Corn, Wine, and Oil

The most important buildings in the United States were not founded with prayer. They were founded with a lodge ceremony. The President’s House, the Capitol, and the Washington Monument all had their first stones laid by Freemasons, in Masonic dress, using Masonic tools, and finishing with the same three offerings poured over the stone: corn, wine, and oil. This study walks through what was done, what the offerings mean in the lodge, and where the same three gifts appear in Scripture.

See what Scripture offered in its place ↓

The Stones of the Capital

On October 13, 1792, the cornerstone of the President’s House, now called the White House, was laid by the Freemasons of Georgetown Lodge in a Masonic ceremony. Less than a year later, on September 18, 1793, George Washington himself crossed the Potomac at the head of a Masonic procession to lay the cornerstone of the United States Capitol. He wore a Masonic apron. He set the stone with a silver trowel. A silver plate was laid with it, dated in two calendars: the year of American independence and the year of Masonry. Then, according to the newspaper account printed that week, the stone was consecrated with corn, wine, and oil, and the brethren sang Masonic songs.

The pattern did not stop with the founders. On July 4, 1848, the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia laid the cornerstone of the Washington Monument (Study Three). On July 4, 1851, President Millard Fillmore and the Grand Lodge laid the cornerstone of the Capitol extension, using the same gavel Washington had used in 1793. Statehouses, courthouses, post offices, and schools across the country have been founded the same way, and Grand Lodges still lay cornerstones for public buildings today. The seat of the president, the seat of the lawmakers, and the obelisk between them were all dedicated in the same rite.

What the Lodge Pours and What It Means

In the Masonic cornerstone ceremony, the stone is first tested by the square, the level, and the plumb, and declared well formed, true, and trusty. Then the Grand Master takes three vessels. He pours the corn and calls it the emblem of plenty. He pours the wine and calls it the emblem of refreshment. He pours the oil and calls it the emblem of joy. A prayer is offered to the Great Architect of the Universe — a title that names no god at all, so that any god may be meant by it.

Masonic writers explain that the three offerings were the wages of the workmen at Solomon’s temple. They point to the corn, wine, and oil Solomon sent to Hiram, king of Tyre, in payment for timber and workmen (2 Chronicles 2:10, 15). The lodge has turned those wages into a consecration. Payment to a Phoenician king for building materials has become an offering poured on a stone.

Hosea Named These Three Gifts

The same three offerings, in the same order, appear in one of the sharpest sentences in the prophets. Israel had grown prosperous and credited the harvest to Baal, the Canaanite storm god who was believed to send the rain.

Hosea 2:8For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.

Yahuah gave the corn, the wine, and the oil. Israel took them and prepared them for another power. That is the charge, and it describes the cornerstone of the Capitol exactly. Grain, wine, and oil from fields Yahuah watered were carried to a stone and poured out in a rite that never spoke His name.

Yahuah’s answer to Israel was to take back what was His.

Hosea 2:9Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof.

He calls it “my corn” and “my wine.” Pouring it out on a lodge stone does not change who owns it. It only changes who is honored.

The Grain God

The corn on the cornerstone carries an older name. The Hebrew word for grain in Hosea 2:8 is dagan (H1715). The god of the Philistines was Dagon (H1712), the grain god, whose name is built on the same root. Clay tablets dug up at Ugarit on the Syrian coast call Baal “the son of Dagan.” In the religion of Canaan, the storm god Hosea condemned was the son of the grain god. When grain is poured out to an unnamed Architect, it lands in a family Scripture already knows.

Dagon’s end is recorded in Scripture. When the Philistines set the ark of Yahuah in his temple, Dagon fell on his face before it, and on the second morning his head and hands lay broken on the threshold (1 Samuel 5:3–4). The grain god could not stand in the presence of the commandments.

The Bread and Wine of the Lodge

The pouring at the cornerstone is not the only place American Masonry handles the holy things. The headquarters of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, stands in Washington DC (Study Twelve). Its eighteenth degree, Knight of the Rose Croix, includes a ritual meal at which bread is broken and a cup of wine is passed. Rose Croix chapters keep it each spring as a solemn feast. To a church member visiting the lodge, it looks like the Lord’s Supper. It is held under lodge vows, among men who have sworn oaths no Scripture commanded.

1 Corinthians 10:21Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.

The Name Under the Arch

The rite also carries a name. In the Royal Arch degree, worked in American chapters of the York Rite, the candidate acts out the recovery of a lost word from the ruins of Solomon’s temple. For generations the word revealed was Jahbulon, explained by Masonic and non-Masonic writers alike as three names joined into one: Jah, the short form of the name of Yahuah; Bul, a form of Baal; and On, the Egyptian city of the sun (Genesis 41:45). In 1989 the Royal Arch in England removed the name from its ritual after churches objected. A word that was never there does not need removing.

The same men who poured the corn, wine, and oil on the nation’s stones carried a name that joined Yahuah to Baal and to the sun of Egypt. Hosea 2:8 described the offering. The lodge supplied the god.

Exodus 23:13And make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.

Still Carried to the Wrong House

Revelation closes the account of Babylon with the list of her cargo. Among the gold and silver and fine linen are the same gifts the lodge pours out.

Revelation 18:13And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.

Wine, oil, and wheat, still being carried to the wrong house at the end of the age. America’s capital was consecrated with them from its first stone.

Come out of her, my people.

What Scripture Offered in Its Place

Scripture does record a stone anointed with oil. After his dream at Bethel, Jacob set up the stone he had slept on and poured oil on it (Genesis 28:18). He did it on the spot where Yahuah had spoken to him, named the place Beth-el, the house of El, and vowed that Yahuah would be his Elohim (Genesis 28:21). The stone marked where heaven came down. A lodge cornerstone marks where men intend to build up, and it names no one.

Scripture also has a cornerstone, and men do not lay it.

Isaiah 28:16Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.

Peter names that stone as Yahushua, the one the builders rejected (1 Peter 2:6–7). The bread and wine belong at His table, not the lodge’s. And the name of Yahuah is not to be joined to any other. Through Hosea, Yahuah refused even to be called by a title that sounded like Baal.

Hosea 2:16–17And it shall be at that day, saith Yahuah, that thou shalt call me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali. For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth.

The corn, the wine, and the oil were always meant to be received with thanks to Yahuah by name, eaten before Him in the place He chose (Deuteronomy 12:17–18). That is the altar the gifts were made for.

Revelation 18:4Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.