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A Man Named “Ota” Dec 14, 2008 5:26 pm
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more on Darwinism and its Racism
by Ken Ham

A Man Named “Ota”

Ota Benga was born in 1881 in Central Africa, where he grew strong and keen in the ways of the wilderness. The husband of one and the father of two, he returned one day from a successful elephant hunt to find that the camp he called “home” had ceased to exist. His wife, children, and friends lay slaughtered, their bodies mutilated in a campaign of terror by the Belgian government’s thugs against “the evolutionary inferior natives.” Ota was later captured, taken to a village, and sold into slavery.

He was first brought to the United States from the Belgian Congo in 1904 by the noted African explorer Samuel Verner, who had bought him at a slave auction. At 4’11” tall, weighing a mere 103 pounds, he was often referred to as “the boy.” In reality, he was a son, a husband, and a father. Ota was first displayed as an “emblematic savage” in the anthropology wing of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Along with other pygmies, he was studied by scientists to learn how the “barbaric races” compared with intellectually defective Caucasians on intelligence tests and how they responded to things such as pain.1

The July 23, 1904, Scientific American reported:

They are small, ape-like, elfish creatures . . . they live in absolute savagery, and while they exhibit many ape-like features in their bodies, they possess a certain alertness which appears to make them more intelligent than other Negroes . . . the existence of the pygmies is of the rudest; they do not practice agriculture, and keep no domestic animals. They live by means of hunting and snaring, eking this out by means of thieving from the big Negroes, on the outskirts of whose tribes they usually establish their little colonies, though they are as unstable as water, and range far and wide through the forests. They have seemingly become acquainted with metal only through contact with superior beings.

They failed to mention 1902 research by H.H. Johnston in the Smithsonian Report that found the pygmies to be a very talented group. When studied in their natural environment, Johnston found that they were experts at mimicry, and they were physically agile, quick, and nimble. They were exceptional hunters, with highly developed social skills and structure. While outsiders considered them primitive, the pygmies actually held strong monotheistic beliefs about God. More recent research has confirmed, “The religion of the Ituri Forest Pygmies is founded on the belief that God possesses the totality of vital force, of which he distributes part to his creatures, an act by which he brings them into existence or perfects them. . . . According to a favorite pygmies saying, ‘He who made the light also makes the darkness.’ ”2 When Verner had visited their African king, “He was met with songs and presents, food and palm wine, drums. He was carried in a hammock.”

But the Darwinists failed to take note of any of these things. Such observations didn’t fit their preconceived notions of evolution or their view that the pygmies were inferior, sub-human beings. When the pygmies were in St. Louis, they were greeted with laughter, staring, poking, and prodding. “People came to take their picture and run away . . . some came to fight with them. . . . Verner had contracted to bring pygmies safely back to Africa. It was often a struggle just to keep them from being torn to pieces at the fair. Repeatedly . . . the crowds became agitated and ugly; pushing and grabbing in a frenzied quality. Each time Ota and the Batwa were extracted only with difficulty.”3

The exhibit was said to be “exhaustively scientific” in its demonstration of the stages of human evolution. Therefore, they required the darkest blacks to be clearly distinguished from the dominant whites. Ota’s presence as a member of “the lowest known culture” was meant to be a graphic contrast with the Caucasians, who represented humanity’s “highest culmination.”

Meanwhile, the anthropologists in charge of the display continued their research by testing and measuring. In one case “the primitive’s head was severed from the body and boiled down to the skull.” Believing that skull size was an index of intelligence, the scientists were amazed to discover that the “primitive” skull was larger than that which belonged to the statesman Daniel Webster.4

After the fair, Verner took Ota and the other pygmies back to Africa. Ota soon remarried, but his second spouse died from a poisonous snakebite. He was also ostracized from his own people because of his association with the white people. Back in his homeland, Ota had found himself entirely alone. He returned to America with Verner, who said he would return him to Africa on his next trip. It was not to be. Once back in America, Verner tried to sell his animals to zoos and sell the crates of artifacts that he brought back from Africa. Verner was also having serious money problems and could not afford to take care of Ota.

