Melchizedek

“Blessed be the Lord out of Zion, who dwells at Jerusalem. Praise the Lord.”
— Psalm 135

Nearly every religion on earth can offer a prophesy of doom. These are scenarios that attract us because they echo our own forebodings. And perhaps, they feed a false hope, exonerating us from taking our own future in hand. “We are doomed anyway,” says the voice behind the distracted lives and the dim faith.

Doom — or, at least, a crisis we don’t yet comprehend — may be inevitable. Many of the prophesies in sacred texts have already come to be. But most religious prophesies also foretell hope coming from a great distance in the form of a great teacher.

Who is this great teacher? He’s been called by many names, and that in itself is a clue to his identity and the significance of his arrival.

Jesus is foretold to come again, and his own disciples had it from him firsthand. (When he’ll return remains the question.) The Islam faith offers Muntazar, who will unite the races through understanding. The Central Asian nomads await The White Burkhan while the Hopi tribes expect Pahdna. The Hindu Messiah is Kalki, the last avatar of the current cycle. The Jewish faithful believe their Messiah will restore the Temple of Solomon and their status as God’s people. And to Buddhists of many lands and sects, the name of the world unifier is Maitreya. To name but a few of the names that appear in the texts and oral traditions of the world.

Could it be that many of these names describe the same teacher, one who has been here before, knows our failings and shortcomings, and who will return with even deeper wisdom than he possessed the first time around?

To answer this question, we need to look for a great teacher, an immortal being, who has already been here — long before the time of Jesus.

Hints are embedded in the Old Testament. Since this writer is English-speaking and the ancient scriptures are readily available in English, we will begin there.

A mysterious person fitting the description of a wise teacher emerges twice from the pages of Old Testament scripture. In Psalm 110, he is described as “a priest forever, a rightful King by my decree.” From Genesis 14:18, we have the following description:

“King Melchizedek of Salem, brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High.”

“Salem” is the place that would later become Jebus and, finally, Jerusalem. “Melchizedek” is a Hebrew word meaning “king of righteousness.”

Melchizedek is also described in the New Testament (Hebrews, 7) as having no human parents: “Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God...” (Hebrews, 7:3) The “Son of God” is, of course, Jesus.

Fast forward from the time the Old Testament scriptures were written to a secluded group of believers, the Qumran community, led by a prophet. We don’t know this prophet’s name. The Dead Sea Scrolls, first discovered in 1947, designate him only as the Teacher of Righteousness. Scholars agree that the vast majority of the scrolls were written in the first century B.C., a little less than 2,000 years after the time of Abraham.

What the Teacher of Righteousness did is remarkable enough to be controversial even today. He quoted and reinterpreted pivotal passages within the sacred literature of the Jewish faith. He reinstated “Melchizedek” as the Messiah figure mysteriously unnamed, for the most part, in the scriptures. And through the scrolls he left behind, he tells us that many references to the “Lord” and “Yahweh” in the old texts do not refer to God, but to Melchizedek.

“And your Elohim is Melchizedek, who will save them (those who uphold the covenant) from the hand of Belial.” — 11Q13, Dead Sea Scrolls

(“Belial” could be interpreted as the combined forces of evil, mortal and immortal.)

What this Teacher of Righteousness did, put simplistically, is to solve a case of mistaken identity. “Your latter day Messiah will be Melchizedek,” he seems to be telling the faithful Qumran community, “the same ‘Lord’ who chose and guided Abraham, inspired Moses, and informed the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets.” Until little more than 50 years ago, the Teacher’s solution remained buried in the caves of the Judean desert.

But there are more mysteries. How far, for example, did the teachings of Melchizedek travel out of Palestine? Was Melchizedek a visible or spiritual presence? And when will he return?

The answers are not to be found in the usual haunts of sacred scholarship. They reside in a font of revelatory texts first published in 1955, known alternately as the Urantia Papers, the Urantia Book and the Fifth Epochal Revelation. The texts combined, comprising more than 2,000 pages,
provide an intricate analysis of the universe, of God and the celestial hierarchies, of the history of Earth (designated “Urantia”) and its people, and one entire book devoted to the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Urantia Papers and the Dead Sea Scrolls are in agreement over who Melchizedek has been to the faithful and who he will become. They confirm, for instance, that in many cases “the Lord” in the Old Testament refers to Melchizedek rather than to the Universal Father.

