Melchizedek Ministry

I've been hearing and seeing the plan and purpose of the Lord for His called. Today this chapter spoke loudly to me and I desire to share it.  Royal Priesthood Part 30 - J. Preston Eby

Quote ="For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and BLESSED HIM; to whom also Abraham GAVE A TENTH PART OF ALL; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is King of peace" (Heb. 7:1-2).

All scriptural truth is great and precious. No costly gem of earth can compare its value to the precious worth of truth. From the vast storehouse of truth contained within the holy scriptures there shines forth with dazzling brilliance two wonderful revelatory actions in the brief passage quoted above. First, there is the blessing and second, the tithe. How these two have been reversed in our thinking! It has been inscribed in endless volumes, preached on innumerable radio and television programs, and shouted from the pulpits everywhere that the tithing comes first and the blessing comes second. Of course, the scripture quoted most often in support of that teaching is Mal. 3:8-10 wherein God said to Old Testament Israel, "Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed Me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed Me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

The Bible does indeed teach that God blesses us as we give to Him. There are laws at work that God has built into the universe: that God will not be placed into the debt of any man; that no one can outgive God; that he that sows, reaps. Those laws in the spiritual world, as in the physical world, are based upon faith. It is an act of faith in the law of the harvest which a farmer exercises every spring when he takes perfectly good corn that could be made into perfectly good bread to feed his family, and throws it away into the dirt. He does that because he knows that he is not throwing it away; he is sowing it and he will reap a harvest. The Bible repeatedly makes reference to these laws, that in obedience to God we will be blessed.

When we come to the Melchizedek Priesthood, however, the order is reversed. Notice with intense consideration the inspired words of Moses, "For this Melchizedek...priest of the Most High God...met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and BLESSED HIM; to whom also Abraham GAVE A TENTH PART OF ALL." Can we not see by this that the blessing precedes the tithing in the Order of Melchizedek? The law of tithing had not been given to Abraham or his seed when Abraham met Melchizedek, for there was not as yet an Israel of God in the world.

The priesthood of Aaron would not be established until hundreds of years thence. Abraham had absolutely no comprehension of the God who would envelop Himself in a thick cloud amidst the thunderings and lightnings of the fiery Mount Sinai, a sight so terrible that Moses cried, "I exceedingly fear and quake." Who could endure the sight of that devouring fire, which was the apt expression of divine holiness? "The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; He shined forth from Paran, and He came with ten thousand of His saints; from His right hand went a FIERY LAW for them" (Deut. 33:2). The term "fiery," as applied to the law, is expressive of its holiness, "Our God is a consuming fire" - perfectly intolerant of evil, in thought, word, and deed.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so is the Melchizedek priesthood higher than the priesthood of Aaron. The Aaronic priesthood administered the LAW, whereas the priesthood of Melchizedek ministered BLESSING. You will nowhere find an account in the scriptures of Melchizedek being anything but a Blesser. He blessed Abraham and he blessed the Most High God. Let it be understood, a blessing cannot be given in reality until the one giving it is a Blesser indeed. Melchizedek had nothing whatever to do with the law - he was not a judge, he was not a magistrate, he was not a curser, he was not a destroyer - instead he was a king and a priest who lived in the realm of blessing and from thence became a blessing to those he ministered to. There is a cosmic law that declares that one must be blessed before he can be a Blesser. Consider what Heb. 7:6-7 says, "But he whose descent is not counted from them (Levi)...blessed him that had the promises. And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better."

Melchizedek did not bless just anyone, but he blessed him that had the PROMISES. How great were the promises given to Abraham! There were seven great and wonderful promises given to Abraham, enumerated in Gen. 12:2-3. The first was, "I will make of thee a great nation." The second was, "I will bless thee." The third was, "I will make thy name great." The word name carries with it the idea of honor, authority, and the character of the individual. God was saying to Abraham that he would make his honor to be great; his authority was to be great and even his character great. I will make thy name to be great. The fourth promise was, "Thou shalt be a blessing." The fifth was, "And I will bless them that bless thee." The sixth, "I will curse him that curseth thee." Then the seventh was, "In thee shall ALL FAMILIES OF THE EARTH BE BLESSED." Not the families of Israel, nor the families of the Church, but ALL FAMILIES OF THE EARTH. In these precious promises God caused Abraham to understand that he was the beginning of something that was to be WORLD WIDE and not some insignificant local affair.

