The Mysterious Pyramid in Jeffersonville














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The Jeffersonville Pyramid

If a UFO crashed on Walton's Mountain, its stranded occupants would be hard pressed to appear more alien and out of place than this white marble pyramid does among the polite little headstones and marble crosses of an otherwise simple and old-fashioned Indiana cemetery. Standing half again as high as most of the stones around it and easily more massive than anything else in Eastern Cemetery in Jeffersonville, with a large, metal eagle mounted on top, the Pyramid is the first thing you see when you enter the cemetery, and certainly the one thing you won't forget once you've left.

Locally, everybody seems to have been to the Pyramid, or at least to know about it. Like the alien artifact it is, however, most people don't know what it signifies.

On its marble face, it bears seven arcane inscriptions: " Ephesian, Symrnean, Pergamean, Thyatirean, Sardisean, Philadelphian, and Laodicean." Some Christians identify these as the seven ages of the Christian Church; seven distinct periods in Christian history, each marked by the divinely inspired hand of a different Great Prophet. The inscriptions on the Pyramid identify each of these successive prophets, each with his age. In the Ephesian Age, there was the apostle Paul; in the Smyrnean Age, Ireneus, the great missionary and scholar of ancient Rome. The Thyatirean age brought us the medieval saint, Columbia, while the Sardisean witnessed the rise of Martin Luthor and modern Protestantism. With the Philadelphian Age came John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church.

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The Great Prophet of the Laodicean age was born in 1909. As a child he heard God's voice in the wind. He told his parents the trees spoke to him, advising him of God's will. By his thirties he embarked on a nationwide ministry of healing and miracles and, according to some accounts, the resurrection of the dead. By his fifties, his followers believe, he met with angels and fulfilled Biblical prophesy regarding the end of the world His name was William M. Branham, a minister who lived much of his life in Jeffersonville. He lies beneath the Pyramid, which has become a holy relic to hundreds of Pentacostals who believe the man to have been not only the Lord's own Endtime Prophet, but the Seventh Angel fortold by Revelation. His is one of the truly wild stories of the American Evangelical movement ; an adventure in faith and mythmaking that few in Jeffersonville, even those who remember Branham, are even aware of.

A devotee's biography of William Branham

The Alter of Fire

Alter of Fire pictures

In 1963, Branham claimed to have met with seven angels, who instructed him to open the Seventh Seal of Revelation (a skeptic's view.)

A LIFE Magazine article on the odd, circular cloud Branham cited as a sign heralding his his reading of the Seventh Seal

"The Revelation of the Seven Seals"

A photo tour of Branham's Jeffersonville

"A Prophet's Cave;" a photo-illustrated essay about an Indiana cave in which Branham claimed to have met with angels.

Photo Album

"The William Branham Cloud Portrait"

A religious, but skeptical, essay on Branham, with an annotated, straight-forward analysis of his doctrine and its origins.

Extremely detailed analysis of Branham's life and beliefs by a religious author who believes Branham to have been controlled by "demonic spirits. The bondage in which he lived was an occultic bondage. His powers were those of a soothsayer."

The William Branham Audio Library - 1,100 audio sermons online