Trojan Horse

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Cephas Ministry Newsletter

Was The Templer/ Masonic Connection

The Trojan Horse For Islam?

This article is the result of an interesting encounter with the author a little book named "Unholy Worship?" which we advertised in Masonic book section. The author is from Canada. He came across our page and thanked us for advertising his book. He identified himself as a member of the Lodge in Canada and a Christian and proud of it. I couldn't resist but witness to him that a Christian cannot have fellowship with the Lodge and he took another look at our website and wondered why I was advertising his book. I told him that we present historical information about the Lodge to teach what the problems are in Freemasonry that are incompatible with the Gospel. One reason is that Ancient Masonry is rooted in Astrology, which was news to him. I told him that I would take a look at this book if he would take a look at a book written by James L. Holly, M.D., President of Mission and Ministry To Men, Inc. and add a few pages from the book of Ancient Masonry which dates back to Solomon's Temple. He agreed. The book I offered was "The Southern Baptist Convention and Freemasonry." I told him I'd see him in heaven.

The book "Unholy Worship?" The Myth of the Baphomet, Templar, Freemason Connection accuses Fundamentalist Christian groups to attack the Masonic Fraternity and attempts to set the myth straight. Well we would like to set the record straight where we are coming from also. Fundamental Christians are told in Jude 1:20-25 "But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith praying in the Holy Ghost, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference; And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. Now unto HIM that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.. " I don't know where this author gets the idea that we are trying to attack anyone. Our focus is eternal life with in Christ Jesus not the Masonic Lodge. Our only goal is to end up in heaven forever and take as many with us as we can.

This author takes great pride in the Templar Knights which doesn't surprise me. Their ideals were noble. No one disputes that. They were dedicated to Christ at the onset of their careers and protected pilgrims traveling to and from Jerusalem and over time were so trusted and highly respected that nobility even dedicated their riches and entered the Templar Order themselves. That of course caught the Pope's attention in Rome and became affiliated.. Their wardrobe, a white mantle was a symbol of purity and a reflection of the knights vow to chastity. The red cross was given to them by Pope Eugene III in 1147 or 1148. It was worn above every Templars heart as a shield. (page 20) This puts me in mind of the Mormons who wear garments after they have entered the Temples (Order) and made their commitment to the church. Their garments bear the compass and square which is a form of protection. They are buried in their garments as were the Templars. Mormonism is a form a Masonry.

"The Clerics (priests).. chaplains .. always wore white gloves (traditional in Masonry today and dating back to Egyptian times). The purpose of the gloves was to keep their hands clean for when they must serve mass and (figuratively) touch God... Templars, by their rule of order, were required to wear sheepskin under garments, that were never to be removed. This was a symbol of their vow of chastity." (page 21) One of the Mormon rituals is to take the vow of chastity during the Temple rituals. In fact one is interrogated by three different priesthood holders about one sex life (chastity) to ensure that a person is worthy to enter the holy ground of the Temples.

In his book, Unholy Worship? the author would have us believe that there is no connection between Freemasonry and the Templars. A comment from someone to the effect that the occult is connected to Masons motivated him to research and write this book. He claims: "Masonry is a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols." He wrote: "As a Freemason myself, I can vouch that this is the truth, but is not the whole truth, because truth, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder." (page 8) He claims that Freemasonry is not a secret society. If that is the case, why was the Freemason who exposed rituals murdered via Niagara Falls, New York in the early 1800s and why did Joseph Smith Jr. and his brother who were both 33 degree Masons get murdered around the same time for stealing the rituals and start their own system of Freemasonry, a secret organizaton to this day.

Most Masons attend church, in fact they are told to attend churches which is one of the reasons why they have to keep their Masonic identity secret. I have been in meetings where pastors testified of having lost their congregations due to not knowing that the majority of their membership was Mason and when they preached a sermon that Freemasonry is ungodly the pressure to remove the pastor from the pulpit became so great that they had no choice but to resign.

There was, at the time of around 1305, a plan to unite all the religious fighting Orders into one Order which included the Hospitalers who were directly under the Pope. The Order was to be called the Knights of Jerusalem. The Pope resisted that and this union never came about. It was suggested by French King Philip IV who was very ambitious in wanting to head the Catholic Empire. This ambition required great financial resources which the Templars possessed. They had developed the banking industry as we know it today. Influenced by this French King, Pope Clement V simultaneously published the Papal bull, "Vox in Excelso" which was to squash the Order of the Templars for all time.

The only way King Philip could lawfully seize the Templar assets was to accuse them of foul deeds like magic and heresy. To divert attention from this combined effort, the Catholic Church attacked a Christian sect named Cathars who believed that the Catholic Church was nothing more than a puppet of Satan and killed thousands in the name of God.

