The Melchizedek Teachings in the Levant

95:6.1From Pales­tine some of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies passed on through Mes­o­po­ta­mia and to the great Ira­nian pla­teau. For more than five hun­dred years the Salem teach­ers made head­way in Iran, and the whole na­tion was swing­ing to the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­li­gion when a change of rulers pre­cip­i­tated a bit­ter per­se­cu­tion which prac­ti­cally ended the mono­the­is­tic teach­ings of the Salem cult. The doc­trine of the Abra­hamic covenant was vir­tu­ally ex­tinct in Per­sia when, in that great cen­tury of moral re­nais­sance, the sixth be­fore Christ, Zoroaster ap­peared to re­vive the smoul­der­ing em­bers of the Salem gospel.

95:6.2This founder of a new re­li­gion was a vir­ile and ad­ven­tur­ous youth, who, on his first pil­grim­age to Ur in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, had learned of the tra­di­tions of the Cali­gas­tia and the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion—along with many other tra­di­tions—all of which had made a strong ap­peal to his re­li­gious na­ture. Ac­cord­ingly, as the re­sult of a dream while in Ur, he set­tled upon a pro­gram of re­turn­ing to his north­ern home to un­der­take the re­mod­el­ing of the re­li­gion of his peo­ple. He had im­bibed the He­braic idea of a God of jus­tice, the Mo­saic con­cept of di­vin­ity. The idea of a su­preme God was clear in his mind, and he set down all other gods as dev­ils, con­signed them to the ranks of the demons of which he had heard in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. He had learned of the story of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its as the tra­di­tion lin­gered in Ur, and, ac­cord­ingly, he cre­ated a galaxy of seven su­preme gods with Ahura-Mazda at its head. These sub­or­di­nate gods he as­so­ci­ated with the ide­al­iza­tion of Right Law, Good Thought, No­ble Gov­ern­ment, Holy Char­ac­ter, Health, and Im­mor­tal­ity.

95:6.3And this new re­li­gion was one of ac­tion—work—not prayers and rit­u­als. Its God was a be­ing of su­preme wis­dom and the pa­tron of civ­i­liza­tion; it was a mil­i­tant re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy which dared to bat­tle with evil, in­ac­tion, and back­ward­ness.

95:6.4Zoroaster did not teach the wor­ship of fire but sought to uti­lize the flame as a sym­bol of the pure and wise Spirit of uni­ver­sal and su­preme dom­i­nance. (All too true, his later fol­low­ers did both rev­er­ence and wor­ship this sym­bolic fire.) Fi­nally, upon the con­ver­sion of an Ira­nian prince, this new re­li­gion was spread by the sword. And Zoroaster hero­ically died in bat­tle for that which he be­lieved was the “truth of the Lord of light.”

95:6.5Zoroas­tri­an­ism is the only Uran­tian creed that per­pet­u­ates the Dala­ma­tian and Edenic teach­ings about the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its. While fail­ing to evolve the Trin­ity con­cept, it did in a cer­tain way ap­proach that of God the Sev­en­fold. Orig­i­nal Zoroas­tri­an­ism was not a pure du­al­ism; though the early teach­ings did pic­ture evil as a time co-or­di­nate of good­ness, it was def­i­nitely eter­nity-sub­merged in the ul­ti­mate re­al­ity of the good. Only in later times did the be­lief gain cre­dence that good and evil con­tended on equal terms.

95:6.6The Jew­ish tra­di­tions of heaven and hell and the doc­trine of dev­ils as re­corded in the He­brew scrip­tures, while founded on the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia, were prin­ci­pally de­rived from the Zoroas­tri­ans dur­ing the times when the Jews were un­der the po­lit­i­cal and cul­tural dom­i­nance of the Per­sians. Zoroaster, like the Egyp­tians, taught the “day of judg­ment,” but he con­nected this event with the end of the world.

95:6.7Even the re­li­gion which suc­ceeded Zoroas­tri­an­ism in Per­sia was markedly in­flu­enced by it. When the Ira­nian priests sought to over­throw the teach­ings of Zoroaster, they res­ur­rected the an­cient wor­ship of Mithra. And Mith­ra­ism spread through­out the Lev­ant and Med­i­ter­ra­nean re­gions, be­ing for some time a con­tem­po­rary of both Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity. The teach­ings of Zoroaster thus came suc­ces­sively to im­press three great re­li­gions: Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity and, through them, Mo­hammedanism.

95:6.8But it is a far cry from the ex­alted teach­ings and no­ble psalms of Zoroaster to the mod­ern per­ver­sions of his gospel by the Parsees with their great fear of the dead, cou­pled with the en­ter­tain­ment of be­liefs in soph­ist­ries which Zoroaster never stooped to coun­te­nance.

95:6.9This great man was one of that unique group that sprang up in the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ to keep the light of Salem from be­ing fully and fi­nally ex­tin­guished as it so dimly burned to show man in his dark­ened world the path of light lead­ing to ev­er­last­ing life.