Originally Designed for

Character Counts—Freemasonry USA’s
National Treasure

and Source of Our Founding Fathers’ Original Intent

By Michael Glenn Maness

See

www.PreciousHeart.net/freemasonry

National
Problems Part Religion’s Fault

Truly, we have moral problems today. There is a general
moral decline that all good Christians would like to see stop and begin to rise
to a higher level of general respect and a higher level of moral concern. Not all
of the problem is with the non-religious left, and some of the root problem
rests with the rather ignorant Religious Right. One wonders just who is being
duped when Pat Robertson writes kooky conspiracy theories that fool innocent
trusting people and then claims 90% of America is Christian. Without a doubt,
Christianity has never been as prolific, pervasive, and prosperous as today in
the 21st century. So then, here is a real problem made worse by folks like
Robertson and other media stars. Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore powerfully said:

If Americans are Christian—in fact, if they are by
dint of church membership more Christian than they were a hundred years ago,
and vastly more Christian than they were in the eighteenth century—then
how do we explain the decline in religiously based morality? Can it really be
that a cabal of God-hating liberals has succeeded, despite the overwhelming
numbers confronting them, in driving religion from the public square? And
without anyone’s suspecting, before Robertson and other leaders of the
Religious Right came alone, what were they up to? An alternative theory might
suggest that too many religious leaders have stopped doing what they do well
and started doing what they do badly, in alliance with men who don’t care
much about religion at all except when it returns votes.

We thus have an anomaly. [With moral decline amid a 90%
Christian populace] … Robertson is uninterested in the strengths or the
failures of organized religion, or the possibility that religion may be its own
enemy. The villain for spiritual decline is the state, which never in this
country carried the burden for maintaining the spiritual health of the people
or for teaching them how to pray. Roger Williams would have smelled a rat. If
religion isn’t making people who profess to believe in it good, neither
can the Republican or the Democratic party.[1]

How about that? I do not necessarily like
it—Robertson spouting things too incredible to digest—but Kramnick
and Moore’s words ring with truth through and through. And with those two
paragraphs in tow—if you have not already—now pick up a political
book by Pat Robertson, whose conspiracy theories are not nearly as credible as
a Robert Ludlum fiction novel.

Just who is being duped?

Pat Robertson’s New World Order is buggy
through and through. It is hard to imagine anyone who reads a daily paper or
who is moderately involved in any kind of civic affairs could believe his
fanciful illusions. Truly, if his illusions were true, he would not be as
famous as he is, for his conspirators would have cut him off. If his
conspiracies are truly as widespread and as powerful and wicked as
Robertson’s makes them out, Robertson would never have become a multi-millionaire.
Robertson became a multi-millionaire from convincing innocent and vulnerable
people to buy into his conspiracies; his conspiracies made him a rich man,
where if they were true conspiracies Robertson would have been sharing a room
with Jimmy Hoffa somewhere. Robertson’s celebrity status earned him a
review of his book in the Wall Street Journal, a piece headlined,
“A New World Order Nut.”[2]

You have to laugh. Just who is being duped?

Tim LaHaye listed George Washington and Benjamin Franklin as the “two
most-honored Founding Fathers.”[3] LaHaye gave a long quote by Michael Farris that
ended with,

The Declaration says that we are a nation under God’s
laws. Therefore, all other laws of our Country should be consistent with the
law of God or they violate our national charter.[4]

Now that is truly off-the-wall, especially since LaHaye introduced Farris as a constitutional
attorney. Seemingly oblivious to the reason the Declaration was written in the
first place, Farris connects the Declaration with our Constitution as though
the Constitution had no constituted authority. Furthermore, Farris certainly
meant to use “charter” as a metaphor; but in this very context of
both Farris and LaHaye, the word
“charter” is out of place for the Declaration. Forget that the
Declaration truly included the word God only once and for some of the reasons
LaHaye, Farris, Barton, and others
claim—one nation under God and appealing to God the
Father—but the primary reason for use of the word God was to address a Christian
empire upon its own Christian principles for the purpose of a
parting-of-the-ways and as peaceful independence as the new America
could obtain. Surely, our Founding Fathers were praying then, but they were
also bargaining with their lives; it was good business to appeal to Christian
sensitivity and conscience so that the parting-of-the-ways might come about
without the shedding of blood. But the Christian British Empire would not let
go without a lot of bloodshed.

Many of our Founding Fathers prayed, sincerely and solemnly,
using God a lot of the time not as a bargaining chip, but as their heavenly
Father and even in certain and sure reverence for God as the Great
Architect of the Universe.

That is a nice start, but LaHaye nearly slaps Jefferson and humanists when
talking about Jefferson’s famous wall of separation metaphor. Hmmm?
Who better than Jefferson to consult about the U.S.
“charter”—by LaHaye’s and Farris’
rationale—that actually determines the Constitution? Listen to LaHaye’s opinion of the author
of the Declaration when it comes to something they disagree about, like the
wall of separation.

