Melchizedek, Machiventa

• appeared at Salem to contact children of Terah
• Prince of Salem

35:4.5The Mel­chiz­e­dek who lived on Uran­tia dur­ing the time of Abra­ham was lo­cally known as Prince of Salem be­cause he pre­sided over a small colony of truth seek­ers re­sid­ing at a place called Salem. He vol­un­teered to in­car­nate in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh and did so with the ap­proval of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers of the planet, who feared that the light of life would be­come ex­tin­guished dur­ing that pe­riod of in­creas­ing spir­i­tual dark­ness. And he did fos­ter the truth of his day and safely pass it on to Abra­ham and his as­so­ciates.

• teachings › revealed Most High to Abraham

43:5.17Ev­ery quar­an­tined or iso­lated world has a Vo­ron­da­dek Son act­ing as an ob­server. He does not par­tic­i­pate in plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion ex­cept when or­dered by the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther to in­ter­vene in the af­fairs of the na­tions. Ac­tu­ally it is this Most High ob­server who “rules in the king­doms of men.” Uran­tia is one of the iso­lated worlds of Nor­la­ti­adek, and a Vo­ron­da­dek ob­server has been sta­tioned on the planet ever since the Cali­gas­tia be­trayal. When Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek min­is­tered in semi­ma­te­rial form on Uran­tia, he paid re­spect­ful homage to the Most High ob­server then on duty, as it is writ­ten, “And Mel­chiz­e­dek, king of Salem, was the priest of the Most High.” Mel­chiz­e­dek re­vealed the re­la­tions of this Most High ob­server to Abra­ham when he said, “And blessed be the Most High, who has de­liv­ered your en­e­mies into your hand.”

• since his incarnation › headquarters on Jerusem
• since his incarnation › member of 24 counselors
• since his incarnation › vicegerent Planetary Prince of Urantia

45:4.1614. Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, the only Son of this or­der to be­stow him­self upon the Uran­tia races. While still num­bered as a Mel­chiz­e­dek, he has be­come “for­ever a min­is­ter of the Most Highs,” eter­nally as­sum­ing the as­sign­ment of ser­vice as a mor­tal as­cender, hav­ing so­journed on Uran­tia in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh at Salem in the days of Abra­ham. This Mel­chiz­e­dek has lat­terly been pro­claimed vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia with head­quar­ters on Je­ru­sem and au­thor­ity to act in be­half of Mi­chael, who is ac­tu­ally the Plan­e­tary Prince of the world whereon he ex­pe­ri­enced his ter­mi­nal be­stowal in hu­man form. Not­with­stand­ing this, Uran­tia is still super­vised by suc­ces­sive res­i­dent gov­er­nors gen­eral, mem­bers of the four and twenty coun­selors.

• Prince of Salem

51:3.9Your world has been vis­ited by four or­ders of son­ship: Cali­gas­tia, the Plan­e­tary Prince; Adam and Eve of the Ma­te­rial Sons of God; Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, the “sage of Salem” in the days of Abra­ham; and Christ Mi­chael, who came as the Par­a­dise be­stowal Son. How much more ef­fec­tive and beau­ti­ful it would have been had Mi­chael, the su­preme ruler of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don, been wel­comed to your world by a loyal and ef­fi­cient Plan­e­tary Prince and a de­voted and suc­cess­ful Ma­te­rial Son, both of whom could have done so much to en­hance the life­work and mis­sion of the be­stowal Son! But not all worlds have been so un­for­tu­nate as Uran­tia, nei­ther has the mis­sion of the Plan­e­tary Adams al­ways been so dif­fi­cult or so haz­ardous. When they are suc­cess­ful, they con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of a great peo­ple, con­tin­u­ing as the vis­i­ble heads of plan­e­tary af­fairs even far into the age when such a world is set­tled in light and life.

• since his incarnation › future Planetary Sovereign of Urantia?

