Freemasonry
& THE SOUTHERN
BAPTIST CONVENTION
Lamentation is often heard concerning the
apostate condition of the Southern Baptist Convention. However, there is
a reasonable explanation for the broad path which the SBC is traveling, namely
important statistics regarding the number of Freemasons who hold membership in
the SBC, as published by Biblical
Discernment Ministries:
"U.S. membership [in the Masons] is
claimed at about three million, with about five million worldwide... The
official magazine of Masonry in the U.S. is titled New Age. Some
church denominations are also led by avowed Masons. For example, a 1991
survey by the Southern Baptist Convention Sunday School Board found that 14%
of SBC pastors and 18% of SBC deacon board chairs are Masons. It is also
estimated that SBC members comprise 37% of total U.S. lodge membership. (A
2000 updated SBC report found that over 1,000 SBC pastors are Masons.)"
37% of 3,000,000 would have been 1,110,000 Masons
who held membership in the SBC. This estimate was for 1991. How many are there
today? Also, how many Masons attend SBC churches but do not hold formal
memberships? And how many Masons belong to other Christian denominations? (A
Freemason once informed us that the Masons encourage their members to go to
church.)
In 1993, the Southern Baptist Convention
published a Report
on Freemasonry which noted the many fine SBC leaders who were also
Freemasons as well as many points of agreement between Freemasonry and
Christianity, along with some areas of disagreement between the two. The
verdict of the SBC as to whether or not a Southern Baptist could also be a
member of a Masonic Lodge was not based on the Scriptural prohibition of I Cor.
10:21: "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye
cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils."
Instead the Southern Baptist Convention appealed to the old Masonic cliché
regarding every man's "liberty of conscience":
"In light of the fact that many tenets and
teachings of Freemasonry are not compatible with Christianity and Southern
Baptist doctrine, while others are compatible with Christianity and Southern
Baptist doctrine, we therefore recommend that consistent with our
denomination's deep convictions regarding the priesthood of the believer and
the autonomy of the local church, membership in a Masonic Order be a matter
of personal conscience. Therefore, we exhort Southern Baptists to
prayerfully and carefully evaluate Freemasonry in the light of the Lordship
of Christ, the teachings of the Scripture, and the findings of this report,
as led by the Holy Spirit of God."
Considering that over 1 million Freemasons belong
to the Southern Baptist Convention, and many hold positions of authority, it
is not surprising that in 1998 a Jesus Seminar leader was invited to address
an SBC congregation.
"In
February Jesus Seminar leader Marcus Borg spoke for three days at Myers Park
Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. Myers Park is affiliated with
the Southern Baptist Convention.
"Borg
denies that Jesus Christ even claimed to be the Messiah. He denies that
Jesus Christ was virgin born. He denies the bodily resurrection of Christ.
He denies that Christ worked miracles. 'We would say these are paranormal
happenings, meaning things we don’t have an explanation for' (The
Charlotte Observer, Monday, Feb. 16, 1998, p. 6C).
"In
1992 Borg stated: 'It is a distortion of Scripture to read [the Bible] as a
book of the future. It has a profoundly disturbing effect, and leads to the
image of God as judge and emphasizes us as getting ready for judgment. It
takes us away from the world' (The Berean Call, Apr. 1992).
"That
same year Borg testified that He believes almost nothing in the Bible: 'I
would argue that the truth of Easter does not depend on whether there was an
empty tomb, or whether anything happened to the body of Jesus. ... I do not
see the Christian tradition as exclusively true, or the Bible as the unique
and infallible revelation of God. ... It makes no historical sense to say,
‘Jesus was killed for the sins of the world.’ ... I am one of those
Christians who does not believe in the virgin birth, nor in the star of
Bethlehem, nor in the journeys of the wisemen, nor in the shepherds coming
to the manger, as facts of history" (Bible Review, December
1992).
"The
misnamed Jesus Seminar, composed of some 75 'experts in religion and New
Testament studies,' began meeting in March 1985 (its organization was first
announced in 1978) with the supposed object of discovering which words of
the Gospels are authentic. After a passage was discussed by the
participating 'scholars,' they used colored pegs to indicate the degree of
authenticity they felt should be ascribed to it. Red means they believe it
is definitely authentic; pink for maybe; gray for probably; black for
absolutely not authentic. The colors indicate degrees of doubt in God’s
Word. In 1993 the Jesus Seminar published The Five Gospels: The Search
for the Authentic Words of Jesus. This included a new translation
called 'The Scholar's Translation.' The color coding was incorporated into
the text to describe the degree to which the various portions of the Gospels
are considered authentic by the Jesus Seminar. Most of the passages are
black!