When Verner presented Ota to Dr. Hornady, the director of the Bronx Zoological Gardens, it was clear that he would again go on display—but this time, the display took on an even more sinister twist. On September 9, 1906, The New York Times headline screamed, “Bushman shares a cage with Bronx Park apes.” Although Dr. Hornady insisted that he was merely offering an “intriguing exhibit” for the public, the Times reported that Dr. Hornady “apparently saw no difference between a wild beast and the little black man; and for the first time in any American zoo, a human being was being displayed in a cage.”

On September 10, the Times reported:

There was always a crowd before the cage, most of the time roaring with laughter, and from almost every corner of the garden could be heard the question “Where is the pygmy?” The answer was, “In the monkey house.”
Bradford and Blume, who extensively researched Ota’s life for the book Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo, noted:

The implications of the exhibit were also clear from the visitor’s questions. Was he a man or a monkey? Was he something in between? “Ist das ein Mensch?” asked a German spectator. “Is it a man?” . . . No one really mis- took apes or parrots for human beings. This “it” came so much closer. Was it a man? Was it a monkey? Was it a forgotten stage of evolution?
Dr. Hornady was a staunch believer in Darwin’s theory. The New York Times on September 11, 1906, reported that he had concluded that there was “a close analogy of the African savage to the apes” and that he “maintained a hierarchical view of the races. . . .”

The display was extremely successful. On September 16, 40,000 visitors came to the zoo. The crowds were so enormous that a police officer was assigned to guard Ota full time because he was “always in danger of being grabbed, yanked, poked, and pulled to pieces by the mob.”5

Not all condoned the frenzy. A group of concerned black ministers went to Ota’s defense. The September 10 Times reported Reverend Gordon saying, “Our race . . . is depressed enough without exhibiting one of us with the apes.” On September 12, however, the Times retorted by saying, “The reverend colored brother should be told that evolution . . . is now taught in the textbooks of all the schools, and that it is no more debatable than the multiplication table.”

The media frenzy eventually led to Ota being released from the cage, but the spectacle continued. The Times reported on September 18, “There were 40,000 visitors to the park on Sunday. Nearly every man, woman, and child of this crowd made for the monkey house to see the star attraction in the park—a wild man from Africa. They chased him about the grounds all day, howling, cheering, and yelling. Some of them poked him in the ribs, others tripped him up, all laughed at him.”

Eventually, Hornady himself was worn down (either by the media pressure or by the exhaustion that the spectacle had created). Ota was released from the zoo. In the following months, he found care at a succession of institutions and with several sympathetic individuals. In 1910, he arrived at a black community in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he found companionship and care. He became a baptized Christian, and his English vocabulary rapidly improved. He regularly cared for the children, protecting them and teaching them to hunt. He also learned how to read and occasionally attended classes at a Lynchburg seminary. Later he was employed as a tobacco factory worker.

But Ota grew increasingly depressed, hostile, irrational, and forlorn. When people spoke to him, they noticed that he had tears in his eyes when he told them he wanted to go home. Concluding that he would never be able to return to his native land, on March 20, 1916, Ota pressed a revolver to his chest and sent a bullet through his heart.

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Darwins Seeds of Racism Dec 14, 2008 5:20 pm
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The Seeds of Racism

The theory of Darwinian evolution claims that human beings changed “from-molecules-to-man” over millions and millions of years, with one of our intermediate states being that of the apes. This theory logically implies that certain “races” are more ape-like than they might be human.

Ever since the theory of evolution became popular and widespread, Darwinian scientists have been attempting to form continuums that represent the evolution of humanity, with some “races” being placed closer to the apes, while others are placed higher on the evolutionary scale. These continuums are formed solely by outward appearances and are still used today to justify racism—even though modern genetics has clearly proven that our differences, few as they might be, are no deeper than the skin.

