I realise most people believe Freemasonry to be a "good" organization, but the simple fact is, if you are not a Freemason yourself then you have no idea what it's all about.
Even more astonishingly; the vast majority of Freemasons do not know what it is really about. You might find that difficult to believe - particularly if you are a Freemason. If that is the case, please read on.
I am not concerned, in this article, with "exposing" secret handshakes and passwords, these things are of absolutely no importance. What I am concerned about is the great many men who are held in bondage by this organization.
Most of those men are only in Freemasonry for its social life. They really do not have much time for God. A night away from the wife; a few drinks with the lads after the meeting, and a discussion about the latest football results, that is what most Freemasons are interested in. Very little thought, if any, is given to the lodge rituals or the meaning of them.
On the night they joined Freemasonry as Entered Apprentices they placed their hand on the VSL (Volume of the Sacred Law), which, in most Lodges in the Western world, is the Holy Bible.
However, it does not need to be the Bible, it can be the holy book of any religion, In Freemasonry it does not matter what God you believe in as long as you profess to believe in "a God" - a Creator, a Supreme Being, The Great Architect of the Universe.
In the Lodge of which I was a member, very few of those men, including me, would have seen a Bible from one Lodge meeting to the next, yet, upon that Bible they swore an oath to ever conceal, and never reveal those things which transpired in the lodge-room.
You may ask why I, having taken that blood-thirsty oath (and the others which followed,) am now prepared to speak about Freemasonry. The truth is, for the first few years after leaving, I would not speak about it simply because I had taken those oaths on the Bible. I was still, years after leaving it, held in bondage by Freemasonry.
But I thank God - the Biblical God - the only True God, that He led me to the late Jim McCormick, who knew his Bible very well. When I told Jim that I had been a Freemason but could not speak about it as I had sworn an oath to that effect on the Bible, he lifted his Bible, which always seemed to be beside him, opened it at Acts 23 where a group of men had sworn an oath to kill Paul, and showed me that just because they had sworn an oath, that did not make it right.
We also read in Matthew 5, verses 34 - 37 where the Lord Jesus Christ admonishes us not to swear at all, He tells us that if we want to say "Yes", say yes; and if we want to say "No", then say no. Anything more than that, Jesus tells us, is evil. This teaching is also found in James 5:12.
Through the word of God, upon which I had sworn in ignorance, I was released from my bondage.
What exactly do I find wrong with Freemasonry? After all, look at all the charities they support, and, particularly in America, Shriner's (one of the degrees in masonry) Hospitals and Burns Units financed by the Masonic movement, what is so wrong with that? My answer? Nothing at all! But these "good works" are only the public face of a very private organization.
One day every Freemason will have to stand before a Righteous God and give an account of his life. No matter how many good works he has done, or how much money and time he has donated to charities it will not impress God in the slightest. For God has said in the Bible, the very book upon which the majority of Freemasons have sworn oaths:
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses [good works] are as filthy rags; ... (Isaiah 64:6)
That may seem an odd thing for God to say, but our standing before God depends upon our response to Christ's redemptive work for us - not what we have done for others.
Jesus, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, permitted himself to be born in human flesh, suffer everything that we suffer, then, in an act of love which defies human understanding, He allowed men to put Him to death using the cruelest method they knew - crucifixion!
He was nailed to a piece of wood which He had caused to grow; and when that wood was no more than a seedling Christ knew that one day it would be used to torture and kill Him. Nevertheless, He let that seedling grow. Why? Because of His love for us.
I Accept.
Had He chosen to, God could have peopled this world with robots, programmed
to worship Him, but that was not God's plan, he gave us all the choice
to accept or reject Him. If our choice is to accept God's gift -
the sacrifice the Lord Jesus made for us, then, when God looks at
us He knows we are sinners - for everyone is a sinner - but God sees that our sins have been "covered";
"blotted-out" by the Blood of the Lord Jesus.
The price which we should have paid for being a sinner (death), has already been paid - the just died
for the unjust.
I Reject.
If it is your choice to reject God's charitable gift, if you say,
in effect,
Then you must pay the price for your own sin - it is not covered by Christ's Blood. God still sees you as a sinner - and the wages of sin is death! How does this fit into Freemasonry?
