All Blog Posts (276)

The following was first posted as a response to the previous post titled "When Words Fail." As the comments in the Latest Activity section are difficult to access (for the time being), I've decided to give this response its own posting.

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That people use the language and ideas of Christianity for their own selfish ends is commonplace. You are seeing some gross forms of this perversion in South America, but subtle forms of it are just as deadly to the souls and…

Warning: This blog post contains many questions and few answers. If you're here looking for answers, well... I'm so sorry. I wish I had them too.

Over the past couple of years, I have spent a fair amount of time travelling in, learning about, and generally hanging around South America. Over the course of my travels, I have participated in many discussions about religion, and with every one I have become more and more aware that, due to the history and religious climate these…

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.  

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.…

This post first appeared on my blog https://thiswasthetruelight.wordpress.com

...for that eye that is turned from the light is the blind, and leads into the ditch. (Works, Vol. IV, p.25)…

Our time has been a failure. We are called to ‘the revolution of tenderness’ (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, p48), but we largely fail to respond. Ours is the violence of indifference towards the cry of the earth, the cries of countless creatures condemned in factory farms, those of refugees, those of victims of the Western world’s addiction to arms sales, and many others.

What has this ‘post-Christian’ era proclaimed? A ‘society orphaned of transcendence’ (Erik Varden, The…

The following introductory essay was first posted on my blog site, Abiding Quaker, and can be found there in the archives under February 2019. The lecture by Lewis Benson that is introduced in this essay can be found on this New Foundation Fellowship site under the Resources tab. Here is a link to this…

Announcement:

Kathleen Schmitz-Hertzberg nee Brookhouse, February 16, 1916 – January 29, 2019 (known as Kathleen Hertzberg)

Kathleen died peacefully in her sleep at Parkview Long Term Care Home in Stouffville, Ontario, Canada. She is buried in the Friends Burial Ground in…

This is part 4 of a series I am working on that has been appearing on my blog, This was the true light.

Now, lest I should lose my way, I want to recap what this study is about. Conventional theology looks at John the Baptist's announcement, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," as pertaining to Jesus being a guilt offering enabling God to forgive errant humanity. Mankind's…

Having faith, [a person] can thrive even when planted in the chaos of the world that lies in wickedness, even as a sycamine tree could be planted in a hostile environment of the sea (Lk. 17:6). Having faith, the hearing/obeying relationship with his Creator, man is restored, strengthened, and empowered to withstand and rise above such assaults upon his soul. He is given the power of God to rule over his human nature and to…

Prior to seeking membership in my local Meeting, I listened to lots of YouTube videos and read several biographies about early Quakers, My takeaway was that the Quaker space might be a place where I could  explore my relationship with God, void of judgement. That, in some degree, has been the case with one exception: God and Christ are rarely discussed in my local Meeting.

It seems that God and Christ have become not exactly estranged but something close to it. The word Spirit and…

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…

This morning in worship, I felt led to share the first couple of paragraphs from George Fox's letter to Lady Claypole.

It contains much useful spiritual counsel, and reveals much about how Fox viewed the interior world of human spiritual experience.

One of our attenders, whose first language is not English, asked questions about one particular passage;

"When you are in the transgression of the life of God in your own particular way, the mind flies up in the air,…

The Book of Revelation was one of the topics studied in a Woodbrooke Bible Reading Course a few months ago.  Here is a summary of a talk from it’s notes together with the meaningful commentary by William Barclay.  We were encouraged to share with our meetings.

There is a spirit that runs all through the bible, and Revelation stems from what has gone before. 

The Bible begins:  In the beginning, God…

Just to alert you to an interesting discussion that has taken place on reddit.com/r/Quakers. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Quakers/comments/9x7h1w/can_there_really_be_quakerism_without_jesus/

This is a post I put up in response to another post someone put up concerning Quakerism Without Jesus. (Sorry, I don't have the like to that post.)

If you find that post useful, feel…

It is by subjection to the Light that ‘the exacter and violent doer in them might be thrown out: and they that had been hypocrites, might come to bring forth first fruits of repentance, and their mountain of sin and earthliness might be laid low in them…’ (George Fox, Journal, p32). This is a timely reminder of the obligation, set out by early Friends, to wage the Lamb’s war of resistance against the forces of violence, militarism, and hypocrisy. Some Liberal Quakers deflower the peace…

He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice…

The early Quaker experience shows that unity is possible among those who are listening to Christ. George Fox, founder of the Quaker movement in seventeenth century England, saw that God speaks to all with one voice, and therefore does not contradict himself.

When differing points of view on important matters emerged in a Quaker meeting, all present waited for God to show them who was right. Sometimes the task fell to one person to turn the whole group in the right direction,…