Friends,—All ye that have known the way of truth, and tasted of <211> the power of the same, and now turn back into the world's fashions and customs [2 Pet 2:20], ye stop them that are coming out of the world, ye make them to stumble at the truth [Mal 2:8], ye make them to question the way of the Lord, which is out of the way of the world, and its ways; and ye grieve the righteous, and sadden the hearts of the upright and simple. Ye had better never have known the way of light, life, and power; ye are the cause of many keeping in darkness; you are the cause of the boasting of the wicked, and make the wicked to take you for an example, and their object against truth, and them that live in it, to plead against its ways. Ye had better never have been born [Mark 14:21] ; your days will be sad, trouble and vengeance will be your garment and clothing [Isa 59:17] in that state; and a hard thing it will be for any of you to repent, for you will find a more subtle thing in you than was before you knew the way of truth; who have neglected hearing the voice of God, through which your hearts are hardened. . . . Wo and misery is for you! ye had better never have been born [Mark 14:21], nor known the way of truth [2 Pet 2:21]; whose latter end is worse than the beginning [2 Pet 2:20], when the way of peace is hid from your eyes [Rom 3:17f], and a place of repentance ye cannot find [Heb 12:17], though ye wash your altar with tears [Mal 2:13]; being in the stained life, where all the tattlers, tale-carriers, unclean persons, envious, murmurers and complainers [Jude 1:16] are, and are out of the life, and power, and wisdom of God, which hath the royal dominion, and possession of the royal seed. Therefore turn, turn all that are not hardened and past feeling, and hear the voice, that the way of peace and repentance, and the way of life and salvation ye may know, and live in; and upon all your disorderly carriages, walkings, words, and actions [2 Th 3:6f], ye may come to receive judgment, and through that ye may receive power to live a new life, in which God is served in the truth, and not the devil, who is out of the truth [John 8:44]; for in the truth is the holy unity and the pure dominion, and the everlasting life promised and received, and the royal seed, which the elect have, wherein they have the bread of life [John 6:35].
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."