Freemasonry and Southern Baptists

I want to spend some posts addressing the issue of Freemasonry. If you want to get attention right away just say the word "Mason" in public. Just what is it with Masons in a conservative, Bible-believing church anyway? How can these people stay and pretend to worship our great God? How can they listen to expository sermons from the Word of God week after week and not be convicted of their sins? Are they present in the church to really seek God or are they there to lead others astray? Yes, obviously there are some questions that I have about the Religion. I am sure that most of you know that it is listed in the cult books, so I am going to refer to it as a false religion. I am not suggesting that I have all the answers about Masons and I am not claiming to be an expert. I have done some research of my own on it in my five years of ministry in my present SBC church. In fact, I had the Masons in an uproar my first few months here. I thought they were going to force me out; praise God that there are not many in my church. Yes, it is a problem here and just about everywhere you go in the USA. From the things that I have found out about this false religion, I really wonder if a person can be saved and secure in Jesus Christ and be an active Mason? MAYBE and that is a stretch, a big one! I would think the conviction of the Holy Spirit of God would be so overwhelming that a person in this situation would have to renounce Freemasonry. A man told me one time why he renounced Freemasonry he said, "If Jesus Christ is not in the name I do not want anything to do with it." That leds me to a question, just what God are the Masons serving? Another young man told me that they initiated him into the false religion by chanting words over him blind-folded with a dagger over his heart. Later he told his wife that he did not want anything to do with the Masons again. He did not ever want to be known as one even after he died. Stories like these from born-again Christians having to leave the Masons are frightening to me! Why did they have to leave the false religion? Because it is incompatible with the work of the Holy Spirit of God.

Here is another question that I have; what is it with Freemasonry and the Southern Baptist Convention? Are there some mysterious ties? When my wife and I attended the SBC in St. Louis a few years back a motion was made for them to take a stand against Freemasonry and the motion did not pass. It died for a lack of a second. Shame on them to be so silent! The Convention has been encouraged many times to take a stand against againt Freemasonary, but yet they have shut their mouths. At the SBC stories rang out on the floor into microphones from men that had been involved in masonary and later renounced it. We heard some of the horror stories of what they had to do at the 32nd degree mark like drink wine from a skull head and other things. They spared us alot of the horror stories. Brothers and Sisters there are other things that go on behind those closed doors in the Lodge that no one knows about; I mean no one, but God and fellow Mason brothers.

I am disturbed that the SBC has not passed a motion against Freemasonry; this is really something more than a big-boys club despite what some active Masons may say in the SBC and America. The SBC needs to get on the ball and stop debating petty issues not drawn-out in the Bible and pass a law against Freemasonry. I just wonder if some in the SBC have to many ties and friends that are currently involved in Masonic cultish practices to pass such a motion. This is a grave sin, I do believe, in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Here is a potential reason why the SBC won't touch this issue.
Masonry was originally a means by which people in the occult could practice their "craft" and still remain respectable citizens. The official publication of "The Supreme Council 33" of Scottish Rite Freemasonry 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 were 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.)

For the full article that this excerpt came from click here.