I hope that all had a wonderful Father's Day weekend with their families.Here is the next to last part of Jim Marrs Rule By Secrecy.

.... The knowledge of the Templars concerning the early history of Christianity was undoubtedly one of the main reasons for their persecution and final annihilation.
— MASONIC PHILOSOPHER MANLY P. HALL.

.... In the Dark Ages following the collapse of the Roman Empire, one religion gained absolute supremacy in the Western world: Christianity. While ostensibly based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, scholars today can trace Christianity's evolution back through the ideologies of ancient Greece, Egypt, and Babylon to the much older culture of Sumer.

The discovery in recent years of lost writings dating from before the time of Jesus has provided much-needed information to fill in the gaps of knowledge about both the man and his times.

Due to a lack of first-hand accounts of Jesus, acrimonious debates over Christian beliefs and theology continued for centuries from the time the secular power of the Holy Roman Catholic "Universal" church emerged during medieval times.

Until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Roman church stood as the ultimate authority in the Western world. Through the lending of both its money and blessings, the Vatican dominated kings and queens and controlled the lives of ordinary citizens through fear of excommunication and its infamous Inquisition.

Europe's best and brightest men were exhorted by the clergy to battle for God and country, and Christian Europe launched Crusade after Crusade against the Muslims holding the Holy Land of the Middle East. The power of the church became further centralized and all powerful.

Some of these men, particularly in southern France with its association to certain legends concerning Mary Magdalene and her descendants, had knowledge of secret traditions which ran counter to the teachings of the church. The Crusades presented a convenient excuse to take the Holy Land and search for verification of these traditions.

Some researchers even suggest that the Crusades may have been inspired by this search for hidden knowledge. According to French author Gerard de Sede, Peter the Hermit—generally considered to be instrumental in promoting the First Crusade along with Saint Bernard—was a personal tutor to the Crusade's leader, Godfrey de Bouillon, a man later associated with the Knights Templar.

Once in the Holy Land, the Crusaders apparently found some verification of heretical ideas which supported elder traditions, principally those circulating in southern France, and differed from the teachings of the church. It was this conflict that led to the creation of societies which used secrecy as protection from the Roman church, which, in turn, began to guard its established theology with increasingly violent means.

By many recent accounts, at least one group of Crusaders brought back more than just heretical hearsay—they reportedly returned to Europe with hard evidence of error and duplicity in church dogma. These Crusaders over time became known as heretics and blasphemers and an attempt was made by the church to exterminate them. They were the Knights Templar, whose traditions live on today within Freemasonry....
full text...
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/06/part-4-rule-by-secrecyelder-secret.html