Is it credible?

We don’t know. We have our questions.

It is difficult to believe: that one man could experience so many levels of occult entanglement.

The details are rich. The scenario is dark–about as black as it gets. On the internet, a number question the veracity of his claims.

We don’t pretend to know. But detailed? Convincing? Articulate?

Yes.

Unfortunately, also truculently anti-Catholic.

We speak here of a man named William (Bill) Schnoebelen, now a preacher in Dubuque, Iowa, exposing darkest “secrets”–personal and otherwise. His testimony can be found here and here and here and especially here. 

Start with the jarring fact that Schnoebelen (who did not respond to multiple attempts for an interview) once was enrolled in a minor seminary (it isn’t one anymore) at Loras College in Iowa with the intention of becoming, he says, a Catholic priest.

That’s when Schnoebelen asserts, in an interview on a YouTube channel called “Almost False” [viewed here] that “I had a priest in my theology class who had a doctorate in theology and was teaching a course in Christology.

“He took me aside and he said, ‘If you want to be a priest in the Catholic Church, ‘it’s taught you know, ‘sacerdos est alter Christus,’ the priest is another Christ. He asked if I wanted to be like Christ and I said, ‘Of course.’ He said, ‘Well, if you want to be like Christ, you need to do what Christ did, and what He did was go to the East and studied with the gurus of India, and He went and studied with the lamas in Tibet, He went to Egypt and studied with the magicians there. That’s why He was able to do what He was able to do, to raise the dead and walk on water and do all these miracles.’

And adds Schnoebelen,”Whatever a priest said in those days, you did. He was like God.”

If true: imagine!

Did a priest really say something like that?

It was back in the 1960s; who knows?

“So [the professor] said what you need to do is start studying the occult. This is a priest telling me this!”

Schnoebelen tells the interviewer he went to a bookstore to the occult section and found a book called The Diary of A Witch, by Sybil Leek, who argued in the book that witches were not evil, that it was an ancient mystery religion. “She claimed Jesus was a witch and the twelve Apostles were His coven, along with their wives.”

The Lord rebuke you, Satan!

Anyway, Schnoebelen “bought into it.” He learned that there was a coven in Rockford, Illinois, about an hour-and-a-half drive from Dubuque, and he headed there and ended up initiated as a witch! This is according to an account he shared with Almost False, an organization “dedicated to telling the stories of the regular people around us. Our mission is to spread hope throughout the world by sharing incredible testimonies with the intent to motivate, inspire or educate people. We are firm believers in Jesus and aim to share the truth of the spiritual world in a society that has stopped believing in it.” The podcast drew about four million views.

According to Schnoebelen, he then hooked up with a coven in Boston where he was made a witch “high priest” and soon started a coven in Dubuque and then Milwaukee.

Schnoebelen didn’t think there was a devil. He thought they were worshiping a god and goddess (though one with horns!). Classes were held in the basement of an occult bookstore, and it was packed with “quasi-hippies,” is the way he capably puts it.

In his tumble down this rabbit–or hell– hole, Schnoebelen  recounts that he soon also met a High Druid who lived atop a mountain on an organic farm and trained under him. Quite a spiral! There wasn’t anything exotic, when it came to mysticism, that didn’t grab the young man’s naive attention.

It was the bookstore owner who supposedly urged  young and naïve Schnoebelen to read The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey, who argued that magic was really about Satan but Satan was an “archetype.” It was more like an energy, or “egregore” (a non-physical entity or thoughtform that arises from the collective thoughts and emotions of a distinct group of individuals).

The trap was set. And Schnoebelen stepped right into its maw. “The devil was gradually pulling me in,” is the way he puts it, his testimony repeated in other podcasts as well.

So now Schnoebelen wrote the Church of Satan in San Francisco and becomes a member of that. 

A Satanist—technically, a warlock or satanist in the second degree.

Most interestingly, that grand druid he mentioned, who lived in Arkansas, told the young, yearning, now former seminarian that “if you really want to understand Luciferian energy, you need to join the Freemasonic Order. He himself was a thirty-third-degree Mason.”

He also advised Schnoebelen that if he ever felt in spiritual turmoil, he should also join the Mormons, which he claimed “was a Church started by witches for witches.” They could hide behind the image of clean-cut families with white picket fences. We submit this all solely for discernment. You can watch the videos and judge for yourselves.

At any rate, Schnoebelen says he joined the Masons at the same time that he was a satanist and a witch! He was to remain a Mason for nine years.

That’s packing it pretty tight. He was obviously the kind who, when searching, goes for the mother lode. He was communicating with a deeply satanic cult in Chicago called the Brotherhood. Schnoebelen covered all the bases.

“I sold my soul to the devil,” he flatly admits.

As far as Freemasonry, which he joined in 1975, it was the Scottish Rite.

