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
September 06,2025
- Eberhard ArnoldWe testify to the church of Christ as an embassy of God’s future state. Therefore the church of Christ should represent today what God’s kingdom will be. The Apostle Paul says, “The kingdom of God is today, here and now, and it is justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the element of the great future. For this reason the church receives the Holy Spirit, not in order to figure out for itself a timetable for God’s kingdom, but in order to let life be directed by the Spirit, through perfect love.
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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