Bajans are generally noted for welcoming visitors with open arms, but it didn’t work out quite that way last week when Members of the Grand Order of United Scottish Mechanics of the Universe Incorporated assembled in Barbados for their first convention outside Britain.
While the visitors from Guyana and Birmingham were convening with their local counterparts, hundreds of Christians were participating in services in a week-long conference hosted by the House of Freedom that didn’t exactly – to put it mildly – root for the Masonic cause.
Activities included morning workshops at Restoration Ministries in Brittons Hill and nightly sessions at Sanctuary Empowerment Centre in Country Road, Bridgetown. They reached their zenith on Thursday night when hundreds of the faithful denounced Freemasonry and most of its beliefs and trappings.
At Thursday’s service, which was marked by bold renunciations from several pastors and declarations from government via Senator Reverend David Durrant, the congregation of about 700 at Sanctuary Empowerment Centre prayed against the “spirits of fear, death, secret rites and passwords, the love of position and power” and the “mingling of truth with error”.
The event marked the last of a two-night lecture entitled Secrets Of Freemasonry and opened with a lecture by former master Tony Jordan, who left a local Scottish order 25 years ago after surrendering his life to Christ.
Jordan recalled giving his first expose of the lodge in 1991, being abandoned by his family and accused of having been ousted from the lodge in abject disgrace.
“In the lodge I met men of integrity, civic-minded men, law-abiding men, doctors . . . ,” he conceded as he addressed the congregation.
But he pointed out that several Masonic rites parodied the Word of God, particularly the death and resurrection of Christ.
Jordan also explained that most members in Barbados only rose to the position of master and were therefore unaware of the satanic elements of masonic lodges, whose stated tenets were brotherly love, relief and truth.
Only those in the higher echelons of the lodges, from the 31st to 33rd degree, were aware that satanic worship was at the core of their rituals and that Lucifer was worshipped as the Great Architect of the Universe, he added.
“They [masonic lodges] serve the same master: the Father of All Lights, Satan . . . . The rites seek to parallel much of what is in the Bible,” he told enthralled listeners.
He noted, nevertheless, that he no longer had any fear since “God and one man is a majority in any situation”.
Jordan went on to reveal that if it were not for his Saviour, he would not be alive since he had come perilously close to physical, emotional and financial death since leaving the order.
“The vast majority of Masons are grossly ignorant in relation to the true deception that is masterfully presented in a veneer of truth.
“Only the guys at the very top of the lodges worldwide understand . . . . No lie, deception or falsity is more dangerous than when it is couched and convoluted in truth,” he stressed.
Jordan added that while several other Masons and lodge members had left the orders and joined churches, they had refused to disclose the secrets. “But when Christ takes you from darkness into His glorious light, you have to talk. You have people who are afraid to talk about what Christ delivered them from; something is wrong!” he asserted.
After Jordan’s presentation, the congregation repeated a list of renunciations detailing various oaths, orders, symbols, passwords, the “all-seeing eye of Freemasonry or Horus”, as well as spirits of witchcraft and fear.