Jesus challenged us to work while it is still day. (John 9:4) He compared His Kingdom to labor in a vineyard, the investment of entrusted money, the good use of every talent. If God’s Kingdom is to transform this vale of tears into a place of joy, it has to be a realm of work. Work, and work alone, befits the destiny of the human spirit. By our nature as human beings we are called to a life of creativity. Healthy joy in life will be ours only through unclouded, loving fellowship in work.
- Eberhard Arnold, 1919
January 06,2025
- Eberhard Arnold Why We Live in CommunityWe love the soil because God’s spirit spoke and created the earth, and because he called it out of its uncultivated natural state so that it might be cultivated by the communal work of human beings. We love physical work – the work of muscle and hand – and we love the craftsman’s art, in which the spirit guides the hand. In the way spirit and hand work together and through each other, we see the mystery of community. God – the creative Spirit – has formed nature, and he has entrusted the earth to us, his sons and daughters, as an inheritance but also as a task: our garden must become his garden, and our work must further his kingdom.
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Our all-inclusive task is to awaken the people of Israel to the impending catastrophe, to shake out of sleep the whole of mankind before their certain overthrow, that all may be prepared for the coming Kingdom.
- Eberhard Arnold
It was Jesus who showed and brought and gave us God’s nature and power. Ever since He came, it is possible for us to pray to the Father in spirit and in truth. This spirit of truth makes us free from the impure mixing of religious practices with their human emphasis on what is outward and their idolatrous materialization. It brings us into the unified realm of the pure Church of God and of God’s unconditional rulership. This truth is the essence and reality of God’s genuine, clear word as it has gone forth from Him from the beginning.
- Eberhard Arnold