For almost seven years after Adam’s arrival the Melchizedek receivers remained on duty, but the time finally came when they turned the administration of world affairs over to Adam and returned to Jerusem.
The farewell of the receivers occupied the whole of a day, and during the evening the individual Melchizedeks gave Adam and Eve their parting advice and best wishes. Adam had several times requested his advisers to remain on earth with him, but always were these petitions denied. The time had come when the Material Sons must assume full responsibility for the conduct of world affairs. And so, at midnight, the seraphic transports of Satania left the planet with fourteen beings for Jerusem, the translation of Van and Amadon occurring simultaneously with the departure of the twelve Melchizedeks.
All went fairly well for a time on Urantia, and it appeared that Adam would, eventually, be able to develop some plan for promoting the gradual extension of the Edenic civilization. Pursuant to the advice of the Melchizedeks, he began to foster the arts of manufacture with the idea of developing trade relations with the outside world. When Eden was disrupted, there were over one hundred primitive manufacturing plants in operation, and extensive trade relations with the near-by tribes had been established.
For ages Adam and Eve had been instructed in the technique of improving a world in readiness for their specialized contributions to the advancement of evolutionary civilization; but now they were face to face with pressing problems, such as the establishment of law and order in a world of savages, barbarians, and semicivilized human beings. Aside from the cream of the earth’s population, assembled in the Garden, only a few groups, here and there, were at all ready for the reception of the Adamic culture.
Adam made a heroic and determined effort to establish a world government, but he met with stubborn resistance at every turn. Adam had already put in operation a system of group control throughout Eden and had federated all of these companies into the Edenic league. But trouble, serious trouble, ensued when he went outside the Garden and sought to apply these ideas to the outlying tribes. The moment Adam’s associates began to work outside the Garden, they met the direct and well-planned resistance of Caligastia and Daligastia. The fallen Prince had been deposed as world ruler, but he had not been removed from the planet. He was still present on earth and able, at least to some extent, to resist all of Adam’s plans for the rehabilitation of human society. Adam tried to warn the races against Caligastia, but the task was made very difficult because his archenemy was invisible to the eyes of mortals.
Even among the Edenites there were those confused minds that leaned toward the Caligastia teaching of unbridled personal liberty; and they caused Adam no end of trouble; always were they upsetting the best-laid plans for orderly progression and substantial development. He was finally compelled to withdraw his program for immediate socialization; he fell back on Van’s method of organization, dividing the Edenites into companies of one hundred with captains over each and with lieutenants in charge of groups of ten.
Adam and Eve had come to institute representative government in the place of monarchial, but they found no government worthy of the name on the face of the whole earth. For the time being Adam abandoned all effort to establish representative government, and before the collapse of the Edenic regime he succeeded in establishing almost one hundred outlying trade and social centers where strong individuals ruled in his name. Most of these centers had been organized aforetime by Van and Amadon.
The sending of ambassadors from one tribe to another dates from the times of Adam. This was a great forward step in the evolution of government.