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Urantia Book Paper 95 The Melchizedek Teachings In The Levant
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
...
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Paper 95 The Melchizedek Teachings In The Levant
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Introduction
AS INDIA gave rise to many of the religions and philosophies of eastern Asia,
so the Levant was the homeland of the faiths of the Occidental world. The Salem
missionaries spread out all over southwestern Asia, through Palestine,
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran, and Arabia, everywhere proclaiming the good news of
the gospel of Machiventa Melchizedek. In some of these lands their teachings
bore fruit; in others they met with varying success. Sometimes their failures
were due to lack of wisdom, sometimes to circumstances beyond their control.
1. THE SALEM RELIGION IN MESOPOTAMIA
By 2000 B.C. the religions of Mesopotamia had just about lost the teachings of
the Sethites and were largely under the influence of the primitive beliefs of
two groups of invaders, the Bedouin Semites who had filtered in from the
western desert and the barbarian horsemen who had come down from the north.
But the custom of the early Adamite peoples in honoring the seventh day of the
week never completely disappeared in Mesopotamia. Only, during the Melchizedek
era, the seventh day was regarded as the worst of bad luck. It was
taboo-ridden; it was unlawful to go on a journey, cook food, or make a fire on
the evil seventh day. The Jews carried back to Palestine many of the
Mesopotamian taboos which they had found resting on the Babylonian observance
of the seventh day, the Shabattum.
Although the Salem teachers did much to refine and uplift the religions of
Mesopotamia, they did not succeed in bringing the various peoples to the
permanent recognition of one God. Such teaching gained the ascendency for more
than one hundred and fifty years and then gradually gave way to the older
belief in a multiplicity of deities.
The Salem teachers greatly reduced the number of the gods of Mesopotamia, at
one time bringing the chief deities down to seven: Bel, Shamash, Nabu, Anu, Ea,
Marduk, and Sin. At the height of the new teaching they exalted three of these
gods to supremacy over all others, the Babylonian triad: Bel, Ea, and Anu, the
gods of earth, sea, and sky. Still other triads grew up in different
localities, all reminiscent of the trinity teachings of the Andites and the
Sumerians and based on the belief of the Salemites in Melchizedek's insignia of
the three circles.
Never did the Salem teachers fully overcome the popularity of Ishtar, the
mother of gods and the spirit of sex fertility. They did much to refine the
worship of this goddess, but the Babylonians and their neighbors had never
completely outgrown their disguised forms of sex worship. It had become a
universal practice throughout Mesopotamia for all women to submit, at least
once in early life, to
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the embrace of strangers; this was thought to be a devotion required by Ishtar,
and it was believed that fertility was largely dependent on this sex sacrifice.
The early progress of the Melchizedek teaching was highly gratifying until
Nabodad, the leader of the school at Kish, decided to make a concerted attack
upon the prevalent practices of temple harlotry. But the Salem missionaries
failed in their effort to bring about this social reform, and in the wreck of
this failure all their more important spiritual and philosophic teachings went
down in defeat.
This defeat of the Salem gospel was immediately followed by a great increase in
the cult of Ishtar, a ritual which had already invaded Palestine as Ashtoreth,
Egypt as Isis, Greece as Aphrodite, and the northern tribes as Astarte. And it
was in connection with this revival of the worship of Ishtar that the
Babylonian priests turned anew to stargazing; astrology experienced its last
great Mesopotamian revival, fortunetelling became the vogue, and for centuries
the priesthood increasingly deteriorated.
Melchizedek had warned his followers to teach about the one God, the Father and
Maker of all, and to preach only the gospel of divine favor through faith
alone. But it has often been the error of the teachers of new truth to attempt
too much, to attempt to supplant slow evolution by sudden revolution. The
Melchizedek missionaries in Mesopotamia raised a moral standard too high for
the people; they attempted too much, and their noble cause went down in defeat.
They had been commissioned to preach a definite gospel, to proclaim the truth
of the reality of the Universal Father, but they became entangled in the
apparently worthy cause of reforming the mores, and thus was their great
mission sidetracked and virtually lost in frustration and oblivion.