On the last page of his book, The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin expressed the opinion that he would rather be descended from a monkey than from a “Savage.” In describing those with darker skin, he often used words like “savage,” “low,” and “degraded” to describe American Indians, pygmies, and almost every ethnic group whose physical appearance and culture differed from his own. In his work, pygmies have been compared to “lower organisms” and were labeled “the low integrated inhabitants of the Andaman Islands.”6

Although racism did not begin with Darwinism, Darwin did more than any person to popularize it. After Darwin “proved” that all humans descended from apes, it was natural to conclude that some races had descended further than others. In his opinion, some races (namely the white ones) have left the others far behind, while other races (pygmies especially) have hardly matured at all. The subtitle of Darwin’s classic 1859 book, The Origin of the Species, was The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The book dealt with the evolution of animals in general, and his later book, The Descent of Man, applied his theory to humans.

As the seeds of Darwinism continued to spread in the 1900s, the question being asked was “Who is human and what is not?” The answers were often influenced by the current interpretations of Darwinism.7 The widely held view was that blacks evolved from the strong but less intelligent gorillas, the Orientals evolved from the orangutan, and whites evolved from the most intelligent of all primates, the chimpanzees.8 Across the globe, such conclusions were used to justify racism, oppression, and genocide.

Within decades, however, evolution would be used as justification for the whites of Europe to turn upon themselves. The fruits of Darwinian evolution, from the Nazi conception of racial superiority to its utilization in developing their governmental policy, are well documented. The works of J. Bergman in Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith, June 1992, and March 1993, are just a few examples of vast amounts of material that show the connection between evolutionary thinking and Hitler’s genocidal slaughter of innocent human beings.

Jim Fletcher recalls these vivid impressions from visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.:

The railroad car, once you realize what it represents, forces you in, although not in the same way that people it memorializes were forced off aboard so many decades ago. The odd smell—which many visitors say must be the smell of death—can’t be scrubbed away. It shouldn’t be, for it reminds our senses in a visceral way of what happens when men leave God, and malevolent ideas go unchallenged. . . . When Adolph Hitler looked for a “final solution” for what he called the “Jewish problem”—the fact of the Jews’ existence—he had only to recall what scientists like Ernest Haeckel and liberal theologians embraced: that a purposeless process, known as evolution, had generated all of life’s complexity, including civilization itself. It had done so through a pitiless procedure of the strong eliminating the weak. As the influence of this idea spread, the Bible was increasingly taught as myth.9

Continued racism on European soil has resulted in bitter struggles and untold bloodshed between those of different “races” who occupy the same lands. The recent ethnic conflict between the Serbs and Croats, the dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are just a few examples.

The effect of Darwinism on racism, however, is certainly not limited to Europe. The fruit of Darwin’s plantation was (and is) being reaped in my homeland of Australia, which was involved in a gruesome trade in “missing link” specimens fueled by early evolutionary and racist ideas. Documented evidence shows that the remains of perhaps 10,000 or more of Australia’s Aborigines were shipped to British museums in a frenzied attempt to prove the widespread belief that they were the “missing link.”

Evolutionists in the United States were also strongly involved in this flourishing industry of gathering species of “sub-humans.” (The Smithsonian Institution in Washington holds the remains of over 15,000 individuals!) Along with museum curators from around the world, some of the top names in British science were involved in this large-scale grave robbing trade. These included anatomist Sir Richard Cohen, anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith, and Charles Darwin himself. Darwin wrote asking for Tasmanian skulls when only four of the island’s Aborigines were left alive, provided that the request not “upset” their feelings.

Some museums were not only interested in bones but also in fresh skins. These were sometimes used to provide interesting evolutionary displays when they were stuffed.10 Good prices were being offered for such “specimens.” Written evidence shows that many of the “fresh” specimens were obtained by simply going out and murdering the aboriginal people in my country. An 1866 deathbed memoir from Korah Wills, mayor of Bowen, in Queensland, Australia, graphically describes how he killed and dismembered local tribesmen in 1865 to provide a scientific specimen.

