Friends and brethren, who are made partakers of the power [1 Cor 9:12?] of the world that is without end, and are partakers of the heavenly gift [Heb 6:4], and feel the power, in which are the unity, peace, and kingdom that hath no end [Luke 1:33], in that feel one another, and know one another, and in the life, in which ye will have peace and unity one with another; that the top-stone may be laid over all, and ye all in the wisdom, life, and seed in your measures may be preserved, spreading the truth abroad, confounding the deceit, answering the witness of God in all [Col 4:6/1 Jn 5:9f]. To which they must be brought before their minds can be turned to God, and be acquainted with his covenant of promise, and his life, and to know God, the Father of spirits [Heb 12:9]. For all Christendom, which hath gotten the words of the prophets, Christ, and the apostles, that are not in the spirit and power that they were in that gave them forth, are all on heaps about them, and not in unity, being out of the spirit, in which is the unity and true fellowship. For there are the heaps, amongst them that are out of the spirit and power of God, having the words in the transgression, in the fall, in the earth, and in the many bodies, names, and heads, churches, religions, and worships, which are in the first birth, born of the flesh, which will persecute him that is born of the spirit [Gal 4:29]; which spirit plungeth down by baptism, and putteth under, and bringeth into the one body, and putteth that under which causeth many heads, and answereth to that which is transgressed against. For all must come to the one baptism with the spirit into the one body [Eph 4:5, 1 Cor 12:13]. And all my dear friends, be faithful, and quench not the spirit [1 Th 5:19], but be obedient to the truth [1 Pet 1:22], and spread it abroad, which must go over all the world, to professors, Jews, christians, and heathen, to the answering the witness of God in them all; that they may come to the truth, which answers the witness in them, to be made free by it [John 8:32]. And, friends, in the wisdom of God dwell, which preserveth in unity in the spirit and power. If any thing be spoken in a meeting which ye cannot bear, speak to them concerned betwixt them and you [Mat 18:15], after the meeting is ended; for if any of the world be there it may give occasion to them to reproach truth. For wisdom preserveth in the peace, and maketh peace [Sir 1:18?], and preserveth out of the contrary, and overcomes with the wisdom and love, and answereth the witness with the life, and so hath unity, and that hath the kingdom.
G. F.
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George Fox (1624 - 1691)
Was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends. This was a group the Lord started through the ministry of George Fox. God called him apart from all other forms of Christendom in his day because of the lack of Biblical obedience and holiness.The emphasis in George Fox's ministry was firstly prophetic. He called out the people of God to show them that they had the Holy Spirit of God and could be taught of Him and not to solely rely on the teachings of ecclesiastical leaders. Secondly, he spoke directly to many ministers in his day to show them they were hirelings and did not have a true shepherds heart for the people of God rather they were seeking after financial gain.
Founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers). George Fox was born in Drayton-in-the-Clay, Leicestershire, England, the son of Puritan parents. Little is known of his early life, apart from what he wrote in his journal: "In my very young years, I had a gravity and stayedness of mind and spirit not usual in young children. Insomuch that, when I saw old men behave lightly and wantonly toward each other, I had a dislike thereof raise in my heart, and I said within myself, `If ever I come to be a man, surely I shall not do so, nor be so wanton.'"
At the age of 19, he gained deep, personal assurance of his salvation and began to travel as an itinerant preacher, seeking a return to the simple practices of the New Testament. He abhorred technical theology, and preached a faith borne of experience, freshly fed and guided by the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit.
Fox was persecuted almost daily, yet his power of endurance was phenomenal. He was beaten with dogwhips, knocked down with fists and stones, brutally struck with pikestaves, hard beset by mobs, incarcerated eight times in the pestilential jails, prisons, castles and dungeons--yet he went straightforward with his mission as though he had discovered some fresh courage which made him impervious to man's inhumanity.
He undertook as far as possible to let the new life in Christ take its own free course of development in his ministry. He shunned rigid forms and static systems, and for that reason he refused to head a new sect or to start a new denomination, or to begin a new church. He would not build an organization of any kind. His followers at first called themselves "Children of the Light," and later adopted the name "The Society (or Fellowship) of Friends."
Fox preached and traveled for 40 years throughout England, Scotland, Holland, and America. His life demonstrated the truth of his famous saying, "One man raised by God's power to stand and live in the same spirit the apostle and prophets were in, can shake the country for ten miles around."