Woe to a community if it tries from gloomy depression of soul to rise up to the Spirit! All our own cramped efforts to reach the heights end in downfall! Only the liberating Spirit coming down from above is able to lead the inner life of a community to health, to unity, and to the achievement of God’s work, free from all our own efforts.
- Eberhard Arnold, January 1934
October 16,2025
- Eberhard ArnoldWe experience that unity is at the same time agreement with the apostolic testimony of the New Testament, and agreement with the testimony of the future of the kingdom of God. Thus we experience unity not simply in the small circle of our community life, but as a unity that embraces all millennia; the spirit of inspired men and prophets; perfect unity with all original movements that were a spiritual uprising, with all movements, which sprang from the source, borne by the Holy Spirit and led by the inner light. We can testify that we have experienced that we become completely unanimous, when in the quiet hour the Spirit gives witness, and the light of Christ bursts into flame in our hearts, when in this silent concentrated attention the voice of Jesus speaks within us.
Get Daily Inspiration straight to your Inbox
More Inspiration
We small people must disappear from our own field of vision so that only one question remains in view: “What is happening to God’s Kingdom?” What is going to happen to the injustice of the world situation, which cries out to heaven? How shall God’s Kingdom come? And how can we do away with all distractions so that we come to the cause entrusted to us by the Church?
- Eberhard Arnold, July 1934
We know that here the absolute truth reigns if we experience the unanimity of the believers. The spirit of truth never contradicts itself. We see unity and unanimity as the characteristic mark of absolute truth. This way, because it is the simplest way, the way which unites men in the Spirit, is the way of truth; for it is the way of God’s love, the way of God’s heart, the way of the uniting creative spirit. If this is our certainty, then to work! All hands on deck! Let us dare it, whatever it costs!
- Eberhard Arnold