In one generation the Salem headquarters at Kish came to an end, and the
propaganda of the belief in one God virtually ceased throughout Mesopotamia.
But remnants of the Salem schools persisted. Small bands scattered here and
there continued their belief in the one Creator and fought against the idolatry
and immorality of the Mesopotamian priests.
It was the Salem missionaries of the period following the rejection of their
teaching who wrote many of the Old Testament Psalms, inscribing them on stone,
where later-day Hebrew priests found them during the captivity and subsequently
incorporated them among the collection of hymns ascribed to Jewish authorship.
These beautiful psalms from Babylon were not written in the temples of
Bel-Marduk; they were the work of the descendants of the earlier Salem
missionaries, and they are a striking contrast to the magical conglomerations
of the Babylonian priests. The Book of Job is a fairly good reflection of the
teachings of the Salem school at Kish and throughout Mesopotamia.
Much of the Mesopotamian religious culture found its way into Hebrew literature
and liturgy by way of Egypt through the work of Amenemope and Ikhnaton. The
Egyptians remarkably preserved the teachings of social obligation derived from
the earlier Andite Mesopotamians and so largely lost by the later Babylonians
who occupied the Euphrates valley.
2. EARLY EGYPTIAN RELIGION
The original Melchizedek teachings really took their deepest root in Egypt,
from where they subsequently spread to Europe. The evolutionary religion of
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the Nile valley was periodically augmented by the arrival of superior strains
of Nodite, Adamite, and later Andite peoples of the Euphrates valley. From time
to time, many of the Egyptian civil administrators were Sumerians. As India in
these days harbored the highest mixture of the world races, so Egypt fostered
the most thoroughly blended type of religious philosophy to be found on
Urantia, and from the Nile valley it spread to many parts of the world. The
Jews received much of their idea of the creation of the world from the
Babylonians, but they derived the concept of divine Providence from the
Egyptians.
It was political and moral, rather than philosophic or religious, tendencies
that rendered Egypt more favorable to the Salem teaching than Mesopotamia. Each
tribal leader in Egypt, after fighting his way to the throne, sought to
perpetuate his dynasty by proclaiming his tribal god the original deity and
creator of all other gods. In this way the Egyptians gradually got used to the
idea of a supergod, a steppingstone to the later doctrine of a universal
creator Deity. The idea of monotheism wavered back and forth in Egypt for many
centuries, the belief in one God always gaining ground but never quite
dominating the evolving concepts of polytheism.
For ages the Egyptian peoples had been given to the worship of nature gods;
more particularly did each of the twoscore separate tribes have a special group
god, one worshiping the bull, another the lion, a third the ram, and so on.
Still earlier they had been totem tribes, very much like the Amerinds.
In time the Egyptians observed that dead bodies placed in brickless graves were
preserved--embalmed--by the action of the soda-impregnated sand, while those
buried in brick vaults decayed. These observations led to those experiments
which resulted in the later practice of embalming the dead. The Egyptians
believed that preservation of the body facilitated one's passage through the
future life. That the individual might properly be identified in the distant
future after the decay of the body, they placed a burial statue in the tomb
along with the corpse, carving a likeness on the coffin. The making of these
burial statues led to great improvement in Egyptian art.
For centuries the Egyptians placed their faith in tombs as the safeguard of the
body and of consequent pleasurable survival after death. The later evolution of
magical practices, while burdensome to life from the cradle to the grave, most
effectually delivered them from the religion of the tombs. The priests would
inscribe the coffins with charm texts which were believed to be protection
against a "man's having his heart taken away from him in the nether world."
Presently a diverse assortment of these magical texts was collected and
preserved as The Book of the Dead. But in the Nile valley magical ritual early
became involved with the realms of conscience and character to a degree not
often attained by the rituals of those days. And subsequently these ethical and
moral ideals, rather than elaborate tombs, were depended upon for salvation.
