Machiventa Melchizedek

93:2.1It was 1,973 years be­fore the birth of Je­sus that Ma­chi­venta was be­stowed upon the hu­man races of Uran­tia. His com­ing was un­spec­tac­u­lar; his ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion was not wit­nessed by hu­man eyes. He was first ob­served by mor­tal man on that event­ful day when he en­tered the tent of Am­don, a Chaldean herder of Sume­rian ex­trac­tion. And the procla­ma­tion of his mis­sion was em­bod­ied in the sim­ple state­ment which he made to this shep­herd, “I am Mel­chiz­e­dek, priest of El Elyon, the Most High, the one and only God.”

93:2.2When the herder had re­cov­ered from his as­ton­ish­ment, and af­ter he had plied this stranger with many ques­tions, he asked Mel­chiz­e­dek to sup with him, and this was the first time in his long uni­verse ca­reer that Ma­chi­venta had par­taken of ma­te­rial food, the nour­ish­ment which was to sus­tain him through­out his ninety-four years of life as a ma­te­rial be­ing.

93:2.3And that night, as they talked out un­der the stars, Mel­chiz­e­dek be­gan his mis­sion of the rev­e­la­tion of the truth of the re­al­ity of God when, with a sweep of his arm, he turned to Am­don, say­ing, “El Elyon, the Most High, is the di­vine cre­ator of the stars of the fir­ma­ment and even of this very earth on which we live, and he is also the su­preme God of heaven.”

93:2.4Within a few years Mel­chiz­e­dek had gath­ered around him­self a group of pupils, dis­ci­ples, and be­liev­ers who formed the nu­cleus of the later com­mu­nity of Salem. He was soon known through­out Pales­tine as the priest of El Elyon, the Most High, and as the sage of Salem. Among some of the sur­round­ing tribes he was of­ten re­ferred to as the sheik, or king, of Salem. Salem was the site which af­ter the dis­ap­pear­ance of Mel­chiz­e­dek be­came the city of Je­bus, sub­se­quently be­ing called Je­ru­sa­lem.

93:2.5In per­sonal ap­pear­ance, Mel­chiz­e­dek re­sem­bled the then blended Nod­ite and Sume­rian peo­ples, be­ing al­most six feet in height and pos­sess­ing a com­mand­ing pres­ence. He spoke Chaldean and a half dozen other lan­guages. He dressed much as did the Ca­naan­ite priests ex­cept that on his breast he wore an em­blem of three con­cen­tric cir­cles, the Sa­ta­nia sym­bol of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity. In the course of his min­istry this in­signia of three con­cen­tric cir­cles be­came re­garded as so sa­cred by his fol­low­ers that they never dared to use it, and it was soon for­got­ten with the pass­ing of a few gen­er­a­tions.

93:2.6Though Ma­chi­venta lived af­ter the man­ner of the men of the realm, he never mar­ried, nor could he have left off­spring on earth. His phys­i­cal body, while re­sem­bling that of the hu­man male, was in re­al­ity on the or­der of those es­pe­cially con­structed bod­ies used by the one hun­dred ma­te­ri­al­ized mem­bers of Prince Cali­gas­tia’s staff ex­cept that it did not carry the life plasm of any hu­man race. Nor was there avail­able on Uran­tia the tree of life. Had Ma­chi­venta re­mained for any long pe­riod on earth, his phys­i­cal mech­a­nism would have grad­u­ally de­te­ri­o­rated; as it was, he ter­mi­nated his be­stowal mis­sion in ninety-four years long be­fore his ma­te­rial body had be­gun to dis­in­te­grate.

93:2.7This in­car­nated Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceived a Thought Ad­juster, who in­dwelt his super­hu­man per­son­al­ity as the mon­i­tor of time and the men­tor of the flesh, thus gain­ing that ex­pe­ri­ence and prac­ti­cal in­tro­duc­tion to Uran­tian prob­lems and to the tech­nique of in­dwelling an in­car­nated Son which en­abled this spirit of the Fa­ther to func­tion so valiantly in the hu­man mind of the later Son of God, Mi­chael, when he ap­peared on earth in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh. And this is the only Thought Ad­juster who ever func­tioned in two minds on Uran­tia, but both minds were di­vine as well as hu­man.

93:2.8Dur­ing the in­car­na­tion in the flesh, Ma­chi­venta was in full con­tact with his eleven fel­lows of the corps of plan­e­tary cus­to­di­ans, but he could not com­mu­ni­cate with other or­ders of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties. Aside from the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers, he had no more con­tact with super­hu­man in­tel­li­gences than a hu­man be­ing.