Micah 4 – “In the
last days, the mountain of the Lord’s house will be the highest of all—the most
important place on earth. It will be raised above the other hills, and people
from all over the world will stream there to worship. People from many nations
will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up
to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob’s God. There he will teach
us his ways, and we will walk in his paths.’” (4:1-2).
God will “wield authority over many peoples . . .they will hammer their swords into ploughshares,
their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against
nation, nor train for war anymore. Everyone will live in peace and prosperity,
enjoying their own grapevines and fig trees, for there will be nothing to fear”
(4:3-4). This is the promise of the Lord.
The chapter ends with a promise that the Lord will gather
the lame and the exiles together, “those whom I have filled with grief” (4:6),
and they will become a strong nation. “The kingship will be restored to my precious
Jerusalem” (4:8). The exile has actually not yet
begun. But this promise is one they will take with them. But the
Babylonians do not know that the Lord will make them strong in the end.
From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through
Quakerism -
“Continuing
Revelation”
Part 3
The idea of “continuing
revelation” was a very important concept for early Friends, but it didn’t stand
alone. It stood in tension with another
important idea—the idea that the Spirit of God that brought forth all truth was
not a God of disorder. The best articulation of this in the early years was
in Robert Barclay’s Apology,
published first in 1673 to defend Friends’ interpretation of the gospel against
charges of heresy. Barclay defends the idea that the Spirit of God continues to
lead and influence the faithful, but he is careful to assure his readers that
such continuing revelation will never lead to utterly new and contradictory
“truths”.
“We
firmly believe that there is no other doctrine or gospel to be preached other
than that which was delivered by the apostles. And we freely subscribe to
the saying in Gal. 1:8: ‘If we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a
gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed.’
In
other words, we distinguish between a revelation of a new gospel and new
doctrines, and new insight into the established gospel and doctrines. We
plead for the latter, but we utterly deny the former. We firmly believe that there
are no new foundations to be laid other than those which have already been
laid. But added insight is needed on matters for which the foundations have
already been laid” Dean Freiday, ed., Barclay’s
Apology in Modern English - published through a grant from the Rebecca
White Trust of the Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia, 1967, 63).
Early Friends knew that there were
competing voices within people, and they knew and spoke eloquently about the
fact that hearing and obeying God required a personal experience of Christ’s
cross in relation to their own wills and selves. Fox himself had struggled
against the competing voices that called to him, the “two thirsts” that
clamored within him for attention during Christ’s ministration to him in the
“spiritual wilderness” (The “ministration of Moses” in his own journey).
When certain early recruits to the
Quaker vision of the gospel went off on escapades Fox thought were not
authentic or that brought the movement into disrepute, he set up a structure of
Monthly Meetings that he hoped would oversee individuals and test their
leadings. But I don’t think Fox every
fully appreciated the potential for confusion that lay in his rejection of
outward standards. He simply believed that the gospel he had recovered had
a power and an order in it that reached to the heart and transformed it.
Christ’s sheep “know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will
run from him because the do not know the voice of stranger” (John 10:4-5). If
there were disorderly people in a Monthly Meeting, he encouraged the “more
seasoned” to go to them and labor with them as Jesus recommends in Matthew’s
gospel (18: 15-17).
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