Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: jhaynes@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Methodists and Masons Message-ID: Date: 15 Jun 91 05:50:48 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 44 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , catfood@ncoast.org (Mark W. Schumann) writes: > I was visiting a Methodist family this weekend and something came > up about Masons. Cliff said that the United Methodist governing > body recently made a statement to the effect that secret societies > such as the Masons are incompatible with the idea of a Christian > community. > > Can anyone confirm, deny, or qualify this report? I have a book call THE DEVIL'S ALPHABET by Koch an author from Germany and he says for the letter F free masonary is one of the devil's schemes to deceive us from the truth. An example of this he share a certain lodge master took some of the secert books of the lodge to his house for save keeping. The lodge master died and the books fell into the hands of his daughter who was told never to look into the books. She revealed to Koch that the book had instructions to kill anyone who left the lodge and how to do it. Read the book for yourself and see what it says. He does mension that his life was treaten that if he used the material in his book he would be kill. Well he is still alive today and so is the girl who shared it with them. An example in my life that my grandfather died who was a mason before the funeral only two days after his death, some men from his lodge came to visit my grandmother and remove several of the books from his library. I know a little bit of the context of some of the books of masons but was turned off because anything that is so secert that the men came to get them from a dead man I don't want any part of it. It could be quite innocent as men playing the club house games as we did when we are kids or as damning someone to hell for putting another god before the Almight God "Jesus". For me I'll stick with the Almighty God and not play in the secert powers of this dark world. I hope this helps, Joel [The Masonic tradition is a very broad one, and covers groups with rather different orientations. It's probably not a good idea to use information from Germany to characterize Masonic practice in the U.S., since much continental Masonry had an atheist character, while this does not generally seem to be the case in the U.S. There are some really bizarre groups with Masonic roots, such as the infamous P9 lodge. However I know enough Christian Masons to be fairly confident that the organization most people in the U.S. are thinking of is not following secret powers of the dark world. Some Christians will still object, for various reasons that have been mentioned here in the past. --clh]