Extracted text
Editorial transcription, lightly normalized from the scan. Line-break hyphenation, spacing, capitalization, and unmistakable OCR errors have been repaired; the claims remain those of The Flaming Sword.
JERSEY CITY, October 8, 1892.—I am in full sympathy with the celibacy, communism and non-resistance of the Shakers; with the utter destruction and overthrow of the money power as laid down by Koresh, also with the concave theory, although I but partially understand it. Would like to know if all Laplace's "Mecanique Celeste" and Leverrier's calculations leading to the locating of Neptune, not before discovered, are readable with opposite mathematical signs, or by what process they could turn out correct, based upon a false system of astronomy and a defective science (?) of optics?—A. P. B.
The cellular cosmogony does not alter facts about astronomical phenomena. The same mathematical calculations answer in either case. The interpretation of form and phenomena are reversed. Mathematical calculations have accompanied every system of astronomy, and the calculations have been as accurate in other systems—now regarded false—as they are in the Copernican.
Some years ago I made a vow that I would never be guilty of ridiculing any new thought or theory conscientiously affirmed and advocated by another, which I had not investigated myself, however absurd it might appear. While your theory that we are living and moving on the inside or the concave surface of this planet is about the last or most unlikely one that I would have expected, yet count me in as an unprejudiced seeker after light. Your theory, even considered as a possibility, sets one's brain to whirling like a top, and suggests a multitude of queries, such as: Where is, and what is, the outside surface of the earth? Does it revolve at all? Are the sun, moon, stars and other planets between us and the outside surface of the earth? Are they moving around us as they appear to be, and are we deceived as to their distance? If my neighbor starts on a trip around the earth, and performs half the circuit, is he then over my head, instead of in the opposite direction? Where am I, anyway?—O. B., Salem, Ohio.
The Koreshan literature is full of the doctrine of our cosmogony. The earth is a concave shell, the outer rind of which is a complex metallic pile of strata or layers superimposed one upon another. Man occupies the concave surface. China is over our head. Between the earth's surface and the solar sphere there are three atmospheres—our own, an atmosphere of hydrogen, and one of aboron. The three atmospheres contain three stellar regions. The stars are focal points of electric energy. The crusts of the earth, that is, the laminae or plates called rakaia in Hebrew, and translated firmament of heaven, move slowly one upon another. There are seven planetary spheres, all of which are reflected from the aforementioned laminae or plates. The sun, moon, stars and planets are not between us and the outside surface, but in the heavens within the shell—the circumference of which is about twenty-five thousand miles, and the diameter about eight thousand. If your neighbor travels east or west till half-way round the earth, he is over your head on the opposite side of the concave shell.
"Where am I, any way?" you ask. You are on the road, and in a fair way of getting out of the labyrinth of fallacy into which the humbug, atheistic, so called science has enshrouded you. We are not pursuing our crusade against the errors of modern, so called science, and so called Christianity, with our eyes shut. We know what we are talking about, and we know the obstacles in the way of our progress; but we are prepared to demonstrate every inch of our ground, and we know that within ten years the Koreshan cosmogony will take the lead because the time has come for the fruitage of genuine science and its concomitant life.
We know also that when true science dawns upon the mind of the darkened humanity of this age, it will find its corroboration in the testimony of the law and the prophets, which found their confirmation in the testimony of Jesus the Lord. If Moses made mistakes in his cosmogonical reckoning and delineation, then the Lord Jesus made a greater mistake in coming to fulfil the law (Moses) and the prophets. In the Lord Jesus the law and the prophets were fulfilled. Moses was one witness to the truth, and the prophets, the other. If their witness is not true, then the witness of the Father and the Son, in the person of Jesus the Christ of God, was not true. If Moses, the prophet Elias, and Jesus should meet Ingersoll, they would rattle him so quickly it would make his head swim. Of all the smart men of the age Ingersoll is the biggest fool, and those who are blindly led by him do not fall very much behind.
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The source scans remain the record. This page preserves the correspondents' inquiries and the editorial replies without presenting the Koreshan System's conclusions as independently established results. The claims remain attributed to The Flaming Sword.
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The Flaming Sword · Vol. 4, No. 14 · 1 Oct 1892 · PDF p. 7