(A Word from the Lord to Friends)
ALL Friends that are grown up in the Life and Power of the Truth, see that when ye appoint your Meetings in any open Place, in the Fields, on the Moors, or on the Mountains, that none appoint Meetings in your own Wills; for that lets in the Wills of the World upon the Life of Friends, and so ye come to suffer by the World. But at such Meetings let the Wisdom of God guide you, that some may be there to prevent the Truth from suffering by the World; that all Burdens may be kept off, and taken away: So will ye grow pure and strong.
And when there are any Meetings in unbroken Places, ye that go to Minister to the World, take not the whole Meeting of Friends with you thither, to suffer with and by the World's Spirit; but let Friends keep together and wait in their own Meeting Place. So will the Life (in the Truth) be preserved, and grow. And let Three, or Four, or Six, that are grown up, and are strong (in the Truth) go to such unbroken Places and thresh the Heathenish Nature: and there is true Service for the Lord: And to you all this is the Counsel of the Lord! The Grace of God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, be with your Spirits. Amen.
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."