Edward Ramsay, curator of the Australian Museum in Sydney for 20 years starting in 1874, was particularly heavily involved. He published a booklet for the museum that gave instructions not only on how to rob graves, but also on how to plug bullet wounds from freshly killed “specimens.” Many freelance collectors worked under his guidance. For example, four weeks after Ramsay had requested skulls of Bungee Blacks, a keen young scientist sent him two of them, announcing, “The last of their tribe, had just been shot.”11

The seeds from Darwin’s plantation even spread as far as Asia, where evolutionary thinking was used to justify their acts of racism and genocide. In order to justify their nation’s expansionist aggression, the Japanese had been told that they were the most “highly evolved” race on earth. After all, the Europeans, with their longer arms and hairy chests, were clearly closer to the ape, weren’t they? Westerners returned in kind, of course, often portraying the Japanese as uncivilized savages in order to dehumanize their killing with weapons of mass destruction.

In North America, Darwinism was used to justify colonial slavery as well as the elimination of “savage native tribes” who hindered the European’s westward expansion in the name “manifest destiny.” People on various continents wanted to “prove” that their “race” originated first. As a result, the Germans trumpeted Neanderthal fossils, the British did the same with Piltdown Man, and so on. Currently, members of the Ku Klux Klan justify their racism on the basis that they are a more evolutionary advanced race. The current Christian Identity Movement believes that Jews and blacks are not really human at all.

Today, Darwinism and evolutionary thinking also enable ordinary, respectable professionals—otherwise dedicated to the saving of life—to justify their involvement in the slaughter of millions of unborn human beings, who (like the Aborigines of earlier Darwinian thinking) are also deemed “not yet fully human.”

Ken Ham
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Is the Bible infallible Dec 14, 2008 9:09 am
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or is it God's word itself? There is no infallible translation. The original writings are infallible
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the weirdness of conjunctional functions Dec 14, 2008 5:35 am
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or ....why do people look at things this way

In God's word we are told that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin. We are also told that he is given to us as believers to comfort us and to teach us all things.

So the love affair begins as we search out the Holy Spirit, his knowledge and his gifts that are for the edification of the body of Christ; personally and corporately.

The one thing about the Holy Spirit, he always points towards Jesus. Thats his function in the God head.It is not about power. The word says it is not by power and not by might, but by my spirit says the Lord.

The power I guess we could look at and say that it is supernatural power that we seem to seek. The might could be us doing something to try and effect a situation. But it says it is by the Lords' Spirit.

The word says God is a Spirit. Says we are formed in his image. So our eternal man, our Spirit is formed in his image.

Yet we talk about the power. We often mention experiences with power and yet we are told its not about power.
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m: The Jung Cult: Origins Of A Charismatic Movement (Hardcover) Dec 13, 2008 4:18 pm
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Psychoanalysis has existed as a recognized discipline (one hesitates to call it a science) for little more than a century. In this time, it has exerted great intellectual and social influence, far beyond what one might expect of a narrow medical specialty.

Terms like "ego," "id," and "collective unconscious" have entered the popular vocabulary, and the analyst's consulting room and couch provide the setting for innumerable cartoons. Given the cultural significance of psychoanalysis, it is odd how little curiosity historians and social critics have shown about its origins. Most regard it simply as an invention of the late nineteenth century, like the light bulb or the automobile.


In "The Jung Cult," Richard Noll has brilliantly placed Jungian analysis in its historical context. He has also, in the process, shed much light on Freud and a number of his other disciples. Psychoanalysis was to a large extent the product of German philosophical and literary thought, and had much to do with the collapse of orthodox religious belief amongst the educated classes.

German romanticism, the radical nihilism of Nietzsche, Haeckel's efforts to construct a modern "scientific" structure of ethical thought along religious lines, a "völkisch" hearkening back to Nordic paganism (as in Wagner's operas), and late nineteenth-century occultism as exemplified by H.P. Blavatsky, were all ingredients of the bouillabaisse out of which analysis emerged. These elements were (and remain) obscured by the trappings of science and medicine, which serve principally to give psychoanalysis an intellectual respectability it would otherwise lack.

