DELIBERATE TRUTH

A Hutterite mother with child

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A NEW REDEMPTION

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Those who turn their thoughts away from the physical world and set all their hopes on life after death are counterfeiters of truth. The new redemption is intended for us. The new will is to be realized here on earth! Many people over the centuries—most decisively, Jesus—have shown this to be true. But he was murdered, and this was bound to happen. He was killed by the military, by the most organized legal system in history, by the most religious people that have ever lived, by the leaders of the church and the voice of the people. And this was no accident. He was murdered because people, bound by their possessions, could not tolerate his witness for truth.
Still today we cannot bear his truth, and so we twist it every way possible
We no longer dare to accept the clarity of his words about loving
our enemies, even though everything he taught is contained in his simple
words, “What you wish for yourself, do to others.
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Eberhard Arnold

Eberhard Arnold , his wife and children along with a few other couples began to live in Christian community in the central German village of Sannerz in 1920. Arnold had been influenced by his reading of the New Testament and believed that authentic Christianity could only be expressed when believers lived as the early church did, in community. By 1926 the little group had outgrown the Sannerz farm and moved to the Fulda district establishing the Rhon Bruderhof where they continued to live according to Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. As well as sharing of goods, pacifism and adult baptism became hallmarks of the movement which much later aligned itself to the older communities of the Hutterite Brethren that still existed in North America. The Bruderhof was briefly disbanded by the Nazis in 1930. Today there are several communities around the world including one in Robertsbridge in England which I visited some years ago.~GOSh.~