal about nothing, as usual. Brother Russell liked pyramids and some friends put a pyramid on his tomb. That's all. If he had loved, say, puppies, maybe they would have put a statue of a dog. Haters are going to hate, no matter what.

 

EDIT: Well, not exactly "on" his tomb, but close to it. Make that "in the graveyard where he was buried".

[jwhess]

5 hours ago, retroHelen said:

I have been in the Truth since the mid 1960s and I always knew that the gravemarker was for all who served at Bethel and Russell had his own separate one.

 

I was also told that it was pyramid shaped because it had 4 faces looking throughout all sides of the graveyard - over the burial areas of all the Bethelites and the pyramid shape would stand up to weather better than 4 straight sides with hollow or filled area atop of it. It seems pretty irrelevant that it may resemble a shape  in an older book called the Divine Plan of the Ages. If anything - re: their beliefs back then - it more resembles an arrow pointing to heaven where they all regarded themselves as going at that time.

It is good to know (and remember) that this feature of the "Pyramid" was at one time a central part of our Bible Explanation.  We used its location, size and so on to explain truths at the time.  We developed "Chart Talks" based on the dimensions to send out public speakers and at assemblies.  It did not end with Br. Russell's death and burial.  It did not end with the placing of the Pyramid in the Bethel graveyard in Allegheny.

 

It only ended when Jehovah had Jesus clarify the issue at the very end of 1928.  that was a year of many important clarifications and a cleansing of our teachings, including use of the cross, Christmas, Easter and other mistaken ideas.

 

*** w00 1/1 pp. 9-10 pars. 16-17 Serving With the Watchman ***

A Progressive Cleansing

¹ One example will underline how important this principle is. In 1886 when C. T. Russell published a book that came to be called The Divine Plan of the Ages, this volume contained a chart linking the ages of mankind with the Great Pyramid of Egypt. It was thought that this memorial of Pharaoh Khufu was the pillar referred to at Isaiah 19:19, 20: “In that day there will prove to be an altar to Jehovah in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to Jehovah beside its boundary. And it must prove to be for a sign and for a witness to Jehovah of armies in the land of Egypt.” What relationship could the pyramid have with the Bible? Well, as an example, the length of certain passages in the Great Pyramid was said to indicate the time for the beginning of the “great tribulation” of Matthew 24:21, as it was then understood. Some Bible Students became engrossed with measuring different features of the pyramid to determine such matters as the day they would be going to heaven!

¹⁷ This so-called Bible in Stone was held in esteem for some decades, until the Watchtower issues of November 15 and December 1, 1928, made clear that Jehovah needed no stone monument built by pagan pharaohs and containing demonic signs of astrology to confirm the witness given in the Bible.

 

*** dx86-21 Beliefs Clarified ***

1928, Christmas: kr 102-103; w95 5/15 19; jv 199

cross: kr 104-105

Easter: kr 105

‘good news of kingdom’ not preached by Bible distribution: w06 2/1 24-25

Great Pyramid of Giza (Gizeh): w00 1/1 9-10; jv 201

Kingdom more important than personal salvation: kr 50

 

EDIT: for those who do not know what a :Chart Talk" is here is a reference:

*** yb75 p. 44 Part 1—United States of America ***
In those early days, “Dawn Circles” were held on Friday evenings. These Bible studies were so named because volumes of Millennial Dawn were used. Ralph H. Leffler recalls that Sunday evening usually was devoted to a Bible study or a discourse on the Scriptures. What was known as a “chart talk” might be given. What was this? He explains: “Under the front cover of Volume I of Studies in the Scriptures there was a long chart. . . . That chart was enlarged to the size of a banner . . . and could be purchased from the Bible House in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. That chart was hung on the wall in front of the audience for all to see as the speaker for the occasion went about explaining its many arches and pyramids. The chart was a graphic illustration of the main Bible events from man’s creation to the end of the millennium and the beginning of ‘ages to come.’ . . . We learned much about Bible history from these ‘chart’ talks. And they were delivered frequently.”
“Chart talks” might be delivered at the regular meeting places of Jehovah’s people or elsewhere. Were these discourses effective?

