The first of two references in the Bible to Melchizedek
occurs after Abraham went to war against a confederation of kings. Before
reviewing our first scriptural reference, note that this priest in the book of
Genesis, chapter 14, was the king of Salem .
The word Salem ,
as defined by Strong's Concordance number #H8004, means peace. This makes
Melchizedek the "King of Peace" (Hebrews 7:2).
The first scripture referring to this priest is in the book
of Genesis chapter 14, near the middle of the chapter: "Then Melchizedek
king of Salem
brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. And he blessed
him and said: 'Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and
earth; And blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your
hand.'" (Genesis 14:14, 16-18, NKJV throughout)
The second reference to this priest of God is in the book of
Psalms: "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your
enemies Your footstool . . . The Lord has sworn and will not relent, 'You are a
priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.' " (Psalm 110:1-4)
Did Jesus say He was NOT inherently GOOD?
Jesus said no one, including Himself, is inherently good
[righteous]: ". . . 'Why do you call Me good? NO ONE IS GOOD BUT ONE, that
is, God.'" (Matthew 19:17). Melchizedek was the epitome of righteousness,
and since no human is inherently righteous, it is evident that he could not be
human. If he had been human, he would have been the same as Aaron or anyone
else, i.e. a sinner. As the King of Righteousness, he was the image of God's
Spirit (Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3). He is also in Psalm 10:4.
Malachi refers to Melchizedek indirectly when he said that
the SUN of Righteousness would arise with healing in His wings (Malachi 4:2). Malachi
did not use the term "SON" for him because that would have suggested
that Jesus was in some way a son or a descendant of the priest. This would have
implied that the One who became Jesus Christ in the flesh was someone other
than the king of Salem .
In Hebrews 7, the apostle Paul makes some startling
statements about Melchizedek. He says: "For this Melchizedek, king of
Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the
slaughter of the kings and blessed him . . . first being translated 'king of
righteousness,' and then also king of Salem, meaning 'king of peace,' without
father, without mother, with genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor
end of life . . ." (Hebrews 7:1-3). Paul made some amazing statements
concerning this priest because he was emphasizing his deity. The One who became
Jesus Christ is the father of all life except for one human life - His own. The
Most High God is the Father of Jesus Christ the Savior (Luke 1:32).
SO WE FIND MELCHIZEDEK MENTIONED PROMINENTLY IN THE BIBLE
BUT WHAT DO WE KNOW OF THE MELCHIZEDEK TEACHINGS?
First and foremost Melchizedek teachings were responsible
for the rise of MONOTHEISM across the EARTH – in particular in the covenant
with Abraham and the Judeo Christian Tradition. But Melchizedek is also referenced in Oriental religious traditions and scripture.
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
powerand very soon influenced the highest deity concepts of Mesopotamia ,
India , and Egypt .
(1052.2) 96:0.2 The 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 Earth until there existed a people
believing in the Universal Father among whom he could appear.
(1052.3) 96:0.3 The Salem religion persisted among the
Kenites in Palestine as their creed, and this religion as it was later adopted
by the Hebrews was influenced, first, by Egyptian moral teachings; later, by
Babylonian theologic thought; and lastly, by Iranian conceptions of good and
evil. Factually the Hebrew religion is predicated upon the covenant between
Abraham and Machiventa Melchizedek, evolutionally it is the outgrowth of many
unique situational circumstances, but culturally it has borrowed freely from
the religion, morality, and philosophy of the entire Levant .
It is through the Hebrew religion that much of the morality and religious
thought of Egypt ,
Mesopotamia, and Iran
was transmitted to the Occidental peoples.
1. Deity Concepts Among the Semites
(1052.4) 96:1.1 The early Semites regarded everything as
being indwelt by a spirit. There were spirits of the animal and vegetable
worlds; annual spirits, the lord of progeny; spirits of fire, water, and air; a
veritable pantheon of spirits to be feared and worshiped. And the teaching of
Melchizedek regarding a Universal Creator never fully destroyed the belief in
these subordinate spirits or nature gods.
(1052.5) 96:1.2 The progress of the Hebrews from polytheism
through henotheism to monotheism was not an unbroken and continuous conceptual
development. They experienced many retrogressions in the evolution of their
Deity concepts, while during any one epoch there existed varying ideas of God
among different groups of Semite believers. From time to time numerous terms
were applied to their concepts of God, and in order to prevent confusion these
various Deity titles will be defined as they pertain to the evolution of Jewish
theology:
(1053.1) 96:1.3 1. Yahweh was the god of the southern
Palestinian tribes, who associated this concept of deity with Mount Horeb
(1053.2) 96:1.4 2. El Elyon. For centuries after
Melchizedek’s sojourn at Salem
his doctrine of Deity persisted in various versions but was generally connoted
by the term El Elyon, the Most High God of heaven. Many Semites, including the
immediate descendants of Abraham, at various times worshiped both Yahweh and El
Elyon.