Each of these degrees involved oaths to keep yet more Masonic secrets. So this search for ever greater light could only be achieved through ever greater secrecy, yet, the Lord Jesus said:
"I am the light of the world: ..." (John 8:12) and later: "In secret have I said nothing ... " (John 18:20)
Clearly, the light being sought by Freemasonry is not Jesus, the Light of the world. If Christ is not the 'light' of masonry, what is?
Before I answer that question the reader needs to be aware that the room in which the Lodge "sits" is set out relevant to the points of the compass. That is to say: North, South, East and West.
The Master of the Lodge sits in the East. Throughout the ritual the sun is referred to a number of times -
Freemasonry leans very heavily on Solomon, the Biblical King, along with Hiram, King of Tyre and another character known as Hiram Abiff.
When you enter Freemasonry you are told a story about these three men, too long to go into here. As you go through each degree this story is embellished. The first two men, Solomon and Hiram, King of Tyre are actual historical figures but the other character involved in this Masonic farce, Hiram Abiff, is not; he never existed. Later we shall see who he really represents.
Why is Freemasonry so interested in King Solomon? They will tell you (or rather, they won't) the story I mentioned above which makes out that Solomon and the two Hiram's were Masons. However, as we shall see later the whole story is totally untrue, the main character in it being, not Solomon, but the fictional Hiram Abiff. May I suggest an explanation for their interest in Solomon? The name consists of the names of the Sun in Latin, Indian and Egyptian: Sol - Om - On. The reader is probably unfamiliar with the names "Om" and "On" (although you will hear 'Om' being chanted repeatedly by those who are involved in New Age "Relaxation" classes where the people involved are told it is a meaningless word which just helps to empty the mind. Those people do not know they are calling upon the Eastern Sun god). However, I am sure the reader will have heard of the holiday resort in Spain. The "Costa del Sol" = The Coast of the Sun.
By now you should be aware of what I am proposing. The light which
Freemasons are taught to seek is not the Lord Jesus but is the sun.
You may find this hard to believe but let me give you some quotations from Masonic writings which support my claim.
"If he (the candidate) was about to be initiated into the secret worship of the god of ice, or cold, if any such existed, he would naturally be warmly muffled up, but being about to be initiated into the secret worship of the sun-god, he presents himself neither naked, nor clad."
He presents himself in darkness to indicate, that from the sun-god proceeds all light, and so he must present himself semi-nude, to indicate, that from the sun-god proceeds all warmth and comfort." ("The Masters Carpet," by Edmond Ronayne, p. 257)
During the initiation of the candidate his shoes are removed. With reference to this we read:
"The Druids practised the same custom whenever they practised their sacred rites and the Peruvians are said always to have left their shoes at the porch, when they entered the magnificent temple consecrated to the worship of the sun." ("Symbolism of Freemasonry," by A.G. Mackey, p. 127)
As can be seen from the foregoing drawing, the candidates for the Entered Apprentice; Fellow Craft and Master Mason degrees are neither naked nor clad and are not wearing shoes.
There are a great many more Masonic quotations which could be listed but I do not think it is necessary, I believe I have proved my point.
However I would like to quote just one more. A Masonic Lodge has three principle officers: Junior Warden; Senior Warden and Worshipful Master.
"The Worshipful Master represents the sun at its rising, the Senior Warden represents the sun at its setting, and the Junior Warden represents the sun at Meridian." ("Freemasons Guide," by Daniel Sickles, p.66)
I repeat my claim.
I believe that we have seen, beyond any doubt, that Freemasonry is a modern form of sun-worship, even though the majority of Freemasons are totally unaware of that fact.
Every Freemason is familiar with the story of Hiram Abiff. I am sure that most Freemasons, as I once did, believe him to be an historical figure simply because he is "involved" in a story with two men who are! However he is not an historical figure, he never existed. So, who does Hiram Abiff represent in Freemasonry?
To answer our question we need to know at least the "bare-bones" of the story in which Hiram Abiff is presented to us.
The story has to do with the building of a temple, (not King Solomon's, as many Masons believe).
A number of men working on the temple were Master masons, there were also other masons who had not yet made it to the dizzy heights of Master mason. The temple was nearing completion and a number of Fellow Craft masons were concerned that the temple would be finished before they became Master masons. Three of them, (notice: the name 'bel', an ancient name for the sun-god, embedded in each of these names) Jubela; Jubelo and Jubelum are prepared to go to any lengths to make Hiram Abiff tell them the Master mason's word. They know that Hiram is in the habit of worshipping the deity at high twelve (i.e. when the sun is at its highest) they wait at three different gates for Hiram to finish his worship.