 

C. E. Sillaway recalls: “The talks must have borne some fruit, for the little group grew from six adults to about fifteen in less than two years.” On one occasion, William P. Mockridge gave a chart talk in a Baptist church in Long Island City, New York, “with the result that several members of [the Baptist preacher’s] church came into the truth and the minister . . . C. A. Erickson also came into the truth and became one of the Society’s traveling . . . speakers.”
 

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by jwhess

[jwhess]

The use of the Bible Students Monthly tract helped promote the ideas of "truth" as we knew it then.

*** yb75 p. 45 Part 1—United States of America ***
From 1909 onward, the Watch Tower Society released a new series of tracts called “Peoples Pulpit” (then “Everybody’s Paper” and later “The Bible Students Monthly”). Through these monthly tracts religious error was exposed, Scriptural truths were explained and the nations were warned about the highly significant year 1914. Cartoons and illustrations added to the effectiveness of these tracts. By such tract distribution, God’s servants were more and more noticed by the public, becoming widely known as Bible Students and International Bible Students.

 

See below our 1913 issue featuring the "Pyramid"...yes our beliefs have be clarified.

 

 

[Sheep]

On 12/11/2021 at 11:04 PM, jwhess said:

It is good to know (and remember) that this feature of the "Pyramid" was at one time. . .

 

On 12/11/2021 at 11:34 PM, jwhess said:

The use of the Bible Students Monthly tract helped promote the ideas of "truth" as we knew it then. . .

 

Brother John (@jwhess), you certainly have a very rich history in the truth. Whenever I meet one of you old-timers who have kept track of our spiritual heritage, I cling to that brother or sister! It's not often I wind up in a congregation who has someone with such a history, and cherishes it like you do. But I could listen to that spiritual sibling talk for hours and hours, recounting their experiences and sharing spiritual tidbits with us. People like you are such an encouragement!

[jwhess]

Our organization even has an "Archive" department.  One of the GB members is quoted as saying....

 

*** w12 1/15 pp. 31-32 Preserving Gems From Our Past ***

The Governing Body is keenly interested in our theocratic history. In commenting on the need to preserve, document, and pass on our spiritual heritage, one member of the Governing Body said, “To know where we are going, we have to know where we have come from.” To that end, Writing Archives was recently set up at world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, and is under the direction of the Writing Committee.

 

The scripture says...Psalm 43:13... "Set your hearts upon its ramparts. Inspect its fortified towers, So that you may tell about it to future generations."

 

 

Edited December 13, 2021 by jwhess

[Old]

3 hours ago, jwhess said:

Our organization even has an "Archive" department.  One of the GB members is quoted as saying....

 

*** w12 1/15 pp. 31-32 Preserving Gems From Our Past ***

The Governing Body is keenly interested in our theocratic history. In commenting on the need to preserve, document, and pass on our spiritual heritage, one member of the Governing Body said, “To know where we are going, we have to know where we have come from.” To that end, Writing Archives was recently set up at world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, and is under the direction of the Writing Committee.

 

The scripture says...Psalm 43:13... "Set your hearts upon its ramparts. Inspect its fortified towers, So that you may tell about it to future generations."

 

 

In 2009 a Bethel brother look me up at the Vienna convention to get information about my grandmother. He explained they had only recently begun this venture of compiling a modern history. Though she died at Brooklyn Bethel they had no idea where she was buried, they had only few pictures and none of the many years of studio recordings.

My sister knew most of the answers, she was buried on Staton Island. When WBBR shut down she had given boxes of her studio recordings to her daughter, June Maxwell an elderly pioneer who lived with her husband in a small trailer house in Forks Washington. The studio recordings were on oversize records, bigger that a 78 rpm record and required special equipment to play. After Betty Shilton died my aunt took them to the dump, after all what is past is past and our history was so contempory we didn't look back. Most Gannies reviews and photos of her career exist only in the archives of the Seattle Times newspaper. The one of few Bethel photos  is the one I have posted here a couple of times.