"The
Seminar concluded that Christ spoke only 18 percent of the sayings
attributed to Him in the Bible. According to the Jesus Seminar, Christ did
not speak most of the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount; He did not say
anything about turning the other cheek or giving to those who ask of you; He
did not speak the parable of the sower, the parable of the ten virgins, the
parable of the ten pieces of money, or the parable of the talents; He did
not say 'I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it'; He did not pray in the garden of Gethsemane; He did not say
'Take eat, this is my body' and the other sayings associated with the
Lord’s Supper; He did not say 'Father, forgive them; for they know not
what they do' or 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me' when He was on
the cross.
"The
Jesus Seminar determined that Christ did not walk on the water; he did not
feed the thousands with only a few loaves and fishes; Christ gave no
prophecies of His death or resurrection or second coming; Christ did not
conduct the Last Supper as it is recorded in Scripture; there was no Jewish
trial of Christ; Christ did not appear before the high priest or before
Pilate; the Jewish crowd did not participate in His condemnation; Christ did
not rise again bodily on the third day and did not ascend to Heaven bodily.
"According
to the Jesus Seminar, 'THE STORY OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS ENDED WITH HIS
DEATH ON THE CROSS AND THE DECAY OF HIS BODY' (Religious News Service, March
6, 1995). (Christ-Denier
Speaks at Southern Baptist Church)
Presently there are an abundance of books which
promote the thesis of the Jesus Seminar: that the true message of Jesus Christ
was suppressed by the early Church but has been preserved in non-canonical
works written by Gnostics ~ especially the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were
discovered in Qumran in 1945, and the Nag Hammadi Library, which was
discovered in Egypt in 1947.
The majority of books promoting these heretical
manuscripts are of Masonic origin: The Hiram Key; The Dead Sea Scrolls
Deception; The Message of the Sphinx; Holy Blood, Holy Grail; and
Bloodline of the Holy Grail. 1.
The Introduction to a popular volume of the Nag
Hammadi Library rejects the inspiration of two of the Gospels in the
traditional Christian canon:
"The Jewish Christianity of the first
generation in Galilee that developed the collection of sayings imbedded in
the Gospels of Matthew and Luke may well have been considered heretical even
by Paul and the Hellenists, and the feeling may have been mutual."
The Gospel of Mark is also suspect, according to
the Masonic authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, subsequent to the
recovery in 1958 of the Gnostic Secret Gospel of Mark near Jerusalem. 2.
Since its inception in 1985, the Jesus Seminar
has been preoccupied with discrediting Jesus Christ as revealed in the canon
of Scripture and seeking to discover "the historical Jesus" in the
Gnostic scriptures. With three Gospels of the New Testament now
discredited, Jesus Seminar scholars have turned to a new gospel which presents
"another Jesus" who preaches "another Gospel."
A survey of the Jesus
Seminar, available at the University of California at Santa Barbara web
site, mentions their "scholarly" translation of a new version which
includes the "recent archeological discovery" ~ the Gospel of
Thomas:
"Part of the project was also the
preparation of a new translation of the gospels, prepared by a group within
the Seminar, known as 'the Scholars Version.' This translation, and
the work of the Jesus Seminar as a whole, includes the non-canonical Gospel
of Thomas, preserved in a Coptic version as part of the Nag Hammadi Codices
discovered in Upper Egypt in 1945...The results of all this work appeared in
1993: The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus,
by Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, published by
Macmillan in New York."
Gnosis means "knowledge" - specifically
hidden or occult knowledge. The Gnostics taught that it is possible for
Man to attain to the divine state through the knowledge of secret mysteries.
The Introduction to the Gospel of Thomas describes the Gnostic message of
"another Jesus" who imparts gnosis to those seeking their
divine origin:
"The Gospel of Thomas in its oldest form,
stressed the finding of wisdom, or of the 'Kingdom of the Father,' in the
knowledge (gnosis) of oneself (cf. saying 3), guided by the sayings of
Jesus...The theme of recognizing oneself is further elaborated in sayings
(cf. 50, 51) which speak of the knowledge of one's divine origin..."
Note the variety of New Age concepts preached by
the Gnostic Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas:
(22) "Jesus said to them, 'When you make
the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside
like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the
male and female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the
female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of
a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a
likeness; then you will enter the kingdom." (As above, so below;
androgyny)
[NOTE: According to The Message of the
Sphinx, the "'Hermetic writings' (of the Gnostic School of
Alexandria, Egypt)...express the philosophy 'as above, so below' and
advocate the drawing down to earth of cosmic powers as an essential step
in Mankind's quest for knowledge of the divine and immortality of the
soul: 'And I, said Hermes, will make Mankind intelligent, I will confer
wisdom on them, and make known to them the truth. I will never cease to
benefit thereby the life of mortal men; and then will I benefit each one
of them when the force of nature working in him is in accord with the
movement of the stars.'" 3.]
