At the Feast of Tabernacles

162:6.1On the last day, the great day of the feast, as the pro­ces­sion from the pool of Siloam passed through the tem­ple courts, and just af­ter the wa­ter and the wine had been poured down upon the al­tar by the priests, Je­sus, stand­ing among the pil­grims, said: “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. From the Fa­ther above I bring to this world the wa­ter of life. He who be­lieves me shall be filled with the spirit which this wa­ter rep­re­sents, for even the Scrip­tures have said, ‘Out of him shall flow rivers of liv­ing wa­ters.’ When the Son of Man has fin­ished his work on earth, there shall be poured out upon all flesh the liv­ing Spirit of Truth. Those who re­ceive this spirit shall never know spir­i­tual thirst.”

162:6.2Je­sus did not in­ter­rupt the ser­vice to speak these words. He ad­dressed the wor­shipers im­me­di­ately af­ter the chant­ing of the Hal­lel, the re­spon­sive read­ing of the Psalms ac­com­pa­nied by wav­ing of the branches be­fore the al­tar. Just here was a pause while the sac­ri­fices were be­ing pre­pared, and it was at this time that the pil­grims heard the fas­ci­nat­ing voice of the Mas­ter de­clare that he was the giver of liv­ing wa­ter to ev­ery spirit-thirst­ing soul.

162:6.3At the con­clu­sion of this early morn­ing ser­vice Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach the mul­ti­tude, say­ing: “Have you not read in the Scrip­ture: ‘Be­hold, as the wa­ters are poured out upon the dry ground and spread over the parched soil, so will I give the spirit of ho­li­ness to be poured out upon your chil­dren for a bless­ing even to your chil­dren’s chil­dren’? Why will you thirst for the min­istry of the spirit while you seek to wa­ter your souls with the tra­di­tions of men, poured from the bro­ken pitch­ers of cer­e­mo­nial ser­vice? That which you see go­ing on about this tem­ple is the way in which your fa­thers sought to sym­bol­ize the be­stowal of the di­vine spirit upon the chil­dren of faith, and you have done well to per­pet­u­ate these sym­bols, even down to this day. But now has come to this gen­er­a­tion the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther of spir­its through the be­stowal of his Son, and all of this will cer­tainly be fol­lowed by the be­stowal of the spirit of the Fa­ther and the Son upon the chil­dren of men. To ev­ery one who has faith shall this be­stowal of the spirit be­come the true teacher of the way which leads to life ev­er­last­ing, to the true wa­ters of life in the king­dom of heaven on earth and in the Fa­ther’s Par­a­dise over there.”

162:6.4And Je­sus con­tin­ued to an­swer the ques­tions of both the mul­ti­tude and the Phar­isees. Some thought he was a prophet; some be­lieved him to be the Mes­siah; oth­ers said he could not be the Christ, see­ing that he came from Gal­i­lee, and that the Mes­siah must re­store David’s throne. Still they dared not ar­rest him.