All posts tagged Friends

Don’t be ashamed of Christ

For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away? For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.
Luke 9:25-26

Some of you may have read a recent newspaper article in which it was stated that “The Quakers” are considering dropping any reference to the word “God” in their meetings, literature, publicity, etc.

As so often happens with newspaper articles, clarity and accuracy is sacrificed for the sake of brevity. In the context of the article, “The Quakers” refers only to the body in the UK properly known as Britain Yearly Meeting (that body also affects the title ‘The Religious Society of Friends in Britain’, as though claiming exclusivity to name and territory). BYM has inherited the organisation and property of the Society of Friends, though, for a long time, it has abandoned the Society’s faith and testimonies for ones based on worldly values. We know BYM folk to be well-meaning people, but being well-meaning is not enough. Indeed their well-meaning-ness has gained them the respect of the world – but what does that profit them if that respect is gained at the loss of their soul. Their organisation may continue to function, but it will never again live.

We take no pleasure in their failure. Their being named in the context of the article, however, means that those of us who are not associated with them but who bear the same outward name – “Quaker” – are obliged to work doubly hard to re-affirm that BYM does not speak for us, nor does it speak in the name of Quakerism, nor does it express the ground of our faith in Jesus Christ.

We do not have creeds that we recite, as the churches of the world do, but we do find unity in the statement our ancient friend George Fox made to the Governor of Barbados in 1671, as reproduced below.

“We own and believe in God, the only wise, omnipotent and everlasting God, the Creator of all things in heaven and on earth, and the Preserver of all that he hath made; who is God over all, blessed for ever. And we own and believe in Jesus Christ his beloved and only begotten Son, in whom he is well pleased. And we own and believe that he was made a sacrifice for sin, who knew no sin, and that he was buried and rose again on the third day by the power of his Father, for our justification, and that he ascended up into heaven. This Jesus who was the foundation of the holy prophets and apostles, is our foundation and we believe there is no other foundation to be laid but that which is laid, even Christ Jesus who tasted death for every man, shed his blood for all men, is the propitiation for our sins, and not ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. We believe that he alone is our Redeemer and Saviour. Christ Jesus the Alpha and Omega, the First and Last. He is (as the Scriptures of Truth say of him) our wisdom, righteousness, justification, and redemption, neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. He rules in our hearts, by his law of love and life, and made us free from the law of sin and death. We have no life but by him, for he is the quickening Spirit, the second Adam. He is our Mediator who makes peace and reconciliation between God offended and us offending. He being the Oath of God, the new Covenant of Light, Life, Grace, and Peace, the author and finisher of our faith. This we say is that Lord Jesus Christ, whom we own to be our life and salvation.”

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by plainquakers on 10/05/2018  •  Permalink
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Posted by plainquakers on 10/05/2018

https://plainquakers.org/2018/05/10/dont-be-ashamed-of-christ/

“Beware of Low-flying Bigots! “

The following article appeared in The Call in 2013
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Some sects of professing Christians maintain that no believer should go by any other name than ‘Christian’, because that is what the early Church knew themselves as, citing the Bible as their prime evidence for this. However, let us look at where this word appears in the Bible. It can be found in three places:

Acts 11:26 “And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.” This Greco-Latin word Χριστιανός /Christianus was undoubtedly given to believers by the pagan population of Antioch, most likely as a dismissive term, and was not how they addressed or thought of each other and themselves.

Acts 26:28 “Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” From Paul’s audience with King Herod Agrippa and Roman Procurator Porcius Festus, we learn that the Rome-educated Agrippa, brought up in the Jewish faith, comes close to an intellectual, outward assent to the Apostles testimony that Christ fulfilled the Prophets. He uses the word common amongst outsiders – ‘Christian’ – but Paul does not use it. Rather, he distinguishes between the outward perception and the reality. “I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day were both almost, and altogether such as I am…” (Acts 26:29) “Such as I am,” says Paul! Not one who may be outwardly labelled a ‘Christian’, but one who can say “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

1 Peter 4:16 “Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God…” The previous two usages of the word prepare the way for this. They are super-ficial, they do not show an understanding of what it meant to be a disciple, to be a member of the early Church, to be a ‘saint’. When a person suffered for being a ‘Christian’ he suffered not because anyone truly understood that to which he was bearing witness, but because of what they perceived him to be. Disloyal, a fanatic cultist, a bad citizen, a traitor to the Emperor, a blasphemer, a performer of erotic rites (‘love feasts’), an eater of flesh and drinker of blood, even a fire-raiser and an atheist. The early Church had a message of love and salvation, but many were deaf to it, hearing and seeing only the superficial ‘Christian’.

