How glad I am that you are so positively united with me in the experience of peace and of Jesus’ spirit of love! The question is not at all one of our only refusing to do military service, though people always put it in this negative way. This refusal, after all, follows as a matter of course from a positive experience of the Spirit of Christ. When this Spirit, which is expressed so very intensely in the Sermon on the Mount and in Romans 8, penetrates us and glows in us, then we will become victorious people who must work as long as it is daylight—work in the productive, creative work of love.
- Eberhard Arnold
September 06,2026
- 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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Where God heals and makes well, He grants perfect peace on the basis of faithfulness and of faith. He who follows the Spirit says with the prophet, “As long as I live, peace and faithfulness shall reign.”
- Eberhard Arnold
We are able to cope with the demands of today’s needs only when we have found the inward concentration in God. And this we find only when the lightning of God’s kingdom has fallen down to earth and lit up the whole horizon.
- Eberhard Arnold