While Freud, who described himself as a "godless Jew," believed that religion was the problem, and its elimination the solution, Jung concluded that the moral stringency of orthodox Christianity had to be replaced by another type of religious belief, ecstatic and archaic in character. In the Jungian view, the dominant philosophical background is mystical and magical, as Noll documents. He argues persuasively that Jung viewed himself as a religious figure, and that he was in some sense the founder of a kind of religion.

Noll's book has been portrayed by some Jungians as a hatchet job. While it is not written from a sympathetic point of view, it is far from that. It is thoroughly documented and copiously annotated. I found it a fascinating exercise in intellectual history. Jung stands between Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard in the dubious pantheon of the founders of modern religions. For what it is worth, he accomplished what he did with far more eclat and subtlety than either of these "neighbors."
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Is Freemasonry A Religion? Dec 13, 2008 4:04 pm
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Cephas Ministries

Albert Pike, the Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite from 1859 to 1891, is one of the most honored and influential American Freemasons of all time. The Supreme Council exalts Pike by saying: "Albert Pike remains today an inspiration for Masons everywhere. His great book Morals and Dogma endures as the most complete exposition of Scottish Rite philosophy. He will always be remembered and revered as the Master Builder of the Scottish Rite." (The House of the Temple of the Supreme Council 198

A few brief quotes from this honored Masonic book, Morals and Dogma, expose the Anti-christ nature of Freemasonry."
"The doctrines of the Bible are often not clothed in the language of strict truth, but in that which was fittest to convey to a rude and ignorant people the practical essentials of the doctrine." (Morals and Dogma, p. 224), [Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, 1871 L.H. Jenkins Inc.]

"Every Masonic Lodge is a temple of religion; and its teachings are instruction in religion." (Morals and Dogma, p. 213) "It is the universal, eternal, immutable religion, such as God planted it in the heart of universal humanity." (Morals and Dogma, p 219)

"Masonry is a worship; but one in which all civilized men can unite;" (Morals and Dogma, p. 256) "The Blue Degrees are but the outer court or portico of the Temple. Part of the symbols are displayed there to the Initiate, but he is intentionally misled by false interpretations. It is not intended that he shall understand them; but it is intended that he shall imagine he understands them. Their true explication is reserved for the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry." (Morals and Dogma, p. 819)
"It reverences all the great reformers. It sees in Moses, the Lawgiver of the Jesus, in Confucius and Zoroaster, in Jesus of Nazareth, and in the Arabian Iconoclast, Great Teachers of Morality, and Eminent Reformers, if no more:" (Morals and Dogma, p. 525)

"The God of nineteen-twentieths of the Christian world is only Bel, Moloch, Zeus, or at best Osiris, Mithras, or Adonai, under another name, worshiped with the old Pagan ceremonies and ritualistic formulas." (Morals and Dogma, p. 295-296)

"The first Masonic Legislator whose memory is preserved to us by history, was Buddha,.." (Morals and Dogma, p. 277)
"The Bible is an indispensable part of the furniture of a Christian Lodge, only because it is the sacred book of the Christian religion. The Hebrew Pentateuch in a Hebrew Lodge, and the Koran in a Mohammedan one, belong on the altar; and one of these, and the Square and Compass, properly understood, are the Great Light by which a Mason must walk and work." (Morals and Dogma, p.11)

"Masonry is a search after Light. That search leads us directly back, as you see, to the Kabalah." (Morals and Dogma, p. 741)

"The Kabalah, a Jewish Occult book, is a "Jewish mystical tradition teaching godhood to man. Foundation of most post-Egyptian, Western magical systems." (The Magicians Dictionary, p. 208, [E.E. Rehmus, 1990 Feral House}
"To conceive of God as an actuality, and not as a mere nonsubstance or name, which involved non-existence, the Kabala, like the Egyptians, imagined Him to be "a most occult Light,".. (Morals and Dogma, p 740)

"Lucifer, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! It is he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish souls? Doubt it not!" (Morals and Dogma, p 321)

Just as Pike stated, Freemasonry strives to deceive Masons as to the true intent of Freemasonry. Freemasonry is an organization that deceives GOOD MEN.

