The Melchizedek Teachings in the Occident

98:7.1A Cre­ator Son did not in­car­nate in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh and be­stow him­self upon the hu­man­ity of Uran­tia to rec­on­cile an an­gry God but rather to win all man­kind to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther’s love and to the re­al­iza­tion of their son­ship with God. Af­ter all, even the great ad­vo­cate of the atone­ment doc­trine re­al­ized some­thing of this truth, for he de­clared that “God was in Christ rec­on­cil­ing the world to him­self.”

98:7.2It is not the prov­ince of this pa­per to deal with the ori­gin and dis­sem­i­na­tion of the Chris­tian re­li­gion. Suf­fice it to say that it is built around the per­son of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, the hu­manly in­car­nate Mi­chael Son of Neb­a­don, known to Uran­tia as the Christ, the anointed one. Chris­tian­ity was spread through­out the Lev­ant and Oc­ci­dent by the fol­low­ers of this Galilean, and their mis­sion­ary zeal equaled that of their il­lus­tri­ous pre­de­ces­sors, the Sethites and Salemites, as well as that of their earnest Asi­atic con­tem­po­raries, the Bud­dhist teach­ers.

98:7.3The Chris­tian re­li­gion, as a Uran­tian sys­tem of be­lief, arose through the com­pound­ing of the fol­low­ing teach­ings, in­flu­ences, be­liefs, cults, and per­sonal in­di­vid­ual at­ti­tudes:

98:7.41. The Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ings, which are a ba­sic fac­tor in all the re­li­gions of Oc­ci­dent and Ori­ent that have arisen in the last four thou­sand years.

98:7.52. The He­braic sys­tem of moral­ity, ethics, the­ol­ogy, and be­lief in both Prov­i­dence and the su­preme Yah­weh.

98:7.63. The Zoroas­trian con­cep­tion of the strug­gle be­tween cos­mic good and evil, which had al­ready left its im­print on both Ju­daism and Mith­ra­ism. Through pro­longed con­tact at­ten­dant upon the strug­gles be­tween Mith­ra­ism and Chris­tian­ity, the doc­trines of the Ira­nian prophet be­came a po­tent fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing the the­o­logic and philo­sophic cast and struc­ture of the dog­mas, tenets, and cos­mol­ogy of the Hel­le­nized and La­tinized ver­sions of the teach­ings of Je­sus.

98:7.74. The mys­tery cults, es­pe­cially Mith­ra­ism but also the wor­ship of the Great Mother in the Phry­gian cult. Even the leg­ends of the birth of Je­sus on Uran­tia be­came tainted with the Ro­man ver­sion of the mirac­u­lous birth of the Ira­nian sav­ior-hero, Mithras, whose ad­vent on earth was sup­posed to have been wit­nessed by only a hand­ful of gift-bear­ing shep­herds who had been in­formed of this im­pend­ing event by an­gels.

98:7.85. The his­toric fact of the hu­man life of Joshua ben Joseph, the re­al­ity of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth as the glo­ri­fied Christ, the Son of God.

98:7.96. The per­sonal view­point of Paul of Tar­sus. And it should be re­corded that Mith­ra­ism was the dom­i­nant re­li­gion of Tar­sus dur­ing his ado­les­cence. Paul lit­tle dreamed that his well-in­ten­tioned let­ters to his con­verts would some­day be re­garded by still later Chris­tians as the “word of God.” Such well-mean­ing teach­ers must not be held ac­count­able for the use made of their writ­ings by later-day suc­ces­sors.

98:7.107. The philo­sophic thought of the Hel­lenis­tic peo­ples, from Alexan­dria and An­ti­och through Greece to Syra­cuse and Rome. The phi­los­o­phy of the Greeks was more in har­mony with Paul’s ver­sion of Chris­tian­ity than with any other cur­rent re­li­gious sys­tem and be­came an im­por­tant fac­tor in the suc­cess of Chris­tian­ity in the Oc­ci­dent. Greek phi­los­o­phy, cou­pled with Paul’s the­ol­ogy, still forms the ba­sis of Eu­ro­pean ethics.

98:7.11As the orig­i­nal teach­ings of Je­sus pen­e­trated the Oc­ci­dent, they be­came Oc­ci­den­tal­ized, and as they be­came Oc­ci­den­tal­ized, they be­gan to lose their po­ten­tially uni­ver­sal ap­peal to all races and kinds of men. Chris­tian­ity, to­day, has be­come a re­li­gion well adapted to the so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal mores of the white races. It has long since ceased to be the re­li­gion of Je­sus, al­though it still valiantly por­trays a beau­ti­ful re­li­gion about Je­sus to such in­di­vid­u­als as sin­cerely seek to fol­low in the way of its teach­ing. It has glo­ri­fied Je­sus as the Christ, the Mes­sianic anointed one from God, but has largely for­got­ten the Mas­ter’s per­sonal gospel: the Fa­ther­hood of God and the uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood of all men.

98:7.12And this is the long story of the teach­ings of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek on Uran­tia. It is nearly four thou­sand years since this emer­gency Son of Neb­a­don be­stowed him­self on Uran­tia, and in that time the teach­ings of the “priest of El Elyon, the Most High God,” have pen­e­trated to all races and peo­ples. And Ma­chi­venta was suc­cess­ful in achiev­ing the pur­pose of his un­usual be­stowal; when Mi­chael made ready to ap­pear on Uran­tia, the God con­cept was ex­is­tent in the hearts of men and women, the same God con­cept that still flames anew in the liv­ing spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the man­i­fold chil­dren of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther as they live their in­trigu­ing tem­po­ral lives on the whirling plan­ets of space.

98:7.13[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek of Neb­a­don.]