55:7.3When such an era is at­tained on your world, no doubt Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, now the vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia, will oc­cupy the seat of the Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eign; and it has long been con­jec­tured on Je­ru­sem that he will be ac­com­pa­nied by a son and daugh­ter of the Uran­tia Adam and Eve who are now held on Eden­tia as wards of the Most Highs of Nor­la­ti­adek. These chil­dren of Adam might so serve on Uran­tia in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mel­chiz­e­dek-Sov­er­eign since they were de­prived of pro­cre­ative pow­ers al­most 37,000 years ago at the time they gave up their ma­te­rial bod­ies on Uran­tia in prepa­ra­tion for tran­sit to Eden­tia.

• co-authored Paper 56

56:10.22[Pre­sented by a Mighty Mes­sen­ger vis­it­ing on Uran­tia, by re­quest of the Neb­a­don Rev­e­la­tory Corps and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a cer­tain Mel­chiz­e­dek, the vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia.]

• enormously curtailed Caligastia’s power to disturb

66:8.5The power of the fallen Prince to dis­turb hu­man af­fairs was enor­mously cur­tailed by the mor­tal in­car­na­tion of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek in the days of Abra­ham; and sub­se­quently, dur­ing the life of Mi­chael in the flesh, this traitorous Prince was fi­nally shorn of all au­thor­ity on Uran­tia.

• laid foundations for spiritual rehabilitation of Urantia

76:5.6The super­ma­te­rial gov­ern­ment of Uran­tia, un­der the di­rec­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­deks, con­tin­ued, but di­rect phys­i­cal con­tact with the evo­lu­tion­ary races had been sev­ered. From the dis­tant days of the ar­rival of the cor­po­real staff of the Plan­e­tary Prince, down through the times of Van and Amadon to the ar­rival of Adam and Eve, phys­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the uni­verse gov­ern­ment had been sta­tioned on the planet. But with the Adamic de­fault this regime, ex­tend­ing over a pe­riod of more than four hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years, came to an end. In the spir­i­tual spheres, an­gelic helpers con­tin­ued to strug­gle in con­junc­tion with the Thought Ad­justers, both work­ing hero­ically for the sal­vage of the in­di­vid­ual; but no com­pre­hen­sive plan for far-reach­ing world wel­fare was pro­mul­gated to the mor­tals of earth un­til the ar­rival of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, in the times of Abra­ham, who, with the power, pa­tience, and au­thor­ity of a Son of God, did lay the foun­da­tions for the fur­ther up­lift and spir­i­tual re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of un­for­tu­nate Uran­tia.

• teachings › cardinal precepts were trust and faith
• teachings › were the 3rd epochal revelation

92:4.73. Mel­chiz­e­dek of Salem. This emer­gency Son of Neb­a­don in­au­gu­rated the third rev­e­la­tion of truth on Uran­tia. The car­di­nal pre­cepts of his teach­ings were trust and faith. He taught trust in the om­nipo­tent benef­i­cence of God and pro­claimed that faith was the act by which men earned God’s fa­vor. His teach­ings grad­u­ally com­min­gled with the be­liefs and prac­tices of var­i­ous evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions and fi­nally de­vel­oped into those the­o­logic sys­tems pres­ent on Uran­tia at the open­ing of the first mil­len­nium af­ter Christ.

• incarnated 1973 years before birth of Jesus

93:2.1It was 1,973 years be­fore the birth of Je­sus that Ma­chi­venta was be­stowed upon the hu­man races of Uran­tia. His com­ing was un­spec­tac­u­lar; his ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion was not wit­nessed by hu­man eyes. He was first ob­served by mor­tal man on that event­ful day when he en­tered the tent of Am­don, a Chaldean herder of Sume­rian ex­trac­tion. And the procla­ma­tion of his mis­sion was em­bod­ied in the sim­ple state­ment which he made to this shep­herd, “I am Mel­chiz­e­dek, priest of El Elyon, the Most High, the one and only God.”