Now that you know the truth - renounce this great evil. If you have been involved with Freemasonry and wish to repent, ask God to forgive you and renounce all ties with Freemasonry.
"You have trusted in your wickedness and have said, `No one sees me.' Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, `I am, and there is none besides me.' Disaster will come upon you, and you will not know how to conjure it away.. a catastrophe you cannot foresee will suddenly come upon you. Keep on, then, with your magic spells and with your many sorceries, .. all the counsel you have received has only worn you out .. let them save you from what is coming upon you. Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up. They cannot save themselves from the power of the flame." (Isaiah 47:10..14)

"Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you." (2 Corinthians 6:17 KJV). This article was from the pamphlet "Immorals And Dogma" by Followers of Jesus Christ, Evansville, Indiana.

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TESTIMONY OF "HAVELL" former Master Mason Dec 13, 2008 4:01 pm
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"For eight years I was a Freemason, initiated, passed, and raised, if you know the jargon. It simply means I was in the Blue Lodge, and I became in due course a Master Mason. I was introduced into Freemasonry by two members of a church vestry of which I was also a member. I liked and respected both men - they were friends, and I had no reason to doubt their honesty. They would say, in accord with Freemasonry teachings, that I was not invited to join, but rather that I expressed an interest. That is one of the things which is part of Freemasonry folklore; that no one is invited to join, that a candidate expresses an interest and it is that interest that is subsequently taken up. So two respected friends said this was something I should look at, I expressed an interest and some two years later I was initiated into a lodge.

However, nine years ago I decided to resign from my lodge. Then I removed all lodge-related clothing and books from my home, and finally I renounced entirely all connections with Freemasonry and sought the LORD's forgiveness. Why did I choose to do that? Well, let me start with some of the good things, the attractive things about Freemasonry, and perhaps you will come on a journey with me as I work through the list to some of the things I am uncomfortable with about Freemasonry.

Freemasons are known for, but generally don't seek publicity for, good works. For example, the building of homes for the elderly, and support for widows and children. Many Freemasons give a great deal of time and considerable sums of money to that sort of thing. Lodge ritual promotes high standards of moral conduct, for example, honesty, uprightness, support for widows and children. They acknowledge a supreme being, any supreme being. For the Christian or Jew it is Yahweh, but for Moslems it is Allah, for others, their gods.

It is quite spurious to hold that all are the same, the one true God. Neither the Christian nor the Jew may have any God other than the Lord God the creator. That is the first commandment, and to the Christian, God has uniquely revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. To acknowledge any other god is not only to reject the First Commandment, but also to deny Christ. Christ said, "If you deny me I also shall deny you before My Father in heaven." So I believe that Freemasons, on this alone, are in grave spiritual danger. Perhaps one could express it more strongly than this.

Next, Paul instructed Christians not to be yoked together with unbelievers. In my view candidates undertaking the first three degrees of Freemasonry yoke themselves with members of other lodges who may openly acknowledge supreme beings other than God. Much lodge ritual calls on Freemasons to do good works, so that they may ascend to heaven. In contrast Christ said that no man comes to the Father except through Him. He is the way. Paul makes clear that we cannot justify ourselves through good works. Only our faith in Christ is cause for hope, that we will share eternal life with Him. To argue otherwise is again to deny Christ.

Continuing on with falsehood, Freemasonry claims that lodge ritual is largely a series of plays that teach morality. Well, certainly they are fiction. The plays, however, present as fact what is fiction, so they may be plays but they have the presentation of being truth. But in the course of this, Bible stories are mistold and Biblical characters are given roles that they don't ever have in the Bible. There is no biblical support for it. Now, I think Freemasons might argue that this is but a means, albeit an amoral or immoral means, to an end. But I view it as an insidious form of lie. It is falsehood with a religious gloss, and for traditional Anglicans the gloss is also enhanced by a wording which is a counterfeit of 1662 Prayer Book language. So it has this religiosity about it which appeals to people who know that tradition, which affects for example, many Presbyterians and Anglicans.