[jwhess]

A good friend and a lovely sister just visited my wife and I this afternoon (triple vaccinated and social distance and so on).  Her husband and my friend died a couple of months ago.  He was a former Bethel brother from the early 1960s.  She told me that every time she and her son (who is 50) get outside to start a fire to burn tree limbs and leave, they take a few of her husbands books from his theocratic library and burn them in the pile.

 

I don't recall his library very much but his father donated his library to the Kingdom hall when it was established in 1970.  Our hall library goes back to the original Watchtowers from the 1870s.  So his son's library probably had a few oldies-but-goodies- also.  The sister does not do that kind of background research and her son uses all digital material.

[Old]

5 minutes ago, jwhess said:

A good friend and a lovely sister just visited my wife and I this afternoon (triple vaccinated and social distance and so on).  Her husband and my friend died a couple of months ago.  He was a former Bethel brother from the early 1960s.  She told me that every time she and her son (who is 50) get outside to start a fire to burn tree limbs and leave, they take a few of her husbands books from his theocratic library and burn them in the pile.

 

I don't recall his library very much but his father donated his library to the Kingdom hall when it was established in 1970.  Our hall library goes back to the original Watchtowers from the 1870s.  So his son's library probably had a few oldies-but-goodies- also.  The sister does not do that kind of background research and her son uses all digital material.

It is sad, but what is one supposed to do?   We spent a couple of weeks stripping the bindings from our library going back to the early 50s. Because of advancing age and diminishing health our daughters are insisting and rightly so that we give up our ocean view retirment home and move to Everrett WA. We put our home up for sale last Thursday and sold it in two days for twice what we paid for it. No room for library.

 

[TrueTomHarley]

Here’s a Pittsburg sign that still stands—unmolested and sans pyramids. In front of old Carnegie Hall, taken about 2 months ago: 

Edited December 14, 2021 by TrueTomHarley

[coolbrz731]

We have a brother in our congregation that attended a special convention at Yankee Stadium, where the brothers travelled from all over the country to attend.  He is in his 80's now, and he was a kid when he attended.  He told me about the tent city setup by the brothers.  It had streets going though it with biblical names.  I love getting insider details about certain historical events.  He also told us a story about the brother who initially defended us when they tried to ban us during WWII, as mentioned in the Kingdom Proclaimers book.  He said that he was kind of a bad boy then, and that brother was MEEEAAANNNN!  Which simply means he didn't play.  😆

[jwhess]

34 minutes ago, coolbrz731 said:

We have a brother in our congregation that attended a special convention at Yankee Stadium, where the brothers travelled from all over the country to attend.  He is in his 80's now, and he was a kid when he attended.  He told me about the tent city setup by the brothers.  It had streets going though it with biblical names.  I love getting insider details about certain historical events.  He also told us a story about the brother who initially defended us when they tried to ban us during WWII, as mentioned in the Kingdom Proclaimers book.  He said that he was kind of a bad boy then, and that brother was MEEEAAANNNN!  Which simply means he didn't play.  😆

The Trailer-Tent City in 1953 was set up in New Jersey (about 40 miles from Yankee Stadium.  They had roads, street signs, water, sewage, cooking, showers, a first-aid station, a fire department and a grocery store.  There were 4 major "sound towers" to blast the convention message through-out the camp.

 

The city lasted 10 days and for a while it was one of the largest cities in New jersey with about 50,000 inhabitants.  A little over a week later it was gone entirely.

See the pictures below.

[coolbrz731]

Just now, jwhess said:

The Trailer-Tent City in 1953 was set up in New Jersey (about 40 miles from Yankee Stadium.  They had roads, street signs, water, sewage, cooking, showers, a first-aid station, a fire department and a grocery store.  There were 4 major "sound towers" to blast the convention message through-out the camp.

 

The city lasted 10 days and for a while it was one of the largest cities in New jersey with about 50,000 inhabitants.  A little over a week later it was gone entirely.

See the pictures below.

That's it!!  I had a feeling you'd fill in the blanks!!

[jwhess]

On 12/11/2021 at 11:34 PM, jwhess said:

The use of the Bible Students Monthly tract helped promote the ideas of "truth" as we knew it then.

