The Local Universe Sons of God

35:1.1Af­ter bring­ing into ex­is­tence the be­ings of per­sonal aid, such as the Bright and Morn­ing Star and other ad­min­is­tra­tive per­son­al­i­ties, in ac­cor­dance with the di­vine pur­pose and cre­ative plans of a given uni­verse, there oc­curs a new form of cre­ative union be­tween the Cre­ator Son and the Cre­ative Spirit, the lo­cal uni­verse Daugh­ter of the In­fi­nite Spirit. The per­son­al­ity off­spring re­sult­ing from this cre­ative part­ner­ship is the orig­i­nal Mel­chiz­e­dek—the Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek—that unique be­ing who sub­se­quently col­lab­o­rates with the Cre­ator Son and the Cre­ative Spirit to bring into ex­is­tence the en­tire group of that name.

35:1.2In the uni­verse of Neb­a­don the Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek acts as the first ex­ec­u­tive as­so­ciate of the Bright and Morn­ing Star. Ga­briel is oc­cu­pied more with uni­verse poli­cies, Mel­chiz­e­dek with prac­ti­cal pro­ce­dures. Ga­briel pre­sides over the reg­u­larly con­sti­tuted tri­bu­nals and coun­cils of Neb­a­don, Mel­chiz­e­dek over the spe­cial, ex­traor­di­nary, and emer­gency com­mis­sions and ad­vi­sory bod­ies. Ga­briel and the Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek are never away from Sal­ving­ton at the same time, for in Ga­briel’s ab­sence the Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek func­tions as the chief ex­ec­u­tive of Neb­a­don.

35:1.3The Mel­chiz­e­deks of our uni­verse were all cre­ated within one mil­len­nial pe­riod of stan­dard time by the Cre­ator Son and the Cre­ative Spirit in li­ai­son with the Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek. Be­ing an or­der of son­ship wherein one of their own num­ber func­tioned as co-or­di­nate cre­ator, Mel­chiz­e­deks are in con­sti­tu­tion partly of self-ori­gin and there­fore can­di­dates for the re­al­iza­tion of a su­per­nal type of self-gov­ern­ment. They pe­ri­od­i­cally elect their own ad­min­is­tra­tive chief for a term of seven years of stan­dard time and oth­er­wise func­tion as a self-reg­u­lat­ing or­der, though the orig­i­nal Mel­chiz­e­dek does ex­er­cise cer­tain in­her­ent co­parental pre­rog­a­tives. From time to time this Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek des­ig­nates cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als of his or­der to func­tion as spe­cial Life Car­ri­ers to the mid­sonite worlds, a type of in­hab­ited planet not here­to­fore re­vealed on Uran­tia.

35:1.4The Mel­chiz­e­deks do not func­tion ex­ten­sively out­side the lo­cal uni­verse ex­cept when they are called as wit­nesses in mat­ters pend­ing be­fore the tri­bu­nals of the super­uni­verse, and when des­ig­nated spe­cial am­bas­sadors, as they some­times are, rep­re­sent­ing one uni­verse to an­other in the same super­uni­verse. The orig­i­nal or first-born Mel­chiz­e­dek of each uni­verse is al­ways at lib­erty to jour­ney to the neigh­bor­ing uni­verses or to Par­a­dise on mis­sions hav­ing to do with the in­ter­ests and du­ties of his or­der.