The superstitions of these times are well illustrated by the general belief in
the efficacy of spittle as a healing agent, an idea which had its origin in
Egypt and spread therefrom to Arabia and Mesopotamia. In the legendary battle
of Horus with Set the young god lost his eye, but after Set was vanquished,
this eye was restored by the wise god Thoth, who spat upon the wound and healed
it.
The Egyptians long believed that the stars twinkling in the night sky
represented the survival of the souls of the worthy dead; other survivors they
thought were absorbed into the sun. During a certain period, solar veneration
became a
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species of ancestor worship. The sloping entrance passage of the great pyramid
pointed directly toward the Pole Star so that the soul of the king, when
emerging from the tomb, could go straight to the stationary and established
constellations of the fixed stars, the supposed abode of the kings.
When the oblique rays of the sun were observed penetrating earthward through an
aperture in the clouds, it was believed that they betokened the letting down of
a celestial stairway whereon the king and other righteous souls might ascend.
"King Pepi has put down his radiance as a stairway under his feet whereon to
ascend to his mother."
When Melchizedek appeared in the flesh, the Egyptians had a religion far above
that of the surrounding peoples. They believed that a disembodied soul, if
properly armed with magic formulas, could evade the intervening evil spirits
and make its way to the judgment hall of Osiris, where, if innocent of "murder,
robbery, falsehood, adultery, theft, and selfishness," it would be admitted to
the realms of bliss. If this soul were weighed in the balances and found
wanting, it would be consigned to hell, to the Devouress. And this was,
relatively, an advanced concept of a future life in comparison with the beliefs
of many surrounding peoples.
The concept of judgment in the hereafter for the sins of one's life in the
flesh on earth was carried over into Hebrew theology from Egypt. The word
judgment appears only once in the entire Book of Hebrew Psalms, and that
particular psalm was written by an Egyptian.
3. EVOLUTION OF MORAL CONCEPTS
Although the culture and religion of Egypt were chiefly derived from Andite
Mesopotamia and largely transmitted to subsequent civilizations through the
Hebrews and Greeks, much, very much, of the social and ethical idealism of the
Egyptians arose in the valley of the Nile as a purely evolutionary development.
Notwithstanding the importation of much truth and culture of Andite origin,
there evolved in Egypt more of moral culture as a purely human development than
appeared by similar natural techniques in any other circumscribed area prior to
the bestowal of Michael.
Moral evolution is not wholly dependent on revelation. High moral concepts can
be derived from man's own experience. Man can even evolve spiritual values and
derive cosmic insight from his personal experiential living because a divine
spirit indwells him. Such natural evolutions of conscience and character were
also augmented by the periodic arrival of teachers of truth, in ancient times
from the second Eden, later on from Melchizedek's headquarters at Salem.
Thousands of years before the Salem gospel penetrated to Egypt, its moral
leaders taught justice, fairness, and the avoidance of avarice. Three thousand
years before the Hebrew scriptures were written, the motto of the Egyptians
was: "Established is the man whose standard is righteousness; who walks
according to its way." They taught gentleness, moderation, and discretion. The
message of one of the great teachers of this epoch was: "Do right and deal
justly with all." The Egyptian triad of this age was
Truth-Justice-Righteousness. Of all the purely human religions of Urantia none
ever surpassed the social ideals and the moral grandeur of this onetime
humanism of the Nile valley.
In the soil of these evolving ethical ideas and moral ideals the surviving
doctrines of the Salem religion flourished. The concepts of good and evil found
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ready response in the hearts of a people who believed that "Life is given to
the peaceful and death to the guilty." "The peaceful is he who does what is
loved; the guilty is he who does what is hated." For centuries the inhabitants
of the Nile valley had lived by these emerging ethical and social standards
before they ever entertained the later concepts of right and wrong--good and
bad.