“At what point does it get creepy?” he said. “There are tons of Christians who are Masons, literally thousands of them. When you start out as a Mason, they take you to this room, you take off all your clothes except for your undies, and they put you in like these pajamas. Typically one knee is bare and one breast is bare, your left breast. You’re blindfolded, and there’s like a cable around your neck, a velvet blue rope, and you’re tied up and led to the door of the lodge. There’s a guy leading you and he knocks on a door, and the guy on the other side says, ‘Who comes here?’ and your guide, who’s a lodge officer, says, Mr. Bill Schnoebelen, who has been long in darkness and now seeks to be brought to light, to receive the rights and benefits of the worship of the lodge, erected to God,’ as all members have done before.”

He says a lot of the Masons were Protestant ministers–that forty percent of Southern Baptist preachers belonged.

There’s an oath with a hand on a large King James Bible, and are sworn to secrecy, which of course he has broken.

From there the various initiations “get more creepy.” [scroll for more:]

We don’t have time for all the details. Masonry, he says, is “an anti-christ religion” and “almost every major occult figure was a Mason.” Schnoebelen asserts that this includes all satanists.

First is the Blue Lodge, which has three degrees. Everyone has to go through this.

Then there’s a choice between the Scottish Rite and the York Rite. The top of the York Rite is the Knights Templar. The Scottish Rite has 29 degrees for most. With the three previous degrees, that equals thirty-two degrees (“Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret”) and for dignitaries, a 33rd degree can be offered. He says at the 19th degree they actually try to call up the devil. The York Rite was the so-called “Christian path,” and he was advised to go this way because–believe it or not–he was still in the seminary.

Beyond that, are secret degrees that even most Freemasons don’t know about and in Europe that goes to 360 degrees. Schnoebelen got up to the 97th level (sexual alchemy). (Critics assert there are no such addition levels.)

What was the “royal secret”? Schnoebelen was to learn it was that you can live forever–or so they believed–by vampirizing children. Only perhaps one in a thousand Masons know this, he tells interviewers. Most think it’s a “good ole boys’ club” and even that it teaches civility.

As for satanism, he says the center for that is Chicago and that they work with high-level Masons.

True? False?

Schnoebelen told “Almost False” he was taken to a park in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, for his satanic induction. It was broad daylight, but he was told not to worry about it, that even police there were satanists. In the park were “like Egyptian statues” and literally an altar.

We found this photo of the park.

There Schnoebelen supposedly swore an oath to Satan and signed his name in blood in a black book.

Interestingly, when he wrote a check out for a subscription to a satanic journal–the canceled check came back with a female handwriting on it: someone at the bank had written, “I will be praying for you in Jesus’ Name.”

Although Schnoebelen scoffed at that, within twenty-four hours he says he lost his occult powers along with his job, and got sick. He went to a personal altar he had to Lucifer and prayed to the devil.

But Jesus answered.

The next day he got a call from two girls who wanted to meet him. They had a gift for him–Christian comic books about the dangers of the occult. And the day after that was a knock on the door: Mormon missionaries.

This was back in 1980. He eventually joined the Mormon Church, believing that the two visitors he encountered were actually a sign from Lucifer.

A Druid had told him that Mormons were essentially “white witches,” so after he and his wife left Satanism behind, they felt at ease attending the Mormon Temple. He says they participated in all the Mormon ceremonies, which he believes have their origins in Masonic traditions. After being baptized, he was ordained as an elder within a year, and later advanced to the role of elders quorum president, an administrative position that operates under the authority of the bishop who oversees the local congregation.

Thus, he found himself once again participating in ritual practices, this time in Salt Lake City.

“Most people don’t realize that Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church in 1844, had been made a Master Mason in Illinois,” he says. “He borrowed heavily from Masonic rituals to create Mormon ceremonies. The entire experience was strange.”

He also claims to have had a vision of a naked young woman lying on an altar, surrounded by men chanting “Hail Lucifer,” and says that this scene was set in the Celestial Room of the Mormon Temple.

It’s his claim, not ours.

But when he decided to broach this bizarre vision with an elder with the ironic name James Faust, he was told, on “solemn testimony,” that what he’d “seen” was true.

We’ll take Bill at his word.

Are there levels of Mormonism that, like levels of Masonry, are not known to the average member?

Again, for your sage discernment. It seems so.

He describes Temple Square as filled with Masonic symbols, including secret handshakes, the All-Seeing Eye, and representations of the sun, moon, and stars. He notes that the Mormon Temple lacks any Christian imagery, such as crosses, on its exterior.

Inside, he points to a veil similar to that of Solomon’s Temple and mentions a secret invocation that closely mirrors passages from a satanic grimoire. In his view, Mormonism carries even darker elements than Freemasonry, and he believes that those leading the Mormon Church are involved in devil worship, with that influence filtering down into the lives of members and their families.

At least he was not actively worshiping the devil and had eschewed drugs and other bad habits. As he rose in the Mormon ranks, in the early 1980s, he oversaw local missionaries, who he admits did some good things, as far as helping people.

Eventually, to make a very long story (or series of YouTube videos) rather short, he was brought back to Christianity by the Assemblies of God. He renounced all his occult oaths (and unfortunately also his Catholicism).

We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt; he certainly uses detail and eloquently expressed it. He seems like a sincere and dedicated Christian. Is he? (Again, truculently anti-Catholic.)

Quite a whirlwind!

Quite a circuitous course.

Stay tuned…

[see YouTube videos, prayerfully]