The earlier chapters of Genesis have been symbolic accounts of the Adamic race as a whole. With Abram, the book begins to focus exclusively on the development and history of a particular people. Yet this people remain a symbol of mankind. As a struggling, seeking, oft-cursed, oft-blessed race, they are a microcosm of Humanity in its search for God, manifesting all the potential within for good and evil.
Melchizedek
These become hard at times for the individual to visualize; that the mental and soul [bodies] may manifest without a physical vehicle.
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Perhaps one reason why Melchizedek was able to impress Abram was that this high priest, like Adam and Enoch (and many of the so-called Eastern masters today) was a “living soul.” Melchizedek was not a flesh man. It is written of him:
Neither his father nor his mother is recorded in the genealogies; and neither the beginning of his days nor the end of his life. (Hebrews 7:3)
Thus, he was “a living soul.”
For as He hath given, “The earth, the heavens will pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Know that the soul, the psychic forces of an entity, any entity, any body, are . . . eternal—for they are without days, without years, without numbers . . .
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Cayce described the three primary appearances of Jesus—Adam, Enoch, and Melchizedek—as “in the perfection” (5749-14) and distinguished them from the later ones which were “in the earth”—Joseph, Joshua, Jeshua, and Jesus. It is also written of Melchizedek that “he is a priest forever.” (Psalm 110:4, Hebrews 7:17)
In his resurrected body Jesus is “without days or years” and once again High Priest “after the order of Melchizedek.”
Though He were the Son, know that there was the lonesomeness, the fear of those influences that beset those He loved. Yet, knowing He hath entered into that glory, becoming the high priest of His people, they that seek Him daily, and having sat down on the right hand of the Father, then through Him ye have that promise, “Lo, I am with thee.”
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The Offices of High Priest
Just as Abram began the line which eventually resulted in the ultimate incarnation in the flesh of the Son of the Living God, Edgar Cayce told a woman that in a very distant and ancient age, she had begun activities and established a line which made the appearance of Melchizedek possible. Although Melchizedek’s genealogy is not known, Edgar Cayce said that in prehistoric Egypt [884] had been his great-great-grandmother:
. . . we find the entity was in what is now known as the Egyptian land, during those experiences when there were those being sent as the emissaries for the peoples in the various lands; where there had been and were the attempts to correlate the teachings of those in various portions of that eastern land.
The entity was among those that aided in the establishing of that in the Persian land, which later became as the tenets of that people from whom—many ages later—Melchizedek came. And the entity finds that when this is said within its inner self there is a response which makes for an opening of the greater promises from within: M-e-l-c-h-i-z-e-d-e-k, the great-great-grandson of the entity, who came as without days, as without father or mother, yet as in [the] desire of the entity that—as Sususus—created or begun the condition through its efforts.
For it brought into the associations of those with whom the entity labored that which would make for peace, harmony; glorying in the acceptance of the truths from the Infinite—as it may express itself in the finite minds of men.
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If Cayce is correct, one of Melchizedek’s greatest contributions to the spiritual development of mankind was the creation of the Book of Job, a religious allegory, a pattern of man’s experience in the earth:
(Q) Was Jesus, the Christ, ever Job in the physical body? . . .
(A) No. Not ever in the physical body . . . For, as the Sons of God came together to reason, as recorded in Job, who recorded same? The Son of Man! Melchizedek wrote Job!
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Another body of teaching initiated by Melchizedek was later used to found the School of Prophets, which eventually became the Essene Community to which many of the early Christian Jews belonged, including Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.
Hence the group we refer to . . . as the Essenes . . . was the outgrowth of the periods of preparations from the teachings of Melchizedek, as propagated by Elijah and Elisha and Samuel.
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Thus the teachings of Melchizedek are not only the basis for much of the Old Testament wisdom, but the Christian philosophy as well.
Melchizedek’s blessing of Abram in Genesis 14 provides another example of a spiritual service:
. . . Melchizedek, a prince of peace, one seeking ever to be able to bless those in their judgments who have sought to become channels for a helpful influence without any seeking for material gain or mental or material glory . . .
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Father Abraham
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were the first patriarchs and set the examples. All the later prophets, seers, and writers of the Old Testament refer to the experiences of these three men. God spoke to Adam, walked with Enoch, and talked with Noah, but only with the coming of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did man’s concept of God become a personal thing.
On February 19, 1939, a fifty-four-year-old beauty salon manager obtained a Life reading. In this very touching extract from it, Cayce describes the influence Abraham and his family had upon her.
. . . the entity was in that land when there were those activities in which the chosen of the Lord, as recorded, were making for those activities which later brought about the dwellings of him called father of the faithful.
The entity then was among the daughters of Heth from whom Abraham purchased the land near Socoh. [Genesis 23] The entity was acquainted with that patriarch, though—as considered in those days—of an unknown people; yet through the activities viewed by the entity as to same there was aroused that which brought a longing for a knowledge of a something of which the entity had heard.
For the manner in which Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah—and even Ishmael—were in the care of their own brought the love of a home; yet to the entity—as in the present—seeking rather the knowledge of that city not built with hands, but rather that eternal in the heart and soul of those.12
Hence we find again those abilities of ministering, of teaching—not as proclaiming but in living, and in the quietness of the conversation, being able to give that which awakens within the minds and hearts of others that search for that which the entity finds in its emblem—the lamb and the lotus, in purity that touches even to the lips of God.
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On