God promised Abraham that He would bless him. And when Melchizedek came out of the celestial realm that day, HE BLESSED ABRAHAM. Then the Lord said, "Thou shalt BE a blessing...in thee shall ALL families of the earth BE BLESSED." Ah - he was blessed...TO BE A BLESSING! With reverence and godly respect I now tell you that you, dear reader of these lines, are included in these wonderful promises. "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds as to many; BUT AS OF ONE, and to thy seed, WHICH IS CHRIST" (Gal. 3:16). God made this covenant, even this promise, with TWO PEOPLE only. With Abraham and with His own Son, Jesus the Christ. With Abraham and his singular seed - WHICH IS CHRIST. God not only made this covenant with a man, Abraham, but He made it with HIS OWN SON. God had a witness in earth and a witness in heaven that He had made a covenant that through Abraham and His Son Would every nation and family be blessed and it was confirmed with an oath so that it could never fail.

"And if ye be Christ's, THEN ARE YE ABRAHAM'S SEED AND HEIRS ACCORDING TO THE PROMISE" (Gal. 3:29). Can we comprehend this? We today, now, are heirs according to that marvelous promise God gave to Abraham and the Christ. We are heirs of every one of those seven conditions that God gave to Abraham. We can take them all individually and apply them to ourselves and to the whole body of the Christ. To Abraham God promised a seed which would come to bless the whole earth, a seed through whom each and every person ever to see the light of day would be blessed and delivered.

We see that seed begin in the preparation of a nation chosen and separated unto Himself. Long centuries afterward we behold Jesus of Nazareth, anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, walking the length and breadth of that favored nation showing forth among its people the wondrous glory of His Father. God's holy word declares Him to be the direct seed of Abraham according to the flesh, but the Son of God with power. Truly He was the promised seed, the seed of Abraham and the anointed Son of God, "thy seed which is Christ." To Paul the revelation was given to reveal how we, the redeemed of this age, are MEMBERS IN PARTICULAR OF CHRIST, so that we are the CHRIST BODY as Jesus is the CHRIST HEAD, that the Head and body together, indwelt by one Spirit, are ONE CHRIST, the temple of the Lord and the habitation of God. "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: SO ALSO IS CHRIST" (I Cor. 12:12). It is through this corporate, many-membered Christ that the promises to Abraham and his seed shall be gloriously fulfilled and all families and nations of the earth shall be blessed.

"Even as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen (nations) through faith, PREACHED BEFORE THE GOSPEL UNTO ABRAHAM, saying, IN THEE SHALL ALL NATIONS BE BLESSED" (Gal. 3:6-8). In this passage we see that God one day did some preaching. The almighty God with infinite care and wisdom laid the plans for the magnificent work He would do through Abraham and his seed. Then He told Abraham to attend a preaching service He was going to hold. Abraham was the congregation. It makes no difference where the service was to be held. God was the preacher and it would have been very wonderful to have been in the service. As God began to preach, He brought forth the Gospel or the GOOD NEWS and it was this: ALL NATIONS were to be blessed in Abraham.

All the nations of earth are to be blessed. Certainly they have all been kissed by God's wonderful sunshine and have drunk of the refreshing rain from heaven, but that is not what God is here speaking of. He is pointing to a great manifestation of God that has not occurred - a time when God will speak to all, reveal Himself to all, deliver all and bless all. A great and mighty move of God shall come in the earth that few men have even dreamed of when the younger sons of God, the CHRIST BODY, in union with their glorious Head are manifested in the fullness of the wisdom, glory and power of God, at which time the whole creation will be lifted from the bondage and night of corruption into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8:18-23). What an exceeding great responsibility is laid upon us in the promises to Abraham which we share!

