The Bestowals of Christ Michael

119:1.1It was a solemn oc­ca­sion on Sal­ving­ton al­most one bil­lion years ago when the as­sem­bled di­rec­tors and chiefs of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don heard Mi­chael an­nounce that his el­der brother, Im­manuel, would pres­ently as­sume au­thor­ity in Neb­a­don while he (Mi­chael) would be ab­sent on an un­ex­plained mis­sion. No other an­nounce­ment was made about this trans­ac­tion ex­cept that the farewell broad­cast to the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers, among other in­struc­tions, said: “And for this pe­riod I place you un­der the care and keep­ing of Im­manuel while I go to do the bid­ding of my Par­a­dise Fa­ther.”

119:1.2Af­ter send­ing this farewell broad­cast, Mi­chael ap­peared on the dis­patch­ing field of Sal­ving­ton, just as on many pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions when prepar­ing for de­par­ture to Uversa or Par­a­dise ex­cept that he came alone. He con­cluded his state­ment of de­par­ture with these words: “I leave you but for a short sea­son. Many of you, I know, would go with me, but whither I go you can­not come. That which I am about to do, you can­not do. I go to do the will of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties, and when I have fin­ished my mis­sion and have ac­quired this ex­pe­ri­ence, I will re­turn to my place among you.” And hav­ing thus spo­ken, Mi­chael of Neb­a­don van­ished from the sight of all those as­sem­bled and did not reap­pear for twenty years of stan­dard time. In all Sal­ving­ton, only the Di­vine Min­is­ter and Im­manuel knew what was tak­ing place, and the Union of Days shared his se­cret only with the chief ex­ec­u­tive of the uni­verse, Ga­briel, the Bright and Morn­ing Star.

119:1.3All the in­hab­i­tants of Sal­ving­ton and those dwell­ing on the con­stel­la­tion and sys­tem head­quar­ters worlds as­sem­bled about their re­spec­tive re­ceiv­ing sta­tions for uni­verse in­tel­li­gence, hop­ing to get some word of the mis­sion and where­abouts of the Cre­ator Son. Not un­til the third day af­ter Mi­chael’s de­par­ture was any mes­sage of pos­si­ble sig­nif­i­cance re­ceived. On this day a com­mu­ni­ca­tion was reg­is­tered on Sal­ving­ton from the Mel­chiz­e­dek sphere, the head­quar­ters of that or­der in Neb­a­don, which sim­ply re­corded this ex­traor­di­nary and never-be­fore-heard-of trans­ac­tion: “At noon to­day there ap­peared on the re­ceiv­ing field of this world a strange Mel­chiz­e­dek Son, not of our num­ber but wholly like our or­der. He was ac­com­pa­nied by a soli­tary om­niaphim who bore cre­den­tials from Uversa and pre­sented or­ders ad­dressed to our chief, de­rived from the An­cients of Days and con­curred in by Im­manuel of Sal­ving­ton, di­rect­ing that this new Mel­chiz­e­dek Son be re­ceived into our or­der and as­signed to the emer­gency ser­vice of the Mel­chiz­e­deks of Neb­a­don. And it has been so or­dered; it has been done.”

119:1.4And this is about all that ap­pears on the rec­ords of Sal­ving­ton re­gard­ing the first Mi­chael be­stowal. Noth­ing more ap­pears un­til af­ter one hun­dred years of Uran­tia time, when there was re­corded the fact of Mi­chael’s re­turn and unan­nounced re­sump­tion of the di­rec­tion of uni­verse af­fairs. But a strange rec­ord is to be found on the Mel­chiz­e­dek world, a recital of the ser­vice of this unique Mel­chiz­e­dek Son of the emer­gency corps of that age. This rec­ord is pre­served in a sim­ple tem­ple which now oc­cu­pies the fore­ground of the home of the Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek, and it com­prises the nar­ra­tion of the ser­vice of this tran­si­tory Mel­chiz­e­dek Son in con­nec­tion with his as­sign­ment to twenty-four mis­sions of uni­verse emer­gency. And this rec­ord, which I have so re­cently re­viewed, ends thus:

119:1.5“And at noon on this day, with­out pre­vi­ous an­nounce­ment and wit­nessed by only three of our broth­er­hood, this vis­it­ing Son of our or­der dis­ap­peared from our world as he came, ac­com­pa­nied only by a soli­tary om­niaphim; and this rec­ord is now closed with the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that this vis­i­tor lived as a Mel­chiz­e­dek, in the like­ness of a Mel­chiz­e­dek he worked as a Mel­chiz­e­dek, and he faith­fully per­formed all of his as­sign­ments as an emer­gency Son of our or­der. By uni­ver­sal con­sent he has be­come chief of Mel­chiz­e­deks, hav­ing earned our love and ado­ra­tion by his match­less wis­dom, su­preme love, and su­perb de­vo­tion to duty. He loved us, un­der­stood us, and served with us, and for­ever we are his loyal and de­voted fel­low Mel­chiz­e­deks, for this stranger on our world has now eter­nally be­come a uni­verse min­is­ter of Mel­chiz­e­dek na­ture.”

119:1.6And that is all I am per­mit­ted to tell you of the first be­stowal of Mi­chael. We, of course, fully un­der­stand that this strange Mel­chiz­e­dek who so mys­te­ri­ously served with the Mel­chiz­e­deks a bil­lion years ago was none other than the in­car­nated Mi­chael on the mis­sion of his first be­stowal. The rec­ords do not specif­i­cally state that this unique and ef­fi­cient Mel­chiz­e­dek was Mi­chael, but it is uni­ver­sally be­lieved that he was. Prob­a­bly the ac­tual state­ment of that fact can­not be found out­side of the rec­ords of Sonar­ing­ton, and the rec­ords of that se­cret world are not open to us. Only on this sa­cred world of the di­vine Sons are the mys­ter­ies of in­car­na­tion and be­stowal fully known. We all know of the facts of the Mi­chael be­stowals, but we do not un­der­stand how they are ef­fected. We do not know how the ruler of a uni­verse, the cre­ator of the Mel­chiz­e­deks, can so sud­denly and mys­te­ri­ously be­come one of their num­ber and, as one of them, live among them and work as a Mel­chiz­e­dek Son for one hun­dred years. But it so hap­pened.