The Bible And King Solomon's Temple in Masonry

A. J. Holman Company, 1968. Hardcover. Like New/No Dustjacket as Issued. Signed by several "Visiting Brethren and Friends". In original box, which is in Very Good condition, with some light fraying at corers. Bound in blue moroccograne leatherette, with gilt edges and masonic decoration. A Holman Masonic Bible. Quite scarce in this condition. John Wesley Kelchner (1866–1942) was a visionary promoter, elocutionist, and entertainer in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Freemasons regarded him as an authority on sacred space and a leading expert on the architecture and design of the tabernacle of Moses and King Solomon’s temple. An active promoter of American Orientalism, Kelchner began his career as a Seventh-day Adventist minister who spent tens of thousands of dollars to build an elaborate model of the wilderness tabernacle. He traveled throughout the United States of America, attracting thousands of spectators to local churches, art galleries, and World’s Fairs that featured his models, paintings and drawings, and electrical effects shows. After going bankrupt and leaving the Adventist Church, he remerged as the self-proclaimed founder of the Temple Restoration Movement — a movement of freemasons who sought to permanently rebuild Solomon’s temple in seven principal cities around the world as symbols of universal peace and religious freedom.