Now Freemasons learn their lodge ritual by heart. "By heart" is a significant phrase. By repeated listening to the ritual and reciting it, members become skilful at presenting it from memory. And this aggravates the danger. Much of what you learn you internalise. But it is not truth, it is falsehood. It is certainly not God's truth. Can I ask you, who wants us to be skilful in presenting falsehood? This same sort of rote learning and reiteration are used by evil regimes seeking to perpetuate themselves. So we put the same mechanism and manipulation to work.

Lodge ritual is agreed among Freemasons to be secret. The fact is, of course, that the ritual is largely available through books in most public libraries. However, as you proceed from one degree to another there are always new "secrets" to be learned, and most of us only get into the Blue Lodge and don't see beyond that. However, the problem is that the meaning of this ritual is obscure and questionable. In my judgement, there is sufficient evidence of hidden evil in the lodge ritual to repel any Christian.

It came to a point where I could no longer accept this accumulation of evil. It stood against everything I believed about the Lord and everything I had come to understand about the way He works. So I got out. It took me a long time before I got rid of my lodge regalia and books. I put them out in the garage, and then finally I had them burnt by a friend. It was reported to us by this friend, a priest, that when he had burnt it, there was nothing left. The metal buckles, the hinges, there was nothing - it had gone completely. That day my wife and I found a new freedom, and I rejoice for it."

(The above testimonies were both delivered in public meetings. Minor grammatical and other editing has been necessary to convert what they said to writing. The spirit of their messages remains unchanged.)
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testimony of Alan, former 30° Mason and retired Anglican lawyer Dec 13, 2008 3:58 pm
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"I still have many friends in Masonry that I look upon with affection and respect. Many of them are decent and well-intentioned people who I believe went into Masonry for the same reason I did, in that they understood it was a Christian-based organisation, in that it gave a humanitarian lifestyle, good fellowship and promoted a moral standard of life. Masonry is like quite a lot of other things, in that it has sufficient moral teaching in it, and even verses taken from the Bible, to give a false sense of security as to what it is.

My disagreement is not with all those individual people who are in the Craft, but with the hidden agenda that lies in Masonry with indoctrination, with false interpretations and a deliberate deceit, particularly the majority of Masons who are in the Blue Lodge. I was one who went right through to the thirtieth degree. I have come to a realisation that it is only when you reach the upper degrees of Masonry that the true significance of Masonic teachings are made apparent in any way. It was following my commitment to Christ with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit that I knew I had committed a very great wrong, and that it had to be put right. I admit frankly that there were selfish reasons for my going into Masonry.

During the war years when I was overseas I was curious about the fact that some of the men in the unit every now and then went off into a little hush-hush gathering somewhere, and to any enquiries I made they said "We've got a lodge meeting." I didn't know anything more about it than that. I came back from the war and went into my family law practice, married shortly afterwards to my very precious wife and within just over six years we had six children. That sounds pretty hot going, but we had two sets of twins on end, so there wasn't time for much else, and I forgot my curiosity about Masonry for most of that time. I had a business associate who was also a relative of mine by marriage, and who had been a senior officer in the unit I served with. He kept speaking to me about the advantages to be gained from joining Masonry. He knew we were active members of a church, and claimed Masonry was a Christian-based organisation. I expressed some interest in it, and was eventually invited to join the lodge.

I am blessed with a fairly retentive memory and my progress up the ladder in Masonry was rapid for that reason. I soon went through the first three degrees and then the various offices in the lodge. I finished up as "Worshipful Master," and then at a later stage (I suppose in recognition of my known Christian commitment) I was invited to join the Rose Croix degree, the 18th degree. Much later on I was invited into the 30th degree. Even through that period of time there were a number of things which continued to cause some unease within me in some way or other, and I didn't know quite how to deal with them, but I want to share some of those with you. They steadily grew until finally I knew I had to leave the lodge completely, after about 30 years in it.

