The Melchizedek Sons assisted with planetary preparation for Michael's bestowal and Jesus did everything to fit his work within the parameters of the Melchizedek plan. I asked our study group in Walnut Creek to follow this episode in the Master’s career from the issuing of a warrant for his arrest to the transfiguration event on Mt. Hermon. My inspiration for the study were insights David Kantor shared with me and I have used to create this blog.

   “Melchizedek taught that at some future time another Son of God would come in the flesh as he had come, but that he would be born of a woman; and that is why numerous later teachers held that Jesus was a priest, or minister, “forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (The Urantia Book, The UB, 93:3.7)

   “And thus did Melchizedek prepare the way and set the monotheistic stage of world tendency for the bestowal of an actual Paradise Son of the one God, whom he so vividly portrayed as the Father of all, and whom he represented to Abraham as a God who would accept man on the simple terms of personal faith. And Michael, when he appeared on earth, confirmed all that Melchizedek had taught concerning the Paradise Father.” (93:3.8, p.1017)

   The plan to represent “a God who would accept man on the simple terms of personal faith,” began to come apart with the Sanhedrin’s closure of the synagogues to Jesus and his followers, and the issuing of a warrant for Jesus' arrest. “May 22 was an eventful day in the life of Jesus. On this Sunday morning, before daybreak, one of David's messengers arrived in great haste from Tiberias, bringing the word that Herod had authorized, or was about to authorize, the arrest of Jesus by the officers of the Sanhedrin.” (154:5.1)

   It became very clear that the Jews were going to reject the teachings of the Son. “… in losing sight of Melchizedek, they also lost sight of the teaching of this emergency Son regarding the spiritual mission of the promised bestowal Son; lost sight of the nature of this mission so fully and completely that very few of their progeny were able or willing to recognize and receive Michael when he appeared on earth and in the flesh as Machiventa had foretold.” (93:9. p.1024)

   The times demanded a crisis decision. What did Jesus do? First, he sought to survive and continue the gospel teaching. He fled Galilee, telling the apostles he was not interested in risking death and martyrdom by directly taking on the religious and political authority of Jerusalem. “Jesus made it clear to the twenty-four that he had not fled from Galilee because he lacked courage to confront his enemies. They comprehended that he was not yet ready for an open clash with established religion, and that he did not seek to become a martyr.” (156:2.5)

   He decided to take his message to the Gentiles beginning in Phoenicia and this expedition was very successful, “many were baptized.” (156:4.1) But on the way back Jesus is summoned to Mt. Hermon, a sudden change apparently, and yet just one among many precipitous developments, only six days after the confession of Peter that Jesus was “the Son of God.” He traveled with the apostles up to Caesarea Philippi and stayed a couple of days, “Jesus and the apostles remained another day at the home of Celsus, waiting for messengers to arrive from David Zebedee with funds.” (157:6.1)

   “Jesus had been summoned to go up on the mountain, apart by himself, for the transaction of important matters having to do with the progress of his bestowal in the flesh as this experience was related to the universe of his own creation. It is significant that this extraordinary event was timed to occur while Jesus and the apostles were in the lands of the gentiles, and that it actually transpired on a mountain of the gentiles.” (158:1.2)

   Jesus selected Peter, James, and John to go with him to Mt. Hermon to the meeting to which he had been summoned, “and where he had appointed to inaugurate his fourth phase of earth ministry as the Son of God.” (157:7.5)

   “Lay in provisions and prepare yourselves for a journey to yonder mountain, where the spirit bids me go to be endowed for the finish of my work on earth. And I would take my brethren along that they may also be strengthened for the trying times of going with me through this experience." (157:7.5)

   What went on at this meeting with Jesus, Father Melchizedek and Gabriel that took several hours?  “A fleeting glimpse of a celestial pageant… the acceptance of the fullness of the bestowal of the incarnated life of Michael on Urantia by the Eternal Mother-Son of Paradise … The testimony of the satisfaction of the Infinite Spirit as to the fullness of the Urantia bestowal in the likeness of mortal flesh.” (158:3.2-3)

   By going to the Gentiles with the bestowal program, Jesus undertook his own innovation to the original Melchizedek plan. Yet he was not doing anything very different from what the Salem missionaries decided when they took their message to the whole known world. “Melchizedek continued for some years to instruct his students and to train the Salem missionaries, who penetrated to all the surrounding tribes, especially to Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor. And as the decades passed, these teachers journeyed farther and farther from Salem, carrying with them Machiventa’s gospel of belief and faith in God.” (93:7.1)

   “But the task was so great and the tribes were so backward that the results were vague and indefinite. From one generation to another the Salem gospel found lodgment here and there, but except in Palestine, never was the idea of one God able to claim the continued allegiance of a whole tribe or race. (93:7.3)

   Note Jesus' conversation with Peter, James and John on the way down the mountain. Like Peter, the apostles must have “shuddered at the thought of the Master’s dying,” (158:2.2) "but don't worry,” he told them, “I'll rise from the dead after three days." Just a few weeks earlier he’d told them he had no interest in being a martyr. As David Kantor commented: “This is the first time I can find that he's telling them he's going to be killed. So what happened at that meeting?  It seems that it was agreed that Jesus should play out the bestowal as planned in the context of Hebrew religion and let things run their natural course.”

   The Jews had accepted the monotheistic concept. Indeed they were the only people who were not polytheists.  By going to the Gentiles Jesus was placing his message more fully into Gentile/pagan culture.  The Urantia Book notes that the repercussions were that his teaching, in the form it took as Christianity, “conquered—absorbed and exalted—the whole stream of Hebrew theology and Greek philosophy. And then, when this Christian religion became comatose for more than a thousand years as a result of an overdose of mysteries and paganism, it resurrected itself and virtually reconquered the whole Western world. Christianity contains enough of Jesus' teachings to immortalize it.”(195:10.18)

   The “resurrection” of Jesus’ teachings was undoubtedly helped by the presence of the Spirit of Truth on our world after Pentecost.

   Jesus could easily have gone to Damascus or Alexandria, even India, and begun a new career. He could have returned to his position as Creator Sovereign of Nebadon after Mt. Hermon. But he stayed in Palestine and forced the issue with the Jewish religious authorities. This is what he understood to be the Father's will, fulfilling the bestowal as planned. “Jesus sought to know his Father's will and decided to pursue the mortal bestowal to its natural end.” (158:3.5) It was not the Father's will that he be crucified, but rather that the situation be allowed to run its natural course. Was it also the way it was originally planned by the Melchizedeks?

   “He did not emerge from the tomb as a spirit nor as Michael of Nebadon; he did not appear in the form of the Creator Sovereign … He now lives as Jesus of morontia, and as he begins this morontia life, the material body of his flesh lies there undisturbed in the tomb. The soldiers are still on guard, and the seal of the governor about the rocks has not yet been broken.” (189:1.8 to 13) Have a Joyous Easter!