Keystone
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| Image from Internet |
It was as if I
got out of bed one morning and began wondering. ‘Is this all there is?’ I had
a wife, three daughters, a house, a car, and a job. But what was the purpose of
it all? So began my quest for truth. I needed to find meaning, that thing that
makes it all make sense. I started reading all sorts of philosophy as I
searched for the Hegelian ‘concrete universal’, something that would bring and then
hold it all together. I investigated things such as Darwinism, Marxism, the
Jewish Kabbala, Mormonism to name a few. I even attended services at the
Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses!
It was while
growing up in Scotland that I had become interested in Freemasonry. If you don’t
know, ‘Freemasonry is a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory, and
illustrated by symbols.’ Which is to say that Masonry is an organisation that
teaches men morals using the construction of Solomon’s Temple and the tools
used to ‘take a good man and make him better.’ Now, whatever you may think of
Freemasonry, please note and consider the fact that God used this organisation
to convert this lost sinner by teaching him about ‘the stone the builders
rejected.’
My book From
Mason To Minister (Nordskog Publishing Inc.) tells my story. However,
before we look at a quote from therein, let’s set the scene. I had been asking
some JWs if Jesus was Jehovah, which, as seemed clear to me, that Jesus and
other New Testament writers seemed agree that He was. The name Jehovah or Yahweh
or LORD are the same. Referring to Exodus 3:14-15 where Moses asks God’s
name and God had answered with the ‘I AM WHO I AM’ references. Says John Frame,
‘Here, God gives Moses his mysterious name in three forms: long (I AM WHO I
AM), medium (I AM), and short (Heb. Yahweh, translated “LORD”). These
are all related to the name Yahweh.’ The truth of this was about to fall
on me like a ton of bricks!
As I looked
for the glue that held it all together, I had taken my search into Freemasonry
while living in Manitoba.
‘The final
degree in the Chapter of the Royal Arch refers to a strangely shaped stone
supposedly found among the rubble of the destroyed Temple of Solomon. I had
been taught in the Blue Lodge that Masonry is synonymous with Geometry
. Therefore, when the stone the builders
rejected was referred to as a keystone that holds an archway together I started
studying the shapes of keystones. And Lo! and Behold! Did the Hebrew letters in
the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) when viewed in terms of their numerical equivalents,
not present the shape of a trapezoid otherwise known as a keystone? Y = Yod,
the tenth (10) letter in the Hebrew alphabet; H = Hé, the fifth (5); W = Vav,
the sixth letter (6); and H = again Hé, the fifth (5). Jesus was the keystone
and the keystone was JeHoVaH! Find a piece of paper and draw lines forming a
box shape with the dimensions 10 x 5 x 6 x 5 (use millimetres or inches) and
the shape of a keystone will appear. This was astounding to me! If you remove
the keystone from an arch, the arch falls down. My personal darkness turned to
light when I realized the reality that Jesus Christ is - in every way - the
keystone that holds the entire creation together (see Col. 1:17). Christ is the
“missing link”!’
YaHWeH or Jehovah = the
LORD.‘In him all things hold together’ (Col. 1:17b).
‘Jesus is “the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.” Salvation is found in no one
else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must
be saved.’ (Acts 4:11-12).
