Posted by:
steve benson
(
)
Date: November 29, 2011 07:19AM
My dad happened to be the mission president at the time, so there in the field operations HQ one Sunday night we had an impromptu ward youth fireside featuring a Mason-Mormon magic man, whose circus act (sorry to say now) I naively helped arrange. This was back in 1971-72, during my senior year in high school.
A barnstorming, charismatic LDS carnival barker kind of a guy, he had blown into town from Utah, where he dropped into the Ft. Wayne 1st Ward sacrament meeting that we attended. He got up, introduced himself and nearly charmed the garments off the easily-bamboozled congregation (including our gullible bishopric) with his engaging gospel style.
Myself and some other youth in the ward were sufficiently struck by this fellow's entertaining pulpit performance to invite him (with presiding priesthood permission) to be a guest speaker at a hastily-arranged fireside that same evening in the large living room of the mission home, located at 4700 Old Mill Road in Ft. Wayne, not far from Rudisill Boulevard and down the road from Foster Park:
Brother Razzle-Dazzle showed up before a gathering of us teens that night and proceeded to tell us about a few items of particular (and usually not-spoken-of-openly) interest; namely:
1) He was a Mason. To prove that, he proudly showed off to us his Masonic ring.
2) The Masonic Order contained secret rituals, signs, symbols and covenants.
3) The sacred Mormon temple ceremony included elements of the Masonic Order, which he said he could not discuss with us in detail but about which he bore solemn and dramatic testimony.
4) As a temple Mormon, he was wearing secret LDS temple undergarments beneath his street clothes, into which were sewn Masonic emblems representing power and priesthood. He pointed to the areas of his body where the garments were located (but unseen), about which he also bore solemn and dramatic testimony.
During his presentation, several of the young people became "spiritually moved" and began to cry.
However, I didn't feel a thing (which actually kind of surprised me, given that so many of my friends were in tears of testimonial joy). My friend Dave didn't feel anything, either. After the fireside was over, he and I stepped aside and talked among ourselves about what we had just witnesssed. Both of us agreed that it was rather weird and less than spiritually impressive.
In fact, for me it served to plant seeds of troubled curiousity in my mind about what really went on behind the secrecy-shrouded walls of the Mormon temple that faithful Latter-day Saints were never supposed to talk about in public. "Why hadn't I heard of the Mormon-Mason connection before?," I wondered to myself.
When I finally decided to bolt the Cult some 21 years later by resigning my membership in disgust over its historical lies, doctrinal absurdities, obnoxious sexism, authoritarian mind control and bigoted bizarreness, one of the pivotal reasons was having discovered in greater detail as an adult the undeniable, plagiarized parallels between the LDS temple ritual inventions of Joseph Smith (himself a Nauvoo-initiated, top-degree Mason) and the ceremonies of bricklayer/trade union pre-Mormon Freemasonry that originated during the Middle Ages.
It brought me back to that Ft. Wayne mission home fireside show many years earlier, delivered by that Masonic-ring toting, Mormon garment-wearing pitchman.
_____
The Mormon Church, of course, goes out of its way to deny any meaningful connection to Masonry.
For instance, in its "Encyclopedia of Mormonism," while it admits "resemblances between the two rituals" [meaning the secret Mormon temple ceremonies and the secret Freemasonry ceremonies), it insists that these similarities "are limited to a small proportion of actions and words . . . ."
Furthermore, it claims that "[e]ven where the two rituals share symbolism, the fabric of the meanings are different. . . .
"Freemasonry is a fraternal society and in its ritual all promises, oaths and agreements are made between members. In the [Mormon] temple endowment all covenants are between the individual and God.
"In Freemasonry, testing, grading, penalizing or sentencing accords with the rules of the fraternity or membership votes. In the [Mormon temple] endowment, God alone is the judge.
"Within Freemasonry, rank and promotions are of great imporatance, while in the LDS temple rites there are not distinctions; all participants stand equal before God.
"The clash between good and evil, including Satan's role, is essential to, and vividly depicted in the [LDS] endowment but is largely absent from Masonic rites.
"[Mormon] Temple ceremonies emphasize salvation for the dead through vicarious ordinance woprk, such as baptism for the dead; nothing in Masonic ritual allows for proxies acting on behalf of the dead.
"Women participate in all aspects of LDS temple rites; though Freemasonry has women's auxiliaries. Masonic ritual excludes them. . . . LDS temple rites unite husbands and wives and their children, in eternal families. Latter-day Saint sealing would be completely out of place in the context of Mason ceremonies.
"Thus, Lattery-day Saints see their temple ordinaces as fundamentally different from Masonic . . . . "
("Freemasonry and the Temple," by Kenneth W. Godfrey, "Encyclopedia of Mormonism: The History, Scripture, Doctrine and Procedure of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," vol. 2 [New York, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992), p. 529)
Uh-huh, and blah, blah, blah.
Tell all that to the Mormon Mason who blew through Ft. Wayne, Indiana, that Sunday, showing off his Masonic ring and openly proclaiming to the youth of the LDS ward there that he was wearing secret Mormon underwear marked with Masonic symbols, while he testified that the Mormon temple ceremony contained elements of the Masonic Order that he was forbidden to talk about.
The real and deep historical Mason-Mormon connection is what the Mormon Church doesn't want to talk about.
Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/2011 08:28AM by steve benson.