It has been claimed that the name was adopted by believers, maybe as a convenient identification, or maybe to take the sting out of it as a term of reproach. This is not unlikely, and the term ‘Christian’ is one with which most believers, including ourselves, are comfortable. Thus it came into being in the same way that 17th century disciples became known as ‘Quakers’ first as a term of abuse and then by adopting the name. But still, there is no more scriptural evidence to suggest that ‘Christian’ was divinely ordained than ‘Quaker’ was, save that providence may have led the way into each. In Peter’s time, each assembly of believers (and not the building in which they assembled) was known as a Church, and its congregation as ‘saints’. Peter himself called them “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people…” (1 Peter 2:9)

By contrast, these days the term ‘Christian’ seems to be a very broad and liberal definition. Rather than insist on the nomenclature and criticise anyone who doesn’t, it behoves us to strive to be ‘as Paul was’, when he appeared before Festus and Agrippa.

There is a danger in adopting a name levelled slanderously at us. Nowadays the most frequent term used by outsiders is ‘bigot’. This is mainly due to our testimony with regard to a single issue. But our testimony is one of God’s love. “How can you claim to ‘love’ us,” ask our detractors, “If you do not agree with our self-image and with our socio-political agenda?” Hard as it may be for them to understand – we simply do! In the famous parable, the Samaritan simply sees a man beaten and left for dead by thieves and helps him. He never once asks the man who he is, what his ethnic heritage is, what his sexual orientation is, what his class or political beliefs are, what his religion is, whether he is an honest man or himself a thief. He simply helps him, and at his own risk.

That was one of Christ’s models for what a person who was ‘as Paul was’ would be like. His charity would be unthinking and unhesitating, informed by no bigotry. But there would nevertheless be things to which he could not, in all love, assent without shattering the peace of God in his conscience. To label this kind of person a ‘bigot’ is to redefine the word by bending it wholly out of shape. What part of a believer’s testimony to telling the truth would it be if we ever accepted this term as being divinely ordained for us, or even convenient to adopt?

“Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way…  Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.  Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.” (Matthew 5:22-26)

We put this question: For our righteousness to be greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees, how would we ‘agree’ with an adversary who has insulted us in this way? What canst thou say?

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by plainquakers on 11/08/2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by plainquakers on 11/08/2017

https://plainquakers.org/2017/08/11/beware-of-low-flying-bigots/

Some words on Gospel power

The following article was published in ‘The Call’ in 2010.
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“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” Matthew 5:13

An English Friend, in a note written after travelling in Gospel ministry in the United States in the 1990s, said:

“During my travels I saw many periodicals in Friends’ houses which were from mainstream evangelical sources; and though the writers may well have been honest and tender – and the Friends certainly were – the doctrines in those periodicals were in many cases those which the first generations of Friends had been led away from, as being built upon sand.

I was invited once to watch an evangelical preacher on television. What struck me more than anything was not his preaching nor his doctrine, of which I remember little, but his white shirt, his immaculately knotted necktie, his orthodontistry, his winning smile, his neat hairstyle, and so on. There might have been life in his work, but I couldn’t see it.

However, I also visited a place where youngsters with learning difficulties gathered. I call them youngsters because they were each reckoned to have a mental age of five, though they were in their teens and early twenties mostly. At one point they were doing what they called their ‘craft’, which entailed coulouring and cutting out pictures of biblical figures, and attaching tabs to make them stand upright. One young man – lanky, and I guess rather unprepossessing – suddenly announced to his immediate neighbours ‘I have Jesus in my heart’, and then went round his friends asking each one “Do you have Jesus in your heart?’ At each affirmative answer he smiled and chuckled with delight, so much so that I was struck deeply by this, and the words of our ancient friend George Fox were recalled to my mind – ‘What canst thou say?’ And also the scripture words ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou has perfected praise’.

Not many days after this episode, I was at present in a Meeting House for their business meeting. A concern was raised about reaching out to the local community, and ideas were expressed; it became like a brain-storming session, and less like a meeting in the Lord’s presence, and I began to feel very uneasy. I looked across to a good friend of mine, a faithful woman, and saw that she was deep in prayer.

Suddenly an elderly Friend rose. In his time he had been a greatly-gifted and recorded Gospel minister, but of late a stroke had quietened and weakened him, so that he did not often hold much conversation with folk, let alone speak in meeting. I do not recall the words that were given to him, but I do recall that they were powerful prophecy. When he sat down the meeting was quiet again, brought back under the Lord’s discipline, and business continued prayerfully.

On that occasion the words came to me ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’.

Great indeed is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness, and blessed is the LORD for letting me see such things. Small they may seem to those who go about in earthly greatness and splendour, but they are miracles.”

Although we do not preach up George Fox, but rather Christ the Head of the Church, we do find GF’s writing to be truly prophetic and worth reading and repeating. These lines from Epistle 318: “And keep your testimony for your men and women’s meetings, in the power of God, by which you are gathered out of the apostasy, and over it, into the everlasting gospel order, as was in the apostles’ days. Which gospel is not of man; but by Christ, the spiritual man” are such, when we consider the wreck that has been made of gospel order in some places – even some places that claim our society’s name. Rather than seeking the wisdom that is of the world, let us hope to be more like that naïve youth, and like that elderly man – such as the world counts as nothing, but who are loved and blessed by the Lord, and who praise and serve him.

Amen.

