Hermes Club and the Ghostly Guild

In 1845, as a Cambridge undergraduate, Westcott organized the Hermes Club. Hermes is the Greek god of magic, the Lord of death, cunning and trickery. According to Greek mythology, Hermes was a gifted speaker and a scribe. Westcott’s friend, Madame Blavatsky, a key founder of the New Age Movement, wrote, Satan and Hermes are all one, in her book, The Secret Doctrine. She didn’t even pretend to be a Christian, she was a Luciferian.

In the 1850s Westcott, Hort and Benson, a future Archbishop of Canterbury, founded the Ghost Club, also known as the Ghostly Guild. It promoted channeling by which spirits speak through a medium. 1 Timothy 4: 1 says: Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils.

The modern translations (RSV, ASV, NASB, NIV, NEV and even the NKJV) have one thing in common. They tend to agree against the Textus Receptus (King James - Geneva) in omitting hundreds of words, phrases and entire verses. These omitted words are not always archaic words no longer used in Modern English. The omitted words are words like God, omitted 66 times in the New King James Version alone and even more in other modern versions. God is not an archaic word. Neither is Christ, blood, virgin or other frequently omitted words.

Statements from Wescott

• In 1842, “In the evening I go with Tom to the wizard.”, Westcott, Vol. 1, p. 9
• Westcott made a pilgrimage to a shrine of the Virgin and commented, “God appears in many forms.”
• In 1855, “How certainly I should have been proclaimed a heretic.”, Westcott, Vol. 1, p. 233
• In 1871, “I shall aim at what is transcendental in many peoples eyes, I suppose I am a communist by nature.”, Westcott, Vol. 1, p. 309
• In 1881, “Our Bible as well as our Faith is a mere compromise.”, Westcott, On the Canon of the New Testament: A General Survey, p. vii

Statements from Hort

• Hort referred to evangelical Christians at various times as “dangerous, perverted, unsound and confused.” He called America “a standing menace to the whole civilization.”
• In 1848, “The pure Romish view seems to me nearer and more likely to lead to truth than the evangelical.”, Hort, Vol. 1, pp. 76-77
• “Protestantism is only parenthetical and temporary.”, Hort, Vol. II, p. 31
• In 1856, “Campbell’s book on the Atonement, unluckily he knows nothing except Protestant theology.”, Hort, Vol. 1, p. 322

Agendas of Wescott and Hort

Westcott and Hort had a friend named Philip Schaff. He was the President of the Old and New Testament committees that formed the American Standard Version of 1901. He was a rank heretic and he advocated one world religion.  The University of Berlin called him “The theological mediator between East and West.” Schaff mocked Christians, saying, “They vainly imagine that they possess the monopoly on truth.”  He further stated, “The church must adjust her doctrinal statements to natural science. ”

Churchman brought Schaff before the Pennsylvania Synod for heresy. The Living Bible and NASB used Schaff’s 30,000 alterations to the Bible.  Schaff’s Parliament of World Religions, called itself “Babel.” It first met in Chicago in 1893. Schaff called it “the sum of my life and theological activity.” It set the New Age movement in motion. From Schaff, we can get a clearer view of the agenda of Westcott and Hort. Schaff used their corrupt text to give us the ASV of 1901. He followed their interpretation of theology and their view of “one world religion.”