The Melchizedeks in The Urantia Book

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  • #42601
    Richard E Warren
    Richard E Warren
    Participant

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    After Jesus, the Melchizedeks are the most prominent characters in the Urantia Book. They authored more Papers, 31 in all, than any other contributor. Four of them give their first name: Malavatia, Manovandet, Mantutia, and Machiventa. Mantutia headed a commission of twelve Melchizedeks who authorized the Jesus Papers.

    Verbatim quotes from Machiventa, the one who shared Jesus’ Thought Adjuster and preceded him by 1,973 years:

    “El Elyon, the Most High, is the divine creator of the stars of the firmament and even of this very earth on which we live, and he is also the supreme God of heaven.”

    “I am Melchizedek, priest of El Elyon, the Most High, the one and only God.”

    “Come to Salem, where you shall hear our teachings of the truth of the eternal Creator, and in the enlightened offspring of you two brothers shall all the world be blessed.”

    “Look you now up to the heavens and number the stars if you are able; so numerous shall your seed be.”

    The covenant that Abraham agreed to:

    …This 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…. 93:6.4 (1020.7)

    The Salem gospel: …the simple gospel of Salem, that faith in God would assure divine favor and eternal survival…. 94:11.13 (1040.4)

    ***

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    Richard E Warren

    #42602
    Bradly
    Bradly
    Participant

    Universe Teachers and Truth Warriors!

    The Heroes of Being In Time….

    ;-)

     

    35:2.1 (385.4) The Melchizedeks are the first order of divine Sons to approach sufficiently near the lower creature life to be able to function directly in the ministry of mortal uplift, to serve the evolutionary races without the necessity of incarnation. These Sons are naturally at the mid-point of the great personality descent, by origin being just about midway between the highest Divinity and the lowest creature life of will endowment. They thus become the natural intermediaries between the higher and divine levels of living existence and the lower, even the material, forms of life on the evolutionary worlds. The seraphic orders, the angels, delight to work with the Melchizedeks; in fact, all forms of intelligent life find in these Sons understanding friends, sympathetic teachers, and wise counselors.

    35:2.4 (386.2) The Melchizedeks function as mobile and advisory review courts of the realms; these universe Sons go in small groups to the worlds to serve as advisory commissions, to take depositions, to receive suggestions, and to act as counselors, thus helping to compose the major difficulties and settle the serious differences which arise from time to time in the affairs of the evolutionary domains.

    35:2.7 (386.5) There is no phase of planetary spiritual need to which they do not minister. They are the teachers who so often win whole worlds of advanced life to the final and full recognition of the Creator Son and his Paradise Father.

    35:4.2 (389.1) While the Melchizedek orders are chiefly devoted to the vast educational system and experiential training regime of the local universe, they also function in unique assignments and in unusual circumstances. In an evolving universe eventually embracing approximately ten million inhabited worlds, many things out of the ordinary are destined to happen, and it is in such emergencies that the Melchizedeks act. On Edentia, your constellation headquarters, they are known as emergency Sons. They are always ready to serve in all exigencies—physical, intellectual, or spiritual—whether on a planet, in a system, in a constellation, or in the universe. Whenever and wherever special help is needed, there you will find one or more of the Melchizedek Sons.

    35:4.3 (389.2) When failure of some feature of the Creator Son’s plan is threatened, forthwith will go a Melchizedek to render assistance. But not often are they summoned to function in the presence of sinful rebellion, such as occurred in Satania.

    35:4.4 (389.3) The Melchizedeks are the first to act in all emergencies of whatever nature on all worlds where will creatures dwell. They sometimes act as temporary custodians on wayward planets, serving as receivers of a defaulting planetary government. In a planetary crisis these Melchizedek Sons serve in many unique capacities. It is easily possible for such a Son to make himself visible to mortal beings, and sometimes one of this order has even incarnated in the likeness of mortal flesh. Seven times in Nebadon has a Melchizedek served on an evolutionary world in the similitude of mortal flesh, and on numerous occasions these Sons have appeared in the likeness of other orders of universe creatures. They are indeed the versatile and volunteer emergency ministers to all orders of universe intelligences and to all the worlds and systems of worlds.

    35:4.5 (389.4) The 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.

     

    Me here: I have often wondered about the possible connection between Machiventa’s Mortal Missionaries to the East and the teacher – monk – protector – servant – warrior disciplines and traditions which spread in Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, and SE Asia.