Egypt was intellectual and moral but not overly spiritual. In six thousand
years only four great prophets arose among the Egyptians. Amenemope they
followed for a season; Okhban they murdered; Ikhnaton they accepted but
halfheartedly for one short generation; Moses they rejected. Again was it
political rather than religious circumstances that made it easy for Abraham
and, later on, for Joseph to exert great influence throughout Egypt in behalf
of the Salem teachings of one God. But when the Salem missionaries first
entered Egypt, they encountered this highly ethical culture of evolution
blended with the modified moral standards of Mesopotamian immigrants. These
early Nile valley teachers were the first to proclaim conscience as the mandate
of God, the voice of Deity.
4. THE TEACHINGS OF AMENEMOPE
In due time there grew up in Egypt a teacher called by many the "son of man"
and by others Amenemope. This seer exalted conscience to its highest pinnacle
of arbitrament between right and wrong, taught punishment for sin, and
proclaimed salvation through calling upon the solar deity.
Amenemope taught that riches and fortune were the gift of God, and this concept
thoroughly colored the later appearing Hebrew philosophy. This noble teacher
believed that God-consciousness was the determining factor in all conduct; that
every moment should be lived in the realization of the presence of, and
responsibility to, God. The teachings of this sage were subsequently translated
into Hebrew and became the sacred book of that people long before the Old
Testament was reduced to writing. The chief preachment of this good man had to
do with instructing his son in uprightness and honesty in governmental
positions of trust, and these noble sentiments of long ago would do honor to
any modern statesman.
This wise man of the Nile taught that "riches take themselves wings and fly
away"--that all things earthly are evanescent. His great prayer was to be
"saved from fear." He exhorted all to turn away from "the words of men" to "the
acts of God." In substance he taught: Man proposes but God disposes. His
teachings, translated into Hebrew, determined the philosophy of the Old
Testament Book of Proverbs. Translated into Greek, they gave color to all
subsequent Hellenic religious philosophy. The later Alexandrian philosopher,
Philo, possessed a copy of the Book of Wisdom.
Amenemope functioned to conserve the ethics of evolution and the morals of
revelation and in his writings passed them on both to the Hebrews and to the
Greeks. He was not the greatest of the religious teachers of this age, but he
was the most influential in that he colored the subsequent thought of two vital
links in the growth of Occidental civilization--the Hebrews, among whom evolved
the acme of Occidental religious faith, and the Greeks, who developed pure
philosophic thought to its greatest European heights.
In the Book of Hebrew Proverbs, chapters fifteen, seventeen, twenty, and
chapter twenty-two, verse seventeen, to chapter twenty-four, verse twenty-two,
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are taken almost verbatim from Amenemope's Book of Wisdom. The first psalm of
the Hebrew Book of Psalms was written by Amenemope and is the heart of the
teachings of Ikhnaton.
5. THE REMARKABLE IKHNATON
The teachings of Amenemope were slowly losing their hold on the Egyptian mind
when, through the influence of an Egyptian Salemite physician, a woman of the
royal family espoused the Melchizedek teachings. This woman prevailed upon her
son, Ikhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt, to accept these doctrines of One God.
Since the disappearance of Melchizedek in the flesh, no human being up to that
time had possessed such an amazingly clear concept of the revealed religion of
Salem as Ikhnaton. In some respects this young Egyptian king is one of the most
remarkable persons in human history. During this time of increasing spiritual
depression in Mesopotamia, he kept alive the doctrine of El Elyon, the One God,
in Egypt, thus maintaining the philosophic monotheistic channel which was vital
to the religious background of the then future bestowal of Michael. And it was
in recognition of this exploit, among other reasons, that the child Jesus was
taken to Egypt, where some of the spiritual successors of Ikhnaton saw him and
to some extent understood certain phases of his divine mission to Urantia.
Moses, the greatest character between Melchizedek and Jesus, was the joint gift
to the world of the Hebrew race and the Egyptian royal family; and had Ikhnaton
possessed the versatility and ability of Moses, had he manifested a political
genius to match his surprising religious leadership, then would Egypt have
become the great monotheistic nation of that age; and if this had happened, it
is barely possible that Jesus might have lived the greater portion of his
mortal life in Egypt.
