Dear friends every where, be faithful to God, who hath been faithful and true [Rev 3:14] to you; therefore be you true to God, and faithful witnesses to him, and to Christ Jesus; that now ye may all have riches and treasure laid up in store, against a time of want, storms and tempests, that you may stand; for if you do not stand now, you are as bad as such professors, who stood only when the sun shined, and crept out when it was fine and fair weather, but when a storm or tempest came, then they ran creeping into their holes and corners, and skulking into by corners and fled by back doors, who were ashamed of their religion, and what they professed; but when the sun did shine, then they showed their enmity to the righteous. And therefore by you of the faith of David, and of his spirit, who said, ‘I was young, and now am old. I never saw the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread [Psa 37:25];’ and the Lord, (to encourage his people,) saith, ‘In all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them [Isa 63:9];’ and Christ tells you, it is he that suffers and is persecuted, when his children are persecuted [Mat 25:40]. And so it is for the Lord's sake that the just suffer by the unjust [1 Pet 3:18]; and you read how such as suffered the spoiling of their goods [Heb 10:34], and scoffing and mocking, yet they were not to forsake the assembling themselves together [Heb 10:25], <39> as the manner of some was; for they that suffer with Christ shall reign with him [2 Tim 2:12]; for the Lord may try you, (who hath blessed you with outward things,) whether your minds do stand with him, or in the outward things.
G. F.
Be the first to react on this!
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."