The Rose Conspiracy (19 page)

“I thought a number of the Founders, like George Washington, were Masons,” Julia remarked.

“Certainly true,” Lamb said. “He joined for the same reasons a number of other prominent men did too, because it seemed to be a worthwhile fraternal organization. On the surface, the Masonic code talks about good citizenship and the brotherhood of man. Noble ideals. But when
Washington started hearing about their subversive views, he became less and less involved.”

“Subversive?” Blackstone called out. “That's a strong accusation. Look, Uncle, I'm not interested in linking my legal defense to some cockeyed conspiracy theory.”

“I'm not talking about UFOs at Roswell, for heaven's sake,” Reverend Lamb countered with agitation in his voice. He was extending both of his hands cupped out in front of him, as if trying to grasp some invisible orb as he spoke.

“I'm talking,” Lamb explained, “about their ages-old mission of creating a select ruling class of spiritual gurus who would lead the world. First, it begins with the realization that Masonry does not need the orthodoxy of Christianity—no, not at all. In fact I ran across a sermon, delivered in 1798 by Reverend Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale College. He pointed out the ‘malignant' ideas of Masonry, including its hostility to the Christian religion, and its continuation of ‘mysticism' under a blanket of secrecy.”

There was a collective silence in the room. The faces of all of Reverend Lamb's listeners were reflecting the same incredulity.

“I see you folks are going to be a tough audience,” Lamb said with a smile. “That's why I've brought my evidence with me.”

With that, he pulled a small book off the top of his stack.

“
The Spirit of Masonry,
” Lamb announced. “Written back in the 1950s by Foster Bailey, himself a thirty-second-degree Mason over in England—and together with his famous wife, Alice Bailey, co-leaders in the twentieth-century Theosophy and mystic spirituality movement. Now what would have attracted a spiritualist like Bailey to the Masons? We get a clue from him here, at page 140:

Masonry is of divine origin and was created for the purpose of training a group of members of the human family who would be capable of hastening the triumph of ‘God's Plan for man.

“So what?” Blackstone interjected. “Isn't that similar to every religion that ever existed? Just think about it—claiming a ‘divine origin,' investing
some bogus religious doctrine in a small group of followers, and figuring all of that will somehow result in a God-orchestrated revelation, bringing on some apocalypse, or hastening some grand heavenly ‘plan'…It's all basic religious anthropology 101.”

“So you're ready to agree with my first major point, then?” Reverend Lamb said with a sly smile.

Blackstone's eyes widened.

“What are you talking about?” he snapped, worried that his uncle was actually besting him.

“Oh, just the very thing,” Lamb said with a far-off look in his eye, “that most Masonic initiates are trained to deny. And what the small core of high-ranking Freemason leaders know to be true but rarely admit—except in obscure, privately published writings meant to be read only by fellow members of ‘the Craft' as they call themselves. But then they die and their widows put their old Freemasonry books up in the attic. And one day a widow dies too. And the kids auction it off in an estate sale. And it ends up, somehow, on a dusty shelf of a used bookstore in Windsor, England.”

Then Reverend Lamb smiled and picked up a small, faded red book with a tattered cover and displayed it to the group.

“And an Anglican college professor getting on in age, with a penchant for the old heresies and mystery religions, happens to be there in that bookstore one day. Looking for more evidence of the origins of today's confused and forsaken worldviews. Trying to figure out what lies have been passing for the truth—what enticing religious systems have been substituted for the saving work of Christ, the Savior, on the cross. And so he buys the little book for twelve pounds. And adds it to his collection of out-of-print Masonic literature. This one is called
Builders of Man—The Doctrine and History of Masonry, or the Story of the Craft.
Published in 1923.”

Lamb flipped the book open to a dog-eared page and read from it. “According to the author, himself a Mason and a rector in the Church of England, Freemasonry is ‘a theocracy.' ”

Lamb continued, “That, my friends, is my point. Masonry is, at bottom, a religious ideology. It is also a philosophy, of course. But more than that, it is a religious system. And while it has tried to masquerade as a complement to Christianity, nothing could be farther from the truth.”

“But I thought you just said,” Julia said with a puzzled look on her face, “that this old book you just read from was written by a rector of the Church of England who also was a Mason? I mean, personally I think I've heard of members of the clergy belonging to the Freemasons.”

“Of course,” Lamb countered. “But they either have not understood the deeper heresies of Masonry, or else they have actually embraced them.”

“Heresies?” Jason spoke up with a question on his face. “There's that word again.”

“
Heresy,
” Blackstone announced sarcastically, as if reading his own definition. “Ah yes, a term often used by religious zealots whose obsession with their own dogma excludes the possibility that the ideas of others may actually be correct.”

“Well,” Lamb replied, “what would any honest physician call the work of snake-oil salesmen? If Christ was who the Bible says He truly was, then all counterfeit pictures of Him, all misrepresentations, are nothing but tragically dangerous detours for the soul.”

At the end of the conference table Tully was drumming his fingers impatiently.

“Don't mean to be rude,” he said. “But can we get to the point here? Professor Blackstone has given me a dumpster full of work to do on this Smithsonian case. Unless there is something I can use in all of this, J.D., maybe I ought to get going.”

Reverend Lamb interrupted him.

“Wouldn't suggest that,” the old Anglican clergyman said. “I was just going to get to my second major point.”

