We all need a refuge from stress and severe distraction; a retreat where we can withdraw for a time from life’s problems, so that when we return, they feel more manageable. This is God’s intent for the Sabbath.

Rest, in the Old Covenant, meant a special day when people were supposed to pause in their outward work. But how do we pause in our duel with the stresses of daily life?

The visitation of God, directly to the soul, in the person of Jesus Christ, is our…

In the desert liturgy of obedience to the Lamb, wrought in the wilderness of the Spirit, the engrafted Word and immortal Seed grow, waging the Lamb’s War, there where neither smell nor scent of time, flesh, or reasonings remain; and here all things are made new and one drinks freely from the well of the water of life. This experience of an invasive, desolating, purging Light is signified by the repeated phrasing, ‘And he carryed me awaye into the wilderness in the sprete’ (p541). Untouched…

ALL ye churches gathered into outward forms upon the earth, the son of God is come to reign; and he will tread and trample, will shake, and make you quiver, you that are found out of his life, his light, and his power. His day hath appeared...Come you, that have boasted of my name, saith the Lord, and have gloried in the flesh...who have slain my witness, yet boast of my words...What! hast thou professed the prophets’ words? hast thou…

The Lamb was the Light guiding early Quakers in worship, belief and practice. The contemplative collective state, like the War fought against self ends, carnal reasoning, and concupiscence (intellectual, social, political, linguistic, etc.), was part of what John Punshon called the offensive of the Lamb. This formed a unity of prayer and worship with its behaviour as people in but not of the world.

The Book of Revelation provides a key to this experiential baptism in the Lamb’s…