"Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven." Luke 6: 22, 23.
It is an immense thing when you see and accept that suffering for Christ is the place of the highest distinction on earth. We may not suffer much; but the mere conviction that suffering is the highest place, and the only one of true progress, will ever be healthy discipline and encouragement. Whatever we need the Father has laid up for us in the Son. All fulness dwells in Him--all the treasures both of wisdom and knowledge; and not only is there every thing for us laid up in Him, but God also has made Him at the same time the storehouse of all that His heart needs. On earth God found His delight only in His beloved Son, now in heaven He has His people hidden in Christ. God's eyes and our eyes meet there; God's heart and our hearts find rest and satisfaction only in Christ. The Father thus brings us into companionship with Himself, into fellowship with His own joy. The spring and source of our joy must be the same as His own. Nothing less could satisfy His love for us. He will have us drink from the same fountain in which He has found His own eternal joy. It is humbling to think how little we have entered into that fellowship, but there must be a beginning. Have we begun to share His delight in His beloved Son? J. G. B.
Christian Friend vol. 20, p. 295.
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John Gifford Bellett was an Irish Christian writer and theologian, and was influential in the beginning of the Plymouth Brethren movement. Bellett was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was educated first at the Grammar School in Exeter, England, then at Trinity College Dublin, where he excelled in Classics, and afterwards in London. It was in Dublin that, as a layman, he first became acquainted with John Nelson Darby, then a minister in the established Church of Ireland, and in 1829 the pair began meeting with others such as Edward Cronin and Francis Hutchinson for communion and prayer.
Bellett had become a Christian as a student and by 1827 was a layman serving the Church. In a letter to James McAllister, written in 1858, he describes the episcopal charge of William Magee, Archbishop of Dublin, that sought for greater state protection for the Church. The Erastian nature of the charge offended Darby particularly, but also many others including Bellett.
The pair bonded particularly over prophetic issues, and attended meetings and discussions together at the home of Lady Powerscourt, and Bellett and Darby (along with the Brethren movement in particular) were particularly associated with dispensationalism and premillenialism.
Bellett wrote many articles and books on scriptural subjects, his most famous works being The Patriarchs, The Evangelists and The Minor Prophets.