Jacob’s well

• Jacob’s well

124:6.1Je­sus, hav­ing now reached the thresh­old of young man­hood and hav­ing been for­mally grad­u­ated from the syn­a­gogue schools, was qual­i­fied to pro­ceed to Je­ru­sa­lem with his par­ents to par­tic­i­pate with them in the cel­e­bra­tion of his first Pass­over. The Pass­over feast of this year fell on Sat­ur­day, April 9, A.D. 7. A con­sid­er­able com­pany (103) made ready to de­part from Naz­a­reth early Mon­day morn­ing, April 4, for Je­ru­sa­lem. They jour­neyed south to­ward Samaria, but on reach­ing Jezreel, they turned east, go­ing around Mount Gil­boa into the Jor­dan val­ley in or­der to avoid pass­ing through Samaria. Joseph and his fam­ily would have en­joyed go­ing down through Samaria by way of Ja­cob’s well and Bethel, but since the Jews dis­liked to deal with the Samar­i­tans, they de­cided to go with their neigh­bors by way of the Jor­dan val­ley.

• Jacob’s well

127:3.3Je­sus did much think­ing as they jour­neyed through Samaria, par­tic­u­larly at Bethel and when drink­ing from Ja­cob’s well. He and his brother dis­cussed the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob. He did much to pre­pare James for what he was about to wit­ness at Je­ru­sa­lem, thus seek­ing to lessen the shock such as he him­self had ex­pe­ri­enced on his first visit to the tem­ple. But James was not so sen­si­tive to some of these sights. He com­mented on the per­func­tory and heart­less man­ner in which some of the priests per­formed their du­ties but on the whole greatly en­joyed his so­journ at Je­ru­sa­lem.

• Jacob’s well

143:5.2The wa­ter of Ja­cob’s well was less min­eral than that from the wells of Sy­char and was there­fore much val­ued for drink­ing pur­poses. Je­sus was thirsty, but there was no way of get­ting wa­ter from the well. When, there­fore, a woman of Sy­char came up with her wa­ter pitcher and pre­pared to draw from the well, Je­sus said to her, “Give me a drink.” This woman of Samaria knew Je­sus was a Jew by his ap­pear­ance and dress, and she sur­mised that he was a Galilean Jew from his ac­cent. Her name was Nalda and she was a comely crea­ture. She was much sur­prised to have a Jew­ish man thus speak to her at the well and ask for wa­ter, for it was not deemed proper in those days for a self-re­spect­ing man to speak to a woman in pub­lic, much less for a Jew to con­verse with a Samar­i­tan. There­fore Nalda asked Je­sus, “How is it that you, be­ing a Jew, ask for a drink of me, a Samar­i­tan woman?” Je­sus an­swered: “I have in­deed asked you for a drink, but if you could only un­der­stand, you would ask me for a draught of the liv­ing wa­ter.” Then said Nalda: “But, Sir, you have noth­ing to draw with, and the well is deep; whence, then, have you this liv­ing wa­ter? Are you greater than our fa­ther Ja­cob who gave us this well, and who drank thereof him­self and his sons and his cat­tle also?”

143:5.3Je­sus replied: “Ev­ery­one who drinks of this wa­ter will thirst again, but whoso­ever drinks of the wa­ter of the liv­ing spirit shall never thirst. And this liv­ing wa­ter shall be­come in him a well of re­fresh­ment spring­ing up even to eter­nal life.” Nalda then said: “Give me this wa­ter that I thirst not, nei­ther come all the way hither to draw. Be­sides, any­thing which a Samar­i­tan woman could re­ceive from such a com­mend­able Jew would be a plea­sure.”

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.