• personal details › lived 94 years as material being; sustained by material food

93:2.2When the herder had re­cov­ered from his as­ton­ish­ment, and af­ter he had plied this stranger with many ques­tions, he asked Mel­chiz­e­dek to sup with him, and this was the first time in his long uni­verse ca­reer that Ma­chi­venta had par­taken of ma­te­rial food, the nour­ish­ment which was to sus­tain him through­out his ninety-four years of life as a ma­te­rial be­ing.

• personal details › 6-foot tall Nodite in appearance; dressed like a priest
• personal details › lived 94 years as material being; sustained by material food
• personal details › spoke Chaldean and 6 other languages
• personal details › wore 3 concentric circles

93:2.5In per­sonal ap­pear­ance, Mel­chiz­e­dek re­sem­bled the then blended Nod­ite and Sume­rian peo­ples, be­ing al­most six feet in height and pos­sess­ing a com­mand­ing pres­ence. He spoke Chaldean and a half dozen other lan­guages. He dressed much as did the Ca­naan­ite priests ex­cept that on his breast he wore an em­blem of three con­cen­tric cir­cles, the Sa­ta­nia sym­bol of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity. In the course of his min­istry this in­signia of three con­cen­tric cir­cles be­came re­garded as so sa­cred by his fol­low­ers that they never dared to use it, and it was soon for­got­ten with the pass­ing of a few gen­er­a­tions.

• personal details › never married, could not have left offspring

93:2.6Though Ma­chi­venta lived af­ter the man­ner of the men of the realm, he never mar­ried, nor could he have left off­spring on earth. His phys­i­cal body, while re­sem­bling that of the hu­man male, was in re­al­ity on the or­der of those es­pe­cially con­structed bod­ies used by the one hun­dred ma­te­ri­al­ized mem­bers of Prince Cali­gas­tia’s staff ex­cept that it did not carry the life plasm of any hu­man race. Nor was there avail­able on Uran­tia the tree of life. Had Ma­chi­venta re­mained for any long pe­riod on earth, his phys­i­cal mech­a­nism would have grad­u­ally de­te­ri­o­rated; as it was, he ter­mi­nated his be­stowal mis­sion in ninety-four years long be­fore his ma­te­rial body had be­gun to dis­in­te­grate.

• indwelt by Adjuster that later served Jesus

93:2.7This in­car­nated Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceived a Thought Ad­juster, who in­dwelt his super­hu­man per­son­al­ity as the mon­i­tor of time and the men­tor of the flesh, thus gain­ing that ex­pe­ri­ence and prac­ti­cal in­tro­duc­tion to Uran­tian prob­lems and to the tech­nique of in­dwelling an in­car­nated Son which en­abled this spirit of the Fa­ther to func­tion so valiantly in the hu­man mind of the later Son of God, Mi­chael, when he ap­peared on earth in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh. And this is the only Thought Ad­juster who ever func­tioned in two minds on Uran­tia, but both minds were di­vine as well as hu­man.

• personal details › in full contact with his 11 Melchizedek fellows

93:2.8Dur­ing the in­car­na­tion in the flesh, Ma­chi­venta was in full con­tact with his eleven fel­lows of the corps of plan­e­tary cus­to­di­ans, but he could not com­mu­ni­cate with other or­ders of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties. Aside from the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers, he had no more con­tact with super­hu­man in­tel­li­gences than a hu­man be­ing.

• organized schools at Salem on Sethite model

93:3.1With the pass­ing of a decade, Mel­chiz­e­dek or­ga­nized his schools at Salem, pat­tern­ing them on the olden sys­tem which had been de­vel­oped by the early Sethite priests of the sec­ond Eden. Even the idea of a tithing sys­tem, which was in­tro­duced by his later con­vert Abra­ham, was also de­rived from the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of the meth­ods of the an­cient Sethites.

