Salem teachings

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.

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.

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.

93:4.16Mel­chiz­e­dek taught el­e­men­tary re­vealed truth at Salem for ninety-four years, and dur­ing this time Abra­ham at­tended the Salem school three dif­fer­ent times. He fi­nally be­came a con­vert to the Salem teach­ings, be­com­ing one of Mel­chiz­e­dek’s most bril­liant pupils and chief sup­port­ers.

• nonritualistic

94:1.5The Salem mis­sion­ar­ies preached the one God of Mel­chiz­e­dek, the Most High of heaven. This por­trayal was not al­to­gether dishar­mo­nious with the emerg­ing con­cept of the Fa­ther-Brahma as the source of all gods, but the Salem doc­trine was non­ritu­al­is­tic and hence ran di­rectly counter to the dog­mas, tra­di­tions, and teach­ings of the Brah­man priest­hood. Never would the Brah­man priests ac­cept the Salem teach­ing of sal­va­tion through faith, fa­vor with God apart from rit­u­al­is­tic ob­ser­vances and sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ni­als.

• based exclusively on creative power

96:0.1In con­ceiv­ing of De­ity, man first in­cludes all gods, then sub­or­di­nates all for­eign gods to his tribal de­ity, and fi­nally ex­cludes all but the one God of fi­nal and su­preme value. The Jews syn­the­sized all gods into their more sub­lime con­cept of the Lord God of Is­rael. The Hin­dus like­wise com­bined their mul­ti­far­i­ous de­i­ties into the “one spir­i­tu­al­ity of the gods” por­trayed in the Rig-Veda, while the Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans re­duced their gods to the more cen­tral­ized con­cept of Bel-Mar­duk. These ideas of mono­the­ism ma­tured all over the world not long af­ter the ap­pear­ance of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek at Salem in Pales­tine. But the Mel­chiz­e­dek con­cept of De­ity was un­like that of the evo­lu­tion­ary phi­los­o­phy of in­clu­sion, sub­or­di­na­tion, and ex­clu­sion; it was based ex­clu­sively on cre­ative power and very soon in­flu­enced the high­est de­ity con­cepts of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, In­dia, and Egypt.

• spread in Europe by Jewish mercenaries

98:0.3Much of the Salem doc­trine was spread in Eu­rope by the Jew­ish mer­ce­nary sol­diers who fought in so many of the Oc­ci­den­tal mil­i­tary strug­gles. In an­cient times the Jews were famed as much for mil­i­tary valor as for the­o­logic pe­cu­liar­i­ties.

• basic factor in all religions of last 4000 years

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.

• in the Orient

131:3.1Ga­nid was shocked to dis­cover how near Bud­dhism came to be­ing a great and beau­ti­ful re­li­gion with­out God, with­out a per­sonal and uni­ver­sal De­ity. How­ever, he did find some rec­ord of cer­tain ear­lier be­liefs which re­flected some­thing of the in­flu­ence of the teach­ings of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies who con­tin­ued their work in In­dia even to the times of Bud­dha. Je­sus and Ga­nid col­lected the fol­low­ing state­ments from the Bud­dhist lit­er­a­ture: