Should Christians Be Members of Secret Societies?
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place in these associations. Your own conscience will bear witness
to the truth of what I say. The talent and skill and inventive power
with which God has endowed men are, in these associations, too
often perverted to instruments of cruelty, of iniquity, of selfishness in
practicing fraud upon their fellow men.
Of course all this is denied by the members of these bodies. But
God looks beneath the pleasant, attractive appearance, to the secret,
underlying motives and the real working of the association. While
some of them claim to make the Word of God in a certain sense
the basis of their organization, they depart far from the principles of
righteousness. The vows imposed by some of these orders require
the taking of human life when the secrets of the order are divulged.
Members are also pledged, under certain circumstances, to clear the
guilty from deserved punishment. Toward those who work against the
order, they are required to pursue a course that is not at all in harmony
with the law of God.
We cannot swerve from the truth, we cannot depart from right prin-
ciples, without forsaking Him who is our strength, our righteousness,
and our sanctification. We should be firmly rooted in the conviction
that whatever in any sense turns us aside from truth and justice in our
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association and partnership with men, cannot benefit us, and greatly
dishonors God. Every species of deceit or conniving at sin is abhorrent
to Him.
Fraud runs all through these secret associations, and none can be
bound up with them and be free men before God and heaven. The
moral nature is dragged down to that which God pronounces unjust,
which is contrary to His will and His commandments. One who
professes to love God, may in these associations be placed in positions
which are called honorable, but in the eyes of God he is tarnishing
his honor as a Christian, and separating farther and farther from the
principles of righteousness and true holiness. He is perverting his
powers, that have been purchased by the blood of Jesus. He is selling
his soul for nought.
In the revelation of His righteous judgments, God will break up
all these associations; and when the judgment shall sit and the books
be opened, there will be revealed the un-Christlikeness of the whole
confederacy. Those who choose to unite with these secret societies