• teachings › subordinated everything to doctrine of one God

93:3.6Mel­chiz­e­dek taught his fol­low­ers all they had ca­pac­ity to re­ceive and as­sim­i­late. Even many mod­ern re­li­gious ideas about heaven and earth, of man, God, and an­gels, are not far re­moved from these teach­ings of Mel­chiz­e­dek. But this great teacher sub­or­di­nated ev­ery­thing to the doc­trine of one God, a uni­verse De­ity, a heav­enly Cre­ator, a di­vine Fa­ther. Em­pha­sis was placed upon this teach­ing for the pur­pose of ap­peal­ing to man’s ado­ra­tion and of prepar­ing the way for the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Mi­chael as the Son of this same Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• teachings › taught advent of another Son of God

93:3.7Mel­chiz­e­dek taught that at some fu­ture time an­other Son of God would come in the flesh as he had come, but that he would be born of a woman; and that is why nu­mer­ous later teach­ers held that Je­sus was a priest, or min­is­ter, “for­ever af­ter the or­der of Mel­chiz­e­dek.”

• teachings › creed and commandments

93:4.1The cer­e­monies of the Salem wor­ship were very sim­ple. Ev­ery per­son who signed or marked the clay-tablet rolls of the Mel­chiz­e­dek church com­mit­ted to mem­ory, and sub­scribed to, the fol­low­ing be­lief:

93:4.21. I be­lieve in El Elyon, the Most High God, the only Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and Cre­ator of all things.

93:4.32. I ac­cept the Mel­chiz­e­dek covenant with the Most High, which be­stows the fa­vor of God on my faith, not on sac­ri­fices and burnt of­fer­ings.

93:4.43. I prom­ise to obey the seven com­mand­ments of Mel­chiz­e­dek and to tell the good news of this covenant with the Most High to all men.

93:4.5And that was the whole of the creed of the Salem colony. But even such a short and sim­ple dec­la­ra­tion of faith was al­to­gether too much and too ad­vanced for the men of those days. They sim­ply could not grasp the idea of get­ting di­vine fa­vor for noth­ing—by faith. They were too deeply con­firmed in the be­lief that man was born un­der for­feit to the gods. Too long and too earnestly had they sac­ri­ficed and made gifts to the priests to be able to com­pre­hend the good news that sal­va­tion, di­vine fa­vor, was a free gift to all who would be­lieve in the Mel­chiz­e­dek covenant. But Abra­ham did be­lieve half­heart­edly, and even that was “counted for righ­teous­ness.”

93:4.6The seven com­mand­ments pro­mul­gated by Mel­chiz­e­dek were pat­terned along the lines of the an­cient Dala­ma­tian su­preme law and very much re­sem­bled the seven com­mands taught in the first and sec­ond Edens. These com­mands of the Salem re­li­gion were:

93:4.71. You shall not serve any God but the Most High Cre­ator of heaven and earth.

93:4.82. You shall not doubt that faith is the only re­quire­ment for eter­nal sal­va­tion.

93:4.93. You shall not bear false wit­ness.

93:4.104. You shall not kill.

93:4.115. You shall not steal.

93:4.126. You shall not com­mit adul­tery.

93:4.137. You shall not show dis­re­spect for your par­ents and el­ders.

• failed to eradicate followers’ proclivity to sacrifice

93:4.14While no sac­ri­fices were per­mit­ted within the colony, Mel­chiz­e­dek well knew how dif­fi­cult it is to sud­denly up­root long-es­tab­lished cus­toms and ac­cord­ingly had wisely of­fered these peo­ple the sub­sti­tute of a sacra­ment of bread and wine for the older sac­ri­fice of flesh and blood. It is of rec­ord, “Mel­chiz­e­dek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine.” But even this cau­tious in­no­va­tion was not al­to­gether suc­cess­ful; the var­i­ous tribes all main­tained aux­il­iary cen­ters on the out­skirts of Salem where they of­fered sac­ri­fices and burnt of­fer­ings. Even Abra­ham re­sorted to this bar­barous prac­tice af­ter his vic­tory over Ched­or­la­o­mer; he sim­ply did not feel quite at ease un­til he had of­fered a con­ven­tional sac­ri­fice. And Mel­chiz­e­dek never did suc­ceed in fully erad­i­cat­ing this pro­cliv­ity to sac­ri­fice from the re­li­gious prac­tices of his fol­low­ers, even of Abra­ham.

