Final Appearances and Ascension

193:1.1About four o’clock on Sab­bath af­ter­noon, May 13, the Mas­ter ap­peared to Nalda and about sev­enty-five Samar­i­tan be­liev­ers near Ja­cob’s well, at Sy­char. The be­liev­ers were in the habit of meet­ing at this place, near where Je­sus had spo­ken to Nalda con­cern­ing the wa­ter of life. On this day, just as they had fin­ished their dis­cus­sions of the re­ported res­ur­rec­tion, Je­sus sud­denly ap­peared be­fore them, say­ing:

193:1.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that I am the res­ur­rec­tion and the life, but this will avail you noth­ing un­less you are first born of the eter­nal spirit, thereby com­ing to pos­sess, by faith, the gift of eter­nal life. If you are the faith sons of my Fa­ther, you shall never die; you shall not per­ish. The gospel of the king­dom has taught you that all men are the sons of God. And this good news con­cern­ing the love of the heav­enly Fa­ther for his chil­dren on earth must be car­ried to all the world. The time has come when you wor­ship God nei­ther on Ger­izim nor at Je­ru­sa­lem, but where you are, as you are, in spirit and in truth. It is your faith that saves your souls. Sal­va­tion is the gift of God to all who be­lieve they are his sons. But be not de­ceived; while sal­va­tion is the free gift of God and is be­stowed upon all who ac­cept it by faith, there fol­lows the ex­pe­ri­ence of bear­ing the fruits of this spirit life as it is lived in the flesh. The ac­cep­tance of the doc­trine of the fa­ther­hood of God im­plies that you also freely ac­cept the as­so­ci­ated truth of the broth­er­hood of man. And if man is your brother, he is even more than your neigh­bor, whom the Fa­ther re­quires you to love as your­self. Your brother, be­ing of your own fam­ily, you will not only love with a fam­ily af­fec­tion, but you will also serve as you would serve your­self. And you will thus love and serve your brother be­cause you, be­ing my breth­ren, have been thus loved and served by me. Go, then, into all the world telling this good news to all crea­tures of ev­ery race, tribe, and na­tion. My spirit shall go be­fore you, and I will be with you al­ways.”

193:1.3These Samar­i­tans were greatly as­ton­ished at this ap­pear­ance of the Mas­ter, and they has­tened off to the near-by towns and vil­lages, where they pub­lished abroad the news that they had seen Je­sus, and that he had talked to them. And this was the sev­en­teenth mor­ontia ap­pear­ance of the Mas­ter.