Notice how many times the words "bless," "blessed," and "blessing" occur in God's promises to Abraham. Small wonder that when Melchizedek came he BLESSED him that had the promises! And he was blessed to be a blessing. He was blessed to become a Blesser. And so are we. "SO THEN they which be of faith ARE BLESSED with faithful Abraham" (Gal. 3:7). It isn't alone Abraham who is blessed, but we also who are of faith are blessed with him. THE VERY SAME BLESSING WITH WHICH MELCHIZEDEK BLESSED ABRAHAM HAS NOW COME UPON US. Oh! the wonder of it. That blessing is that God through us who ARE BLESSED WILL BLESS ALL FAMILIES AND NATIONS OF THE EARTH. No matter who we are, great or small, if we are of faith, we are blessed with faithful Abraham - blessed TO BE A BLESSING. How wonderful are these things! They are far beyond our expression or the ability of the most eloquent to describe!

A millennium after God blessed Abraham to make him a blessing the word of the Lord came to the remnant of Abraham's seed proclaiming, "And it shall come to pass, that as ye were a curse among the heathen, O house of Judah, and house of Israel; so will I save you, and YE SHALL BE A BLESSING: fear not, but let your hands be strong" (Zech. 8:13). Let us notice this statement: "Ye shall be a blessing." How important punctuation is! Should someone put a question mark behind this statement it would read, "Ye shall be a blessing?" And looking at ourselves, none of us are very important people in this present world system, we're just common, ordinary, mostly uneducated people; laborers, plumbers, farmers, electricians, mill workers, office workers, housewives, barbers, mechanics, etc. The great ones of this world would look askance at us and incredulously query, "YE shall be a blessing?" But we know from the Lord Almighty that as we follow on to know the Lord we SHALL be a blessing, indeed. So we put an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, not a question mark. "YE SHALL BE A BLESSING!"

I am sure that all of the Lord's elect, those who press forward toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, cherish the Precious Promise that we are called to be a Dart of that seed which shall bless all the families and nations of the earth. As we daily view the desperate needs about us, of friends and family, of the sinful, sorrowing, needy, sick and dying, oh! how we WANT to be a blessing! To be a blessing - what a promise that is! What hope is contained therein But you don't just walk up to a person and announce, "I'm your Blesser." We need to first BECOME. We must BE. To BE bespeaks a state of being. God is teaching us, preparing us, training us to BE Blessers indeed.

This preparation takes place here, now, in our daily walk with God. We need training, we must acquire certain skills, and betimes the preparation brings suffering, so that we might be merciful high priests. If anyone could have been a Blesser without any training it would have been our Lord Jesus Christ. But we find that "though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience through the things which He suffered; and being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all that obey Him; called of God an High Priest after the Order of Melchizedek. For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (Heb. 5:8-10; 2:10). Ah, it does not stand to reason that an untrained, uninstructed, undeveloped, untested, immature people will be used by God to bless and lift and transform all the families and nations of the earth.

Out of the crucible of crisis and the furnace of affliction God is raising up in the earth a BLESSING COMPANY. These have received a word from the Lord as did the prophet of old, "God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He not said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good? Behold, I HAVE RECEIVED COMMANDMENT TO BLESS: and He hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it' (Num. 23:19-2O). As one has written, "There is a principle which becomes one of the foundational workings in our process of BECOMING, as found in the verse, 'Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again' (Lk. 6:37-38).

Giving - and receiving again according to how we have given. This is a principle which covers a vast area, far more than just sharing of our finances, but in all our giving expressions - projected attitudes towards others, feelings towards others, words spoken towards others, etc. so that we are reminded again, 'blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' 'Bless those who persecute you - who are cruel in their attitude toward you; bless and do not curse them' (Rom. 12:14, Amplified).

God has His servants for every task, and will place a sword in the hand of the slayer, and those who shall purge the earth of its corruption. Justice will be established in the earth, and righteousness shall be the foundation of His kingdom. They will 'execute the judgments written,' with 'vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people' (Ps. 149:7,9). But the Lord will also have those vessels of mercy, which intercede with the prayer, 'O Lord...in wrath remember mercy' (Hab. 3:2), for they would BLESS the nations" - Gospel Echoes.