• did not attempt to reform mores

93:4.15Like Je­sus, Mel­chiz­e­dek at­tended strictly to the ful­fill­ment of the mis­sion of his be­stowal. He did not at­tempt to re­form the mores, to change the habits of the world, nor to pro­mul­gate even ad­vanced san­i­tary prac­tices or sci­en­tific truths. He came to achieve two tasks: to keep alive on earth the truth of the one God and to pre­pare the way for the sub­se­quent mor­tal be­stowal of a Par­a­dise Son of that Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• appeared at Salem to contact children of Terah

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.

• maintained peaceful relations with surrounding tribes

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.

93:6.1Abra­ham 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.

• appearance and departure unannounced
• departure

93:8.1It was shortly af­ter the de­struc­tion of Sodom and Go­mor­rah that Ma­chi­venta de­cided to end his emer­gency be­stowal on Uran­tia. Mel­chiz­e­dek’s de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate his so­journ in the flesh was in­flu­enced by nu­mer­ous con­di­tions, chief of which was the grow­ing ten­dency of the sur­round­ing tribes, and even of his im­me­di­ate as­so­ciates, to re­gard him as a demigod, to look upon him as a super­nat­u­ral be­ing, which in­deed he was; but they were be­gin­ning to rev­er­ence him un­duly and with a highly su­per­sti­tious fear. In ad­di­tion to these rea­sons, Mel­chiz­e­dek wanted to leave the scene of his earthly ac­tiv­i­ties a suf­fi­cient length of time be­fore Abra­ham’s death to in­sure that the truth of the one and only God would be­come strongly es­tab­lished in the minds of his fol­low­ers. Ac­cord­ingly Ma­chi­venta re­tired one night to his tent at Salem, hav­ing said good night to his hu­man com­pan­ions, and when they went to call him in the morn­ing, he was not there, for his fel­lows had taken him.

• departure

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.

• Hebrew scribes destroyed almost every record of

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.

93:10.1Dur­ing the years of Ma­chi­venta’s in­car­na­tion the Uran­tia Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers func­tioned as eleven. When Ma­chi­venta con­sid­ered that his mis­sion as an emer­gency Son was fin­ished, he sig­nal­ized this fact to his eleven as­so­ciates, and they im­me­di­ately made ready the tech­nique whereby he was to be re­leased from the flesh and safely re­stored to his orig­i­nal Mel­chiz­e­dek sta­tus. And on the third day af­ter his dis­ap­pear­ance from Salem he ap­peared among his eleven fel­lows of the Uran­tia as­sign­ment and re­sumed his in­ter­rupted ca­reer as one of the plan­e­tary re­ceivers of 606 of Sa­ta­nia.

• appearance and departure unannounced

93:10.2Ma­chi­venta ter­mi­nated his be­stowal as a crea­ture of flesh and blood just as sud­denly and un­cer­e­mo­ni­ously as he had be­gun it. Nei­ther his ap­pear­ance nor de­par­ture were ac­com­pa­nied by any un­usual an­nounce­ment or dem­on­stra­tion; nei­ther res­ur­rec­tion roll call nor end­ing of plan­e­tary dis­pen­sa­tion marked his ap­pear­ance on Uran­tia; his was an emer­gency be­stowal. But Ma­chi­venta did not end his so­journ in the flesh of hu­man be­ings un­til he had been duly re­leased by the Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek and had been in­formed that his emer­gency be­stowal had re­ceived the ap­proval of the chief ex­ec­u­tive of Neb­a­don, Ga­briel of Sal­ving­ton.

93:10.3Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek con­tin­ued to take a great in­ter­est in the af­fairs of the de­scen­dants of those men who had be­lieved in his teach­ings when he was in the flesh. But the progeny of Abra­ham through Isaac as in­ter­mar­ried with the Ken­ites were the only line which long con­tin­ued to nour­ish any clear con­cept of the Salem teach­ings.

