Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
GEORGE FOX
THE TERROR OF THE MARK OF THE BEAST.
Now read the story of one of the greatest men in history since the Apostles. This man would not take the mark of the beast. He believed in the inner light. He believed he was the temple of the Holy Ghost.
He would not bow down to King James, the church of England, or anyone else, but Jesus.
He honored the new covenant that Jesus built with his blood. This covenant, which is "Christ in you," worked in George Fox. I will live in them, talk in them, and they shall be my sons and daughters, saith God. You are the temple of God. Fox believed this, and lived it.
The first beast, Constantine, legalized Christianity. The second beast, King James, authorized the Bible. So the church of England had authority from the Bible, to persecute Fox and his people.
Fox told one judge to quake at the Word of God. The judge called him a Quaker, and that's where the name came from.
Constantine had fifty Bibles written up on fine vellum, but he did not authorize the Bible. King James gave authority to the Bible. He made this image of God's Word to talk.
How many times have you heard people say, "The Bible says?"
Well, the image that King James made to talk, did not control Fox. He was led by the inner light. The Holy Ghost.
People will hold the Bible up in their hand and say, "This is my Bible, I am what it says I am, I can do what it says I can do."
In Fox's time, people would say, "If you have a Bible, it's like having the Pope in your pocket."
Fox would have none of that. He knew that the letter kills, and that the image of God's Word, only says what you interpret it to say. The Spirit gave Fox his light.
Jesus did not die so we could have a book. But rather, a gift, a promise from God, the Holy Ghost. The gift of himself in you.
If the Bible is the Word of God, then Satan has the Word of God.
Fox was sent to prison for several years, for keeping the new covenant.
Christ in you. Satan will not let anyone live with the Holy Ghost. He can't control the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the only thing on earth that Satan can't control.
THE FRIENDS (QUAKERS) go back to the 1650's in England. They were considered unconventional because they affirm the Inner Light, the spiritual nerve center that God has put in all of us. They rejected the validity of the clergy, liturgy, and sacraments. They have silent worship meetings and speak only when inspired. Every person can have this inner light and all people are equal.
Their challenges and victories started when George Fox (1624-91), who was a British seeker of spiritual truth and peace, couldn't find what he was looking for in the churches of his time. But he did find what he was seeking in a personal relationship with Christ: "When all my hopes in churches were gone, I heard a voice that said, "That it is the inner voice, or inner light, based on John 1:9 The true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." A voice available to everyone, and has nothing to do with ceremonies, rituals or creeds. Every person is a walking church and every heart is God's altar and shrine.
Quakerism was treated as revolutionary by the state church of England. To say the state and church were wrong and that their theology was nothing, and that you didn't need to go to church to find God. That it was wrong to pay taxes for the state church clergy's support was considered rebellion.
Fox and his early followers went even further. They not only refused to go to church, but they also insisted on freedom of speech, assembly, and worship. They would not take oaths in court; they refused to go to war; they doffed their hats to no one, king or commoner; they made no distinction in sex or social class; they condemned slavery and England's treatment of prisoners and the insane. The very names they adopted, Children of Truth, Children of Light, Friends of Truth, aroused ridicule and fierce opposition. When Fox, hauled into court, advised one judge to "tremble at the Word of the Lord", he heard the judge call him "a Quaker". But derision was not enough to stop the Friends. So persecution unsheathed it's sword.
Quakers were whipped, jailed, tortured, mutilated, and murdered. Fox spent six years in jail; others spent decades, even dying there.
From 1650 until 1689, more than 3,000 suffered for conscience's sake and 300 to 400 died in prison. But thanks to that persecution, the group grew, and the Religious Society of Friends was founded in 1652. When Fox died, Quakers numbered 50,000.
Some were already in America, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher arrived in Massachusetts from Barbados in 1656; they were promptly accused of being witches and were deported. Two days later, eight more Friends arrived from England. Hastily, laws were passed to keep them out; the whipping post worked overtime, but failed. Four were hanged in Boston. But Quakers kept coming into New England, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Rhode Island and Pennsylvania welcomed them from the beginning, and the long horror in the communities that did not welcome them ended with the passage of the Toleration Act of 1689.
With that law and Fox's death, a new phase began. Persecution waned and died; Quakers settled down to business and farming, were known for their pacifism and honesty, and became quite prosperous.
The Inner Light is highly important. Friends believe that grace, the power from God to help humankind resist evil, is universal among all people. They seek not holiness but perfection, a higher, more spiritual standard of life for both society and the individual, and they believe that the truth is unfolding and continuing.
They value the Bible highly but prefer to rely on fresh individual guidance from the Spirit of God, which produced the Bible, rather than follow only what has been revealed to others. Some modern groups accept the Bible as the final authority in all religious matters.
They believe supremely in the nearness of God to the human soul, in direct intercourse and immediate communion, in mystical experience in a firsthand discovery of God. It means and involves a sensitiveness to the wider spiritual Life above us, around us, and within us, a dedication to duty, a passion for truth, and an appreciation of goodness, and eagerness to let love and the grace of God come freely through one's own life, a reverence for the will of God wherever it is revealed in past or present, and a high faith that Christ is a living presence and a life giving energy always within reach of the receptive soul.
THE END OF THE GEORGE FOX STORY IS VERY, VERY SAD.
All of his followers that live in this world today have taken the mark of the beast or don't even really believe in Jesus anymore, but in some new age type of belief.
Revelation 12: The woman that fled into the wilderness for a time, times, and a half time, from the face of the serpent. But the serpent cast out of his mouth, water as a flood, after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.
This flood was people, Bible worshippers that covered the new world.
Satan sent a flood of people that resist the Holy Ghost. Stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. They destroyed all of George Fox's people. Today you never hear of a Quaker dying for their faith. George Fox must be turning over in his grave.
Apostle Paul writes; If after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me. Fox fought with beasts in England. He and his brethren gave their lives for a life in Christ. While today his followers bow down to the very image of the beast he fought against; King James and his image of God's Word, his Bible. They don't have the Word in their hearts anymore like Fox had. They have it in their hand or in their head. 666
King James born 1566
King James VI (6th) of Scotland
King James authorized 66 books
THE MARK OF THE BEAST.
Jesus' voice will be heard again in the land.
The sons of God will be manifested.
Satan cannot stop the regenerated seed of Christ. He will live again in his people.