Moreover, the Urantia Papers reveal that Melchizedek “taught elementary revealed truth” in Salem for 94 years as a material being. Abraham was one of his most brilliant pupils, chosen by Melchizedek for his outstanding abilities and receptivity to truth. But unlike previous sacred texts, the Urantia Papers informs us that Abraham was chosen as a conduit for these teachings as much because of where he lived as any other consideration. (There were other equally endowed candidates in the Far East, in Egypt, among others.) Palestine was the center of civilization, travel and commerce 4,000 years ago, however — and continued to be in the times of Jesus.

And ‘the times of Jesus’ is what Melchizedek came to prepare people for, by word and deed. His mission was to prepare the way, setting the monotheistic stage for the arrival of a Son of God on earth.

During Melchizedek’s material existence on earth, he became a renowned luminary, called ‘the priest of El Elyon,’ ‘the most high,’ and the ‘sage of Salem.’ His central message was the truth of one God (monotheism), and salvation won solely by faith. A hard message to grasp at a time when idolatry, sacrificial rituals and superstition were commonplace.

Yet, Melchizedek was brilliantly successful if success can be measured by the sheer geographic distances his teachings eventually traversed, and the quality of the teachers who conveyed them. The Salem missionaries, his followers, carried his original teachings into Egypt, Mesopotamia and beyond, to Europe, Asia, the British Isles and even Iceland. Still, only in Palestine did the concept of one God take hold and flourish in the form of a newfound religion.

In India, the idea of salvation won by faith was antithetical to ancient teachings. To counter such a concept, the Brahmans drew on existing sacred writings to form the Rig-Veda, effectively crystallizing complex sacrificial rituals within Hindu culture. Complexity is often camouflage for something other than virtue. Nevertheless, as a “great assimilator,” it’s likely that Hinduism wove a golden strand of the Melchizedek teachings into its byzantine tapestry.

Buddhism was to take the Far East in a different direction. A true prophet, Gautama Siddartha taught salvation through faith, influenced in part by two individuals. One of these was Godad, descended from an Indian family that had embraced the teachings of the Melchizedek missionaries. A hermit, he became a mentor to Gautama. A pupil of Gautama’s, Bautan, likewise impressed his teacher with truths imparted by Salem missionaries.

Buddhism ultimately conveyed more of the Melchizedek teachings than any other religious system in Eastern Asia. Through Asoka, a low-caste monarch, it would later become the dominant religion of half the world. Ultimately, it was weakened by religions it attempted to supplant. And Gautama became the subject of an idolatry he would have despised.

Given the far-reaching influence of the Melchizedek teachings, is it possible that religious around the world are forecasting the arrival of the same wise king, the same great teacher, the same unifier? Names like “Maitreya,” “Muntazar” and “Pahdna” may differ, but the common gold thread is undeniable.

If that’s true, there are likely to be pretenders. Scripture, the Dead Sea Scrolls and, most recently, the Urantia Papers warn about them. Each of the texts provides ample warning of the Deceiver and human counterparts, while simultaneously placing the onus of discernment on each of us.

The prophetic texts also tell us that Melchizedek’s re-emergence will likely coincide with a world crisis.

Taking these texts side by side, in combination with texts of other faiths, provides a beacon that guides us around false hope and false gods toward the truths of our own times.

The return of Melchizedek is likely to be one of them.

From The Urantia Papers, pages 1084-1085. (My notes are bracketed.):

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

A Creator Son [Jesus] did not incarnate in the likeness of mortal flesh and bestow himself upon the humanity of Urantia [the planet Earth] 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."

It 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 [Creator Son of our local universe], 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.

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

1. 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.

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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

As 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.

And 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.

[Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]

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"The kingdom of God is at hand,” meaning that the arrival of the one-time Sage of Salem, Melchizedek, is imminent. Prepare each and every one of you that you are not found to be wanting, iniquitous and apart from the “elect” — those who elect to do God's will.

Paul Levinson Bond (Cosmic Reserve Corps of Destiny)