• since his incarnation › has collaborated with many prophets and seers

93:10.4This same Mel­chiz­e­dek con­tin­ued to col­lab­o­rate through­out the nine­teen suc­ceed­ing cen­turies with the many proph­ets and seers, thus en­deav­or­ing to keep alive the truths of Salem un­til the full­ness of the time for Mi­chael’s ap­pear­ance on earth.

• since his incarnation › member of 24 counselors
• since his incarnation › vicegerent Planetary Prince of Urantia

93:10.5Ma­chi­venta con­tin­ued as a plan­e­tary re­ceiver up to the times of the tri­umph of Mi­chael on Uran­tia. Sub­se­quently, he was at­tached to the Uran­tia ser­vice on Je­ru­sem as one of the four and twenty di­rec­tors, only just re­cently hav­ing been el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of per­sonal am­bas­sador on Je­ru­sem of the Cre­ator Son, bear­ing the ti­tle Vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia. It is our be­lief that, as long as Uran­tia re­mains an in­hab­ited planet, Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek will not be fully re­turned to the du­ties of his or­der of son­ship but will re­main, speak­ing in the terms of time, for­ever a plan­e­tary min­is­ter rep­re­sent­ing Christ Mi­chael.

• since his incarnation › future Planetary Sovereign of Urantia?

93:10.6As his was an emer­gency be­stowal on Uran­tia, it does not ap­pear from the rec­ords what Ma­chi­venta’s fu­ture may be. It may de­velop that the Mel­chiz­e­dek corps of Neb­a­don have sus­tained the per­ma­nent loss of one of their num­ber. Re­cent rul­ings handed down from the Most Highs of Eden­tia, and later con­firmed by the An­cients of Days of Uversa, strongly sug­gest that this be­stowal Mel­chiz­e­dek is des­tined to take the place of the fallen Plan­e­tary Prince, Cali­gas­tia. If our con­jec­tures in this re­spect are cor­rect, it is al­to­gether pos­si­ble that Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek may again ap­pear in per­son on Uran­tia and in some mod­i­fied man­ner re­sume the role of the de­throned Plan­e­tary Prince, or else ap­pear on earth to func­tion as vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince rep­re­sent­ing Christ Mi­chael, who now ac­tu­ally holds the ti­tle of Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia. While it is far from clear to us as to what Ma­chi­venta’s des­tiny may be, nev­er­the­less, events which have so re­cently taken place strongly sug­gest that the fore­go­ing con­jec­tures are prob­a­bly not far from the truth.

93:10.7We well un­der­stand how, by his tri­umph on Uran­tia, Mi­chael be­came the suc­ces­sor of both Cali­gas­tia and Adam; how he be­came the plan­e­tary Prince of Peace and the sec­ond Adam. And now we be­hold the con­fer­ring upon this Mel­chiz­e­dek of the ti­tle Vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia. Will he also be con­sti­tuted Vicegerent Ma­te­rial Son of Uran­tia? Or is there a pos­si­bil­ity that an un­ex­pected and un­prece­dented event is to take place, the some­time re­turn to the planet of Adam and Eve or cer­tain of their progeny as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Mi­chael with the ti­tles vicegerents of the sec­ond Adam of Uran­tia?

93:10.8And all these spec­u­la­tions as­so­ci­ated with the cer­tainty of fu­ture ap­pear­ances of both Mag­is­te­rial and Trin­ity Teacher Sons, in con­junc­tion with the ex­plicit prom­ise of the Cre­ator Son to re­turn some­time, make Uran­tia a planet of fu­ture un­cer­tainty and ren­der it one of the most in­ter­est­ing and in­trigu­ing spheres in all the uni­verse of Neb­a­don. It is al­to­gether pos­si­ble that, in some fu­ture age when Uran­tia is ap­proach­ing the era of light and life, af­ter the af­fairs of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion and the Cali­gas­tia se­ces­sion have been fi­nally ad­ju­di­cated, we may wit­ness the pres­ence on Uran­tia, si­mul­ta­ne­ously, of Ma­chi­venta, Adam, Eve, and Christ Mi­chael, as well as ei­ther a Mag­is­te­rial Son or even Trin­ity Teacher Sons.