The book under discussion states on page 27: ALL the Templars in France were arrested on a variety of charges similar to those used against the Cathars, which leads one to believe that they were ALL taken out, which isn't the case. The trials drug out over seven years. In 1314, Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Order, was burned at the stake on a small island outside of Paris France. On Page 30 the Templar trials lasted from the arrest on October 13, 1307 until De Molay's death on March 19th, 1314. The order was officially suppressed by the Papal orders of Pope Clement V in the Bull, "Vox in Excelso" dated March 22, 1312. The bull damns the Templars, perhaps for all time, as demon worshipers as seen in the following portion of the document:

"Not slight is the fornication of this house, immolating its sons, giving them up and consecrating them to demons and not to God, to gods whom they did not know. Therefore this house will be desolate and in disgrace, cursed and uninhabited, thrown into confusion and leveled to the dust, lowly, forsaken, inaccessible, spurned by the anger of the Lord, whom it has despised; let it not be lived in but reduced to a wilderness. Let everyone be astonished at it and hiss at all its wounds. For the Lord did not choose the people on account of the place, but the place on account of the people. Therefore the very place of the temple was made to share in the punishment of the people, as the Lord proclaimed openly to Solomon when he built the temple for him, to Solomon who was filled with wisdom like a river: But if your sons turn aside from me, not following and honoring me but going instead after strange gods and worshiping them, then I will cut them off from before me and expel them from the land which I have given to them; and the temple which I have consecrated to my name I will cast out of my sight, and it will become a proverb and a byword among all the peoples. Everyone passing by it will be astonished and shall hiss, and shall say, "Why has the Lord done thus to this temple and to this house?" And they will say: "Because they forsook the Lord their God who bought and redeemed them, and followed instead Baal and other gods, worshiping and serving them. Therefore the Lord has brought all this evil upon them." [Articles of Accusation against the Knights Templar, according to the author]

The Pope used the Old Testament Scriptures out of context which addresses Israel not Gentiles.

""Vox in Excelso" goes on to praise the integrity of King Philip and his noble intentions in bringing down the Templars...

"The same crimes had been reported to him. He was not moved by greed. He had no intention of claiming or appropriating for himself anything from the Templars property; rather, in his own kingdom he abandoned such claim and thereafter released entirely his hold on their goods. He was on fire with zeal for the orthodox faith, following in the well marketed footsteps of his ancestors." [Clement V, Vox In Excelso, March 22nd 1312]

The author questions the fact that Philip publicly defied Pope Boniface VIII and a Pope's public burning of a Papal bull, could hardly to be the actions of devout Christians. The second portion of the Templar dissolving, was the bull, "Ad Providiam". This bull turned over the assets of the Knights Templar to the rival Order of the Hospitalers (who were subject to the Pope). (Page 31)

The author goes on to lead the reader through the various ideologies that the Templars are supposed to have had in their midst and that they were most likely falsely accused. From our readings of the literature about Templars, the Templars were penetrated by Islams, which is very possible since they were dealing with them on their crusades. On page 40 he concludes: "From the articles of accusation we saw that the Templars were said to worship a head sometimes described as having three faces and sometimes only one. In some reports the idol was a man and sometimes a woman. The theories on just what the head was are varied, but whether it was the burial shroud of Jesus or the severed head of John the Baptist, it is commonly referred to by the name of Baphomet. Whether Baphomet was a mispronunciation of the ISLAMIC PROPHET MAHOMET or not, remains to be proven. In any event it is what the Baphomet has come to identify, that is the purpose of this book [Unholy Worship?]."

Since we wanted to focus on the fact that Templars did not completely disappear as he seems to say in his book we'll go to the next phase. I have several books which claim to have tracked their history: a) The Temple and the Lodge by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh and the other a German book: Die Templer, Aufstieg and Untergang 1118 - 1314 by C.H. Beck.

"The Order of the Temple was officially dissolved by Papal decree on 22 March 1312, without a definite verdict of guilt or innocence ever being pronounced. In France, however, the knights were to be harried for another two years. Finally in March 1314, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master, and Geoffroi de Charnay, the Preceptor of Normandy, were roasted to death over a slow fire on the Ile de la Citre in the Seine [A River]. A plaque on the site commemorates the event." (The Temple and the Lodge pp. 54,55)

Philippe badgered his fellow monarchs to help him in his endeavor to prosecute all Templers. He wasn't successful. In Lorraine, Germany at the time, they had protection of the reigning duke. They were tried and exonerated and told to change and become part of society. In Germany proper, the Templars openly defied their would-be judges, appearing in court fully armed and manifestly prepared to defend themselves and intimidated the judges to a point where they pronounced them innocent quickly. Many German Templars found a welcome in the Order of St John or in the Teutonic Order. In Spain, too the Templars resisted their persecutors and found a haven in other Orders, especially Calatrava. And a new Order was created, Montesa, primarily as a refuge for fugitive Templars. There Templars in the British Isles. Remnants were found in the old ruins which point to attire of the Klu Klax Klan.

