The Community Rejects False Werkzeuge.
Unfortunately, not everyone who claims to be a Werkzeug is a Werkzeug. Gruber and Rock acknowledged the existence of false Inspiration.
Gruber (1715) reports that the first false spirit made its appearance, "with false convulsions and false utterances," in a boy of 14 who thought he was moved by the Spirit. Johanna Melchior, an early member of the Community, denounced the false spirit "with great certainty and convincing power."
Gruber describes his own encounter with a false spirit.
- I was befallen by an extraordinary shaking of the head and shivering of the mouth; and it has been proven a hundred times that such was not without significance, but indeed a true warning. (Gruber, 1715).
False Werkzeuge continued to be a problem for as long as the Community had Werkzeuge. Many years after the Community had settled in Iowa, Christian Metz, one of their Werkzeuge, writes:
- There are many presumptuous members in our Communities who are always aspiring for something. The one wants to be an Elder, and the other even a Werkzeug; and the cause of it all is self-love and a false desire of the soul. (Metz, 1849)
Shambaugh (1908) reports that from the very beginnings of the Community, it was customary to appoint a committee to examine those who spoke by Inspiration. In many instances, the committee found an aspiring Werkzeug to be false, and they denied that person the privilege of prophesying.
Read more about this topic: Barbara Heinemann Landmann
Famous quotes containing the words community, rejects and/or false:
“There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.”
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965)
“The experience of the gangster as an experience of art is universal to Americans. There is almost nothing we understand better or react to more readily or with quicker intelligence.... In ways that we do not easily or willingly define, the gangster speaks for us, expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life, which rejects “Americanism” itself.”
—Robert Warshow (1917–1955)
“Our chaotic economic situation has convinced so many of our young people that there is no room for them. They become uncertain and restless and morbid; they grab at false promises, embrace false gods and judge things by treacherous values. Their insecurity makes them believe that tomorrow doesn’t matter and the ineffectualness of their lives makes them deny the ideals which we of an older generation acknowledged.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)