Showing posts with label Quakers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quakers. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Vengeance in New England




Many Calvinist Puritans [Congregationalists] had left England to escape the earlier age's religious persecutions, and they established colonies in Massachusetts. When the Quakers arrived and told them they did not have the true faith, these refugees of persecution turned to become massive persecutors themselves. From William Sewel's 1695 History of the Christian People Called Quakers: The Governor of Massachusetts; the magistrates of Boston, Cambridge, and Salem; the priests, and many other officials viciously persecuted the Quakers, (or anyone who dared care for them), with beatings, whippings, chopping off ears, boring tongues through with a hot iron, and hangings; these persecutions were applied to men, women, and even their accompanying children without mercy. They called both Quaker men and women witches, possessed of the devil. These criminal, unchristian persecutors, themselves met strange, dramatic deaths, sometimes acknowledging it was the judgment of God. John Endicott, the vicious governor who had so many whipped to the point that all their flesh on their backs was destroyed, himself was afflicted so that his back slowly rotted away, with a stench that drove away any would be relievers. But the entire Boston area suffered an even stranger judgment - quoting Sewel:

"Yet one thing remarkable I may mention here, which when I first heard, could not fully give credit to: but thinking it worth the while to make a narrow inquiry into it, I did so, not only by writing, but also from the mouths of persons that had been eye-witnesses, or had been informed by such; and from these I got this concurring observation, namely,  that the country about Boston was formerly a very fruitful soil that produced excellent wheat; but that since the time this town had been stained with the blood of the Quakers, so called, no wheat, or similar crops, would grow to perfection within twenty miles, though the ground had been ploughed and sown several times; for sometimes what was sown was spoiled by vermin or insects; at other times it grew up, but scarcely yielded more than was sown, and so could not support the cost of planting; and in another year the expected harvest was quashed by another accident; and these disappointments continuing many years, the people at length grew weary of making further trial, and so left the ground untilled; notwithstanding that twenty miles off from Boston the soil is fruitful, and yields very good corn. But there having been so many reiterated instances of unfruitfulness nearer the town, ancient people that are alive still, and remember the first times, generally agree in their opinion that this was a judgment from heaven, and a curse on the land, because of the shedding of innocent blood at Boston. This relation I had from so many credible persons, (though the one knew nothing of the other, as differing much in time), yet what they told me did so well agree in the main, that I could not but believe it, though I did not initially believe it to be credulous; and therefore I have been the more exact in my inquiry, so that I can no longer question the case; but it seems to me as a punishment on that blood-thirstiness which now has ceased long ago."

In England, [George] Fox met some of these persecutors with questions so penetrating that it deeply shamed them, and they admitted their guilt of murdering the Quakers. Fearing prosecution from the relatives of those murdered, they fled back to New England. Even when rarely possible to prosecute their persecutors in court, Quakers consistently declined to prosecute them, leaving them to God's judgment.

The fate of the Boston persecutors
Josephus on John the Baptist

Sunday, January 13, 2013

George Fox Warning False Christians

George Fox (1624-1691)

Here is some commentary on George Fox by Hall Worthington:

But, for those who preached and taught in error without the words from the Spirit of God, Fox's criticisms were definitely harsh.
He was critical of religious leaders in hopes of motivating them to stop teaching the words of the Bible, without the words of the Spirit. Here is an example, Fox writing to the Puritan priest of Ulverstone, to which Margaret Fox listened before she became a Quaker.
The word of the Lord to you, 0h Lampitt! You are a deceiver, surfeited and drunk with the earthly spirit, rambling up and down in the scriptures, and blending your spirit among the saints' conditions. You had a prophecy, as your father Balaam had; but you erred from it, as your father did. One whose fruit has withered, (of which I am a witness), and many who have known your fruit have seen the end of it, that it is withered; and do see where you are, in the blind world, a blind leader of the blind; a beast wallowing and tumbling in the earth and in the lust; one that is erred from the spirit of the Lord, of old ordained to condemnation. You are in the seat of the Pharisees, are called master by men, stand praying in the synagogues, and have the chief seat in the assemblies; a right hypocrite in the steps of the Pharisees, and in the ways of your fathers, the hypocrites, which our Lord Jesus Christ cried woe against. Such with the light you are seen to be, and by the light are comprehended; which is your condemnation who hate it, and will be so eternally except you repent. To you this is the word of God; for in Christ's way you are not, but in that of the Pharisees, as you may read in Mat 23. All that own Christ's words can see you in the Pharisees way. Christ, who died at Jerusalem, cried woe against your kind; and Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The woe remains upon you, and from under it you can never escape, except through judgment, condemnation, and true repentance. To you this is the word of God. To that of God in your conscience I speak, which will witness the truth of what I write, and will condemn you. And when you are in your torment, (though now you swell in your vanity, and live in wickedness), remember you were warned in your lifetime. When the eternal condemnation is stretched over you, you shall witness this to be the word of the Lord God to you; and if ever your eye should see repentance, you would witness me to have been a friend of your soul. (Notice Fox speaks the words from the Spirit of God, often in the presence of God, in the Kingdom of God; click here to see more examples).
But in his day, Christ was also extremely judgmental of those who taught religion in error. For example, here is what Christ had to say about those preachers and teachers who had not been purified within their hearts: 
See Jesus' Criticisms for many more.

And John the Baptist had this to say about hypocritical religious leaders:
Yes, Fox was very critical of the religious teachers, priests/preachers, and to a lesser degree, to the professed believers of his day.
But that is because they were false Christians - they had not been changed in heart, purified, crucified of their lusts and affections.
To be a preacher, they must be trained and authorized by Christ himself, with his spirit guiding their words.
Those who taught error were blind guides, leading others into the ditch and to destruction. 

By the 1800's on, Quakers in general judged their founder's criticisms and vocal opposition to the Protestant and Catholic sects and priests to be appalling. The later Quakers judged their founders to be intolerant, rude, unloving, judgmental, etc. This is the case of unfinished  men of the flesh judging a spiritual man obviously under control of the Spirit of God; likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities, Jude 1:8-10. Fox and many of the early Quakers were in the Kingdom of Heaven, therefore heavenly dignities, deserving of respect. A man of the flesh is without understanding and supremely arrogant to judge a man of the spirit. A man of the flesh cannot comprehend the degree to which false prophets are held in contempt by God, and therefore spared no extent of verbal lashing, especially when in a debate with others listening who might have been misled.

Shiloh
Criticisms of George Fox Answered
John Eudes:  "a scourge visited upon the people"