God is always ready. With the intensity of his holy will, he longs for people of faith to speak, pray, live, and believe so completely in the living Jesus that he is at last able to intervene and act as he has always wanted to act. In answer to our faith, and to the measure of our faith, everything will be done just as we ask. There is no wall, no mountain, and no barrier too high for the prayer of faith.
- Eberhard Arnold
Selected Reading
Letter to His Sister Hannah
Eberhard Arnold
Hannah Arnold worried that through his radical stance her brother Eberhard had denied his faith in Jesus. Arnold answered his sister in a letter which was later published in Die Wegwarte, the community’s periodical. Although he had left the evangelical movement he had never denied his faith in Jesus.
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Poems and Rhymed Prayers
Eberhard Arnold
In 1920 Eberhard and Emmy Arnold abandoned the security of the Berlin suburbs for a new life in the village of Sannerz. Here they embarked on what Eberhard called an “adventure of faith” – a life of voluntary poverty and community. His poems from this time reflect the new beginning, expressing the joy and the struggles of the fledgling circle, yet still encompassing a wider vision, and the continued call of a life lived for God.
Who Is My Mother? Who Are My Brothers?
Eberhard Arnold
We find Jesus' mother, who had previously seemed to separate herself from him, waiting with all the others for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and for the creation of the first communal church at Pentecost. From then on she belonged fully to the circle of those who believed in her Son.
Continue ReadingQuick Quotes
Faith does not depend on feelings. It is not feelings but the will that forms the character, especially the Christian character. Often we must continue on the way simply through strict obedience, quite soberly, while at other times the Lord will overwhelm us with floods of joy. He does both in order to teach us. The peace of God is not a feeling. It is the relationship of the soul to God, and an expression of the fact that a reborn person is a child of God.
- Eberhard Arnold, April 1907
Faith is a light of God that surpasses all human reason. The light of faith is nothing other than God drawing near and intervening. He who is in the sun has no lack of light.
- Eberhard Arnold