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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.
The surviving scan of this issue is trimmed at the right edge. The last one to three characters of every line in the third column are not present on the page; they are supplied here in square brackets and are editorial restorations rather than readings from the scan.
"I have just read and reread the book entitled THE CELLULAR COSMOGONY. Suppose, for the elimination of time, your deductions in regard to the contour of the earth are correct, and we should admit that we live inside instead of the outside—what proof is there that the Biblical views (admitting that they corroborate your own) are any more the words of God than yours are the words of God. Do you mean to tell me that you are inspired? If so, all men are inspired.
"Whatever may be your honest views on this subject, do not, in the name of sanity, try to make it a Biblical basis of religion. Men had as good a right to think out a system along this line when the Bible was written as you have now; and if it is not the duty of man to solve the problems of creation, then the very precepts of the Bible are false. For if it is God's duty to teach this, then he becomes the teacher and also the responsible party, wholly and unconditionally."
It is maintained in Koreshanity that all truth is divine, and the substance of all truth the substance of the divine mentality, in some degree of its manifestation. The highest degrees of truth are manifest in unity in the perfection of life. It is also maintained that the successful reading of the Book of Nature and all correlate expressions of truth and life, can only obtain through the mind indentified with the mind of the Creator, or the being who has expressed himself in and through the products of his natural and mental activities.
Therefore, it necessarily follows that the authority of him who discovers the character of the universe, the purpose of its existence, its form and functions, and the laws and principles of its perpetuity, is as great as the authority of any teacher or writer of the past—and his words as much the words of God as the words of any prophet of centuries ago.
The right to discover the secrets of the universe is the right of every man; indeed, no form or degree of truth has ever been or can ever be presented to the world, except through the mental endeavor of some man. It is also true that God is the teacher and is the responsible party and the full and complete authority for what he teaches. This may appear to be paradoxical; it is so to the modern mind. But the fact is, God is at-one, in unity and in harmony with the Man through whom the absolute truth is revealed; that is, God is that Man who reveals divine truth.
No man will ever see through great problems of any kind by way of final solution of them, who supposes, as does the modern Christian, that God is an extra-cosmic Deity, using some men as mere machines to express himself. God is essentially in and of humanity, and periodically involves himself in specific characters for the expression of truth to the world. Nineteen hundred years ago He taught the divine philosophy; today it is the absolute truth of science. The truths of Jesus the Christ came through inspiration, the processes of divine intuition. Koreshan Science comes to the world through illumination, that is, the divine light in the intellect. The Founder of Koreshan Universology is the subject of illumination.
Koreshanity maintains that the Bible is scientifically true; that it contains the laws and principles of all life, and constitutes an expression and a record of the processes and events of progress in the median line of development of specific peoples which constituted the special habitation of Deity himself. The Bible does not constitute the final and only revelation of truth to man; but it contains truth so very high and exalted, profound and grand, so wide and absolute that few have understood it. Indeed, its own claim is that it is specially inspired and written for the God-man. To him it is not his authority, but a mere corroboration of his own truth and his own authority; the Book of books is written for him, and contains numerous predictions of him and the character of his work.
Religion is not a mere conception of moral and spiritual life. The word conveys the idea of something different from a mere system of teachings about God and moral laws. Religion means to tie again, from re, again; ligare, to tie. The religion of a plant is its tying-back to its seed of reproduction, the savior of its life. The tying-back is inevitable; and so is the divorce. Man has fallen from the primitive purity of life and truth of the perfect man, th[e] highest Seed of universal perpetuit[y].
The attainment of perfection in nat[ur]al human life, here in this world, [is] the perfect religion. The science [of] that religion is a true concept or sys[tem] of concepts of the processes [of] religion. The only way in which th[is] religion (the retying) of God and ma[n] can be accomplished at the close of th[e] present old order of the world, is b[y] making the principles and laws of Uni[ver]sology the very essential basis [of] that religion; that is, the laws of uni[ver]sal perfection may be so applied [to] human life, in the establishment [of] religious, societal, and industrial order[s] as to lead man to a realization of h[is] inheritance in the natural life of Dei[ty] in the earth.
All men are inspired; that is, the[y] breathe mentally the substances of th[e] mental world, or the mental spheres t[o] which they are specifically relate[d]. But most men are inspired by the substances of fallacy and ignorance. Th[e] devil is the most inspired of any on[e] in hades—that is, in the world of mortality. Jesus was inspired from abov[e]; teachers of fallacy are inspired fro[m] beneath. Jesus himself was the Wor[d] of God. All that is now taught an[d] popularly accepted in the world constitutes a perversion of truth, and th[e] words of modern teachers are the word[s] of fallacy, the results of mortal inspiration.
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The source scans remain the record. This page preserves the periodical's argument and reported observations without presenting its conclusions as independently established results. The claims remain attributed to The Flaming Sword.
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The Flaming Sword · Vol. 19, No. 33 · · PDF p. 12