As each ruffian in turn asks Hiram for the Master's word, and is refused, they strike Him.
The first, Jubela, at the South gate Hiram is wounded - (hidden meaning - the sun is on the decline, remember, it is just after noon.)
The second, Jubelo, attacks Hiram at the West gate, Hiram is now very weak - (hidden meaning - the sun sets in the West but its light is very weak.)
Hiram struggles to the East gate where the third ruffian, Jubelum, is waiting for him, again Hiram refuses to give the Master's word and is struck with a maul which kills him (hidden meaning - the sun sets, darkness falls.)
The story then goes on to relate how the three ruffians (as they are termed in the story) dispose of the body, first by hiding it in the rubbish of the temple and agreeing to meet at low twelve (midnight, when the sun is farthest from its most powerful time,) to give it a decent burial.
They bury the body in a shallow grave under an Acacia tree. The body is eventually found and they are punished (put to death).
Bear in mind that we have only looked very briefly at the story of Hiram Abiff. For the sake of brevity I have omitted much material but the story clearly shows that Hiram is a representation of a sun-god.
Look at the following chart which shows some of the elements in the legent of the Egyptian Sun-god King, Osiris and some of the elements of the legent of Hiram Abiff
Osiris
| Hiram Abiff
|
|---|
It is perfectly obvious that the name "Hiram Abiff" is nothing more than a Masonic subterfuge. The real person whom Hiram Abiff represents is Osiris - the Egyptian sun god!
Should the reader harbour any doubts, one quote should suffice:
"The ceremonial of the third degree of the Master Mason is unquestionably the most important, impressive and instructive portion of the Ritual of Ancient Freemasonry. That part of the rite which is connected with the legend of the Tyrian Artist (Hiram Abiff) is well worthy the deep and earnest study of thoughtful men. But it should be studied as a myth and not as a fact. ... outside of Masonic tradition there is no proof that an event such as related in connection with the Temple Builder ever transpired and besides, the ceremony is older by more than a thousand years, than the age of Solomon. There are characters impressed upon it which cannot be mistaken. It is thoroughly Egyptian." ("General Ahiman Rezon," by Daniel Sickles, p.195)
Here we discover that the story of Hiram Abiff predates King Solomon by 1000 years, or so we are told. Therefore, when I went through my Masonic degrees and much reference was made to King Solomon and King Solomon's Temple, It was all lies.
King Solomon had nothing to do with Masonry, his name, Solomon, being a composite of three different names for the sun, just fitted the bill and so he, like other biblical characters, was dovetailed into Masonic ritual.
However, there is one Biblical character who is not included in Masonic ritual, in fact He is most definitely and quite deliberately excluded. I refer, of course, to the Lord Jesus Christ.
If an organization worships the sun; it cannot Worship The Son.
During the ritual for certain degrees biblical verses are quoted - albeit out of context. The verses which are used are those which can be fitted into Freemasonry, for example, in the Bible we read of the stone which was cast away, (Ps. 118:22) Masonry makes use of this verse in the "Mark Mason" degree, in Masonry the stone refers to a keystone in the construction of the temple which was cast away by accident and only found some time later. In the Bible that stone represents Jesus, but Freemasonry ignores the Biblical context.
It gets worse! During the "Charge at Opening" of the Royal Arch Degree the Biblical verse, 2 Thessalonians 3:6 is read, however, the underlined portion is omitted:
"Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which ye received from us." (2 Thessalonians 3:6)
Could this be an innocent oversight? I think not, here is another Biblical verse which Freemasonry uses, or should I say - abuses?
"Now them that are such we command and exhort, by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread." (2 Thess. 3:12)
Again, the underlined portion is omitted from the Masonic ritual.
It is plain to see that the Light of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ, is not welcome in the Masonic Lodge.
If the Lord Jesus Christ is not welcome in the Masonic Lodge-room do you think you should be there?
If Masonry rejects Jesus - which it does, and you take the side of Masonry, then you also reject Jesus.
I can think of no better description. In three short words Jim had summed-up the spiritual condition of every Freemason - worldwide!
As I read them I thought they would make an excellent title for an article on the subject.
I pray this article will "do justice" to its title, but more importantly, I pray it will be used by God to help Freemasons see through the lies and deceit of the Masonic movement and search for the true Light of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ.