From the Lodge to Christ: A Worshipful Master Finds Freedom

This entry is part 25 of 31 in the series Freemasonry

The following testimony was submitted by former Masonic Worshipful Master, Daniel Latham. Please pray for Daniel, who may face backlash for sharing insider truth about Freemasonry.

“For some of those guys it’s not just a way of life., they live it and breath it.” Daniel Latham

My name is Danny Latham, I am a Christian, I currently attend a Southern Baptist Church in Northern Kentucky and I am a veteran of the United States Army. I am the former Worshipful Master of Golden Rule Covington Lodge #109. However, I am no longer a Freemason. When I got saved, I had to choose between the Lord and the Lodge, I chose the Lord.

I grew up in a low-income blue collar family. My father walked out on my mother and I, when I was six months old. Depending on who you ask, he either left me on a bed by myself with a bottle, or my mother would not let him see me. Either way, he left and I did not see him again until I was sixteen. My mom ended up marrying my step-father who was a drunk; he was abusive both physically and mentally. Needless to say, I did not feel any love in my house. My Granny was one of the few Godly women I ever knew. She told me about God’s love but the “love” I knew at home from “father figures” made me suspicious of this so-called love of God the Father. God could keep his love as far as I was concerned.

I was a punk kid and that is an understatement. I was sexually assaulted by a friend of the family, when I was ten and she was thirteen. The abuse continued, unwilling, for a few years until puberty hit me. Then it continued willingly, at about age fifteen I met a thirty-eight-year-old woman; she was a boss at my job. She gave me attention and, one night, she gave me her love, but it was only the bodily kind. I got suspend and expelled from school for fighting, drugs, and general misbehavior. I was even a ward of the state for a few months; you can say I knew a hard life. I met my now wife when I was sixteen. By that time I was living on my own (i.e. couch-surfing). She showed me real love; for the first time in my life someone wanted me for me and not my sexual organs. Somehow, I managed to con my way through the rest of high school and graduated at the bottom of my class as the father of a two-year-old child.

After graduation, I enlisted in the Army. At my first duty station my NCO (non-commissioned officer) asked me if I went to church. I told him that I had gone a few times; I think I even made up a few stories about a chaplain and the sinners prayer. He did not buy it, so I went to church with him. They were speaking in tongues and rolling on the floor! I freaked out and ignored everything going on. The next day at work he asked me to keep coming. In the Army our NCOs are very powerful. Make them mad and your career can take a nose dive. I kept going to his church and even brought my wife and daughter. Eventually, I was sent to another unit with my kind of people- drunks. I was around twenty at this time.

By 2009, I was out of the Army and working in civilian life. One of my colleagues happened to be a Freemason and Baptist. Around this time, I was still doing all the things one should not be doing, but my co-worker piqued my curiosity about Freemasonry. The Army was full of Christian Freemasons and they were powerful. If anyone crossed them, their promotions were messed up and they got put on terrible details. The Masons in the army could and would make the life of anyone who crossed them miserable. I figured, “Well, I can use that kind of power to get myself into a nicer, cushier job.” So, I asked my colleague if I could join his Lodge and things took off from there. This Lodge had really nice guys in it, lots of Christians. It also had lots of guys like me, atheistic and worldly. They loved to chase women and rum and I loved it, too. I was hooked, desiring the type of power and influence these men had.

My first visit with the Masons came from an investigation committee, they come out to a candidate’s house to meet his family and ask him three general questions. The committee stressed to me that believing in a higher power was key. At the time, rum and lots of soft curvy women were god to me. So that’s what I told them my “higher power” was. They laughed at it, including the Christian Deacon! I figured, “Well if a Christian is with my God then great!” I was soon initiated into the Lodge. During my initiation ceremony there were lots of allusions to God. One of the questions was, “In times of difficulty and danger in whom do you place your trust?” The answer is supposed to be “God.” I answered, “The God of tits and rum,” they laughed, I laughed and we had a good old time. After my blindfold or as they call it “hoodwink” was removed, I received the Great Light lecture and the Bible lecture. As I went through the degrees and the officer chairs (“going through the chairs” is a Masonic term for working your way up to Worshipful Master), it became obvious that Hiram Abiff was the Messiah of the Masonic Lodge. It didn’t make a difference to me, we Masons taught that everyone was going to the “Celestial Lodge.” Who cares if they have a fake Jesus? The real one was just as fake as Hiram! Around December of 2016, I was tapped to be the Worshipful Master, the king in the lodge.

At the time, I was big time into conspiracy theories, which was another reason for me to go through the first three degrees of Masonry and then the thirty-two degrees of the Scottish Rite. As I went down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, I came across a message board that had short stories on it. One of the stories that caught my eye was Christian in nature, my Granny’s type of Christianity, not the brothers in the Lodge’s type. I messaged a friend of mine and sent him the stories, he sent me a video and it all clicked. I was not going to that Celestial Lodge! I was not a good person, and all the good deeds I was doing at the Lodge did not mean anything to God! The one true God, the Great I Am, The Alpha and Omega, the God of Abraham, Isaiah, and Jacob, the God who had had sent his Son, the one true Messiah, to die in my place for my many sins was not the god of the Lodge. I was stunned by this video and the evidence therein that the Bible was true. I knew I could no longer ignore the gospel truth, I cried, and cried. Tears for a man was the kiss of death, the way I was raised anyway, I cried for at least 3 months.

In March of 2017, I opened the Lodge meeting for the first time as a Christian and a Mason. I knew these two things were incompatible and one had to go, I choose Jesus. In April, I went to an officer’s meeting and announced my resignation. It did not go well, but the deist and or agnostic brothers were easier on me than the Christian Masons. The deists and agnostics wished me well and said that they hoped I would come back to the Lodge. It was the Christian brothers that gave me a hard time. They argued that Masonry and Christianity were compatible. They said I could do both. They said the Lodge had nothing to do with the salvation that Christ offered. They had some good arguments, yet I still could not shake that feeling that I did not belong in the Lodge. I was truly free for the first time in my life. I attempted to get the others who claimed to be Christians to leave. They all stayed, one is now the Worshipful Master.

Brothers and Sisters, Freemasonry and Eastern Star is chocked full of the occult. The Master Mason degree, in that portion of the ritual known as the Legend of the Third Degree, there are three central characters. The story line is set around the building of Solomon’s temple. The characters, King Solomon, Hiram – the King of Tyre, and Hiram Abiff are all taken from the Scriptural account of the temple building. King Solomon and Hiram King of Tyre are mentioned many times in the Scriptures, such as in 1 Kings 5. About the closest the Scriptures come to Hiram Abiff is Huram-Abi which is found in 2 Chronicles 2:13 in the NAS and NIV translations. Huram is a variant of Hiram. In the KJV translation of the verse, the name Hiram is found. The KJV uses both Huram (2 Chron 2:3) and Hiram (1 Kings 5) to identify Hiram the King of Tyre. The KJV translation of 2 Chron 2:13 does not contain -abi, but rather “Huram my father’s.” The Hebrew word from which the KJV “fathers” was translated is “‘ab,” according to the Hebrew Dictionary found in Strong’s Concordance. Strong’s entry for the word ‘ab’ (H1) indicates that it can also mean father-less, as the son of a widow would be. The entry for H1 also mentions “Abi-.” Studying the various translations along with a Hebrew dictionary allows us to see how Freemasonry may have settled on the name Hiram Abi-ff, also sometimes spelled Abif.

Hiram King of Tyre wrote a letter to King Solomon, advising him that he was sending Huram-Abi to work on the temple. That letter is documented in 2 Chron 2:11-14. The fact that Hiram-Abi was the son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali is confirmed in Scripture:

“King Solomon sent to Tyre and brought Huram, whose mother was a widow from the tribe of Naphtali and whose father was a man of Tyre and a craftsman in bronze. Huram was highly skilled and experienced in all kinds of bronze work. He came to King Solomon and did all the work assigned to him.” 1 Kings 7:13-14

Although the most important element of Masonic symbolism deals with the death, burial and resurrection of Hiram Abiff, there is nothing in Scripture to support it. Masonic Grand Lodges have stated that the account is not based upon fact, but rather is an allegory, used to teach. How many times have you Masonic readers sat through a legends degree? How many times have you seen Hiram raised from the “dead” to speak the Master Masons replacement word of “MaH-Ha-Bone?” How many times have you seen the Holy Bible opened next to a Koran or other “Godly” Book? How many times have you heard others speak and say, “In here we are all brothers, religion does not matter, we are all going to that celestial body?” Brothers it’s a fraud, Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 ESV. He doesn’t say, “Your Good deeds plus me.” He said “I, I, I.” That means Jesus and only Jesus. While I was a Mason, I did a great deal of good things. I raised money for schools and the poor. We all have done that right? None of that means anything without Jesus. Ephesians 2:8-10 ESV states this, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We are nothing without the Lord, brothers I implore you to seek Jesus, leave your lodges as many others are doing.

[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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