All Blog Posts (337)

An orchestra is just as likely as any other workplace to harbor gossips. In a conversation with Kathy, one of my casual friends, I mentioned that “I don’t set foot in any church unless God sends me there.”

I knew that Kathy’s good friend, Beryl, was an extremely churchy Baptist, and that Kathy would report what I’d said. That this had occurred became clear at the next rehearsal.

During our 15-minute…

In the days when I was attending a Fundamentalist church, I found that I couldn’t stand the pastor’s and members’ rigid convictions that only a person who believed certain specified doctrines could go to Heaven. In particular, I couldn’t stand this in reference to my mother.

She was an atheist ethnic Jew. When I became a Christian, this was hard for her, but she did let me tell her what God was doing for me.…

In the early 1980s, during the years I was reading the Bible, Fundamentalist Anita Bryant was shrilling against homosexuality all over the (radio) airwaves.

I noticed this because the Bible testifies that God requires righteousness across the board. Why, therefore, would any Protestant elevate one sin above another?

For decades this baffled me. Finally, after I’d noticed many other things about the…

Before I became a Christian, I met Janet at the office where we both worked. I was between my bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Janet and I became friends and, since she lived close to the office, we frequently walked to her apartment for lunch. During that year, I’d been reading the Bible, and was encountering many passages I couldn't understand.

Exod. 4:21 begins the story of how God delivered the…

Gretchen was a college friend. All went well with our relationship until after that Meeting for Worship in the Name of Jesus. We’d both been Christians prior to that Meeting, and were accustomed to tell each other about our spiritual lives.

After that pivotal Meeting, I next stayed with my father at our family cabin in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Prior to this visit, I’d experienced unmistakable signs that my relationship with him was…

Introduction

In 1985, when I was 31 years old, I attended my first Quaker Meeting for Worship in the Name of Jesus. I’d been going to Quaker meetings for the past three years, but these were liberal meetings in which nobody agreed on who their teacher was.

In the Meeting for Worship in the Name of Jesus, I received a massive visitation of God’s love and power, and knew I was in the presence of Christ.…

    In a way that no one could have foreseen, Palestine has become the ‘moral litmus test for the world’ (June Jordan). What does this mean for us as Friends of Truth? It means that the fierce tremor of the inward light is, or ought to be, especially active. More so if we are not to betray the tenderness within that awaits our response. If we are those who are coming to ‘know Christ their teacher, their counsellor, their shepherd to feed them, and their bishop to oversee them and their…

Jesus told his disciples, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations..."

Why make disciples of all nations? Because they have all abandoned the life mankind was created to live. They have abandoned the image of God and instead of living beings, they are lifeless.

So, I am brought back to the Garden and I hear the Voice of the Lord walking in the Garden calling, "Ha-a-dam where are you? Ha-a-dam, where are you?"

Mankind, finding they are naked, have hidden…

I love these first lines. "Friends, in the power and life of God dwell, in unity one with another, that with the life of God ye may answer that of God in every one." We came back to this theme many times during our discussion of the epistle. If we are seeking to reach that seed of God in our adversary we do not take vengeance we do not seek to win arguments. Our aim is to touch something in the other person that causes a Godly response, a quickening of the embryo that has long been buried…

Ye must do nothing for the Lord by earthly policy, nor trust to that; but wait in the power of the Lord God, and be ordered by that to his glory. Ye will never be right, till then, and that must keep peace among you.

Epistle LXXV (75) is full of Godly wisdom, but this quote jumped out. Do our lives reflect being ordered by the power of the Lord God? are they the products of earthly policy? This and much more filled our more than an hour of discussion on this epistle.…

We were a small group this morning. The text, however, that we read and discussed I found to be quite powerful. Fox was just coming out from under a deep, spiritual and physical exercise, which many thought would be the cause of his death. As he was being released from burden of that exercise, he had openings into the heavenly Jerusalem and how those who dwell therein know Christ who is able and "of ability" to bring you up into the state of Adam and Eve before the fall and into a higher…

We met on the 13th via Zoom to read and discuss Fox's Journal. I read from Vol. II, pp 100-104. It was a precious time, but I forgot to start the recording. However, I do want to copy out the letter Fox wrote to encourage Friends to stand faithful. We spent a good share of our time considering what Fox had to say.

My Dear Friends--The seed is above all. In it walk; in which ye all have life. Be not amazed at the weather; for always the just suffered by the unjust, but the…

Epistle LXXIV

Our discussion on 12/17/23 dwelt for some time on the sentence, "And live in the spirit, in which ye will have unity and peace, and the spiritual weapons, to cut down the spiritual enemies of your peace." There are many Christian groups who claim to make the Holy Spirit central. If you listen to them or read their writings you seldom hear Jesus Christ mentioned as a present influence. It is as though they say, "Jesus did His job some 2,000 years ago. We will see Him…

Dear Friends,

You are invited to a meeting of the George Fox Project Trust.

Trustees meet regularly to discuss how we can support the trusts aims of publishing the writings of Early Friends. We welcome attendance from New Foundation workers and supporters.

Our next meeting is on the 15-12-2023 @18:30 GMT.

You can use this link to join:

https://meet.google.com/png-qehy-kfk

There are times when our meetings go above and beyond the usual. November 19 was such a meeting. We were reading a fairly short Epistle, (LXXIV or 74), but we only got half way through it in our discussion. We will consider the 2nd part in our December meeting. I will not offer a summary but encourage all to follow the link to the recording below.

You can listen to/download the reading and our discussion by going to …

On Saturday we met to discuss Fox's Journal. We read again the passage beginning "Sound, sound abroad..." and went on from there. Fox finished up his tour in Ireland visiting meetings and discussing the gospel with other people. One discussion concerned election and reprobation. Fox laid out in clear terms how the election is in Christ who was before the world began while the reprobation is in the evil spirit which has been since the world began. 

We read about a fake George Fox,…

SOUND, sound abroad, you faithful servants of the Lord, witnesses in his name, faithful servants, prophets of the Highest, and angels of the Lord ! Sound ye all abroad in the world, to the awakening and raising of the dead, that they may be awakened and raised up out of the grave to hear the voice that, is living. For the dead have long heard the dead, and the blind have long wandered among the blind, and the deaf amongst the deaf. Therefore sound, sound, ye…

Epistle LXVIII.

Friends,—Know the life and power of God in yourselves, and one in another, and to that power be obedient, to thresh down all deceit within and without you in wisdom, and in that dwell which comprehends the world; and know the rest, which is for the people of God, which he that believeth hath entered into. So know the life that stands in God; and all know the power of God, for that power shall never be…

Marvin Michelo is a young Quaker minister, in the true sense of the word, in Zambia.  You can read a brief description of his need, his call to proclaim the gospel preached by George Fox and early Friends, and make a donation by going to https://gofund.me/d3e6c8df. Thank you for prayerfully considering this opportunity to extend a helping hand to Marvin.

With the publication of these sermons, the "library" of Quaker classics readily available to the reading public gains a completeness it had previously lacked. Oh, we'd had the writings of George Fox, Isaac Penington, James Nayler, Robert Barclay, and William Penn in print; but none of these had fully penetrated the armor of my complacent world-view until I'd read Stephen Crisp's Sermon No. 14, "The Kingdom of God Within," made available by the NFF a generation ago, and been struck by Crisp's…