Freemasonry – The Cult

4 Responses to “Freemasonry – The Cult”

1. 

   Mae says:

   March 5, 2009 at 3:36 pm

   this group is scary.
2. 

   anon. says:

   March 23, 2009 at 7:37 am

   Hi Josh,

   Just writing to say that I appreciate your beliefs, and wish for you to continue to practice them with the guidance of God and the understanding of humanity.

   Personally I am a 20-something, a Christian and a Mason… however, I don’t share your beliefs in Christianity.

   The fact is, I don’t believe that there are any of your kind of Christians within Masonry. The kind of Christians that you will find in Masonry tend to be ones that look at the Bible with a historical and philosophical perspective, they will try to match well-founded historic records to the facts that we find in the bible, and take the allegorical and metaphorical meanings in other parts of the bible. These aren’t the kind of Christians that you find in Baptist, Pentecostal or other Evangelical Churches, they are Christians that you will find in the broad and the liberal mainstream churches. So to the non-literalist Christians there are no problems with incompatibility, and it only becomes a dilemma for a literalist who should also be able to see the conflict within scripture itself.

   Another fact is Albert Pike was pretty crazy (in my opinion), and wrote for a particular (rather mystical) audience often basing his writings on occult practices or misinformed articles. Pikes works now only apply to a small amount of “Scottish Rite” Masons in the USA. Pikes writings are found in no other part of the world of Freemasonry. There are also sooo many mis-quotations out there in the world, often based on biblical re-interpretations based on linguistic constructs. Authors that write about these re-interpretations are often merely providing their own understanding, and not saying that the reader should “definitely” believe in this.

   The final fact I’d like to raise is that in addition to the three degrees of “Blue” lodge masonry, there are degrees which are for Christians only (sometimes specifically Trinitarian Christians). One would not be able to progress to these degrees if blue lodge masonry was incompatible.

   So please please, do try to be a bit more understanding… and be guided by New Testament scripture which advocates open and understanding properties, where, for instance, Jesus sits and eats with the outcasts of Jewish Society.

   Thank you ever so much for taking the time to read this.
3. 

   Josh Buice says:

   March 24, 2009 at 11:27 am

   Anon,

   I appreciate your words, but I respectfully disagree with your overall idea that Freemasonry and Christianity are non-contradictory. I see that Freemasonry violates the very foundational aspect of Christianity which is that there is only one God (Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:14, Deut. 4:24). Freemasonry calls for members to pray to the “Great Architect of the Universe” which is a clear denial of that one true God – YHWH of Holy Scripture. Therefore, it is not just Albert Pike that is the problem with Freemasonry – it is the entire foundation by which Freemasonry is built and the approach it brings to the Scripture. The Word of God is God’s book that should be interpreted with accuracy – recognizing the single meaning of the text as opposed to allegorical interpretation. Often, Freemasonry seeks to interpret the text of Scripture through an allegorical approach.

   I pray that the one God of Scripture will open your eyes to the errors of Freemasonry.

   Josh Buice
4. 

   anon. says:

   March 26, 2009 at 6:17 am

   Hi Josh,

   Thanks for the response. It’s very much appreciated, and I can certainly see that your faith is strong… which is a good thing!

   I do think that you may have misinterpreted something, Freemasonry doesn’t say that there is more than one God. In fact, it says that there is only one God. The fact that we use the term “Grand Architect of the Universe” is purely a descriptive, the masons are about building, and so it would make sense that the all-experienced one (God) is an Architect (he did after all create this universe, did he not?). It’s a subjective thing, for instance Christ used the term “Father” to communicate with God when the rest of the world used LORD (or YHWH), in the old testament we see the terms Adonai (meaning Lord), “God Almighty”, Jehovah (being the human-given name of God), The Shepherd, The Judge, The Creator, The Most High, The Deliverer, The Redeemer… etc etc etc etc. This doesn’t mean that they are different Gods, they are just descriptive names for God, and this is the same with the term “Grand Architect of the Universe”… just another name for the one true God. Plus in ritual, we do also use the term God, interchangeably with the “Grand Architect”.

   So it’s not necessarily the fact that a Freemason will approach scripture from an allegorical perspective (although some, such as myself, may), but they’ll approach it from a building and architecture perspective. Just as someone in the Police may look at scripture for a crime perspective, or a politician may look at scripture for a law making perspective, or a healer may look at scripture for a spiritual healing perspective, or even a historian who may look at scripture to find out some detail about what happened during that particular time.

   Something that I highly recommend looking in to are the Guild Plays which happened in England and the rest of Europe during the 1400s to the 1600s. This is where the Guilds of certain professions acted in a play about something from the Bible (old or new testaments). For instance the Shipbuilders did a play about Noah’s Ark, the Grocers played about Eves expulsion from Eden, the Vintners played about the wedding at Cana, and finally the Masons played about the building of Solomons temple. All of these plays were done with the help of the Church, with the priest of those Church helping with the play (as there were little-to-no Bibles around at that time, and even then the guild members may have been illiterate, and relied on the minister for details about the story). Freemasonry for the Christian is, therefore, entirely orthodox (i.e. isn’t heretical), it’s history is firmly rooted in Christianity and it’s stories are based on the building and architecture work of the Old and New Testaments (mostly Old Testament, as that is where most of the building work is).

   The one thing that I will admit to is that you do get a few “odd-balls” in Masonry, but no more than the amount of “odd-balls” that you get in Christianity or any other religious or non-religious/secular society. And, also like Christianity, if they are just too bizarre then they are often asked to leave (or they leave on they’re own accord), sometimes creating “irregular” groups… which, once again, you get in Christianity and other religious or non-religious/secular societies.

   Once again, thank you ever so much Josh. It is very useful for us both to have a calm and mature conversation about our opinions, and hopefully establishing some commonly-agreed facts along the way. I will always appreciate what you believe, and I will attempt to understand where I can, I will also fight for your right to believe what you believe even if I do disagree from time to time.

   Let us pray for our commonalities and be thankful for all of the beings on this world being spiritual beings.

   Peace be with you!