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Please note that any advertisements that appear on this or any other page on this web site are the responsibility of the platform provider and do not constitute an endorsement by Friends in Christ of any product or service advertised.

by plainquakers on 01/10/2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by plainquakers on 01/10/2015

https://plainquakers.org/2015/10/01/some-words-on-gospel-power/

What therefore God hath joined, let not man put asunder

(This article appeared in The Call in 2009)

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.
John 2:1-10

At their recent annual convention the larger, liberal body which also takes the name ‘Friends’ gave its support to marriages between people of the same gender. At our Yearly Meeting, which happened a handful of weeks later, the subject did not even come up. You may ask why that was.

There is no doubt that the matter is a ‘hot’ social topic, one about which there is much pressure, and about which there is much public debate, with views for and against expressed forcefully by their proponents. How can something which is so much to the forefront of the public consciousness not be on the agenda of a church that reaches out to the world?

In the Apostle’s letter to the Romans we read: “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” (Romans 12:2). The implication – no, the clear meaning – of this is that the Church, of which Jesus Christ is the living Head, is not conformed to the world, does not dance to the world’s tune, does not necessarily give priority to things which are high on the world’s agenda; on the contrary, the Church listens, with an open heart and mind, to the voice of the Shepherd, and lets him be its Guide, it’s Teacher, it’s King – the setter of it’s agenda, one could say.

The Lord may speak to the Church at the time the world calls ‘Christmas’, for example, and say: ‘Remember my death on the cross, and my resurrection’. Or he may speak to the Church at the time the world calls ‘Easter’ and say: ‘Remember my birth in the stable’. He may come amongst the assembled Church at times when the world mourns, and say: ‘Rejoice!’; or when the world rejoices he may say: ‘Mourn!’ At a time when the world agitates itself with such-and-such a matter, he may come amongst the assembled Church and calm them; and when the world is calm, he may stir up his Church.

Everything which the Church does in response to the Lord – even its expectant waiting upon his presence – preaches the gospel. Every last thing, small or large! This includes witnessing the marriage of two people, whom he has brought together. The witnessing is to be part of the preaching of the gospel, and the marriage itself is to be part of the preaching of the gospel.

An important message to the world on the subject of sexuality, marriage, and indeed of anything, is that no one – gay or straight – has any right to foist an agenda onto the Lord. No one, gay or straight, has a right to try shake God by the throat and say “I demand that you sanctify and justify me exactly as I am!” It doesn’t work like that. Someone who comes in pure fear of the Lord says, like the publican in the temple, “God be merciful to me a sinner”, giving his or her all to God – right down to those cherished socio-political agendas – willing to give up all, to die if necessary, to be crucified and risen with Christ. Nothing in any person, gay or straight, is to be hugged close and held back; God will have us totally, and anything held back becomes an idol!

There is a well-known text in scripture, at the head of this article: “What therefore God hath joined, let not man put asunder.” Friends, the facility with which ‘man’ puts asunder marriages, even those in which the couples have had solemn words spoken over them by a priest or by a civil functionary, is testimony to the fact that in the world God frequently does not join these people; equally, the loveless marriages which are endured on a point of ‘religious’ principle are a testimony to the same. Whilst we believe that ones word, once given, should be kept, we can see that humankind is a weak vessel, and human strength alone is not to be relied upon in such cases. Far from widening the ‘right’ for two people to come together by choice, it is the lot of the Church – perhaps – to narrow it, to bear witness that only a man and a woman truly joined by God are not to be put asunder; and by doing this, by bearing this witness faithfully, even if we do so at the expense of our own inclinations, opinions, and agendas, the Church preaches the Gospel.

Let this be added as a footnote and as a caveat. Friends in Christ, by our coming before the Lord in worship and in our daily lives, endeavour to give up all and become the Church. This is not ours by right, nor by desert, but by Grace alone. Do we fail? Of course we do, time and time again; but we are willing to throw ourselves on the Lord’s mercy time and time again. Once we felt led to witness the marriage of a couple, in hope and in trust. That marriage eventually failed. Did that failure preach the Gospel? Or was it perhaps a lesson given to us, so that we would learn first hand the feeling of our own weakness? Who can say?

What can be said is that such a circumstance has made us more willing to bow our heads and to accept humbly the agenda of our Ruler, the ever-present Lord Jesus Christ. It is him whom we preach – we are nothing, Christ is all.

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Please note that any advertisements that appear on this or any other page on this web site are the responsibility of the platform provider and do not constitute an endorsement by Friends in Christ of any product or service advertised.

by plainquakers on 28/06/2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by plainquakers on 28/06/2015

https://plainquakers.org/2015/06/28/what-therefore-god-hath-joined-let-not-man-put-asunder/

Friends in Christ new WordPress site now live.

This is just an introductory note to open our new site on WordPress.

by plainquakers on 26/10/2011  •  Permalink
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Posted by plainquakers on 26/10/2011

https://plainquakers.org/2011/10/26/friends-in-christ-new-wordpress-site-now-live/