(30) "Jesus said, 'When you disrobe
without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your
feet like little children and tread upon them, then [will you see] the son
of the living one, and you will not be afraid." (sexual rites of
initiation)
(41) "Jesus said, 'Whoever has something in
his hand will receive more, and whoever has nothing will be deprived of
even the little he has." (cf., Rev. 13:16,17)
(50) "Jesus said, 'If they say to you,
'Where did you come from?, say to them, 'We came from the light, the place
where the light came into being on its own accord and established [itself]
and became manifest through their image..." (divine origin of man)
(61) "Salome said, 'Who are you, man, that
you...have come up on my couch and eaten from my table. Jesus said to her,
'I am he who exists from the undivided. I was given some of the
things of my father." (Jesus not co-equal with God)
(70) "Jesus said, 'That which you have
will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you
do not have within you [will] kill you if you do not have it within you."
(god within)
(72) "[A man said] to him, 'Tell my
brothers to divide my fathers possessions with me. He said to him, 'O man,
who has made me a divider?' He turned to his disciples and said to them, 'I
am not a divider, am I?" (ecumenical unity)
(77) "Jesus said, 'It is I who am the
light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all
come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am
there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there." (pantheism)
(114) "Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary
leave us, for women are not worthy of life. Jesus said, 'I myself shall lead
her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit
resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter
the kingdom of heaven." (androgyny)
Gnosticism began to threaten the doctrine of the
Church during Apostolic times and became fully developed as a major heresy in
the second century A.D. Paul seems to have been dealing with an early form of
Gnosticism in the book of Colossians, where there are references to a
religious system that attempted to devalue the person of Jesus Christ and
undermine His redemptive work by promoting a combination of Greek speculation
(2:4,8-10), Jewish legalism (2:11-17), and Oriental mysticism (2:18-23).
The theme of Colossians is the complete sufficiency of Jesus Christ, rather
than forbidden knowledge, for every spiritual and practical need of the
believer.
Today, the Gnostic heresy is enjoying a worldwide
revival. Other denominations besides the SBC, such as the United Methodist
Church, have also invited speakers from the Jesus Seminar to address their
congregations. By promoting the heretical doctrines of the Jesus Seminar and
Freemasonry, these denominations have become major vehicles for the
dissemination of Gnosticism.
It appears that this renaissance of Gnosticism
has not been spontaneous, but is the result of premeditated infiltration of
Christian churches. The writings of New Agers such as Theosophist Alice
Bailey revealed that plans to form a fifth column within ALL denominations
were laid early in this century:
"Very definitely may the assurance be
given here that, prior to the coming of the Christ, adjustments will be made
so that at the head of all great organizations will be found either a
Master, or an initiate who has taken the third initiation. At the head of
certain of the great occult groups, of the Freemasons of the world, and of
the various great divisions of the church, and resident in many of the great
nations will be found initiates or Masters." 4.
"The
Christian church in its many branches can serve as a St. John the Baptist,
as a voice crying in the wilderness, and as a nucleus through which world
illumination may be accomplished. I indicate the hope. I do not assert a
fact. Its work is intended to be the holding of a broad Platform. The church
must show a wide tolerance, and teach no revolutionary doctrines or cling to
any reactionary ideas. The church as a teaching factor should take the great
basic doctrines and (shattering old forms in which they are held) show their
true and inner spiritual significance. The prime work of the church is to
teach, and to teach ceaselessly, preserving the outer appearance in order to
reach the many who are accustomed to church usages. Teachers must be
trained; Bible knowledge must be spread; the sacraments must be mystically
interpreted, and the power of the church to heal must be demonstrated.
"The
three main channels through which the preparation for the new age is going
on might be regarded as the Church, the Masonic Fraternity and the
educational field. All of them are as yet in relatively static condition,
and all are as yet failing to meet the need and to respond to the inner
pressure. But in all of these three movements, disciples of the Great Ones
are to be found and they are steadily gathering momentum and will before
long enter upon their designated task." 5.
The
Masonic New World Order
- Christopher Knight &
Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key, Element Books, 1996; Michael
Baigent, Richard Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, Element
Books, Touchstone Books, 1993; Graham Hancock & Robert Bauval, The
Message of the Sphinx, Three Rivers Press, 1996; Michael Biagent,
Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln,Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Dell
Publishing, 1982 ; Laurence Gardiner, Bloodline of the Holy Grail,
Element Books, 1996.
- Holy Blood, Holy Grail,
p. 320.
- The Message of the Sphinx,
pp. 132, 270.
- Alice Bailey, Initiation:
Human & Solar, Lucis Publishing, 1922, pp. 61-2.
- Alice Bailey, The
Externalisation of the Hierarchy, Lucis Pub., 1957, pp. 510-11