Allegiance as Christian Witness: A Testimony of Leaving Freemasonry
Photo by Erik Mclean
Our Christian witness requires exclusive allegiance to Jesus. All other loyalties to family, friends, or country must proceed from our allegiance to Jesus as the Lord of lords and King of kings. Costly discipleship requires that we abstain from and renounce all alliances compromising our Christian witness to the world. For fifteen years, I was in bondage to the false religion of Freemasonry. Following the Second Great Awakening, Freemasonry became prevalent in parts of mainline Methodism. It remains prevalent within some congregations, especially in a rural context. If our churches are to have a Spirit-filled witness to the world, we must walk in the power, authority, and true godliness only available in a life consecrated wholly to Jesus.
Many non-Christian alliances and spiritual experiences such as Christian nationalism, the occult, astrology, and other new-age practices might seem innocent, with participants simply seeking to better themselves, their community, and their country. Ultimately, however, these entanglements ally people with the enemy of our souls. Such alliances have eternal consequences for the advancement of the kingdom on earth. I will propose legislation for the Global Methodist Church to prohibit involvement in Freemasonry because I believe it imperative that we address conflicts that negate our surrender to Jesus as Lord. If we are to be a people who proclaim freedom in Christ (Luke 4:18-19), then we must lay aside everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles (Hebrews 12:1). Scripture clearly instructs us not to be yoked together with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14-18). Freemasonry and similar groups place Christians in spiritual union with people who are connected to every world religion except atheism. In sharing my testimony of how Jesus delivered me from darkness into true light and abundant life, I pray that others will hear Christ’s invitation to true freedom in surrender and devotion to only him.
On Sunday, May 24, 2020, after thirty-five years of active church membership and involvement, I met the risen Christ and accepted Jesus’ invitation to follow. That day, the Father gifted me a birthday in the Spirit, which I share with John Wesley. A friend gave me a copy of Robert Tuttle’s John Wesley: His Life and Theology. I grew up Presbyterian, but having read the story of Wesley and the Wesleyan revival, I was convinced that Jesus would move in power and love in our day. I knew he was calling me to join him as he restores his church and spreads scriptural holiness across the land. My conviction was born from experiencing God’s power, presence, and love. In that first encounter, Christ set me free from depression, anxiety, and a twenty-three-year addiction to pornography. Even as the power of a great affection captured me, it was seven months before I was liberated from a fifteen-year bondage to the false religion of Freemasonry, and my Redeemer continues to heal and restore me. On the surface, the Freemasons and other secret societies appear to be good-natured civic groups. Still, ultimately, these alliances and vain oaths are from the evil one, who seeks to separate people from a dependence on God. Freemasonry is darkness disguised as light (2 Corinthians 11:14).
Freemasonry presents itself as a fraternity that is spiritual in nature but not a religion. A cursory look at it demonstrates the marks of religion, with spiritual initiation rituals, funeral ceremonies, and prayer to a deity for men of all world religions that leads them from darkness to masonic light. In this false religion of Freemasonry, men are united under the authority of a god frequently referred to in prayers as the Great Architect of the Universe. Within the ceremonies of the Freemasons, men who worship Yahweh call their God by the same name as a Muslim who worships Allah, a Wiccan who worships Mother Earth, or a Buddhist who worships a pantheon of divine beings. The first masonic charge, Concerning God and Religion, states that a mason is to be of “that Religion in which all Men agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves.” This is deism and universalism veiled as tolerance, birthed in the milieu of the Enlightenment, which has deeply impacted our Western culture. The fraternity forbids all sectarian discussion within its spaces in the name of tolerance, creating a space in which Christ is not welcomed. In Freemasonry, cornerstone dedications and graveside services provide a ritual context for underlying deceptive beliefs prevalent in American society. Yet this fraternity repeatedly claims it is not a religion.
I spent years in the midst of this false worship, and repeatedly explained to others that Freemasonry is not a religion. I knew Freemasonry’s peculiar rituals and ceremonies were inherited from ancient mystery cults and other world religions. I was aware that biblical passages are used to teach masonic allegory, which differs from Christian teaching, yet I was blinded. An example from the first degree in Freemasonry instructs the initiate, “…[W]e as Free and Accepted Masons are taught to make use of it [the common gavel] for the more noble and glorious purposes of divesting our minds and consciences of all the vices and superfluities of life, thereby fitting ourselves as living stones for that spiritual building, that house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.” In this example, the masonic ritual references 1 Peter 2:5 but omits the sanctifying power of the gospel, instead offering a plan of self-improvement without any mention of Christ. It implies that those of any religion can be sanctified by hammering away vices and superfluities in their strength. Without remaining awake and vigilant, people like me are easily deceived and lulled into false worship under the guise of moralism, instead of receiving the transformative power of the gospel.
