Machiventa Melchizedek

93:9.1It was a great trial for Abra­ham when Mel­chiz­e­dek so sud­denly dis­ap­peared. Al­though he had fully warned his fol­low­ers that he must some­time go as he had come, they were not rec­on­ciled to the loss of their won­der­ful leader. The great or­ga­ni­za­tion built up at Salem nearly dis­ap­peared, though the tra­di­tions of these days were what Moses built upon when he led the He­brew slaves out of Egypt.

93:9.2The loss of Mel­chiz­e­dek pro­duced a sad­ness in the heart of Abra­ham that he never fully over­came. He­bron he had aban­doned when he gave up the am­bi­tion of build­ing a ma­te­rial king­dom; and now, upon the loss of his as­so­ciate in the build­ing of the spir­i­tual king­dom, he de­parted from Salem, go­ing south to live near his in­ter­ests at Gerar.

93:9.3Abra­ham be­came fear­ful and timid im­me­di­ately af­ter the dis­ap­pear­ance of Mel­chiz­e­dek. He with­held his iden­tity upon ar­rival at Gerar, so that Abim­elech ap­pro­pri­ated his wife. (Shortly af­ter his mar­riage to Sarah, Abra­ham one night had over­heard a plot to mur­der him in or­der to get his bril­liant wife. This dread be­came a ter­ror to the oth­er­wise brave and dar­ing leader; all his life he feared that some­one would kill him se­cretly in or­der to get Sarah. And this ex­plains why, on three sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions, this brave man ex­hib­ited real cow­ardice.)

93:9.4But Abra­ham was not long to be de­terred in his mis­sion as the suc­ces­sor of Mel­chiz­e­dek. Soon he made con­verts among the Phil­is­tines and of Abim­elech’s peo­ple, made a treaty with them, and, in turn, be­came con­tam­i­nated with many of their su­per­sti­tions, par­tic­u­larly with their prac­tice of sac­ri­fic­ing first-born sons. Thus did Abra­ham again be­come a great leader in Pales­tine. He was held in rev­er­ence by all groups and hon­ored by all kings. He was the spir­i­tual leader of all the sur­round­ing tribes, and his in­flu­ence con­tin­ued for some time af­ter his death. Dur­ing the clos­ing years of his life he once more re­turned to He­bron, the scene of his ear­lier ac­tiv­i­ties and the place where he had worked in as­so­ci­a­tion with Mel­chiz­e­dek. Abra­ham’s last act was to send trusty ser­vants to the city of his brother, Na­hor, on the bor­der of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, to se­cure a woman of his own peo­ple as a wife for his son Isaac. It had long been the cus­tom of Abra­ham’s peo­ple to marry their cousins. And Abra­ham died con­fi­dent in that faith in God which he had learned from Mel­chiz­e­dek in the van­ished schools of Salem.

93:9.5It was hard for the next gen­er­a­tion to com­pre­hend the story of Mel­chiz­e­dek; within five hun­dred years many re­garded the whole nar­ra­tive as a myth. Isaac held fairly well to the teach­ings of his fa­ther and nour­ished the gospel of the Salem colony, but it was harder for Ja­cob to grasp the sig­nif­i­cance of these tra­di­tions. Joseph was a firm be­liever in Mel­chiz­e­dek and was, largely be­cause of this, re­garded by his broth­ers as a dreamer. Joseph’s honor in Egypt was chiefly due to the mem­ory of his great-grand­fa­ther Abra­ham. Joseph was of­fered mil­i­tary com­mand of the Egyp­tian armies, but be­ing such a firm be­liever in the tra­di­tions of Mel­chiz­e­dek and the later teach­ings of Abra­ham and Isaac, he elected to serve as a civil ad­min­is­tra­tor, be­liev­ing that he could thus bet­ter la­bor for the ad­vance­ment of the king­dom of heaven.

93:9.6The teach­ing of Mel­chiz­e­dek was full and re­plete, but the rec­ords of these days seemed im­pos­si­ble and fan­tas­tic to the later He­brew priests, al­though many had some un­der­stand­ing of these trans­ac­tions, at least up to the times of the en masse edit­ing of the Old Tes­ta­ment rec­ords in Baby­lon.

93:9.7What the Old Tes­ta­ment rec­ords de­scribe as con­ver­sa­tions be­tween Abra­ham and God were in re­al­ity con­fer­ences be­tween Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek. Later scribes re­garded the term Mel­chiz­e­dek as syn­ony­mous with God. The rec­ord of so many con­tacts of Abra­ham and Sarah with “the an­gel of the Lord” refers to their nu­mer­ous vis­its with Mel­chiz­e­dek.

93:9.8The He­brew nar­ra­tives of Isaac, Ja­cob, and Joseph are far more re­li­able than those about Abra­ham, al­though they also con­tain many di­ver­sions from the facts, al­ter­ations made in­ten­tion­ally and un­in­ten­tion­ally at the time of the com­pi­la­tion of these rec­ords by the He­brew priests dur­ing the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. Ke­tu­rah was not a wife of Abra­ham; like Ha­gar, she was merely a con­cu­bine. All of Abra­ham’s prop­erty went to Isaac, the son of Sarah, the sta­tus wife. Abra­ham was not so old as the rec­ords in­di­cate, and his wife was much younger. These ages were de­lib­er­ately al­tered in or­der to pro­vide for the sub­se­quent al­leged mirac­u­lous birth of Isaac.

93:9.9The na­tional ego of the Jews was tremen­dously de­pressed by the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. In their re­ac­tion against na­tional in­fe­ri­or­ity they swung to the other ex­treme of na­tional and racial ego­tism, in which they dis­torted and per­verted their tra­di­tions with the view of ex­alt­ing them­selves above all races as the cho­sen peo­ple of God; and hence they care­fully edited all their rec­ords for the pur­pose of rais­ing Abra­ham and their other na­tional lead­ers high up above all other per­sons, not ex­cept­ing Mel­chiz­e­dek him­self. The He­brew scribes there­fore de­stroyed ev­ery rec­ord of these mo­men­tous times which they could find, pre­serv­ing only the nar­ra­tive of the meet­ing of Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek af­ter the bat­tle of Sid­dim, which they deemed re­flected great honor upon Abra­ham.

93:9.10And thus, in los­ing sight of Mel­chiz­e­dek, they also lost sight of the teach­ing of this emer­gency Son re­gard­ing the spir­i­tual mis­sion of the prom­ised be­stowal Son; lost sight of the na­ture of this mis­sion so fully and com­pletely that very few of their progeny were able or will­ing to rec­og­nize and re­ceive Mi­chael when he ap­peared on earth and in the flesh as Ma­chi­venta had fore­told.

93:9.11But one of the writ­ers of the Book of He­brews un­der­stood the mis­sion of Mel­chiz­e­dek, for it is writ­ten: “This Mel­chiz­e­dek, priest of the Most High, was also king of peace; with­out fa­ther, with­out mother, with­out pedi­gree, hav­ing nei­ther be­gin­ning of days nor end of life but made like a Son of God, he abides a priest con­tin­u­ally.” This writer des­ig­nated Mel­chiz­e­dek as a type of the later be­stowal of Mi­chael, af­firm­ing that Je­sus was “a min­is­ter for­ever on the or­der of Mel­chiz­e­dek.” While this com­par­i­son was not al­to­gether for­tu­nate, it was lit­er­ally true that Christ did re­ceive pro­vi­sional ti­tle to Uran­tia “upon the or­ders of the twelve Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers” on duty at the time of his world be­stowal.