Paper 98 Overview: The Melchizedek Teachings in the Occident

The Melchizedek teachings spread to Europe mostly through Egypt and became part of Western thinking after being influenced by Greek ideas and later Christian beliefs. These teachings eventually became part of the Christian church. Salem missionaries worked in Europe for a long time, with some groups like the Cynics keeping the purest form of Salem teachings.

Jewish soldiers who fought in Western battles also helped spread Salem teachings in Europe. The basic teachings of Greek philosophy, Jewish religion, and Christian ethics all came from the earlier Melchizedek teachings.

The Melchizedek teachings came to Europe through several paths, but mostly through Egypt. These teachings became part of Western philosophy after being changed by Greek ideas and later by Christian beliefs. All of this eventually led to the Christian church. Salem missionaries worked in Europe for a long time before they gradually joined various religious groups.

Among those who kept the Salem teachings in their purest form were the Cynics. These teachers of faith in God were still active in Roman Europe in the first century after Christ, and later became part of the newly forming Christian religion. Jewish soldiers who fought in Western battles also helped spread Salem teachings in Europe, as Jews were known for both their fighting skill and their religious beliefs.

The Salem missionaries could have built a great religious structure among the Greeks, but they were limited by their oath not to organize worship groups or act as priests. When these teachers reached early Greece, they found people who followed traditions from Adamson and the Andites, but these teachings had been changed by the beliefs of the slaves brought to Greece.

This mixing of beliefs caused people to go back to primitive beliefs with bloody rituals, and the lower classes even made ceremonies out of the executions of criminals. The early influence of the Salem teachers was nearly destroyed by the so-called Aryan invasion from southern Europe and the East. These new invaders brought with them the idea of gods that looked like humans, similar to what their Aryan relatives took to India.

A simple and shallow religion cannot last long, especially when it has no priests to support it and fill people's hearts with fear and respect. The Olympian religion did not promise salvation or satisfy the spiritual thirst of its believers, so it was doomed to disappear. Within a thousand years of its start, it had nearly vanished, and the Greeks were left without a national religion.

This was the situation when, during the sixth century before Christ, the East and the Levant experienced a revival of spiritual awareness and a new recognition of monotheism. But the West did not share in this new development, and neither Europe nor northern Africa took part in this religious renaissance. The Greeks, however, did make a magnificent intellectual advancement.

The Roman religion grew out of the earlier forms of worship of family gods into the tribal respect for Mars, the god of war. It was natural that the later religion of the Latins was more of a political practice than the intellectual systems of the Greeks and Brahmans or the more spiritual religions of several other peoples.

In the great monotheistic revival of Melchizedek's gospel during the sixth century before Christ, too few Salem missionaries reached Italy. Those who did could not overcome the influence of the rapidly spreading Etruscan priesthood with its new group of gods and temples, which became organized into the Roman state religion. This religion of the Latin tribes was not trivial like that of the Greeks, nor was it strict and controlling like that of the Hebrews; it consisted mostly of the observance of forms, vows, and taboos.

Most people in the Greco-Roman world, having lost their primitive family and state religions and being unable or unwilling to understand Greek philosophy, turned their attention to the spectacular and emotional mystery cults from Egypt and the Levant. The common people wanted promises of salvation, religious comfort for today, and assurances of hope for life after death.

The three mystery cults that became most popular were: the Phrygian cult of Cybele and her son Attis, the Egyptian cult of Osiris and his mother Isis, and the Iranian cult of Mithras as the savior of sinful mankind. The Phrygian and Egyptian mysteries taught that the divine son had experienced death and been brought back to life by divine power, and that anyone who was properly initiated into the mystery would share in this divine nature and immortality.

The Phrygian and Egyptian mysteries eventually gave way to the greatest of all the mystery cults, the worship of Mithras. The Mithraic cult appealed to a wide range of people and gradually replaced both of its predecessors. Mithraism spread throughout the Roman Empire through Roman soldiers who were recruited in the Levant, where this religion was popular, and they carried this belief wherever they went.

This new religious ritual was a great improvement over the earlier mystery cults. The cult of Mithras began in Iran and lasted a long time in its homeland despite opposition from the followers of Zoroaster. But by the time Mithraism reached Rome, it had been greatly improved by absorbing many of Zoroaster's teachings.

Before the coming of the mystery cults and Christianity, personal religion hardly developed as an independent institution in the civilized lands of North Africa and Europe. It was more of a family, city-state, political, and imperial matter. The Greeks never developed a centralized worship system; their ritual was local, they had no priesthood and no "sacred book."

Western religion was weak until the time of the great contest between Mithraism and Paul's new religion of Christianity. During the third century after Christ, Mithraic and Christian churches were very similar in appearance and in their rituals. Both religions used baptism and shared bread and wine. One big difference between Mithraism and Christianity, besides the characters of Mithras and Jesus, was that Mithraism encouraged fighting while Christianity was peaceful.

A Creator Son did not come to earth as a human to make peace with an angry God, but rather to help all people recognize the Father's love and to realize they are children of God. Even the great supporter of the atonement doctrine understood this truth when he said, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself."

It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the origin and spread of the Christian religion. It is enough to say that it is built around the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the human form of Michael of Nebadon, known on earth as the Christ, the anointed one. Christianity was spread throughout the Levant and the West by the followers of this Galilean, and their missionary enthusiasm equaled that of their famous predecessors, the Sethites and Salemites, as well as their dedicated Asian contemporaries, the Buddhist teachers.