Doesn’t it strike you as strange that the humanists
had to skip all the Founding Fathers when trying to get an opinion they could
agree with, and had to resort to a contemporary [Jefferson] who hadn’t
even been a part of the constitutional deliberations? And even then, they went
to a man who was out of the country at the time the Constitution was being
debated, and one who was so hostile to Christianity that while in the White
House, he made his own Bible by cutting out all the miracles of Jesus Christ because they emphasized His
supernatural nature.[5]

What a powerful statement that reverses upon Tim LaHaye. It is absurd that
Jefferson’s persona was forgotten upon the Constitutional conveners. The
only reason he and a few others were abroad was because he was at the forefront
of leadership and knew the leadership in the states were in general
agreement—even his brothers Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. And Franklin went to France,
shortly after signing the Declaration to help win France’s recognition.
And Jefferson did become president.

It is clear by all historical records that we would not have
won the American Revolution and War of Independence as soon—if at
all—without the help of the French. And our American Revolution was
linked with the Enlightenment and in many ways linked with and helped the
French start their own revolution of 1789 that would become more anti-religion
than not. In sum and in view of religious tolerance and even the higher terms
of religious pluralism, the American Revolution pushed against tyranny and
religious establishment and even against religious tyranny. The American
Revolution pushed toward religious freedom and freedom of conscience, and the
French Revolution pushed against tyranny and religious tyranny and toward an anti-religious
state. The common link was the Enlightenment value of human dignity and vast
array of Freemasonry lodges as the greatest institution that embodied
both liberty and equality under God. Where does all that come into play
for our U.S. original intent?

That is another book that a true historian needs to write in
the light of Bullock, Jacob, Lambert, Dumenil, Weisberger, Rutyna, Foss,
Roberts, Stillson, Ovason, Levy, and Curry. In the light of those historians,
the occulting is easier to see in the silly works of Gordon, Holly, Ankerberg,
and their ilk shrivel. If this book does not send Frankenstein back to the
graveyard in the decades to come, a book comparing real history with the vast
array of occulting and spook-house tactics of the anti-Masons should finish the
job.

It’d be nice if the occulting and prostitution of
character would just stop.

Tim LaHaye listed George Washington and Christian sympathizer
Benjamin Franklin at the top of his list. The
next five “most-influencing Founding Fathers” were James Madison, Gouverneur Morris, Roger
Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, and George Mason.[6] LaHaye interestingly said of Morris that he was,

The first to use (in writing) the expression, “We the
people of the United States.” So divided were the colonies at the time,
that many doubted it would be acceptable. Fortunately for all of us, it was.[7]

What was LaHaye’s meaning there?
“We the people” says more than both LaHaye and Barton want. Herein, LaHaye partially defeats his own book’s
purpose. Part of the reason “we the people” was inserted was to
avoid the establishing of religion. At the end of his listing of only sixteen
“outstanding Christians” among the Founding Fathers, LaHaye said,

There are many other Christians among the Founding Fathers
who are not included in the chapter. Unfortunately, sufficient personal
testimonies or recorded acts of their lives have not survived to warrant their
inclusion.[8]

After those, LaHaye lists other Christians who signed the
Constitution and who were delegates to the Continental Convention who did not
sign the Constitution. Tim LaHaye lists 54 significant
Christians in all, and 24 or 44% of those were Freemasons (see appendix 5).
There were as many as 4 million inhabitants in the colonies, and LaHaye could only identify two clergymen that
were his example of outstanding Christians! Nearly every town had a church, and
nearly every town had a Freemasonry lodge within 50 years after 1776. Certainly
there were many more than two significant clergymen as Founding Fathers just
fifty years after the Great Awakening. There were more Revolutionary era
clergyman of influence. It is just that Tim LaHaye and David Barton could not find them.

There are better records of Freemasonry attendance than
there are of church attendance in the colonial era.

Despite the stretching and gross omissions, Tim LaHaye’s closing statements
are right on target, though not quite the target LaHaye had set out for himself.

Our Founding Fathers did their part. They gave us a
Constitution for the ages. Now it is up to us to do everything we can to keep
it.[9]

Amen there. Yet that is not what LaHaye meant or intended, ironically.
LaHaye wanted to us to believe our Founding
Fathers were 20th century evangelical twins, more than less. Nevertheless,
agreeing here, truly our Founding Father did do their part, and we do
desperately need to do everything we can to keep our beloved Constitution of the
United States—even in spite of some
of the Religious Right’s revisionism and their occulting and hostility to
Freemasonry contributions.

Originally Designed for

Character
Counts—Freemasonry USA’s National Treasure

and Source of Our Founding Fathers’ Original Intent

By Michael
Glenn Maness

See

www.PreciousHeart.net/freemasonry

[1] Isaac
Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless
Constitution—The Case Against Religious Correctness (NY: W. W. Norton,
1996): 156.

[2] John
J. Robinson, A Pilgrim’s Path: Freemasonry and the Religious Right (1993;
179p.): 62.

[3] Tim
LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding
Fathers (1987; 268p.): 99-124.

[4] Tim
LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding
Fathers (1987; 268p.): 42, quoted from Michael Farris, “The Real
Meaning of the Declaration of Independence,” Concerned Women for
America News 8 (July, 1986): 3, 16.

[5] Tim
LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding
Fathers (1987; 268p.): 192.

[6] Tim
LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding
Fathers (1987; 268p.): 125-143.

[7] Tim
LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding
Fathers (1987; 268p.): 133.

[8] Tim
LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding
Fathers (1987; 268p.): 183.

[9] Tim
LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding
Fathers (1987; 268p.): 201.