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