And he turned to Tully and pointed his finger first at him, and then swept his index finger in a circular movement around the table.

“And what I am about to tell you,” said Reverend Lamb, “
all
of you, is a two-thousand-year-old secret. But a secret that actually grew out of an ancient mystery that is even older than that.”

CHAPTER 27

W
ith his last comment, Reverend John Lamb had managed to rivet the attention of the small group seated around the conference table. Even J.D. Blackstone, who was trying to look uninterested, had both eyes fixed on the elderly religion professor.

“I've told you first, that Freemasonry is, fundamentally, a secret religious order. But not just any religious order.”

Then he looked Blackstone in the eye.

“This goes to your comment, Nephew,” Reverend Lamb said, “about Masonry having the same structure as all religions. Maybe you're right in a certain sense. But I would qualify that. Not just like any other religion. Certainly not. In fact, and here is my second point, Masonry adopted religious beliefs, but
not
those of Christianity. Just the opposite. Masonry adopted the doctrines of the chief opponent, the most vicious competitor, of early Christianity.”

“Chief competitor of the early Christians,” Julia, the lapsed Catholic, said out loud. “That's got to be the Roman government. It persecuted the church. Nero lit the Christians on fire.”

“You would think so,” Reverend Lamb said, shaking his head, “but no—that's not it at all. Of course, the Roman government used its political might, including the power to arrest and torture and murder, to try to subdue the Christians. Without success. Rome collapsed. Christianity flourished. But no, I'm talking about something a great deal more dangerous than the powerful Roman Empire—I'm referring to Gnosticism.”

“Say again?” Tully said loudly.

“It's a sect of Christianity,” Blackstone interjected, and then directed his comments to Reverend Lamb. “Wouldn't you agree? Gnosticism, from what I know about it, is related to Christianity because it originated from the early beliefs of the Christians.”

“Not really,” Lamb said shaking his head. “Gnosticism, at its core, is no more related to Christianity than, say, weeds that grow up in a flower bed are related to the flowers. They both grow from the same soil at the same time of course, but one is a separate growth process altogether—a parasite, really, which threatens to strangle the life out of the other.”

Then Lamb thought on it for a few seconds and found the point he wanted to make. “Gnosticism was a crude, pagan counterfeit of Christianity that adopted a few of the Christian ideas here and there, and a few features of Christian terminology—enough to cause confusion in the minds of some of the early Christians. It bandied the name of Christ around, but at its base it was a belief system built on a strange mixture of Greek philosophy and Egyptian mysticism, and other pagan ideas. By the third and fourth centuries, hundreds of years after Christ, some of its heretic leaders were writing phony ‘gospels' on the life of Jesus, trying to modify history, portraying Jesus as some kind of pure spirit without humanity—denying the crucifixion of Christ—making it out as if Jesus were the leader of some secret cult full of magic words and mysterious revelations.”

“I think I saw a TV documentary on that,” Jason said excitedly. “They dug these ancient gospels up out of the desert.”

“Yes,” Lamb said nodding his head. “Near a village in Egypt called Nag Hammadi, several hundred miles south of Cairo. In 1945 a couple of Bedouins stumbled across it while they were digging. They found human skeletal remains, and also an ancient jar. Inside the jar were document fragments from what scholars are now calling ‘the Gnostic gospels.' Experts figure the writings in the jar were buried there around AD 400.”

Then Reverend Lamb opened his arms to the group as if the conclusion he was about to share was fully self-evident.

“You see,” he said, “that is why the apostles in the New Testament, and then the Church Fathers in the hundreds of years immediately after the death of the apostles, spent so little of their writings focusing on the
brutality of the Roman government—but instead, spent much of their time warning of the false doctrines of the false teachers. Those who were presenting nonhistorical versions of the life of Christ and passing them off as truth. Chief among those religious heretics were the Gnostics. You see, a clever half-truth about Christ the Messiah, the Promised One, the Savior, is at its core still a lie, but it is more deceptively dangerous to the souls of true spiritual seekers than all the fires that Nero ever lit.”

“So that's it? Your shocking revelation?” Blackstone broke in abruptly. “That Freemasonry is, number one, a religion, and number two, specifically the religion of Gnosticism? That's it? That's all you've got?”

Tully cleared his throat. Jason was wiggling nervously in his chair.

Blackstone said it again.

“That's it?”

“No,” Reverend Lamb said calmly. “You're impatient, Nephew. You need to practice the art of listening. An art that brilliant men like you sometimes neglect.”

Julia was chuckling.

Blackstone leaned back and spread out his arms to his uncle, beckoning him to bring the discussion to a conclusion.

“Let me introduce my third and final point with a question. Just think about this,” Lamb said, wagging his finger as he spoke. “What is the principal problem with any movement that wants to become a permanent and enduring influence in the world, but which is built on human leadership?”

No one answered at first. Then Blackstone, with a controlled smirk, raised his hand like a smart-aleck middle-school student.

“Me, teacher, please call on me!” Blackstone shouted out.

Reverend Lamb was working hard to tolerate his nephew's disrespect and nodded with a smile toward Blackstone.

“You're obviously talking about the problem of successorship,” Blackstone said with a tone of boredom. “The Karl-Marx-to-Lenin-to-Stalin thing. The degradation of the original philosophy through successive titular leaders.”