*** yb75 p. 45 Part 1—United States of America ***
From 1909 onward, the Watch Tower Society released a new series of tracts called “Peoples Pulpit” (then “Everybody’s Paper” and later “The Bible Students Monthly”). Through these monthly tracts religious error was exposed, Scriptural truths were explained and the nations were warned about the highly significant year 1914. Cartoons and illustrations added to the effectiveness of these tracts. By such tract distribution, God’s servants were more and more noticed by the public, becoming widely known as Bible Students and International Bible Students.

 

See below our 1913 issue featuring the "Pyramid"...yes our beliefs have be clarified.

 

 

I was thinking, if anyone wanted to read the article, I have the digital version.  so I copied just the one issue and attached it below.

1189944270_Monthlyv5num11.pdf

[rbrown1205]

Amazing!!!  It is almost like a time capsule!!  I read some of the other articles, and one of them referred to a number of organ transplants being made.  It reminded me that transplants were novelties way back then.  There is a movie that came out that was about that time, called "Something the Lord had Made", and it was about a US southern surgeon who enlisted the help of his black lab technician to create new surgical instruments to put transplanted organs into babies and children, and their true story won all kinds of awards in medicine - and the movie also got an Oscar I think.

 

Seems like the literature of that time reflected those events, and also how the light got brighter about how to deal with prophecies, like the one that it quoted from Isaiah.  Now we are reexamining the Ezekiel prophesies about not seeing types and anti-types about who the man with the secretary's inkhorn is, and is not.

[daydream]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh2TB1M0mY0

This video is not of a good quality.

 

Spoiler

 

'Something the Lord Made' tells the story of the 34-year partnership that begins in Depression Era Nashville in 1930 when Blalock (Alan Rickman) hires Thomas (Mos Def) as an assistant at his Vanderbilt University lab, expecting him to perform janitorial work. But Thomas' remarkable manual dexterity and intellectual acumen confound Blalock's expectations, and Thomas rapidly becomes indispensable as a research partner to Blalock in his forays into heart surgery.

Edited December 18, 2021 by happiness IS

[daydream]

On 12/12/2021 at 12:04 PM, jwhess said:

for those who do not know what a :Chart Talk" is here is a reference:

You're a real gem Br. John (JWHess). If you don't mind me asking 'do you have Jewish ancestry? You really are a treasure trove of information. I can quite imagine you have an impressive library of JW  archived literature and memorabilia in your house. It's sort of wintry weather in the tropics, only it's non stop light rain that cools the equatorial heat somewhat. So raring for something interesting to read while whiling the time away.

Thank you so much for your hard work. I can't imagine how much time and patience you took to undercover all these precious information from our much beloved JW history. You and all the early Bible students are an inspiration to the rest of us who come in later in the truth.

 

*** yb75 p. 44 Part 1—United States of America ***

 . . We learned much about Bible history from these ‘chart’ talks. And they were delivered frequently.”
https://www.jw.org/finder?wtlocale=E&docid=301975002&srctype=wol&srcid=share&par=49

 

[daydream]

https://www.amazon.com/Something-Lord-Made-Alan-Rickman/dp/B01MSPNF8S

 

HD $3.99

 

A little better quality but not much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIgZVmMAkiQ

 

Edited December 18, 2021 by happiness IS

[daydream]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_the_Lord_Made

Quote

The American Film Institute, which named Something the Lord Made the Best Television Movie of the Year for 2004, called it "a revelation...a bittersweet story [that] is an important tool for America as it continues to search for a public vocabulary to discuss issues of race."

A complex operation called an atrial septectomy, the procedure was executed so flawlessly by Thomas that Blalock, upon examining the nearly undetectable suture line, was prompted to remark, "Vivien, this looks like something the Lord made." To the host of young surgeons Thomas trained during the 1940s he became a figure of legend, the model of a dexterous and efficient cutting surgeon. "Even if you'd never seen surgery before, you could do it because Vivien made it look so simple," the renowned surgeon Denton Cooley

Edited December 18, 2021 by happiness IS