The first verse of the Gospel of John in
the World English Bible
says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God." (1). It is a powerful
verse, but there is something missing from Christian
theology, and that something missing is of cardinal
importance.
If the 'Word' is God, and by all accounts the 'Word' in
the verse above is Yeshua himself — Yeshua is the Aramaic
version of the name which is Yeshu in Hebrew and Jesus in Greek —,
then why bother with reading the rest of the Bible? If
Yeshua is God, and I'm aware of only one Christian sect
that does not believe that is the literal truth, then
his words alone would more than suffice, and one could
read Yeshua's very words in red in special editions of the
Bible. Actually, one wouldn't even need the full Bible to
read all of Yeshua's words, because they are all contained
within the 27 books of the New Testament, so even a New
Testament with Yeshua's words in red would be more than
sufficient. After all, if Yeshua is the Word, and the Word
is God, then what else do we need to read?
While that is what the great majority of Christians
believe, they don't behave in a way that truly suggests
that Yeshua is the Word, or even the Final Word of God.
Christians really believe that the entire Bible is holier
than Yeshua, or holier than God, and behave accordingly.
Besides the 27 books of the New Testament, the entire
Bible includes another 39 Old Testament books according to
the Protestant canon. The Catholic canon then adds another
7 books to the list — Tobit, Judith, First and Second
Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, and Baruch —, as well as parts
of books — Esther 10:4-16:24, and Daniel 3:24-90;
13:1-14:42 — which were available in the Septuagint in
Yeshua's time, but which are not found in the Jewish canon
today. Some bright scholars have very good reasons to call
the Gospel of Thomas a Fifth
Gospel — fifth after the gospels of Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John —, while others have equally valid
reasons to consider the Gospel of the Nazarenes a Sixth Gospel, but no
standard edition of the Bible has included any of these
books of New Testament apocrypha so far.
From careful observation, it would appear that Christians
don't really believe that Yeshua is the Word of God! They
may say Yeshua is the Word of God, but in fact they
idolise the 66- or 73-book Bible far above him. As
idolaters worshiped golden calves, Christians today really
worship the book of books that is the Bible, and/or the
Pope.
This belief carries negative theological and
non-theological consequences. If Yeshua is not the Final
Word of God, then any Pope's words in theory, any
Minister's interpretation, any Bible version one deems
kosher, could in fact supersede Yeshua in divinity. This,
in the end, could actually cause the denial of the
Salvation the majority of Christians seek when Yeshua
finally reappears. Since Yeshua is in fact the Way, and no one
can come to God except through Yeshua (John 14:6),
Christians are then no better off than the Jews, since the
former failed to acknowledge the First Coming, while the
latter could very well fail to acknowledge the even more
fundamental Second Coming.
The non-theological consequences of the Christian sola scriptura dogma
are no less destructive. If Yeshua alone is not the Final
Word of God, then this only reinforces the need for more
Bible printing, the need to cut down more and more trees
in order to continue what is essentially the dogma of the
Industrial Revolution, and other
environmentally-destructive practices of that age. Prior
to the Gutenberg press, in fact, the sola scriptura dogma
would have been at the very least impractical. This fact
also seems to suggest that without the printing press God
would be either impossible, or extremely difficult to
reach. Even the non-theological consequences of the sola scriptura dogma
could make Christians no better off than anyone else,
since the book of Revelation even seems to suggest that
the 'destroyers of the earth' shall they themselves be one
day destroyed (Revelation 11:18).
If Christianity prior to the Protestant Reformation had
the defect of depending too much on less than infallible
Papal authority, after the Reformation it became dependent
more on Industrial Age methods of mass printing than on
Yeshua.
Cesidianism is a new religion, and it seeks truths that
are less Papal and medieval, less manufactured and
industrial, and more genuinely eternal and about Yeshua.
Cesidianism depends more on reason than faith, more on
mathematics and geometry than on scripture. In a way,
Cesidianism has more in common with science than it does
with religion. In other ways, Cesidianism is actually
superior to even the best science of today, because
science cannot save mankind, while Cesidianism has already
begun to.
To a Cesidian, Yeshua was,
is, and shall be the Word of
God. The Bible, on the other hand, was, is, and shall be
never more than just a bunch of words. To a Cesidian,
Yeshua is the divine Living
Bible, while the paperback or hardcover Bible is
just a book, and probably not the smartest or greatest
book that was ever written.
References and Notes