A Good Man: My Father the Freemason

The following is the personal testimony of Pulpit & Pen administrator Tim Weakley.

My father died last year. He was born into a generation that did not have television, the internet, or cell phones, a time when only a wealthy person might have a telephone in his house. In my father’s day, entertainment came through the movie theatre and the radio. Social connection in those days came through going to church, playing on sports teams, and belonging to civic organizations. Those were the things my dad did. My dad loved America and what it stood for. He was a boy scout. From a young age, he was enamored with the idea of standing up for God and Country. He came of age through the Great Depression, in a country that had won World War I and found itself forced to go and fight World War II. My dad, along with the rest of the Greatest Generation went off to war to protect the American way of life. Dad was a hard fighter; he was wounded twice in combat. He was awarded two bronze stars and two silver stars. My father was a person who liked to be involved in his community. He was from a generation of people who helped each other. He was, in the eyes of man, a good person. He was also a 32^nd Degree Mason, a member of the Lodge for almost seventy years.

When I was young, our family was in the Methodist church. It was already well past the glory days of John Wesley and the Methodist circuit riders when being a Methodist meant pleading with sinners to come to Christ in repentance and faith. As Providence would have it, we were invited to a Baptist Church up the street. The pastor there preached a hell fire and brimstone message that was designed to disturb the listener. He preached the gospel and was never shy about it. While my mother listened and came to repentance and faith in Christ, the gospel message rolled off my father as water from a ducks back. Whether or not our family attended Methodist or Baptist services, Bartlett Masonic Lodge #211 was my father’s temple. His obituary demonstrates this clearly:

Jack Bedford Weakley, 92, of Memphis passed away Wednesday, October 25, 2017. He was retired from International Harvester, a veteran of the U.S. Army 94th Infantry Division, lifelong Mason being the youngest member to be a 32nd Degree Mason, a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and a member of the American Legion Drummer Bugle Corps. Mr. Weakley was preceded in death by his wife, Helen Weakley in 2011.

The obituary lists his career, his army service, his family, and his religion…the Lodge.

For the last forty to fifty years of his life he attended church with my mom but he really didn’t want to be there. Although I personally shared the gospel with him a number of times he just couldn’t understand why he was going to Hell; he said he was “a good man.” At the age of ninety-two my dad died. He was a WWII veteran, a faithful husband for 54 years, provider for four children, and a hard-working man. In the eyes of the world he was a good man. Unfortunately my father never bowed the knee to his only hope Jesus Christ. He thought because of his own goodness that he would to Heaven or, as Masons call it, “the Celestial Lodge.” The false teachings and errant doctrines of Freemasonry helped damn my dad to Hell. Yet, he basically thanked the Lodge for it, continuing to pay its dues year after year.

How exactly do you damn a man to Hell and have him thank you for it?

First, you need a way to make a person believe that you have a secret cure that no one else knows. Then you mix up a potion of words that make the cure seem plausible. Finally, you charge a person an ongoing fee to make him think that he is getting what he is paying for. You make him a part of the false solution and repeat the process until you’ve created a whole group of well-meaning followers. To accomplish this you must convince a person that no matter how sick he is that he will be just fine because he knows the secret for life. You sprinkle a little bit of truth within the lies so that the lies seems believable. It helps to say that powerful men throughout history, such as George Washington, knew about this secret cure-all. This is the underlying tactic of the Masonic lodge.

The members consider themselves to be highly enlightened humans that can make a good man better. The lodge starts off with an incorrect premise believing that there are good men. This white washes the real problem, a man’s sin nature, by convincing him of his goodness before God and man. This flies in the face of scripture that says, “All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:12).

The Masonic Lodge had a deep-set hook in my father. The Lodge had convinced my father that he was good when the whole time he was dying from the cancer of sin, a cancer that eats us all alive until we cast ourselves upon Jesus and beg for the Father’s mercy. The Masonic cult members had their hooks in him so deeply that any scripture quoted to him would be instantly filtered through the lodge. Why else would they have the Bible in the center of the Masonic Lodge as “furniture” if not to proclaim their authority over it? The way Freemasonry perverts the bible and convinces men of their inherent goodness is dangerous. There is a great danger in allowing this cult to fester within churches across the Bible Belt. Sadly, it has already taken root in many churches. Men by their very nature hate the gospel; the Masonic lodge washes the salt from their wounds. Christ’s church is salt and light to a dying world, the lodge is a cozy place to hide from our wives and family. What partnership, therefore, can the church have with the lodge? What partnership can the Christian have with the Mason?

The Masonic Lodge is the one of the biggest threats to the Church because so many people doubt just how dangerous it is. You see the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy. Free Masons are the height of apathy because they don’t hate the true Church of Christ, they just tolerate it knowing in the back of their mind they see themselves as more illuminated. The church is their fishing hole. They pick off the weak and offer them a convenient way to stay in their sin and be a part of a works based system of salvation.

It’s too late for my father. What about yours? What about the Freemason who attends your church? Will you preach the gospel to him like a dying man preaching to dying men? Will you demand that the Freemasons in your local body either leave the lodge or leave Christ’s holy body?

Souls are at stake! Act with urgency! Act with love!

[Edited by: Seth Dunn]

*Please note that the preceding is my personal opinion. It is not necessarily the opinion of any entity by which I am employed, any church at which I am a member, any church which I attend, or the educational institution at which I am enrolled. Any copyrighted material displayed or referenced is done under the doctrine of fair use.

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