    From Wiki:

    The term spiritual warrior is used in Tibetan Buddhism for one who combats the universal enemy: self-ignorance (avidya), the ultimate source of suffering according to Buddhist philosophy.[1] A heroic being with a brave mind and ethical impulse. Different from other paths, which focus on individual salvation, the spiritual warrior’s only complete and right practice is that which compassionately helps other beings with wisdom. This is the Bodhisattva ideal (the “Buddha-in-waiting”), the spiritual warrior who resolves to attain buddhahood in order to liberate others.[2][3] The term is also used generically in esotericism and self-help literature.[4] Spiritual warrior, “illuminated heart and valiant one”, “enlightenment hero”, “one who aspires for enlightenment” or, “heroic being” has been defined as a bodhisattva.[5][6]

    In Tibet a monastic rule derived from a feudal warrior clan society, which was transformed into a spiritual warrior society. While the rest of the world followed feudalistic warrior development during the medieval period throughout Europe and Asia, Tibet uniquely established Lamaism. This was centered around a Buddhist social revolution originating distinctly from India’s Hinduism and finding root in Tibet. The Lama (teacher) is a living Buddha for Tibetans who provides a powerful bridge between real and imaginary consciousness worlds, where the self is methodically dissolved into the whole’s benefit by tantra practice.

    Tibetans imported this order to help change their society to one based on education, social welfare, peaceful progress, with a self-renouncing monastic class of rulers. The monastic sangha (community) were supported and organized like a military; however, they were set on a self-discovery yogic mission for reconnaissance to perfect and develop methods in eliminating ego suffering.

    #42603
    Bradly
    Bradly
    Participant

    Regarding the Eastern tradition of monastery schools and centers of culture and Spiritual/Truth Warriors.

    The tradition of centers for the preservation and the spread of culture, truth, knowledge, training, technology, etc. began with Dalamatia and continued with Van and the Amadonites and then the Garden(s).  Although not discussed at length in the UB, there is no doubt that self defense was a preeminent function and feature of all such schools and cultural centers.

    The later Andite explorers who circumvented the globe dispersing the Garden culture to every corner of our world also required and employed the warrior/monk class and discipline for survival and success.

    Machiventa’s missionaries faced the same forms of local resistance and opposition and their survival and success were challenged by dominant, superior forces requiring their own self defense skills.

    Change, progress, and truth are not without enemies who eagerly defend traditions and turf and attack those who challenge the authorities of the local status quo.

    :-)

    94:0.1 (1027.1) THE early teachers of the Salem religion penetrated to the remotest tribes of Africa and Eurasia, ever preaching Machiventa’s gospel of man’s faith and trust in the one universal God as the only price of obtaining divine favor. Melchizedek’s covenant with Abraham was the pattern for all the early propaganda that went out from Salem and other centers. Urantia has never had more enthusiastic and aggressive missionaries of any religion than these noble men and women who carried the teachings of Melchizedek over the entire Eastern Hemisphere. These missionaries were recruited from many peoples and races, and they largely spread their teachings through the medium of native converts. They established training centers in different parts of the world where they taught the natives the Salem religion and then commissioned these pupils to function as teachers among their own people.

    94:5.1 (1032.3) As the Salem missionaries passed through Asia, spreading the doctrine of the Most High God and salvation through faith, they absorbed much of the philosophy and religious thought of the various countries traversed. But the teachers commissioned by Melchizedek and his successors did not default in their trust; they did penetrate to all peoples of the Eurasian continent, and it was in the middle of the second millennium before Christ that they arrived in China. At See Fuch, for more than one hundred years, the Salemites maintained their headquarters, there training Chinese teachers who taught throughout all the domains of the yellow race.

    94:5.2 (1032.4) It was in direct consequence of this teaching that the earliest form of Taoism arose in China, a vastly different religion than the one which bears that name today. Early or proto-Taoism was a compound of the following factors:

    94:5.3 (1032.5) 1. The lingering teachings of Singlangton, which persisted in the concept of Shang-ti, the God of Heaven. In the times of Singlangton the Chinese people became virtually monotheistic; they concentrated their worship on the One Truth, later known as the Spirit of Heaven, the universe ruler. And the yellow race never fully lost this early concept of Deity, although in subsequent centuries many subordinate gods and spirits insidiously crept into their religion.

    94:5.4 (1032.6) 2. The Salem religion of a Most High Creator Deity who would bestow his favor upon mankind in response to man’s faith. But it is all too true that, by the time the Melchizedek missionaries had penetrated to the lands of the yellow race, their original message had become considerably changed from the simple doctrines of Salem in the days of Machiventa.