• since his incarnation › will follow Urantia mortals to Corps of Finality

93:10.9It has long been the opin­ion of our or­der that Ma­chi­venta’s pres­ence on the Je­ru­sem corps of Uran­tia di­rec­tors, the four and twenty coun­selors, is suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to war­rant the be­lief that he is des­tined to fol­low the mor­tals of Uran­tia on through the uni­verse scheme of pro­gres­sion and as­cen­sion even to the Par­a­dise Corps of the Fi­nal­ity. We know that Adam and Eve are thus des­tined to ac­com­pany their earth fel­lows on the Par­a­dise ad­ven­ture when Uran­tia has be­come set­tled in light and life.

• since his incarnation › invisibly present on Urantia for 100 years

93:10.10Less than a thou­sand years ago this same Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, the one­time sage of Salem, was in­vis­i­bly pres­ent on Uran­tia for a pe­riod of one hun­dred years, act­ing as res­i­dent gov­er­nor gen­eral of the planet; and if the pres­ent sys­tem of di­rect­ing plan­e­tary af­fairs should con­tinue, he will be due to re­turn in the same ca­pac­ity in a lit­tle over one thou­sand years.

93:10.11This is the story of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, one of the most unique of all char­ac­ters ever to be­come con­nected with the his­tory of Uran­tia and a per­son­al­ity who may be des­tined to play an im­por­tant role in the fu­ture ex­pe­ri­ence of your ir­reg­u­lar and un­usual world.

93:10.12[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek of Neb­a­don.]

• prepared way for bestowal of Michael

96:0.2The Salem re­li­gion was revered as a tra­di­tion by the Ken­ites and sev­eral other Ca­naan­ite tribes. And this was one of the pur­poses of Mel­chiz­e­dek’s in­car­na­tion: That a re­li­gion of one God should be so fos­tered as to pre­pare the way for the earth be­stowal of a Son of that one God. Mi­chael could hardly come to Uran­tia un­til there ex­isted a peo­ple be­liev­ing in the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther among whom he could ap­pear.

• forbade missionaries to accept fees or create exclusive congregations

98:1.1The Salem mis­sion­ar­ies might have built up a great re­li­gious struc­ture among the Greeks had it not been for their strict in­ter­pre­ta­tion of their oath of or­di­na­tion, a pledge im­posed by Ma­chi­venta which for­bade the or­ga­ni­za­tion of ex­clu­sive con­gre­ga­tions for wor­ship, and which ex­acted the prom­ise of each teacher never to func­tion as a priest, never to re­ceive fees for re­li­gious ser­vice, only food, cloth­ing, and shel­ter. When the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ers pen­e­trated to pre-Hel­lenic Greece, they found a peo­ple who still fos­tered the tra­di­tions of Adam­son and the days of the And­ites, but these teach­ings had be­come greatly adul­ter­ated with the no­tions and be­liefs of the hordes of in­fe­rior slaves that had been brought to the Greek shores in in­creas­ing num­bers. This adul­ter­ation pro­duced a re­ver­sion to a crude an­i­mism with bloody rites, the lower classes even mak­ing cer­e­mo­nial out of the ex­e­cu­tion of con­demned crim­i­nals.

• teachings › regarding the Trinity

104:1.3The third pre­sen­ta­tion of the Trin­ity was made by Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, and this doc­trine was sym­bol­ized by the three con­cen­tric cir­cles which the sage of Salem wore on his breast plate. But Ma­chi­venta found it very dif­fi­cult to teach the Pales­tinian Bed­ou­ins about the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the Eter­nal Son, and the In­fi­nite Spirit. Most of his dis­ci­ples thought that the Trin­ity con­sisted of the three Most Highs of Nor­la­ti­adek; a few con­ceived of the Trin­ity as the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign, the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther, and the lo­cal uni­verse Cre­ator De­ity; still fewer even re­motely grasped the idea of the Par­a­dise as­so­ci­a­tion of the Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit.

