Thy Kingdom Come by Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt and Johann Christoph Blumhardt (
edited by Vernard Eller) is available for free at the following link in mobi, epub or pdf format. Note: the link asks for a name/email address however the download is available immediately without any further steps.
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/thy-kingdom-come
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About The Book
Christians the world over pray "Thy kingdom come" daily, but do they know what they are asking for? These short selections will spark a burning expectation for this kingdom to break into this world, here and now.
Meet Johann Christoph Blumhardt and Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, two German pastors who experienced this kingdom as a daily reality, through this compilation of excerpts from their sermons and discussions. This book is not intended to be an analysis of the Blumhardts' thought, rather an opportunity for the Blumhardts to introduce their thoughts for themselves. "If their own words fail to inform, enlighten, or move the reader," writes Eller, "there are no words of mine that could reverse that situation."
From the book:
Jesus sees every person as abnormal but gives up no one as lost. If people were not as they are, they would have no need of Salvation. So, in the next place, Jesus allows all to come to him as they are: sinners and righteous, poor and rich, healthy and sick. Jesus gives himself to each person as he is; and people ought not play up their own piety and put down that of others.
Signs and wonders are all right as legitimate proof that one has to do with our dear God; but they cannot truly help us. What helps us is justice and truth; and a hundred thousand miracles are of little use in comparison to one word of truth, or one command of truth through which God makes something straight that was crooked.
The capacity to hope is extremely important both for the kingdom of God and for our own development, because something very real and powerful has been laid in our hearts with this hope. One might say that we have been given a power that corresponds to the power of God. A power goes forth from God to make something of us; and from us there goes forth a hope that we shall become something. And this power of God and our hope go together hand in hand, as in a marriage, walking together. We in hope and God in his power, we belong together so that we can follow a purpose, the good purpose of God.
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