All Friends and brethren every where, that are imprisoned for the truth, give yourselves up in it, and it will make you free [John 8:32], and the power of the Lord will carry you over all the persecutors, which was before they were. For since the beginning hath this persecution got up; therefore live and reign in that power which remains when the other is gone, and in that ye will have peace and unity with God, and one with another, who suffer ‘for not putting into the false prophets mouths [Micah 3:5],’ and for crying against them, and for not swearing, and not giving the world's compliments and their honour, which the Lord is staining [Isa 23:9]; and who are suffering for reproving sin in the gate [Isa 29:21]. Be faithful in the life and power of the Lord God, and be valiant for the truth on the earth [Jer 9:3], and look not at your sufferings, but at the power of God, and that will bring some good out in all your sufferings; and your imprisonments will reach to the prisoned, that the persecutor prisons in himself. So be faithful in your sufferings in the power of the Lord, who suffer now by a false priesthood for their tithes, oaths, temples, which have got up since the apostles' days. For as the apostles and true christians suffered for denying the Jewish temple, priesthood, tithes, and oaths, so ye do by the false, and amongst the apostatized christians, who are got up since the apostles' days. So the power, and life, and wisdom of the Lord God Almighty keep you, and preserve you, to finish your testimony to the end, that ye may witness every one of you a crown of life [Rev 2:10] eternal, in which ye may sing praises to the Lord, and in that triumph! And so, be faithful in that which overcomes, and gives victory [Rev 17:14].
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."