WAS FREEMASONRY DERIVED FROM MORMONISM?

  The relationship of Freemasonry to the LDS Temple Endowment has long been a matter of speculation among students of Mormon history.  Joseph Smith was of the opinion that Masonic ritual was a corrupt form of the original Priesthood.  Thus, in a letter to Parley P. Pratt, written three months after Joseph became a Master Mason, 1   Heber C. Kimball observed that: There is a similarity of Priesthood in Masonry.  Brother Joseph says Masonry was taken from the Priesthood, but has degenerated.  But many things are perfect. 2 Later, he explained that: The Masonry of today is received from the apostasy which took place in the days of Solomon and David.  They have now and then a thing that is correct,  but we have the real thing . 3 Benjamin F. Johnson, another of Joseph's intimate friends, recalled the similar opinion of the Prophet that: Freemasonry was the apostate endowment, as sectarian religion was the apostate religion. 4 But since Masonic histori...

Unearthed Truths Validating Latter-day Saints Origins Is Science Compatible with Religion Yes says LDS Scholar, Philosopher Composer only a glimpse of. Dr. Eugene Seaich. For many years I had also attempted to compare these insights with the discoveries of modern physics, since many physicists were beginning to sense that science and religion are basically compatible. Just as religion speaks of a single godhood which is the Source of all things, quantum cosmologists like Frank Tipler, John Barrow, J. Hartle and Stephen Hawking were speaking of a Universal Wave Function, or a "cosmic field" that governs all of nature's processes, and which Tipler sees as equivalent to the biblical "Holy Spirit." Quantum relativity was also speaking of a single space-time continuum, woven out of coherently vibrating "strings of energy," and which is believed to account for the elusive force of gravity, as well as for the force of electro- magnetism and the "strong...