The Order of Melchizedek is an ORDER OF BLESSERS, no cursings, no negation to be uttered, no vindictiveness, no judgment, but there is a ministry of blessing. This is far more than a doctrine to be received or a formula of words to repeat, this is an expression of love and compassion that flows from our spirit toward others until all the families and nations of the earth have been touched and healed and quickened by His all-conquering love.

I must mention again the principle of the Melchizedek Priesthood and the seed of Abraham in respect to blessing. Melchizedek blessed Abraham. God had said to Abraham, "I will bless thee...and thou shalt be a blessing...in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." First Abraham was blessed, and then he could become a blessing.

Blessed to BE A BLESSING. Oh! may God somehow burn this truth indelibly into our hearts. But there is also the realm wherein men bless in order to be blessed, giving and receiving again according to how they have given. "Give, and it shall BE GIVEN UNTO YOU." "Blessed are the merciful, for THEY SHALL OBTAIN MERCY." "Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are "hereunto called, that ye should INHERIT A BLESSING." This is all true, but when the Holy Spirit begins to reveal the higher Order of Melchizedek within your spirit, my brother, a vast transforming change commences to take place in your understanding. Gone forever is the desire to give in order to receive, to be merciful so that in some future time you might receive mercy, or to bless with a view to being blessed. Henceforth we begin to see things as God sees them and from this high and holy vista our purified desire becomes only to BE BLESSED that we may BE A BLESSING. In the Order of Melchizedek ALL THINGS ARE REVERSED.

Truly there is a changing, a reversing of all things in the New Order which is being birthed in the sons of God. Our old ideas, teachings, conceptions, doctrines, methods, and desires are being upset and overthrown, and our old theology acquired in the religious systems of Babylon is fast flying out the window. As the Spirit of the Lord quickens the yielded minds of those who wait before Him in this hour, the elect is being led into new paths and the divine order of the Most High. So fear not, beloved child of God, to let go of the teachings of yesteryear, for those were but the swaddling clothes of your BECOMING in God. God's apprehended ones are now moving into a dimension where there are higher laws, higher understanding, higher reality. It must be remembered that every dimension functions by laws of its own, and so it is with the Melchizedekian Order. The first order of this sacred realm is BLESSING.

A work of transformation is taking place in the mind. God is not dealing in this hour with the outward manifestation, but He is probing deep into our being, to change the attitudes, thoughts and desires of mind and heart. Thank God, He is stripping away the masquerades, purging and purifying, that we might be conformed to His image, changed into His mind, a partaker of His nature. We are challenged with our own development unto spiritual maturity, and therefore we have received a commandment to bless - not that we might receive anything in return - for we cannot truly bless another until it proceeds unselfishly and unmixed out of a pure heart - a genuine desire that they be blessed. Oh for that purity of spirit, that complete deliverance from the "seed-faith" mentality being peddled by the money- hungry preachers of this evil day that continually urges the people to GIVE in order to GET and to BLESS with the motive of BEING BLESSED a hundred-fold in return. May the blazing heat of God's holy fire so transform our minds and hearts until every action can be thoroughly WITHOUT GUILE, no ulterior motive for whatever this might turn to our own welfare again.

I do not hesitate to tell you that giving to receive again, planting with a vision to reaping a harvest, is a true principle in God - but it is the law of a plane beneath the Order of Melchizedek. Increase is the law of the realm of limitation, of want, the in-part reaching forth to acquire more. But the priesthood of Melchizedek is of the realm of the unlimited, of His fullness, of an endless or indissoluble life. The priests of this order minister not from a sense of THEIR NEED, but out of the consciousness of HIS FULLNESS. This transformation of mind and attitude must take place in every son of God. These sons shall not do the will of their heavenly Father in the childish hope that He will REWARD them for it; but such lift up their voices in one accord with the blessed firstborn Son, saying, "Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I DELIGHT TO DO THY WILL, O my God: yea, Thy law is written within my heart" (Ps. 40.7-8).

---end of quote---