Never in all history did any king so methodically proceed to swing a whole
nation from polytheism to monotheism as did this extraordinary Ikhnaton. With
the most amazing determination this young ruler broke with the past, changed
his name, abandoned his capital, built an entirely new city, and created a
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new art and literature for a whole people. But he went too fast; he built too
much, more than could stand when he had gone. Again, he failed to provide for
the material stability and prosperity of his people, all of which reacted
unfavorably against his religious teachings when the subsequent floods of
adversity and oppression swept over the Egyptians.
Had this man of amazingly clear vision and extraordinary singleness of purpose
had the political sagacity of Moses, he would have changed the whole history of
the evolution of religion and the revelation of truth in the Occidental world.
During his lifetime he was able to curb the activities of the priests, whom he
generally discredited, but they maintained their cults in secret and sprang
into action as soon as the young king passed from power; and they were not slow
to connect all of Egypt's subsequent troubles with the establishment of
monotheism during his reign.
Very wisely Ikhnaton sought to establish monotheism under the guise of the
sun-god. This decision to approach the worship of the Universal Father by
absorbing all gods into the worship of the sun was due to the counsel of the
Salemite physician. Ikhnaton took the generalized doctrines of the then
existent Aton faith regarding the fatherhood and motherhood of Deity and
created a religion which recognized an intimate worshipful relation between man
and God.
Ikhnaton was wise enough to maintain the outward worship of Aton, the sun-god,
while he led his associates in the disguised worship of the One God, creator of
Aton and supreme Father of all. This young teacher-king was a prolific writer,
being author of the exposition entitled "The One God," a book of thirty-one
chapters, which the priests, when returned to power, utterly destroyed.
Ikhnaton also wrote one hundred and thirty-seven hymns, twelve of which are now
preserved in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, credited to Hebrew authorship.
The supreme word of Ikhnaton's religion in daily life was "righteousness," and
he rapidly expanded the concept of right doing to embrace international as well
as national ethics. This was a generation of amazing personal piety and was
characterized by a genuine aspiration among the more intelligent men and women
to find God and to know him. In those days social position or wealth gave no
Egyptian any advantage in the eyes of the law. The family life of Egypt did
much to preserve and augment moral culture and was the inspiration of the later
superb family life of the Jews in Palestine.
The fatal weakness of Ikhnaton's gospel was its greatest truth, the teaching
that Aton was not only the creator of Egypt but also of the "whole world, man
and beasts, and all the foreign lands, even Syria and Kush, besides this land
of Egypt. He sets all in their place and provides all with their needs." These
concepts of Deity were high and exalted, but they were not nationalistic. Such
sentiments of internationality in religion failed to augment the morale of the
Egyptian army on the battlefield, while they provided effective weapons for the
priests to use against the young king and his new religion. He had a Deity
concept far above that of the later Hebrews, but it was too advanced to serve
the purposes of a nation builder.
Though the monotheistic ideal suffered with the passing of Ikhnaton, the idea
of one God persisted in the minds of many groups. The son-in law of Ikhnaton
went along with the priests, back to the worship of the old gods, changing his
name to Tutankhamen. The capital returned to Thebes, and the priests waxed fat
upon the land, eventually gaining possession of one seventh of all Egypt; and
presently one of this same order of priests made bold to seize the crown.
But the priests could not fully overcome the monotheistic wave. Increasingly
they were compelled to combine and hyphenate their gods; more and more the
family of gods contracted. Ikhnaton had associated the flaming disc of the
heavens with the creator God, and this idea continued to flame up in the hearts
of men, even of the priests, long after the young reformer had passed on. Never
did the concept of monotheism die out of the hearts of men in Egypt and in the
world. It persisted even to the arrival of the Creator Son of that same divine
Father, the one God whom Ikhnaton had so zealously proclaimed for the worship
of all Egypt.
