Reformed Presbyterian Minutes of Synod 1961 - Rparchives.org

REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 47
it be that a man shall pronounce with an oath, and it be hid from
him; when he knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty in one of
these. And it shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these
things, that he shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing:"
Lev. 5:4,5.
The Church of Jesus Christ is committed to the course which
is open to view and above-board. The Gospel, or good news,
which she is to proclaim, is to be made known to all men openly.
Matt. 28:19,20; Mark 16:15; Jesus spoke and taught openly when
He was on earth in bodily form, John 18:20. Secrecy in itself is
not sinful, indeed in some mattets and under some circumstances
it may be very commendable.
By far the most objectionable feature of secret societies is
the fact that most of them, by their own admission, are religions
which promise salvation to their members, without the necessity
of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as their Redeemer. Freemasonry,
the parent of many secret orders, claims to be not a religion, but
Religion, with a capital R.
Albert G. Mackey, General High Priest of the General Grand
Chapter of the United States, writes, "Freemasonry is emphatically
a religious institution; it teaches the existence of God. It
points to the celestial canopy above, where is the Eternal Lodge
and where He presides. It instructs us in the way to reach the
portals of that distant temple..." (The Mystic Tie, page 32)
Joseph F. Newton, in The Religion of Masonry, pages 10 &
11, says, "As some of us prefer to put it, Masonry is not a religion
but Religion—not a church but a worship, in which men of
all religions may unite."
Furthermore, the god which these self-confessed religions
hold up for worship is not the God of the Bible. In the Masonic
Monitor, by T. S. Webb, on page 285 we find, "So broad is the
religion of Masonry, and so carefully are all sectarian tenets
excluded from the system, that the Christian, the Jew, and the
Mohammedan, in all their numberless sects and divisions, may
and do harmoniously combine in its moral and intellectual wotk,
with the Buddhist, the Parsee, the Confucian, and the worshipper
of Diety under every form." J. S. M. Ward states, "Freemasonry
has taught that each man can, by himself work out his own conception
of God and thereby achieve salvation" (Freemasonry:
Its Aims and Ideals, page 187).
Many of the quotations from the Bible which are used in
Masonic rituals are twisted and blasphemously presented. For
instance, Acts 4:11, "This is the stone which was set at nought
of you builders, which is become the head stone of the corner"
and Rev. 2:17, "To him that overcometh, will I give to eat of the
hidden manna; and I will give him a white stone, and in the stone