I am going to start with a very sad story.

About 45 miles west of Houston, Texas, there is a small community named Pine Island. The Pine Island Baptist Church has been there since the late 1800's. The area was settled by and the church was founded by families who left Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi during the troubled times following the Civil War

A few years ago (in Nov. 1998) one of the members was to be ordained as a deacon. The preacher found out that the man was a Mason and refused to ordain him. There was a meeting of the congregation and they ordered the preacher to ordain the man.

The preacher refused and that Sunday he preached a hellfire sermon about the devil worshiping Masons . The congregation held another meeting and ask him to please reconsider. He refused and the congregation held a vote. The preacher lost by a large majority and was informed that he was fired.

The preacher had taken this position because he had read a book that said Masons were devil worshipers. It wasn't something he actually found or even interpreted from something in the Bible, but a modern book written by a man with a vendetta against a mason or some particular lodge. He decided to believe the words of an unknown fanatic author over that of the men of his congregation who he had known as righteous, upstanding Christians until he discovered they were Masons.

To me this is a very sad story where everyone looses and there are no winners. The preacher lost a congregation and church where he was generally well liked. His wife lost her neighbors and friends and her projects. His children lost their friends and schoolmates and the stability of their home. The congregation lost a young dynamic preacher that fought for his beliefs (right or wrong). The congregation also lost a few of it's members, even causing a split in a family or two. And, because of the preacher's beliefs, the masons lost a little standing with a few members. I can think of a lot of ways for a man to prove his foolishness, but taking everything you read in any individual's book as the gospel truth has to be one of the most foolish, Then to condemn a large part of our male population with no other evidence then another modern man's conjectures or desire to get revenge for rejection is unbelievable to me.

An Interesting Footnote;
The preacher informed the church that he was due to receive 2 months pay if he was fired. Almost all of the congregation was opposed to making the payment and stated that he would never get an extra 2 months pay from their church. Three members of the church stood up and tried to convince the other members that the money was really owed and should be paid. After the congregation refused to pay the extra money, the 3 men made up the full amount from "their own pockets" and gave the preacher the money. The preacher took the 2 months pay without hesitation even though it was made up by 3 well known Masons.

Click Here To Go To The Top.

The Beginnings Of The
Present Day Masonic Lodge

Some of the less critically-minded Masons like to trace the origins of the Order back to ancient Egypt. But in its present form, Freemasonry originated in England, probably in the seventeenth Century, while the first Grand Lodge was founded in London in 1717 and the regulations, by-laws and constitutions of Masonry were laid down in what is known as Anderson's Constitutions in 1722-23. The spiritual elements underlying these precepts were decidedly "advanced" for their time, emphasizing as they did tolerance for other men's religions and the brotherhood of all human beings.

Many Masonic scholars and historians believe the Masons may have been formed from the remains of The Knights Templar. The Knights Templar were originally a monastic order of the Catholic Church as the guardians of the Temple of Solomon site and the routes used by the pilgrims going to and from the Holy Land. Although all of the Knights took a vow of poverty, the Order itself grew very wealthy. The Order had it's headquarters in France and the King of France grew very jealous because by 1308 the Knights Templar had grown much richer then he was. He made an agreement with the Pope to discredit the order and they would divide the Templar's riches between themselves.

Every known official of the order and many of the individual members were arrested on the night the Pope outlawed the order. They were thrown in prison and all of their property was confiscated. A major problem arose when the kings men couldn't find the reported riches anywhere in France. The King finally resorted to torturing the prisoners, even burning 54 of them alive at the stake trying to discover where the treasure was hidden. The Pope did the worse thing he could, he excommunicated all Templar anywhere and demanded they be arrested by the country where they were living. The King of England found other things to do and ignored the order. The Pope was furious and demanded that the king arrest the Templar in England under the threat of excommunicating the king himself. Bowing to the threat, the English king ordered the arrest of the Templars. However the order to arrest was given 3 days after he announced that the Templars were going to be arrested. Strangely enough, none of the Templars were found. They had all disappeared. Most had gone to Scotland where the Scottish king said the Pope could do what he wanted to, but not in Scotland.

Then the Masons publicly "Came out of the closet" so to speak, in 1717. Secret signs, secret passwords, secret handshakes and oaths with severe penalties for revealing the secrets and the identity of brother members wouldn't hardly come from a brand new organization that was making itself "public". But, how about one that had been in hiding for a couple of hundred years under threat of death for being a member???

