God’s Secrets in the Pyramids?

The Great pyramids of Giza are, as just about everyone knows, large stone structures believed to have been built perhaps 4,000 — 4,500 years ago as tombs for the Pharaoh. They have a great deal to do with their pagan worldview, beliefs about the afterlife and the presumed necessity of preserving the body. Prior to the building of the Eiffel Tower, they were the tallest man made structures in the world. With their rather amazing geometric accuracy, some believed their construction was guided by something other-worldly, a belief that still exists in some circles today.

Something which has recently gained popularity in the evangelical church is the Enneagram. We would argue that  it is a mystical and occultic — “tool” that many Christians today believe has great significance for their relationship with God and their fellow Christians. On the surface, we wouldn’t think to compare its current devoted use by Christians to occultic tools, such as Pyramidology, that infected and influenced the Christian church in times past.

But there are some interesting parallels. Some Enneagram teachers, like Christopher Heuertz, believe that the Enneagram has very ancient origins and may have originated in ancient Egypt:

…it’s suggested the Enneagram may be as “old as Babylon,” while others claim there is evidence the Enneagram first showed up over six thousand years ago in ancient Egypt.¹Heuertz, Christopher L.. The Sacred Enneagram (p. 43). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

The alleged link to pagan Egypt didn’t originate with Heuertz. As he wrote, “others claimed there is evidence” that “it first showed up…in ancient Egypt.” Who might we suppose made the claim? PD Ouspensky, disciple of mystic inventor of the Enneagram George Gurdjieff, is a likely suspect. The BBC’s interesting article, “A Short History of Pyramidology,” under the subheading “Occultists,” writes:

Not surprisingly, the Pyramid was also seized on by just about every one of the mystical cults that thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – above all by the Theosophists, an influential group founded by one Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-91). In her widely read, if all-but-unreadable, books, The Secret Doctrine (1888) and Isis Unveiled (1877), she explained to her followers that the Pyramid was ‘the everlasting record and the indestructible symbol of the Mysteries and Initiations on Earth’.

Thanks to Mme Blavatsky, the Pyramid became an essential point of pilgrimage for all self-respecting occultists. Among the notable necromancers and magi who made the journey were the Russian mathematician and mystic PD Ouspensky, whose cult is still alive in various forms today…

Necromancer? Magi? Russian mystic? Which “cult” was PD Ouspensky involved with which the BBC could been alluding to in 2017? Well, that would be the Enneagram.

In 1859, a Brit by the name of John Taylor, whom some refer to as “eccentric,” published The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built? And Who Built It? John Taylor believed the “pyramid inch” was “one twenty-fifth of a “sacred cubit.” Building on that, Astronomer-Royal of Scotland, Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, who was himself involved in the cult of British Israelism, built on Taylor’s work and ideas. Both believed the pyramids were divinely inspired, designed by God using God’s math. Smyth regarded Taylor’s supposition as a way to prove God’s existence, as well as providing evidence that the Brit’s standard of measurement was very close to God’s standard of measurement – as opposed to what he referred to as “atheistic French”:

Smyth was hardly a dispassionate, objective scientist when dealing with the pyramid. His writings show that he certainly had a deep emotional commitment to demonstrating “scientifically” that the Christian religion is true, and that he saw his work with the pyramid as a means by which he could do so. Smyth also had a great antipathy towards the metric system, which he regarded as the flawed produce of the minds of atheistic French radicals. Over and over again in his book The Great Pyramid, Smyth heaps ridicule and scorn upon the metric system and its inventors for using “unnatural” standard units of measurement. (See PYRAMIDOLOGY)

Many of Taylor and Smyth’s dubious occultic ideas made their way across Europe and moved on to America where they infected Christians and cultists alike:

A number of Christian religious leaders accepted the Taylor-Smyth theory and made it an article of faith. Numerous Englishmen took it up, and in France the abbé F. Moigno, the cannon of St. Denis at Paris, became its foremost advocate. (See PYRAMIDOLOGY)