    94:5.8 (1033.3) But the Salemites did not labor in vain. It was upon the foundations of their gospel that the great philosophers of sixth-century China built their teachings. The moral atmosphere and the spiritual sentiments of the times of Lao-tse and Confucius grew up out of the teachings of the Salem missionaries of an earlier age.

    6. Lao-Tse and Confucius

    94:6.1 (1033.4) About six hundred years before the arrival of Michael, it seemed to Melchizedek, long since departed from the flesh, that the purity of his teaching on earth was being unduly jeopardized by general absorption into the older Urantia beliefs. It appeared for a time that his mission as a forerunner of Michael might be in danger of failing. And in the sixth century before Christ, through an unusual co-ordination of spiritual agencies, not all of which are understood even by the planetary supervisors, Urantia witnessed a most unusual presentation of manifold religious truth. Through the agency of several human teachers the Salem gospel was restated and revitalized, and as it was then presented, much has persisted to the times of this writing.

    94:6.2 (1033.5) This unique century of spiritual progress was characterized by great religious, moral, and philosophic teachers all over the civilized world. In China, the two outstanding teachers were Lao-tse and Confucius.

    94:7.5 (1035.5) At Benares Gautama founded his school, and it was during its second year that a pupil, Bautan, imparted to his teacher the traditions of the Salem missionaries about the Melchizedek covenant with Abraham; and while Siddhartha did not have a very clear concept of the Universal Father, he took an advanced stand on salvation through faith—simple belief. He so declared himself before his followers and began sending his students out in groups of sixty to proclaim to the people of India “the glad tidings of free salvation; that all men, high and low, can attain bliss by faith in righteousness and justice.”

    94:9.1 (1037.4) Buddhism prospered because it offered salvation through belief in the Buddha, the enlightened one. It was more representative of the Melchizedek truths than any other religious system to be found throughout eastern Asia. But Buddhism did not become widespread as a religion until it was espoused in self-protection by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikhnaton in Egypt, was one of the most remarkable civil rulers between Melchizedek and Michael. Asoka built a great Indian empire through the propaganda of his Buddhist missionaries. During a period of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than seventeen thousand missionaries to the farthest frontiers of all the known world. In one generation he made Buddhism the dominant religion of one half the world. It soon became established in Tibet, Kashmir, Ceylon, Burma, Java, Siam, Korea, China, and Japan. And generally speaking, it was a religion vastly superior to those which it supplanted or upstepped.

    94:9.2 (1037.5) The spread of Buddhism from its homeland in India to all of Asia is one of the thrilling stories of the spiritual devotion and missionary persistence of sincere religionists. The teachers of Gautama’s gospel not only braved the perils of the overland caravan routes but faced the dangers of the China Seas as they pursued their mission over the Asiatic continent, bringing to all peoples the message of their faith. But this Buddhism was no longer the simple doctrine of Gautama; it was the miraculized gospel which made him a god. And the farther Buddhism spread from its highland home in India, the more unlike the teachings of Gautama it became, and the more like the religions it supplanted, it grew to be.

    94:9.3 (1038.1) Buddhism, later on, was much affected by Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Christianity in Tibet. After a thousand years, in India Buddhism simply withered and expired. It became Brahmanized and later abjectly surrendered to Islam, while throughout much of the rest of the Orient it degenerated into a ritual which Gautama Siddhartha would never have recognized.

    94:9.4 (1038.2) In the south the fundamentalist stereotype of the teachings of Siddhartha persisted in Ceylon, Burma, and the Indo-China peninsula. This is the Hinayana division of Buddhism which clings to the early or asocial doctrine.

    94:9.5 (1038.3) But even before the collapse in India, the Chinese and north Indian groups of Gautama’s followers had begun the development of the Mahayana teaching of the “Great Road” to salvation in contrast with the purists of the south who held to the Hinayana, or “Lesser Road.” And these Mahayanists cast loose from the social limitations inherent in the Buddhist doctrine, and ever since has this northern division of Buddhism continued to evolve in China and Japan.

    94:9.6 (1038.4) Buddhism is a living, growing religion today because it succeeds in conserving many of the highest moral values of its adherents. It promotes calmness and self-control, augments serenity and happiness, and does much to prevent sorrow and mourning. Those who believe this philosophy live better lives than many who do not.

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