The first of these items which caused me concern was the issue of secrecy, because I wondered, if the teachings of Masonry were so true and good, why was it necessary to keep them hidden in a veil of secrecy. I couldn't even share those concerns with my wife, close friends or my spiritual leaders, and had to have that blanket of silence over the things that were revealed to me in Masonry. I talked with my wife afterwards about her feelings and she disclosed to me that when I went in she first of all felt bewilderment, then resentment, and finally reluctant acceptance. I am just so grateful that our marriage wasn't endangered, but she was helped over those years by a good group of lodge wives, many of whom had the same feelings, and they were able to share together.

The next thing which worried me was the question of Masonic oaths. I now recognise them as blood oaths, but even without that recognition if you just look at them word by word, they are horrendous. They agree to a vile mutilation of the body in different ways as a penalty for revealing the secrets, before those secrets are even disclosed to the Initiate. This applies to every step in Masonry. You have to agree to accept the teachings before knowing what they are.

The next point I had problems with right through was the question of deception and double meanings and euphemisms used in the rituals, particularly in the first three degrees. The definition of Masonry itself given to members gives some sort of clue of this, that it is "a peculiar system of morals, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols." That certainly gives some hint of what is involved. I was told it was a Christian-based organisation, and I knew quite a number of churchmen who were in the Craft, and I thought if it was okay for them then it must be okay for me. But I have realised, after thinking it over carefully, that God is never called God, but the "Great Architect of the Universe," and finally the passwords and signs which were exchanged in a secret way, but never had the meanings been given. These were a few of the matters which gave me unease at that stage. Even in the 18th Rose Croix degree, which is supposed to be the Christian form of Masonry, I came to see there were some parts of the ritual which had a secret hidden connotation with elements of the occult there.

The final problem I had was the matter of obedience to the Master and the governing authorities of the craft. The Master takes a significant part in the Craft Degree rituals. He leads the Initiate from "darkness to light" with a sharp instrument pressed against his breast. He leads the Fellow Craft from "death to resurrection" and one can't but wonder if this is a symbolic usurping of the place of Christ in our Christian teachings, putting Masonic teachings at total variance with the Word of God.

There are quite a lot of other things which I came to question, but perhaps I will summarise at this point. I came out of Masonry about ten years ago, because in the meantime we had together increased our Christian commitment considerably. The first real questioning of Masonry came through a very close friend of ours who was a retired clergyman, and who was Spirit-filled (filled with God's Holy Spirit). He had family members who were involved in Masonry and felt a very deep concern about it. Through him we were both baptised in the Holy Spirit and from then on my move away from Masonry increased rapidly. You couldn't worship and live in the Holy Spirit and remain with those areas of concern. When I finally left I felt a tremendous release and freedom, and the joy that we have shared together in these retirement years and the blessings in healing and restoration of relationships and provision from our loving and caring God are more than adequate answers to the decision I made.



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I find this interesting: Dec 13, 2008 3:50 pm
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John MacArthur writes:

"The point is not that God guarantees security to everyone who will say he accepts Christ, but rather that those whose faith is genuine will prove their salvation is secure by persevering to the end in the way of righteousness" (The Gospel According to Jesus [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988], p.9.

MacArthur is an unsaved Modernist at work corrupting the church. The Bible makes it clear that it is our relationship to the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, or our lack of such a relationship, that determines our eternal destiny. In Matthew 7:23 Jesus says to a group of those professing salvation, "I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity." They never had a saving relationship to Jesus Christ (John 17:3). God does not grant the sinner salvation based on the kind of life he lives, otherwise none of us would make it. Living the right kind of life is the fruit of salvation, but never the cause. MacArthur's wording seems to make it the cause or the condition of salvation, a teaching that would be totally contrary to the gospel of grace

taken from a website
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do you believe this statement by John McArthur? Dec 13, 2008 3:48 pm
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do you think its true?

"Salvation isn't the result of an intellectual exercise. It comes from a life lived in obedience and service to Christ as revealed in the Scripture; it's the fruit of actions, not intentions. There's no room for passive spectators: words without actions are empty and futile...The life we live, not the words we speak, determines our eternal destiny" (Hard to Believe, p. 93).
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