Episode:Melchizedek Gospel—Response Among the Hebrews (Part 6)

From Symmetry of Soul


No prophet or religious leader from Melchizedek to the time of Jesus attained the high concept of God that the second Isaiah proclaimed during the Babylonian captivity. This great Hebrew preached a God of universal creation, upholding, and love—quickening the enlarging concept of a supreme Yahweh. He vied with Moses in his eloquence; no more beautiful pronouncements about the heavenly Father have ever been made.

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Keywords: Urantia, Melchizedek of Salem, Israelites, Old Testament, Isaiah

Summary by Kermit

Prior to our reading we commented on the timeline that we’ve been stepping through with the Hebrew prophets. The previous week we learned that it was in the 6th century B.C. that Jeremiah expounded the internationalization of Yahweh. In so doing, he was synchronous with the renaissance of monotheism throughout the world. Not to detract from his key role in the evolution of the God concept among the Hebrews, but his significance as a prophet was as much a consequence of his chronology as his character and personality attributes. The second Isaiah following Jeremiah, was likewise a participant in this 6th century B.C. renaissance.

We further commented that in our efforts to appreciate and grasp evolutionary Deity, along with existential Deity, we must also appreciate our own evolutionary nature and recognize that our current concepts of God will, in our distant future, one day be seen as primitive. Even the lofty and sublime comprehension of the Universal Father we will possess in our face to face audience with Him at the culmination of our Paradise ascent will be seen in hind sight as partial and incomplete. Rather than representing an end point in our universe career, it will be the completion of the initiation to universe service, a starting point in the eternal evolutionary process.

97:7. The Second Isaiah

The Hebrews’ captivity during this time held great potential for expanding their theology. However, the determined action and effort of their priesthood to restore the Jews as the chosen people resulted in their invention of fables and the multiplication of miraculous appearing events that passed as sacred history. Instead of allowing the rugged challenges of tribulation in their external lives to stimulate growth and progress in their inner lives, they created a buffer of illusion of their exalted place in world affairs. Can we as individuals use this history lesson to detect the potentials for our own growth and progress in the apparently disastrous actualities of external events. As it was, the Jews did benefit from the influence of the higher concepts in the Babylonian traditions and legends. At the same they distorted these legends to reflect honor and glory upon the ancestry of Israel, they improved the moral tone and spiritual significance of these adopted stories.

The revelators point out that these priests did not intentionally foist their erroneous ideas on such a large part of the Occidental world. They did not claim to be writing by inspiration or profess to be writing a sacred book. Their intention was to bolster the courage and improve the national spirit and morale of their fellow captives. It was only later that men assembled these writings into a book of supposedly infallible teachings. Any resentment we may feel toward the priests should be antidoted by recognizing the error of thinking too existentially and attaching our ideals of God to material doings. In light of the revelation can we appreciate the Old Testament for the truths it contains rather than resenting it for masquerading as a sacred book?

In the midst of this captivity and the reworking of Hebrew history, along comes the second Isaiah. He didn’t introduce new concepts of God, but in the most compelling manner, he preached a God of justice, love, righteousness, and mercy. He solidified the concepts introduced by the first Isaiah and Jeremiah, and made converts equally among the Jews and their captors.

In appreciating the pivotal role of key individuals like the two Isaiahs, Jeremiah, and others, in the quantum advances in the growth of the God concept, do not fail to recognize the perhaps harder to discern role of those writ less large in this process. What may seem to appear as singular interventions in the stream of human events may in reality be the suddenlies that punctuate the otherwise gradual incremental growth and progress of evolution. The priests who sought divorce from all association with the second Isaiah, incorporated his writings among those of the earlier Isaiah out of sheer respect for their beauty, grandeur and eloquence. No prophet or religious teacher from Machiventa to the time of Jesus attained the high concept of God as this second Isaiah. The revelators inform us that even Machiventa himself, at last beheld the proclamation of a real God to mortal man. Here is a God of the whole planet, even the universe. The angry, vengeful, and jealous Yahweh of the Bedouins has nearly vanished, replaced by a new concept of the supreme and universal Yahweh, never to be lost to human view. At last man is presented with a universe of law and order, and a God of dependable and final attributes.

And our Melchizedek author proceeds to cite some of his more inspiring words saying, “No more beautiful pronouncements about the heavenly Father have ever been made. Like the Psalms, the writings of Isaiah are among the most sublime and true presentations of the spiritual concept of God ever to greet the ears of mortal man prior to the arrival of Michael on Urantia.”

He effectively eclipsed the nationalistic Yahweh with his sublime portraiture of the majesty and universal omnipotence of the supreme Yahweh, God of love, ruler of the universe and affectionate Father of all mankind. While doing much to counteract the wrong concepts of the promised Messiah, he was not entirely successful. But for the dedication of the priests in promulgating a misconceived nationalism, the teachings of the two Isaiahs would have prepared the way for the recognition and reception of the promised Messiah.

Again, applying these truths to us, today, there are thousands of hungry, desperate souls (many of great intelligence) who need the simple truths of trust and faith of the Melchizedek gospel, forget the complexities of even Jesus’ life, let alone the manifold intricacies of the 5th ER. Without the foundational trust and faith of the 3rd ER, one’s ability to dispense the love and service of the 4th ER, or articulate the sublime new ideas of God in the 5th ER are virtually stunted.

We made numerous other observations and comments of interest concerning contemporary application the teachings and preaching of the second Isaiah that deserve re-examination in the archive, to wit, how God does not remember our sins, and the love of God for all persons, even those whom we consider our nemesis.

97:8. Sacred and Profane History

We read this section somewhat hurriedly. Much confusion has resulted from the custom of regarding the experiences of the Hebrews as sacred history, and the doings of the rest of the world as profane history. The Hebrew priests of the Babylonian exile in the rewriting and recasting of their history, with God’s supposedly miraculous dealings with them, coupled with their destruction of then existing records produced the sacred history we know as the Old Testament. Yet, the five hundred years of the captivity and bondage, coupled with the false hope of their contrived scriptures so confused, disappointed, and frustrated the Jewish leaders that they failed to recognize and accept the mission and ministry of a divine Son of Paradise when he incarnated as the Son of Man among them.

All modern religions have seriously blundered in their interpretation of certain periods of human history ascribing events to God’s miraculous intervention. New Testament authors and later Christian writers have exploited Hebrew history to the point where it has been converted to a fiction of sacred history and become inextricably bound up with the moral concepts and religious teachings of the so-called Christian nations.