• since his incarnation › vicegerent Planetary Prince of Urantia

114:0.117. The more re­cent des­ig­na­tion of the one­time in­car­nated Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek as vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince.

• since his incarnation › vicegerent Planetary Prince of Urantia

114:1.2Vicegerent au­thor­ity to act for Mi­chael as Plan­e­tary Prince has been re­cently vested in Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, but this Son of the lo­cal uni­verse has made not the slight­est move to­ward mod­i­fy­ing the pres­ent plan­e­tary regime of the suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions of the res­i­dent gov­er­nors gen­eral.

114:1.3There is lit­tle like­li­hood that any marked change will be made in the gov­ern­ment of Uran­tia dur­ing the pres­ent dis­pen­sa­tion un­less the vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince should ar­rive to as­sume his tit­u­lar re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. It ap­pears to cer­tain of our as­so­ciates that at some time in the near fu­ture the plan of send­ing one of the twenty-four coun­selors to Uran­tia to act as gov­er­nor gen­eral will be su­per­seded by the for­mal ar­rival of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek with the vicegerent man­date of the sov­er­eignty of Uran­tia. As act­ing Plan­e­tary Prince he would un­doubt­edly con­tinue in charge of the planet un­til the fi­nal ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion and prob­a­bly on into the dis­tant fu­ture of plan­e­tary set­tle­ment in light and life.

114:1.4Some be­lieve that Ma­chi­venta will not come to take per­sonal di­rec­tion of Uran­tian af­fairs un­til the end of the cur­rent dis­pen­sa­tion. Oth­ers hold that the vicegerent Prince may not come, as such, un­til Mi­chael some­time re­turns to Uran­tia as he prom­ised when still in the flesh. Still oth­ers, in­clud­ing this nar­ra­tor, look for Mel­chiz­e­dek’s ap­pear­ance any day or hour.

• teachings › monotheistic teachings largely derived from

131:0.1Dur­ing the Alexan­drian so­journ of Je­sus, Gonod, and Ga­nid, the young man spent much of his time and no small sum of his fa­ther’s money mak­ing a col­lec­tion of the teach­ings of the world’s re­li­gions about God and his re­la­tions with mor­tal man. Ga­nid em­ployed more than three­score learned trans­la­tors in the mak­ing of this ab­stract of the re­li­gious doc­trines of the world con­cern­ing the De­i­ties. And it should be made plain in this rec­ord that all these teach­ings por­tray­ing mono­the­ism were largely de­rived, di­rectly or in­di­rectly, from the preach­ments of the mis­sion­ar­ies of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, who went forth from their Salem head­quar­ters to spread the doc­trine of one God—the Most High—to the ends of the earth.

• indwelt by Adjuster that later served Jesus

136:2.2When Je­sus of Naz­a­reth went down into the Jor­dan to be bap­tized, he was a mor­tal of the realm who had at­tained the pin­na­cle of hu­man evo­lu­tion­ary as­cen­sion in all mat­ters re­lated to the con­quest of mind and to self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the spirit. He stood in the Jor­dan that day a per­fected mor­tal of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of time and space. Per­fect syn­chrony and full com­mu­ni­ca­tion had be­come es­tab­lished be­tween the mor­tal mind of Je­sus and the in­dwelling spirit Ad­juster, the di­vine gift of his Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. And just such an Ad­juster in­dwells all nor­mal be­ings liv­ing on Uran­tia since the as­cen­sion of Mi­chael to the head­ship of his uni­verse, ex­cept that Je­sus’ Ad­juster had been pre­vi­ously pre­pared for this spe­cial mis­sion by sim­i­larly in­dwelling an­other super­hu­man in­car­nated in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek.