Who is the Boss, do you think?
I was recently involved in a discussion concerning Freemasons after visiting a museum featuring that international organization, also widely known as “The Lodge”. It was just a little museum in a small town west of Nelson, in the South Island of New Zealand. All secrets were to be revealed to those prepared to visit and see for themselves what worthy things these people were about. This museum was especially interesting to me as I had also been reading a forum discussion on this very same topic on the UK based Anglican Mainstream website, and had done a little research for myself. Check it out here if you are interested.
Yes, as the museum testified, the Freemasons did look to be admirable types, men prepared to step up and meet human need where they saw it existed, and fend for each other against all kinds of assaults on human dignity. They were the brotherhood of man, readily acknowledging each other as such through various conventions devised by their organization. A number of well known members were featured in this museum, and the good works they had done were exposed to advertise the worthiness of the cause.
A great number of Christian denominations, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox, have all declared membership to Freemasonry as incompatible with the Christian faith. Why is that so? What are the concerns? The Anglican forum thread to which I have linked already outlines many of the reasons, and much of the debate.
One big issue is the identity of “The Great Architect of the Universe” and that this “creator being” can be anything you like, and that each member chooses who it is for himself, and all members will accept the relative validity of that choice the individual has made. But this is cultural relativity that denies Christian truth, and it is the promotion of universalism, a position that is most definitely unChristian. Freemasons propose that a generic being is the architect of the universe. Christians absolutely do not believe the architect of the universe is a generic being. No way! He has a name - YHWH. And His name is holy. There is none other, and we are absolutely not to do or say anything to suggest that there is. That is denying our own God for Who He IS. To become a member of an organizarion that does so is to bear false witness by association. We are to be holy - that is, separate - for He is holy.
Who is the Boss, do you think? Who is the Supreme Being, the one Creator God who is Sovereign of all? Christians take note of whom it is recorded in Isaiah 46…
3. “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth.
4. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
5. “To whom will you compare me or count me equal?
To whom will you liken me that we may be compared?
6. Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver on the scales;
they hire a goldsmith to make it into a god, and they bow down and worship it.
7. They lift it to their shoulders and carry it; they set it up in its place, and there it stands. From that spot it cannot move. Though one cries out to it, it does not answer; it cannot save him from his troubles.
8. “Remember this, fix it in mind, take it to heart, you rebels.
9. Remember the former things, those of long ago;
I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me.
10. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.
11. From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.
12. Listen to me, you stubborn-hearted, you who are far from righteousness.
13. I am bringing my righteousness near, it is not far away; and my salvation will not be delayed. I will grant salvation to Zion, my splendour to Israel.
So, for a Christian to belong to an organization which gives the gods of other religions the right to assume the place of our Sovereign Creator God, that Christian defies the teaching of his own faith, and the teaching of God Himself. Here is a major element of incompatibility.
The conversation I had most recently also put it very well, but from a very different position. There was contempt shown for the churches who objected to the conventions of Freemasonry. These were all good people, I was told. Good by human standards, of course. These were people who did good things and got along peaceably with each other. Good things by human standards, of course. The churches deserved to lose membership if this was their stance! Such narrow-minded bigotry they exhibited! No wonder there are so few in the pews these days!
Oh oy, oy, oy! Just who are we to say which god is to sit on the Throne? Is it for us to be telling our Creator that He must share, and that the Freemasons are right to allow everyone’s god to take that place? Just who is the Sovereign Lord, and just who are we to pick and choose among the others who are not? The true church does not have membership of those who do not believe in Him, so they are not losing anyone other than those who never belonged in the first place. The “brotherhood” of Freemasonry is not that of the children of God who belong to a spiritual brotherhood all of their own, the one with God as Father, and Jesus as Lord and Saviour. We need to be very certain just who He is, the One who created all things, and Who is to be worshipped and glorified.
Isaiah 46:9 I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.
The photo above is three photos, taken by myself early one morning this week, and merged manually in Photoshop by myself to show a panoramic view of the eastern coast of New Zealand’s South Island, at the little fishing town of Kaikoura. This is a beautiful part of my country, and a favourite place of mine. All glory to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Who is the Creator and Sovereign of all.
Well, I would never have thought it! I’ve been keeping this up for four years now and the ink in my pen has not run dry… or not quite, not yet. Since this time last year, there have been added a further 40 posts and 72 comments. Not great in numbers by any means, but it has been estimated that there are more than 200 million former bloggers (and probably a great many more by the minute) who have ceased posting to their online diaries after the initial novelty had worn off. I’m not one of them yet.
Jesus was well and truly dead. He had been thoroughly scourged before being nailed to the cross - that is, repeatedly beaten and whipped with a 3-lash scourge that had pieces of bone or metal attached to the ends, tearing into the skeletal muscles to set the stage for circulatory shock. A crown of thorns had been pushed hard down on his head. Crude nails that were between 5 and 7 inches long and almost half an inch square had been hammered through his wrists and feet. The cross had been lifted upright such that his full weight had him hanging from it. Then after some time, when the soldiers decided he was dead, just to be certain they speared him through the ribcage, his right lung and pericardal sac and heart pierced releasing both blood and pleural fluids. Doctors tell us that just that wound in itself would have been fatal. Most unusually, his legs were not broken - but there was no need to do so as he was already undeniably dead.
