Machiventa Melchizedek

93:5.1Al­though it may be an er­ror to speak of “cho­sen peo­ple,” it is not a mis­take to re­fer to Abra­ham as a cho­sen in­di­vid­ual. Mel­chiz­e­dek did lay upon Abra­ham the re­spon­si­bil­ity of keep­ing alive the truth of one God as dis­tin­guished from the pre­vail­ing be­lief in plu­ral de­i­ties.

93:5.2The choice of Pales­tine as the site for Ma­chi­venta’s ac­tiv­i­ties was in part pred­i­cated upon the de­sire to es­tab­lish con­tact with some hu­man fam­ily em­body­ing the po­ten­tials of lead­er­ship. At the time of the in­car­na­tion of Mel­chiz­e­dek there were many fam­i­lies on earth just as well pre­pared to re­ceive the doc­trine of Salem as was that of Abra­ham. There were equally en­dowed fam­i­lies among the red men, the yel­low men, and the de­scen­dants of the And­ites to the west and north. But, again, none of these lo­cal­i­ties were so fa­vor­ably sit­u­ated for Mi­chael’s sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance on earth as was the east­ern shore of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea. The Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion in Pales­tine and the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Mi­chael among the He­brew peo­ple were in no small mea­sure de­ter­mined by ge­og­ra­phy, by the fact that Pales­tine was cen­trally lo­cated with ref­er­ence to the then ex­is­tent trade, travel, and civ­i­liza­tion of the world.

93:5.3For some time the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers had been ob­serv­ing the an­ces­tors of Abra­ham, and they con­fi­dently ex­pected off­spring in a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion who would be char­ac­ter­ized by in­tel­li­gence, ini­tia­tive, sagac­ity, and sin­cer­ity. The chil­dren of Terah, the fa­ther of Abra­ham, in ev­ery way met these ex­pec­ta­tions. It was this pos­si­bil­ity of con­tact with these ver­sa­tile chil­dren of Terah that had con­sid­er­able to do with the ap­pear­ance of Ma­chi­venta at Salem, rather than in Egypt, China, In­dia, or among the north­ern tribes.

93:5.4Terah and his whole fam­ily were half­hearted con­verts to the Salem re­li­gion, which had been preached in Chaldea; they learned of Mel­chiz­e­dek through the preach­ing of Ovid, a Phoeni­cian teacher who pro­claimed the Salem doc­trines in Ur. They left Ur in­tend­ing to go di­rectly through to Salem, but Na­hor, Abra­ham’s brother, not hav­ing seen Mel­chiz­e­dek, was luke­warm and per­suaded them to tarry at Ha­ran. And it was a long time af­ter they ar­rived in Pales­tine be­fore they were will­ing to de­stroy all of the house­hold gods they had brought with them; they were slow to give up the many gods of Mes­o­po­ta­mia for the one God of Salem.

93:5.5A few weeks af­ter the death of Abra­ham’s fa­ther, Terah, Mel­chiz­e­dek sent one of his stu­dents, Jaram the Hit­tite, to ex­tend this in­vi­ta­tion to both Abra­ham and Na­hor: “Come to Salem, where you shall hear our teach­ings of the truth of the eter­nal Cre­ator, and in the en­light­ened off­spring of you two broth­ers shall all the world be blessed.” Now Na­hor had not wholly ac­cepted the Mel­chiz­e­dek gospel; he re­mained be­hind and built up a strong city-state which bore his name; but Lot, Abra­ham’s nephew, de­cided to go with his un­cle to Salem.

93:5.6Upon ar­riv­ing at Salem, Abra­ham and Lot chose a hilly fast­ness near the city where they could de­fend them­selves against the many sur­prise at­tacks of north­ern raiders. At this time the Hit­tites, As­syr­i­ans, Phil­is­tines, and other groups were con­stantly raid­ing the tribes of cen­tral and south­ern Pales­tine. From their stronghold in the hills Abra­ham and Lot made fre­quent pil­grim­ages to Salem.