In Portugal, the Templars were cleared by an inquiry and simply modified their name, becoming the Knights of Christ. They survived under this title well into the sixteenth century, their maritime explorations leaving an indelible mark on history. (Vasco da Gama was a Knight of Christ; Prince Henry the Navigator was a Grand Master of the Order. Ships of the Knights of Christ sailed under the Templar's familiar red patte' cross. And it was under the same cross that Columbus's three caravels crossed the Atlantic to the New World. Columbus himself was married to the daughter of a former Grand Master of the Order, and had access to his father-in-law's charts and diaries.)" (Ibid., pp 55,56)

Speaking of the red cross, in Germany Cathedrals are still there which date back to the eleven hundreds with portraits and relics, even partial boats, which are authentic and priceless. They used the red cross on flags on board ships, which had to cross the violent seas, as a means of protection from the elements. Their ships were small considering what is crossing the ocean today. Judging from my personal visits to these places I have no doubt that the Templars continued their craft under different guises because they had no choice. That is why they are a secret organization to this day.

The German book "Die Templer" states the following on page 212: "Did the Temple spirit remain alive?" The author of this book agrees that the Temple Order broke up and some submerged into the St John Order that was responsible for travelers from Greece as the pilgrimages increased over time. The new territories of Barons Syria - Palestine opened even fostered the importance of the Templar Order. The Kingdom of Sicilia was endangered by Turks. Sicily and Antiochia were strongholds of the Order and after the fall of Antiochias a Templer province was arranged. They were never to compete with the Hospitaliters (the Pope's Order) or the German Orders. They tried to make a Templerstate out of Zypern, a small island in the Mediterranean Sea with the help of an English monarch which did not materialize.

The Templers were all placed under one blanket, which was not fair, when some of them were not guilty. Molay apparently was guilty of stealing from a nobleman named Roger van Flor, and by botching his relationship with the Pope and the French King, brought many of his brothers into ill repute.

The two hundred year battle and contact with Muslims, it was obvious some of the Muslim's beliefs would penetrate the Templer camps which they denied in vain. In their domain in Syria - Palestine, they used Muslims as workers and often as slaves. They, as well as the Order of the Hospitaler and Barons negotiated secretly politically with the Islamic world. They became a political football, as we call it, between the King of England and the Mideast and took advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves. The author points that the connections between Christians and Muslims were already in the making as far back as the era of the Templers. Is it any wonder that today's Masons, "Christian" and political leaders, are making such progress in having Christians embrace Muslims brothers.

He also points out that one of the reasons Templers were persecuted was the pressure born upon Monarch's like Kaiser Friedrich II, who was befriending the Sultan and shocked people with his pro Muslim stand against Christianity. The Templer's call was to protect Christians from Islam and not become the Trojan Horse for Islam into the Christian Community.

Some Templers even submerged in Muslim camps. Many were jailed. They were in Ireland, England and Germany as well. There were basically three groups left : those who were found innocent, those who were mistaken for Templars and those who reconciled with the Catholic Church. They all had to swear that they would change their lifestyle. Those who reconciled with the Church could move into monasteries since their Templer estates were confiscated by the Catholic Church. They earned their keep by working for the monasteries in menial jobs like gathering wood, etc.. Some jailed Templars were released from jail after serving under severe conditions, twelve years. Others died in prison. "Only in France were they burned at the stake." (Die Templer, pp. 264-266)

In conclusion, obvioulsy there is a connection to today since I just heard the "State of the Union Address" by the President last night that we should draw a line where discrimination is concerned and pass the hate crime legislation and make it a law. The reason it did not pass in 1999 was that after committee meetings were held to help make the correct decision, it was brought out that this legislation is an initiative by the United Nations' (international), hate crime legislation which makes it a law that no one can prosylelytize or be an instrument of bringing people to Christ which excludes people who believe in other gods, sodomy, witchcraft, murdering unborn children and so on. To go a step further this is an initiative from Rome where new laws are being developed.

The President said that scientists have discovered that we are all 99.9/10 the same?? I don't really know what in particular he was referring to since there are no two fingerprints the same? no two people the same, even twins. What did he mean? He said, "think about it!." Is that a reason why we should embrace murderers and everyone? What he is really referring to are all the various religions because we need to bring the poor up and the rich down to even it out which is basically the Pope's message. What is behind that is the destruction of our faith in Jesus Christ who said, "the poor will always be with you," (Matthew 26:11) and requires loyalty to the only God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

God is the creator and this planet is His to do with as He wishes. Jesus commanded us to do the following: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40) What He means is that we would not do harm of any kind to anyone if we love our neighbor. It doesn't mean we should embrace the sins along with the neighbor as we are expected to do by the new social order from the United Nations. (Bibliography: Unholy Worship? - Stephen Dafoe - Templar Books, Canada 1998; The Temple and the Lodge - Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh - Arcade Publishing, NY 1989; Die Templer - Alain Demurger - Verlag C.H. Beck, Germany 1989. Editor added bold lettering)

http://newsletters.cephasministry.com/1_00_masons.html

Also see, "The Knights Templar", by Sean Martin

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