Christ dramatically transformed my life on May 24, 2020, and while I no longer had the same desire to remain active in Freemasonry, I did not believe I could leave. I had made over fifty binding oaths and vows in the countless degrees and associated rituals. These oaths explicitly described curses over my life should I ever violate those obligations. I had sworn unwavering allegiance to men I dearly loved and cared for, so how could I violate my word? At the time of my departure from Freemasonry, I served as the presiding officer of a Masonic lodge and the presiding officer of another masonic organization. I was also the ritual instructor for an appointed geographic area in Texas and an elected officer in three other masonic organizations. Despite my powerful encounter, I remained entrenched in Freemasonry. So I continued in the fraternity, envisioning it as a mission field, but Christ had other plans.
In light of my level of commitment to Freemasonry, I only hoped to make a slow, inconspicuous exit, but the Spirit at work within me was waging war against the powers of darkness to which I had sworn my life. I was reminded of the countless Masons from my hometown whom I held in high esteem, I was reminded of the Masons who were my friends throughout young adulthood, and I was torn deeply in my soul as to how I should proceed. Freemasonry was my life, but I knew that Jesus must be my life. I felt convicted about my involvement but could not see a way out.
On Epiphany Sunday, January 3, 2021, Jesus answered my prayer clearly, and I was cut to the heart. As our pastor read from Ezekiel 28:11-19 earlier in the day, I came under conviction. This passage, which some believe refers to the fall of Satan, struck me partly because the King of Tyre has a prominent role in the Masonic ritual. Later in the day, as I continued in prayer, I inquired of the Lord whether there was anything else for which I must repent regarding my involvement with Freemasonry. At that moment, a vision from heaven impressed upon my heart that I must leave now, not sometime in the future, but now. This required countless letters of resignation sent to the numerous masonic organizations in which I held active leadership roles. Later that week, a friend came at my request and hauled away tens of thousands of dollars of masonic books and paraphernalia to be destroyed in a bonfire (Acts 19:18-20). I was relieved to have those items physically gone from my home. While I would require months of spiritual healing, the Lord brought countless confirmations that, “This is the way, walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21). The following Sunday morning, January 10, the Spirit awakened me to the singing of “Blessed Assurance” and the thickest coating of white snow that I had ever seen across the Texas landscape. At that moment, I knew my sins had been forgiven. Although they were like scarlet, Christ had washed them as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18).
It would be over a year later before I explicitly renounced all of my involvement (Titus 2:11-14). After renouncing those ties, I began to experience a greater freedom in Christ and a deeper filling of the Holy Spirit. This culminated a season of grief, pain, confusion, and much spiritual opposition as the Lord was preparing our family for the next steps of faith.
Since January 2021, Jesus has spoken to me extensively about his desire for people to walk free from bondage to Freemasonry.
In the fall of 2020, I participated in a masonic graveside service for the last time. At the service, we spoke words of eternal assurance to the family of a masonic brother in the absence of any Christian burial. We expressed words of false hope in a Platonic immortality of the soul rather than a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3). The members of this family needed true consolation and comfort in Christ Jesus. They did not need a masonic allegory of their loved one passing upward to a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens simply because he had been pronounced a just and upright Mason by members of the Masonic Lodge.
The self-improvement model of Freemasonry is contradictory to the human flourishing we receive through the power of the gospel. This pattern exists in other non-Christian alliances and experiences incompatible with biblical Christianity. At the time of my deliverance from Freemasonry, I did not recognize that the binding oaths I had taken were not to Yahweh. Our Lord would never come into agreement with what is contradictory to Scripture. I now recognize that I had bound myself to countless spiritual powers of darkness, masquerading as the light (2 Corinthians 11:14), but Jesus set me free. Jesus will save us to the uttermost (Hebrews 7:25) if we let him. As a church, will we let Christ save us to the uttermost? Will we make Spirit-filled disciples who walk in freedom?
Chance M. Robinson is a supply pastor in the Global Methodist Church and a Master of Divinity student at Asbury Theological Seminary.