For early friends life and learning was rooted in the Bible. They sought to discern the spirit in which it was written rather than read it literally. They took Jesus' teaching of Eternal Life seriously. However, they saw it as a gift for the present moment not so much some future promise. Contemporary Bible Scholars like Marcus Borg tell us that early Friends were right about Eternal Life. Eternal Life was a life and power to be experienced and lived now.
Likewise, Jesus' teaching of the Kingdom of God. Remember the triumphal entry? There was Jesus riding into Jerusalem on Passover and the crowds placed palm branches and their clothes on the road before him. However, at the same time a large contingent of armed and mounted Roman soldiers were entering Jerusalem through another gate coming up from the Roman garrison at Caesarea on the coast. Passover meant trouble in Jerusalem and they wanted to remind the Jews that Caesar was Lord. Jesus was announcing that God was Lord not of some future world, but this one. Jesus got himself in big trouble. So did early Friends.
For Friends, the Kingdom of God was a this-world, present-moment faith event. Quakers didn't speculate much about the next world, the living faith was about the Light made manifest in this one.
The Inward Light was not a nice-nice goody-good spirituality. It grew goodness, love and truth in false, distorted, lost, proud selves. The Light was surgical and stripped away deception and distortion from following false gods. Early Friend's called this "harrowing". In their written Journals there was almost always a period in their lives of inner struggle while they were brought fully into the light.
Thus Friends testified for the Light and stood against the manifestation of the other kingdoms. God's Kingdom was against war, violence and oppression, the domination system was not the Kingdom of our God of love.
We turn to the Light, the searing Light, truth revealing Light.
Lighten our darkness. Cleanse and deepen the core of our hearts.
We beseech Thee o God - in whom we live and move and have our being.