Machiventa Melchizedek

93:6.1Abra­ham en­vis­aged the con­quest of all Ca­naan. His de­ter­mi­na­tion was only weak­ened by the fact that Mel­chiz­e­dek would not sanc­tion the un­der­tak­ing. But Abra­ham had about de­cided to em­bark upon the en­ter­prise when the thought that he had no son to suc­ceed him as ruler of this pro­posed king­dom be­gan to worry him. He ar­ranged an­other con­fer­ence with Mel­chiz­e­dek; and it was in the course of this in­ter­view that the priest of Salem, the vis­i­ble Son of God, per­suaded Abra­ham to aban­don his scheme of ma­te­rial con­quest and tem­po­ral rule in fa­vor of the spir­i­tual con­cept of the king­dom of heaven.

93:6.2Mel­chiz­e­dek ex­plained to Abra­ham the fu­til­ity of con­tend­ing with the Amor­ite con­fed­er­a­tion but made it equally clear that these back­ward clans were cer­tainly com­mit­ting sui­cide by their fool­ish prac­tices so that in a few gen­er­a­tions they would be so weak­ened that the de­scen­dants of Abra­ham, mean­while greatly in­creased, could eas­ily over­come them.

93:6.3And Mel­chiz­e­dek made a for­mal covenant with Abra­ham at Salem. Said he to Abra­ham: “Look now up to the heav­ens and num­ber the stars if you are able; so nu­mer­ous shall your seed be.” And Abra­ham be­lieved Mel­chiz­e­dek, “and it was counted to him for righ­teous­ness.” And then Mel­chiz­e­dek told Abra­ham the story of the fu­ture oc­cu­pa­tion of Ca­naan by his off­spring af­ter their so­journ in Egypt.

93:6.4This covenant of Mel­chiz­e­dek with Abra­ham rep­re­sents the great Uran­tian agree­ment be­tween di­vin­ity and hu­man­ity whereby God agrees to do ev­ery­thing; man only agrees to be­lieve God’s promises and fol­low his in­struc­tions. Here­to­fore it had been be­lieved that sal­va­tion could be se­cured only by works—sac­ri­fices and of­fer­ings; now, Mel­chiz­e­dek again brought to Uran­tia the good news that sal­va­tion, fa­vor with God, is to be had by faith. But this gospel of sim­ple faith in God was too ad­vanced; the Semitic tribes­men sub­se­quently pre­ferred to go back to the older sac­ri­fices and atone­ment for sin by the shed­ding of blood.

93:6.5It was not long af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of this covenant that Isaac, the son of Abra­ham, was born in ac­cor­dance with the prom­ise of Mel­chiz­e­dek. Af­ter the birth of Isaac, Abra­ham took a very solemn at­ti­tude to­ward his covenant with Mel­chiz­e­dek, go­ing over to Salem to have it stated in writ­ing. It was at this pub­lic and for­mal ac­cep­tance of the covenant that he changed his name from Abram to Abra­ham.

93:6.6Most of the Salem be­liev­ers had prac­ticed cir­cum­ci­sion, though it had never been made oblig­a­tory by Mel­chiz­e­dek. Now Abra­ham had al­ways so op­posed cir­cum­ci­sion that on this oc­ca­sion he de­cided to sol­em­nize the event by for­mally ac­cept­ing this rite in to­ken of the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Salem covenant.

93:6.7It was fol­low­ing this real and pub­lic sur­ren­der of his per­sonal am­bi­tions in be­half of the larger plans of Mel­chiz­e­dek that the three ce­les­tial be­ings ap­peared to him on the plains of Mamre. This was an ap­pear­ance of fact, not­with­stand­ing its as­so­ci­a­tion with the sub­se­quently fab­ri­cated nar­ra­tives re­lat­ing to the nat­u­ral de­struc­tion of Sodom and Go­mor­rah. And these leg­ends of the hap­pen­ings of those days in­di­cate how re­tarded were the morals and ethics of even so re­cent a time.

93:6.8Upon the con­sum­ma­tion of the solemn covenant, the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion be­tween Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek was com­plete. Abra­ham again as­sumed the civil and mil­i­tary lead­er­ship of the Salem colony, which at its height car­ried over one hun­dred thou­sand reg­u­lar tithe pay­ers on the rolls of the Mel­chiz­e­dek broth­er­hood. Abra­ham greatly im­proved the Salem tem­ple and pro­vided new tents for the en­tire school. He not only ex­tended the tithing sys­tem but also in­sti­tuted many im­proved meth­ods of con­duct­ing the busi­ness of the school, be­sides con­tribut­ing greatly to the bet­ter han­dling of the de­part­ment of mis­sion­ary pro­pa­ganda. He also did much to ef­fect im­prove­ment of the herds and the re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Salem dairy­ing projects. Abra­ham was a shrewd and ef­fi­cient busi­ness man, a wealthy man for his day; he was not overly pi­ous, but he was thor­oughly sin­cere, and he did be­lieve in Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek.