All Blog Posts (347)

During Meeting for Worship it was opened in me to speak about Jesus's criticism of the Pharisees. Matt: 23. I understood Jesus's criticism to be for two reasons: the Pharisees were keepers of a demanding law. Yet they didn't keep God's Law, handed down by Moses. They taught the Law but did not have the Spirit. Two, the Pharisees had rewritten the Law or wrote new law that was not of God but men. The new law was influenced by their captivity in Babylon. These new laws were burdensome and…

If you listen to the language of professing Christians, a recurring phrase you will hear is "In Jesus' name," "In Christ's name," "In his name," or some other variant. I am not sure what they mean by the phrase, neither am I sure if they understand what those words really mean.

To do something or request something in Jesus' name is to act under his authority. "Have you been authorized by Jesus to act in his stead?" I have often wondered. From my perspective, I would have to conclude…

What do you think the Church is?

One of the distinct aspects of the Gospel of Early Friends, and a matter of faith that George Fox was most clear on, was his conception what it is that constitutes the True Church.



A good starting point to reach clarity on this point is to ask ourselves the question, what is the Church?

Misconceptions

There are many misleading answers offered by various counterfeit versions of Christianity. They tend to…

The Solid Rock

Vs 1:  My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

Chorus:  On Christ the Solid Rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

Vs 2:  When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace.  In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil.

Vs 3:  His Oath, his covenant, his blood support me in…

We’re here today because we’ve gone through these trials; we've been tempted countless times to love something more than truth, and for the love of it, we’ve chosen truth instead, though our choice entails baptism into Christ’s death, the world's brief triumph. We know that the eternal triumph, the resurrection to new life, follows the inward dying to the self. In that triumphant inward resurrection, we know not only rightness but the joy and the peace of having received Christ, the life, of…

Arendt’s ideas of the necessity for deep, critical thought to halt evil, and evil's impervious resistance to thought, has a Scriptural corollary in the work and execution of John the Baptist. Like Arendt, John is calling people to engage in thought when he cries, "Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mt. 3:2). The word “repentance” at its etymological root means “to think differently.” John's call to repentance is a call to re-think or to begin to think more deeply and…

Introduction

For the next few days, I will be posting in three parts the paper that I gave at the New Foundation Fellowship gathering last month near Casper, Wyoming, U.S.A. As readers might surmise from the title, this paper examines the question of where resides the power to counteract and overcome evil. Nowhere are the essential criteria for victory over evil upheld and identified more succinctly than in Jesus's rebuttal of Satan, which occurs in the first 17 verses of the fourth…

The call to obey God is a call to action. It's not enough just to commit our lives to Jesus and decide to follow him. It's not enough to read the Bible, reserve a regular time for prayer, and have fellowship with other Christians. It's possible to do all these things and still not approach what God actually wants from us.



How do I know this? Because of how God has dealt with me. In 1985, during a Quaker Meeting for Worship in the Name of Jesus—silent, waiting worship—I received a…

Many years ago, Else Pickvance (1915-2002)[1], gave me a small abridged version of the journal of John Burnyeat. Else and I had been talking about the importance of properly discerning Christ’s leading within ourselves and the importance of our spiritual community in helping us toward in this vital task of the Spirit. She pointed out to me this small passage which to me speaks volumes about the spiritual place…

Continued from part 3. This is the final installment

3 A Question of Occupation

What are you doing?

The Exodus 19 passage quoted above gives voice to the concept of the kingdom of God that was fundamental to the foundation of Israel. But the prophets spoke of a life in the Kingdom of God that would transcend the Mosaic law. Moses pointed to the prophet whom God would raise up, into whose mouth He would put His words. This prophet would speak God’s word to the…

The Good News: part 3

….Continued from part 2....

The Good News, the real Good News, is all good news. There is no dualism involved. Jesus began his earthly ministry announcing “repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.” He continues his earthly ministry proclaiming “repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.” “So,” you may ask, “when do we get to see that Kingdom come? It has been 2,000 years since Jesus announced that it was at hand. Shouldn’t it have arrived by now? ” The Kingdom…

...Continued from part 1....

Look at the contrast between what modern evangelists and preachers declare as the gospel and the message proclaimed by George Fox and the early Quakers:

...therefore, fear the Lord, let him be your fear and dread, and turn to the light, which Christ the Son hath enlightened you withal, and believe in Christ, the saviour of the world, the offering for the sin of the whole world, that you might have life in him, and through him, and come to…

Note: the following four posts are taken from the my presentation at the 2015 gathering, which has been broken at logical break points into a series of smaller sections.

1 Introduction

All churches claim to be preaching the gospel. We can either accept that as a given and live with the confusion of disparate messages or we can come to some yardstick that is able to distinguish the true gospel from the false. In this session I want to hold before us such a…

The Solid Rock

Vs 1:  My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

Chorus:  On Christ the Solid Rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

Vs 2:  When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace.  In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil.

Vs 3:  His Oath, his covenant, his blood support me in…

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell…

Nonbelievers often criticize religion as a cause of division among people. It is true that some people treat their religion as a badge of group membership and an excuse to hate and attack others outside the group. Carried to an extreme, this results in religiously motivated terrorism. The claim is that all religion is bad because it divides people.

Of course, many who claim to be Christians behave in ways that seem to support this criticism. There are fanatics in Christianity as well…

Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you. A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards. Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy…

“God's guidance is sure and perfect, but our discernment can always fail.” This is often the argument put forward to counter claims that we can know and do the will of God in this life.



But if we focus on human weakness rather than on the power of God, we might not notice how God intervenes to correct us when we are going wrong and don't realize it.



Recently I experienced such an intervention. A minor episode in my work had been claiming part of my attention because it had…

So, are we doing anything more than playing semantics? What difference of understanding is to be gained by looking at things from one point of view or the other? 



Consider Epistle XXXII in Vol. VII of the Works of Fox, "When your minds go forth from the pure spirit of God and are drawn out from it, there the image of God comes to be lost, in those whose mind goes out from the pure to lust after that which is in the fall, which may appear like truth in the notion..."



Make…

Even though Fox spoke and wrote about the spirit of God, at times calling it the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, what he has to say and how it relates to the gospel is all Hebrew, there is not a shred of similarity with Holy Spirit Christianity. For example: "For though I read the scriptures that spake of Christ and of God, yet I knew Him not but by revelation as he who hath the key did open and as the Father of life drew me to his son by his spirit." (Works, Vol. I, p. 75) Fox asserts that…