The weakness of Ikhnaton's doctrine lay in the fact that he proposed such an
advanced religion that only the educated Egyptians could fully comprehend his
teachings. The rank and file of the agricultural laborers never really grasped
his gospel and were, therefore, ready to return with the priests to the
old-time worship of Isis and her consort Osiris, who was supposed to have been
miraculously resurrected from a cruel death at the hands of Set, the god of
darkness and evil.
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The teaching of immortality for all men was too advanced for the Egyptians.
Only kings and the rich were promised a resurrection; therefore did they so
carefully embalm and preserve their bodies in tombs against the day of
judgment. But the democracy of salvation and resurrection as taught by Ikhnaton
eventually prevailed, even to the extent that the Egyptians later believed in
the survival of dumb animals.
Although the effort of this Egyptian ruler to impose the worship of one God
upon his people appeared to fail, it should be recorded that the repercussions
of his work persisted for centuries both in Palestine and Greece, and that
Egypt thus became the agent for transmitting the combined evolutionary culture
of the Nile and the revelatory religion of the Euphrates to all of the
subsequent peoples of the Occident.
The glory of this great era of moral development and spiritual growth in the
Nile valley was rapidly passing at about the time the national life of the
Hebrews was beginning, and consequent upon their sojourn in Egypt these
Bedouins carried away much of these teachings and perpetuated many of
Ikhnaton's doctrines in their racial religion.
6. THE SALEM DOCTRINES IN IRAN
From Palestine some of the Melchizedek missionaries passed on through
Mesopotamia and to the great Iranian plateau. For more than five hundred years
the Salem teachers made headway in Iran, and the whole nation was swinging to
the Melchizedek religion when a change of rulers precipitated a bitter
persecution which practically ended the monotheistic teachings of the Salem
cult. The doctrine of the Abrahamic covenant was virtually extinct in Persia
when, in that great century of moral renaissance, the sixth before Christ,
Zoroaster appeared to revive the smouldering embers of the Salem gospel.
This founder of a new religion was a virile and adventurous youth, who, on his
first pilgrimage to Ur in Mesopotamia, had learned of the traditions of the
Caligastia and the Lucifer rebellion--along with many other traditions--all of
which had made a strong appeal to his religious nature. Accordingly, as the
result of a dream while in Ur, he settled upon a program of returning to his
northern home to undertake the remodeling of the religion of his people. He had
imbibed the Hebraic idea of a God of justice, the Mosaic concept of divinity.
The idea of a supreme God was clear in his mind, and he set down all other gods
as devils, consigned them to the ranks of the demons of which he had heard in
Mesopotamia. He had learned of the story of the Seven Master Spirits as the
tradition lingered in Ur, and, accordingly, he created a galaxy of seven
supreme gods with Ahura-Mazda at its head. These subordinate gods he associated
with the idealization of Right Law, Good Thought, Noble Government, Holy
Character, Health, and Immortality.
And this new religion was one of action--work--not prayers and rituals. Its God
was a being of supreme wisdom and the patron of civilization; it was a militant
religious philosophy which dared to battle with evil, inaction, and
backwardness.
Zoroaster did not teach the worship of fire but sought to utilize the flame as
a symbol of the pure and wise Spirit of universal and supreme dominance. (All
too true, his later followers did both reverence and worship this symbolic
fire.)
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Finally, upon the conversion of an Iranian prince, this new religion was spread
by the sword. And Zoroaster heroically died in battle for that which he
believed was the "truth of the Lord of light."
Zoroastrianism is the only Urantian creed that perpetuates the Dalamatian and
Edenic teachings about the Seven Master Spirits. While failing to evolve the
Trinity concept, it did in a certain way approach that of God the Sevenfold.
Original Zoroastrianism was not a pure dualism; though the early teachings did
picture evil as a time co-ordinate of goodness, it was definitely
eternity-submerged in the ultimate reality of the good. Only in later times did
the belief gain credence that good and evil contended on equal terms.
The Jewish traditions of heaven and hell and the doctrine of devils as recorded
in the Hebrew scriptures, while founded on the lingering traditions of Lucifer
and Caligastia, were principally derived from the Zoroastrians during the times
when the Jews were under the political and cultural dominance of the Persians.