The intellectual and spiritual foundations of modern democracy, including the American Revolution and the American Constitution, are to be found in large part in the teachings of Jean Jacques Rousseau and in the ideas cemented into the great first Encyclopedia. And it is a fact that most of the authors of that epoch-making Encyclopedia -- Diderot, D'Alembert, Condorcet, the famous Swiss philosopher Helvetius, etc. -- were Freemasons. The envoy to France from the rebellious American colonies, Benjamin Franklin, also was an ardent Freemason. So were George Washington, sixty among his generals, John Hancock and a great many of his co-signers of the Declaration of Independence. Both Washington and Franklin long held the post of Grand Master.

Click Here To Go To The Top.

Nazis And Fascists And The Masonic Lodge

Nazi and Fascist publications leave no doubt of their belief that all evil in the world, from the high mortality rate among the dinner guests of the Borgias down to the Versailles Treaty, has been the work of Freemasons, alone or with the help of Israel. In "Mein Kampf", Hitler merges his twin phobias:

"The general pacifistic paralyzation of the national instinct of self-preservation, introduced into the circles of the so-called `intelligentsia' by Freemasonry, is transmitted to the great masses, but above all to the bourgeoisie, by the activity of the great press, which today is always Jewish."

In 1917, as one of their acts, the Bolsheviks dissolved all lodges in Russia. In 1919, when Bela Kun proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat in Hungary, one of his first decrees ordered the dissolution of Masonic lodges. In 1925, Spain's first dictator of this generation, General Primo de Rivera, ordered the abolition of Freemasonry in his country.Benito Mussolini went about the same business more methodically. Having established his regime, Il Duce proceeded step by step to exterminate the lodges and the influence of Italian Freemasonry. In the summer of 1925 Mussolini got around to dissolving Italian Freemasonry. The Nazis acted more swiftly. Immediately on Hitler's rise to power, the ten Grand Lodges of Germany were dissolved. Many among the prominent dignitaries and members of the Order were sent to concentration camps.

Why does this implacable and fanatic hatred of the Order obsess the totalitarian mind? The answer is in the whole history and temper of Freemasonry. For more than two centuries its leaders have been consistently on the side of political freedom and human dignity, reaping a harvest of persecution at the hands of tyrants.

Click Here To Go To The Top.

Famous Masons

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Abbott, William "Bud" - Actor (Abbott and Costello)
Abbott, Sir John J.C. - Prime Minister of Canada 1891-92
Abbott, Robert Sengstacke - Founder/publisher "Chicago Defender"
Acuff, Roy - Musician
Aldrin, Edwin E. "Buzz" - Astronaut - Second man to walk on the moon
Allen, Richard - Founder/first bishop AME Church
Allende, Salvador - President of Chile, overthrown in 1970
Armstrong, Louis - Jazz Musician
Arnold, Eddie - Actor
Arnold, General Henry "Hap" - Commander of the Army Air Force
Astor, John Jacob - Fur trader and financier
Atkins, Chet - Musician
Austin, Stephen F. - Father of Texas
Autry, Gene - Actor

MASONRY

It has been written that Freemasonry is honesty in business; that it is fairness in work; courtesy in society; compassion for the sick and unfortunate; forgiveness for the penitent; love for our fellowman and reverence for God.

What Masonry is:

What Masonry is not:

Many malicious stories

CONTENTS A Sad Story, The Disruption Of A Community The Beginnings Of Modern Freemasonry Nazis and Fascists And the Masonic Lodge Famous Masons From All Walks Of Life Consider This, Things To Ponder About Masonry Dear Dad, A Personal Story

I am going to start with a very sad story.

The Beginnings Of The Present Day Masonic Lodge

Nazis And Fascists And The Masonic Lodge

Consider The Following Points

Please read the following Letter

The above letter is my story and it is one that came from the heart.

CONTENTS

A Sad Story, The Disruption Of A Community

The Beginnings Of Modern Freemasonry

Nazis and Fascists And the Masonic Lodge

Famous Masons From All Walks Of Life

Consider This, Things To Ponder About Masonry

Dear Dad, A Personal Story

The Beginnings Of The
Present Day Masonic Lodge