Pyramidology became the legacy of the followers of the Baptist minister William Miller, who famously predicted the return of Jesus Christ for 1843 and then 1844 (Second Adventism, as well as Seventh Day Adventism and other Adventist groups, arose out of the “disappointed” Millerite Movement) Second Adventist George Stetson passed pyramidology on to another Second Adventist, George Storrs of Brooklyn, NY who published, “The Bible Examiner.” Another Second Adventist, Nelson Barbour, also saw the Great Pyramid as “God’s stone witness.” Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Bible Students, which morphed into the Jehovah’s Witnesses, picked up pyamidology from these three. Russell is today buried near a 9 ft pyramid.  Russell had been raised Presbyterian and Congregationalist, but at the age of 20, in 1872, he radically reimagined his faith because he could not reconcile the doctrine of hell with God’s mercy. Not finding the answers he liked from the churches, he set out to find answers elsewhere to unlock the Bible and its mysteries, and he ran into these three Second Adventists.

Through careful study of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which Russell referred to as “God’s stone witness,” he settled on what he believed to be God’s “plan of salvation” and the timing of Christ’s return, which he initially set for 1874. He (and other Second Adventists) arrived at the date through the measurement of the passageways in the Egyptian pyramids. In Series III of Russell’s Studies in the Scriptures: Thy Kingdom Come, he writes:

The Great Pyramid, however, proves to be a storehouse of important truth — scientific, historic, and prophetic…²Charles Taze Russell, Series III of Russell’s Studies in the Scriptures: They Kingdom Come; Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Allegheny, PA, 1907, p. 314

Russell thought it to be a secret in Scripture that would be revealed when the time was right:

If it was built under God’s direction, to be one of his witnesses to men, we might reasonably expect some allusion to it in the written Word of God. And yet, since it was evidently part of God’s purpose to keep secret, until the Time of the End, features of the plan of which it gives testimony, we should expect that any reference to it in the Scriptures would be, as it is, somewhat undercover – to be recognized only when due to be understood.

Isaiah, as quoted above, testifies of an altar and pillar in the land of Egypt, which “shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt.” In the context shows that it shall be a witness in the day when the great Savior and Deliverer shall come to break the chains of oppression and to set at liberty captives – of which things our Lord preached at his first advent (Luke 4:18.) The scope of this prophecy is but dimly seen, however until Egypt is recognized as a symbol or type of the world of mankind, full of vein philosophies, which only darken their understandings, but ignorant of the true light. ³Charles Taze Russell, Series III of Russell’s Studies in the Scriptures: They Kingdom Come; Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Allegheny, PA, 1907, p. 315

Notice the language here. We would know that the pyramid was built “under God’s direction” if we can find some allusion to it in Scripture. Russell then goes on to argue that indeed the Great Pyramid is found in Scripture – but it was a secret which God would later reveal near the end times just prior to the return of Jesus. And why should anyone believe that? Because, in Russell’s circular reasoning, we now have something outside of the Bible — the Great Pyramid — with which to interpret the secrets of Scripture.

And what of the Enneagram? If is a truly an essential spiritual tool, might we “reasonably expect some allusion to it in the written Word of God,” as Russell said of the sacred secrets of the pyramid?  We can only surmise that it was evidently part of God’s purpose to keep the Enneagram a secret as well! Evidently, it was a very well-kept secret indeed, hidden from the church and individual Christians for all these many centuries, though they had the Bible the whole time! And yet, according to its promoters – New Age mystical promoters we might add – it is the very face of God with each number being one’s personal path to God! That sounds critically important to the Christian’s salvation and walk! Would God keep such a vital secret from His people for all these centuries, while at the same time safeguarding the secret in the hands of mystics and occultists?

The Enneagram and Pyramidology are more closely related than appears at first glance, even aside fact that they share the devotion of PD Ouspensky. Like former Presbyterian Charles Russell found the secrets to Christian salvation and prophecy in occultic Pyramidology, too many of today’s Christians are finding mystical connections with God – which they seem unable to find in Scripture — in the occult medium of the Enneagram.

Was the church completely in the dark until Christians embraced the Enneagram in 2016 – or have Christians allowed themselves to be led into darkness by mystical charlatans?

© 2020, Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc All rights reserved. Excerpts and links may be used if full and clear credit is given with specific direction to the original content.