93:5.7Not long af­ter they had es­tab­lished them­selves near Salem, Abra­ham and Lot jour­neyed to the val­ley of the Nile to ob­tain food sup­plies as there was then a drought in Pales­tine. Dur­ing his brief so­journ in Egypt Abra­ham found a dis­tant rel­a­tive on the Egyp­tian throne, and he served as the com­man­der of two very suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary ex­pe­di­tions for this king. Dur­ing the lat­ter part of his so­journ on the Nile he and his wife, Sarah, lived at court, and when leav­ing Egypt, he was given a share of the spoils of his mil­i­tary cam­paigns.

93:5.8It re­quired great de­ter­mi­na­tion for Abra­ham to forgo the hon­ors of the Egyp­tian court and re­turn to the more spir­i­tual work spon­sored by Ma­chi­venta. But Mel­chiz­e­dek was revered even in Egypt, and when the full story was laid be­fore Pharaoh, he strongly urged Abra­ham to re­turn to the ex­e­cu­tion of his vows to the cause of Salem.

93:5.9Abra­ham had kingly am­bi­tions, and on the way back from Egypt he laid be­fore Lot his plan to sub­due all Ca­naan and bring its peo­ple un­der the rule of Salem. Lot was more bent on busi­ness; so, af­ter a later dis­agree­ment, he went to Sodom to en­gage in trade and an­i­mal hus­bandry. Lot liked nei­ther a mil­i­tary nor a herder’s life.

93:5.10Upon re­turn­ing with his fam­ily to Salem, Abra­ham be­gan to ma­ture his mil­i­tary proj­ects. He was soon rec­og­nized as the civil ruler of the Salem ter­ri­tory and had con­fed­er­ated un­der his lead­er­ship seven near-by tribes. In­deed, it was with great dif­fi­culty that Mel­chiz­e­dek re­strained Abra­ham, who was fired with a zeal to go forth and round up the neigh­bor­ing tribes with the sword that they might thus more quickly be brought to a knowl­edge of the Salem truths.

93:5.11Mel­chiz­e­dek main­tained peace­ful re­la­tions with all the sur­round­ing tribes; he was not mil­i­taris­tic and was never at­tacked by any of the armies as they moved back and forth. He was en­tirely will­ing that Abra­ham should for­mu­late a de­fen­sive pol­icy for Salem such as was sub­se­quently put into ef­fect, but he would not ap­prove of his pupil’s am­bi­tious schemes for con­quest; so there oc­curred a friendly sev­er­ance of re­la­tion­ship, Abra­ham go­ing over to He­bron to es­tab­lish his mil­i­tary cap­i­tal.

93:5.12Abra­ham, be­cause of his close con­nec­tion with the il­lus­tri­ous Mel­chiz­e­dek, pos­sessed great ad­van­tage over the sur­round­ing petty kings; they all revered Mel­chiz­e­dek and un­duly feared Abra­ham. Abra­ham knew of this fear and only awaited an op­por­tune oc­ca­sion to at­tack his neigh­bors, and this ex­cuse came when some of these rulers pre­sumed to raid the prop­erty of his nephew Lot, who dwelt in Sodom. Upon hear­ing of this, Abra­ham, at the head of his seven con­fed­er­ated tribes, moved on the en­emy. His own body­guard of 318 of­fi­cered the army, num­ber­ing more than 4,000, which struck at this time.

93:5.13When Mel­chiz­e­dek heard of Abra­ham’s dec­la­ra­tion of war, he went forth to dis­suade him but only caught up with his for­mer dis­ci­ple as he re­turned vic­to­ri­ous from the bat­tle. Abra­ham in­sisted that the God of Salem had given him vic­tory over his en­e­mies and per­sisted in giv­ing a tenth of his spoils to the Salem trea­sury. The other ninety per cent he re­moved to his cap­i­tal at He­bron.

93:5.14Af­ter this bat­tle of Sid­dim, Abra­ham be­came leader of a sec­ond con­fed­er­a­tion of eleven tribes and not only paid tithes to Mel­chiz­e­dek but saw to it that all oth­ers in that vicin­ity did the same. His diplo­matic deal­ings with the king of Sodom, to­gether with the fear in which he was so gen­er­ally held, re­sulted in the king of Sodom and oth­ers join­ing the He­bron mil­i­tary con­fed­er­a­tion; Abra­ham was re­ally well on the way to es­tab­lish­ing a pow­er­ful state in Pales­tine.