Episode:Melchizedek Gospel—Response in the Orient (Part 4)
As the Melchizedek missionaries passed through Asia, they spread the doctrine of the Most High God and salvation through faith. The earliest form of Taoism arose in China as a direct consequence of this teaching. In the sixth century before Christ, a unique time of spiritual progress, two outstanding teachers of religious truth, Lao-tse and Confucius, restated and revitalized the Melchizedek gospel.
Keywords: Urantia, Melchizedek of Salem, Taoism, Lao-tse, Confucius
Summary by Kermit
with final edits by James
5. The Struggle for Truth in China
We picked up our story of the response in the Orient to the Melchizedek teachings and missionaries in China. As in India, the Melchizedek missionaries’ original doctrine of the Most High God and salvation through faith absorbed considerable philosophy and religious thought from the populations they encountered. They did however, penetrate to all peoples of the Eurasian continent, arriving in China in somewhat less than five hundred years after Machiventa’s departure in the flesh. For over one hundred years they maintained a headquarters for the training teachers at See Fuch. We speculated about the current location of See Fuch, suspecting that it is in the southern part of China, part of the Yangtze River culture.
The earliest form of Taoism arose from this teaching. This early or proto-Taoism was vastly different from the Taoism of today, and was derived from three factors.
- The lingering monotheistic teachings of Singlangton, persisting in the concept of Shang-ti, the God of Heaven. While never completely losing the One Truth or Spirit of Heaven from the times of Singlangton (from approximately 100,000 years ago), subsequent centuries saw the insidious accumulation of subordinate gods and spirits into their religion. (We discussed the role of the pacifistic nature of the yellow race and their mindal compatibility to the teachings of Singlangton as key factors for the persistence of his teachings for nearly 100,000 years.)
- The Salem religion, albeit considerably changed from the simple Salem doctrines.
- The Brahman-Absolute concept of Indian philosophers plus a desire to escape all evil was the greatest extraneous influence to the spread of the Salem religion.
This composite belief spread through the lands of the yellow and brown peoples, appearing in Japan as Shinto. We commented that the reference to “brown” peoples should be thought of as the result of the racial blending of the primary Sangiks, in this case predominately yellow and red.
Though the Chinese avoided the pitfall of slavery to priestcraft as befell the Indian religions, they did fall into the error of ancestor worship. The chief detriment of worshipping one’s ancestors is the emphasis on looking to the past and not the future. This subject led to an interesting discussion of the terms preservation, observation, and conservation, being focused on the past, present, and future respectively, and the implications of each for their application to religious and social progress. (As always, the Symmetry of Soul archive can provide the student with the full details of this discussion at about 1:05 into the broadcast).
6. Lao-Tse and Confucius
As a result of the general absorption of the Melchizedek teachings into the older Urantia beliefs, approximately six hundred years prior to Michael’s arrival, Melchizedek himself concluded that the purity of his teachings was being unduly compromised. So it was that “...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.” [94:6.1] This century of spiritual truth was characterized by the appearance of great religious, moral, and philosophic teachers all over the civilized world. This sixth-century spiritual awakening is one of the more intriguing episodes in our planetary history. We speculated on the types of spiritual agencies involved in this remarkable episode, from the action of Machiventa and the twelve Melchizedek receivers, activation of destiny reservists in the persons of these great teachers, Michael’s hand, or activity of the mysterious Inspired Trinity Spirits with their enigmatic superconscious techniques as teachers of the realms [19:5.9]. But, as was pointed out, spiritual agencies are in the main understandable by our administrators. It is the “unusual co-ordination...not all of which are understood by even the planetary supervisors,” that could reasonably point in the direction of the holistic and inscrutable activity of the Supreme. It was as a result of these teachers that the Salem gospel was restated and revitalized, much of which has persisted to the twentieth-century.
Lao-tse and Confucius thus appeared on the scene in China during this remarkable divine “conspiracy” in the sixth-century B.C.
Lao was a most remarkable and discerning man of great spiritual vision. The advanced nature of his teaching of Tao as the One First Cause of all creation, coupled with his vision of man’s eternal destiny of eternal union with Tao, Supreme God and Universal King are more than exceptional. Was he a reservist? How did he come to such higher-level understanding? While his methods may remain mysterious, through the revelation we know he was a real person and not an historical construct as put forward by some. His presentation of the doctrine of returning good for evil, and his concept of true faith as the “attitude of a little child” are so reminiscent of Jesus’ teachings that we wonder if Jesus selected and tailored his message to align with Lao’s?
Further, Lao understood the eternal purpose of the Creator in His inevitability of expression without striving, or coercion of the creature. Unfortunately, his teaching of nonresistance and his distinction between action and coercion were later perverted into the beliefs of “seeing, doing, and thinking nothing,” notwithstanding that his teaching of nonresistance has been a factor in the pacific tendencies of the Chinese peoples.
Twentieth-century Taoism bears little resemblance to the full teachings of Lao. The lack of the personal as aspects of both the creature and creator in today’s Taoism as well as other eastern religions represents a major obstacle in their religious and philosophical development.
Next week we meet Lao’s younger contemporary in sixth-century China, Confucius.