Zoroaster, like the Egyptians, taught the "day of judgment," but he connected
this event with the end of the world.
Even the religion which succeeded Zoroastrianism in Persia was markedly
influenced by it. When the Iranian priests sought to overthrow the teachings of
Zoroaster, they resurrected the ancient worship of Mithra. And Mithraism spread
throughout the Levant and Mediterranean regions, being for some time a
contemporary of both Judaism and Christianity. The teachings of Zoroaster thus
came successively to impress three great religions: Judaism and Christianity
and, through them, Mohammedanism.
But it is a far cry from the exalted teachings and noble psalms of Zoroaster to
the modern perversions of his gospel by the Parsees with their great fear of
the dead, coupled with the entertainment of beliefs in sophistries which
Zoroaster never stooped to countenance.
This great man was one of that unique group that sprang up in the sixth century
before Christ to keep the light of Salem from being fully and finally
extinguished as it so dimly burned to show man in his darkened world the path
of light leading to everlasting life.
7. THE SALEM TEACHINGS IN ARABIA
The Melchizedek teachings of the one God became established in the Arabian
desert at a comparatively recent date. As in Greece, so in Arabia the Salem
missionaries failed because of their misunderstanding of Machiventa's
instructions regarding overorganization. But they were not thus hindered by
their interpretation of his admonition against all efforts to extend the gospel
through military force or civil compulsion.
Not even in China or Rome did the Melchizedek teachings fail more completely
than in this desert region so very near Salem itself. Long after the majority
of the peoples of the Orient and Occident had become respectively Buddhist and
Christian, the desert of Arabia continued as it had for thousands of years.
Each tribe worshiped its olden fetish, and many individual families had their
own household gods. Long the struggle continued between Babylonian Ishtar,
Hebrew Yahweh, Iranian Ahura, and Christian Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Never was one concept able fully to displace the others.
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Here and there throughout Arabia were families and clans that held on to the
hazy idea of the one God. Such groups treasured the traditions of Melchizedek,
Abraham, Moses, and Zoroaster. There were numerous centers that might have
responded to the Jesusonian gospel, but the Christian missionaries of the
desert lands were an austere and unyielding group in contrast with the
compromisers and innovators who functioned as missionaries in the Mediterranean
countries. Had the followers of Jesus taken more seriously his injunction to
"go into all the world and preach the gospel," and had they been more gracious
in that preaching, less stringent in collateral social requirements of their
own devising, then many lands would gladly have received the simple gospel of
the carpenter's son, Arabia among them.
Despite the fact that the great Levantine monotheisms failed to take root in
Arabia, this desert land was capable of producing a faith which, though less
demanding in its social requirements, was nonetheless monotheistic.
There was only one factor of a tribal, racial, or national nature about the
primitive and unorganized beliefs of the desert, and that was the peculiar and
general respect which almost all Arabian tribes were willing to pay to a
certain black stone fetish in a certain temple at Mecca. This point of common
contact and reverence subsequently led to the establishment of the Islamic
religion. What Yahweh, the volcano spirit, was to the Jewish Semites, the Kaaba
stone became to their Arabic cousins.
The strength of Islam has been its clear-cut and well-defined presentation of
Allah as the one and only Deity; its weakness, the association of military
force with its promulgation, together with its degradation of woman. But it has
steadfastly held to its presentation of the One Universal Deity of all, "who
knows the invisible and the visible. He is the merciful and the compassionate."
"Truly God is plenteous in goodness to all men." "And when I am sick, it is he
who heals me." "For whenever as many as three speak together, God is present as
a fourth," for is he not "the first and the last, also the seen and the
hidden"?
[Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
The Adjuster And The Soul Personality Survival Seraphic Guardians Of Destiny
Seraphic Planetary Government The Supreme Being The Almighty Supreme God The
Supreme Supreme And Ultimate--time And Space The Bestowals Of Christ Michael
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