I was doing research for a paper when I was in college. I had already been feeling weird about it all for various reasons (I HAD to go to college, no option, got shunned. I had been basically brushed aside my entire life because my dad wasn't in. I had creeping weirdness because of the whole "you can't get married if you die before the end" thing, and all the girls losing their minds to land a brother... I had been laughed at for answering as a child that Macbeth was inappropriate because of witches -yeah, silly, but I was in grade school and humiliated in public for something they taught me was bad, witches and the occult in entertainment... etc etc.) So, for my final I decided to write a paper about frauds and how to educate people against them. I picked up "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural" by James Randi at the library, and the floor fell out from under me when I was flipping through and found out about pyramids:
Jehovah's Witnesses
Charles
Taze Russell (1852-1916) founded the religious sect now known as the
Jehovah's Witnesses in 1872. While at that time there was much support
for a theory by one Nelson H. Barbour that called for the end of the
world to occur in 1874, Russell didn't come to accept that chronology
until Barbour convinced him — after the dreaded date had already come
and gone — that Jesus had actually returned — invisibly — at the named
date. Barbour was the one who had made the false prediction, and he
tried to justify it with a “spiritual” fulfillment.
One
of Russell's strange preoccupations was inventing correlations between
historical events and the measurements of the Great Pyramid of Giza. In
common with Flinders Petrie and many other fans of Great Pyramid lore,
Russell “discovered” hundreds of seeming links that he said showed the
divine nature of the Pyramid as a history book and prophetic document
which could only be properly understood by an adept.
His
analysis, published in 1891, called for the resurrection of all mankind
and the end of the world — again — to take place in 1914. Though there
were some defections from the Jehovah's Witnesses sect when 1914 arrived
and passed, the religion has survived and now prefers not to discuss
their founder's odd Pyramid notions. Their most recent calculation
called for the world to end in 1975.
As
the millennium approached, the Witnesses were busily knocking on doors,
trying to convince prospective converts that world conditions were
getting worse and that obviously the End Time was approaching.
Again.
Shortly after reading that a girl I knew as a small child on up, was impregnated by an MS. She was 15, she was punished. He was not. Then her friend, an elder's granddaughter, also got pregnant... she was congratulated. And I was done.