THE MELCHIZEDEK TEACHINGS ON RELIGION AND SCIENCE
The fact of religion consists wholly in the religious
experience of rational and average human beings. And this is the only sense in
which religion can ever be regarded as scientific or even psychological. The
proof that revelation is revelation is this same fact of human experience: the
fact that revelation does synthesize the apparently divergent sciences of
nature and the theology of religion into a consistent and logical universe
philosophy, a co-ordinated and unbroken explanation of both science and
religion, thus creating a harmony of mind and satisfaction of spirit which
answers in human experience those questionings of the mortal mind which craves
to know how the Infinite works out his will and plans in matter, with minds,
and on spirit.
(1106.1) 101:2.2 Reason is the method of science; faith is
the method of religion; logic is the attempted technique of philosophy.
Revelation compensates for the absence of a viewpoint by providing a technique
for achieving unity in the comprehension of the reality and relationships of
matter and spirit by the mediation of mind. And true revelation never renders
science unnatural, religion unreasonable, or philosophy illogical.
(1106.2) 101:2.3 Reason, through the study of science, may
lead back through nature to a First Cause, but it requires religious faith to
transform the First Cause of science into a God of salvation; and revelation is
further required for the validation of such a faith, such spiritual insight.
(1106.3) 101:2.4 There are two basic reasons for believing
in a God who fosters human survival:
(1106.4) 101:2.5 1. Human experience, personal assurance,
the somehow registered hope and trust initiated by the indwelling thought adjuster. (our personal understanding)
(1106.5) 101:2.6 2. The revelation of truth, whether by
direct personal ministry of the Spirit of Truth, by the world bestowal of
divine Sons, or through the revelations of the written word.
(1106.6) 101:2.7 Science ends its reason-search in the
hypothesis of a First Cause. Religion does not stop in its flight of faith
until it is sure of a God of salvation. The discriminating study of science
logically suggests the reality and existence of an Absolute. Religion believes
unreservedly in the existence and reality of a God who fosters personality
survival. What metaphysics fails utterly in doing, and what even philosophy
fails partially in doing, revelation does; that is, affirms that this First
Cause of science and religion’s God of salvation are one and the same Deity.
(1106.7) 101:2.8 Reason is the proof of science, faith the
proof of religion, logic the proof of philosophy, but revelation is validated
only by human experience. Science yields knowledge; religion yields happiness;
philosophy yields unity; revelation confirms the experiential harmony of this
triune approach to universal reality.
(1106.8) 101:2.9 The contemplation of nature can only reveal
a God of nature, a God of motion. Nature exhibits only matter, motion, and animation
— life. Matter plus energy, under certain conditions, is manifested in living
forms, but while natural life is thus relatively continuous as a phenomenon, it
is wholly transient as to individualities. Nature does not afford ground for
logical belief in human-personality survival. The religious man who finds God
in nature has already and first found this same personal God in his own soul.
(1106.9) 101:2.10 Faith reveals God in the soul. Revelation,
the substitute for insight on an evolutionary world, enables man to see the
same God in nature that faith exhibits in his soul. Thus does revelation
successfully bridge the gulf between the material and the spiritual, even
between the creature and the Creator, between man and God.
(1107.1) 101:2.11 The contemplation of nature does logically
point in the direction of intelligent guidance, even living supervision, but it
does not in any satisfactory manner reveal a personal God. On the other hand,
nature discloses nothing which would preclude the universe from being looked
upon as the handiwork of the God of religion. God cannot be found through
nature alone, but man having otherwise found him, the study of nature becomes
wholly consistent with a higher and more spiritual interpretation of the
universe.
(1107.2) 101:2.12 Revelation as an epochal phenomenon is
periodic; as a personal human experience it is continuous. Divinity functions
in mortal personality as the gift of the Father, as the Spirit of Truth of the
Son, and as the Holy Spirit of the Universe Spirit, while these three
supermortal endowments are unified in human experiential evolution as the
ministry of the Supreme.
(1107.3) 101:2.13 True religion is an insight into reality,
the faith-child of the moral consciousness, and not a mere intellectual assent
to any body of dogmatic doctrines. True religion consists in the experience
that “the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children
of God.” Religion consists not in theologic propositions but in spiritual insight
and the sublimity of the soul’s trust.
(1107.4) 101:2.14 Your deepest nature — the divine Adjuster
— creates within you a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a certain craving
for divine perfection. Religion is the faith act of the recognition of this inner
urge to divine attainment; and thus is brought about that soul trust and
assurance of which you become conscious as the way of salvation, the technique
of the survival of personality and all those values which you have come to look
upon as being true and good.
(1107.5) 101:2.15 The realization of religion never has
been, and never will be, dependent on great learning or clever logic. It is
spiritual insight, and that is just the reason why some of the world’s greatest
religious teachers, even the prophets, have sometimes possessed so little of
the wisdom of the world. Religious faith is available alike to the learned and
the unlearned.
(1107.6) 101:2.16 Religion must ever be its own critic and
judge; it can never be observed, much less understood, from the outside. Your
only assurance of a personal God consists in your own insight as to your belief
in, and experience with, things spiritual. To all of your fellows who have had
a similar experience, no argument about the personality or reality of God is
necessary, while to all other men who are not thus sure of God no possible
argument could ever be truly convincing.
