Mount Gerizim

• Mount Gerizim

126:1.2This hill, a lit­tle more than one hun­dred years pre­vi­ously, had been the “high place of Baal,” and now it was the site of the tomb of Sim­eon, a re­puted holy man of Is­rael. From the sum­mit of this hill of Sim­eon, Je­sus looked out over Naz­a­reth and the sur­round­ing coun­try. He would gaze upon Megiddo and re­call the story of the Egyp­tian army win­ning its first great vic­tory in Asia; and how, later on, an­other such army de­feated the Judean king Josiah. Not far away he could look upon Taanach, where Deb­o­rah and Barak de­feated Sis­era. In the dis­tance he could view the hills of Dothan, where he had been taught Joseph’s breth­ren sold him into Egyp­tian slav­ery. He then would shift his gaze over to Ebal and Ger­izim and re­count to him­self the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Ja­cob, and Abim­elech. And thus he re­called and turned over in his mind the his­toric and tra­di­tional events of his fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple.

• Samaritans worshiped Yahweh on

143:4.2The re­li­gious en­mity be­tween the Jews and the Samar­i­tans dated from the re­turn of the for­mer from the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity, when the Samar­i­tans worked to pre­vent the re­build­ing of Je­ru­sa­lem. Later they of­fended the Jews by ex­tend­ing friendly as­sis­tance to the armies of Alexan­der. In re­turn for their friend­ship Alexan­der gave the Samar­i­tans per­mis­sion to build a tem­ple on Mount Ger­izim, where they wor­shiped Yah­weh and their tribal gods and of­fered sac­ri­fices much af­ter the or­der of the tem­ple ser­vices at Je­ru­sa­lem. At least they con­tin­ued this wor­ship up to the time of the Mac­cabees, when John Hyr­canus de­stroyed their tem­ple on Mount Ger­izim. The Apos­tle Philip, in his labors for the Samar­i­tans af­ter the death of Je­sus, held many meet­ings on the site of this old Samar­i­tan tem­ple.

• Samaritans worshiped Yahweh on

143:5.5By this time Nalda was sobered, and her bet­ter self was awak­ened. She was not an im­moral woman wholly by choice. She had been ruth­lessly and un­justly cast aside by her hus­band and in dire straits had con­sented to live with a cer­tain Greek as his wife, but with­out mar­riage. Nalda now felt greatly ashamed that she had so un­think­ingly spo­ken to Je­sus, and she most pen­i­tently ad­dressed the Mas­ter, say­ing: “My Lord, I re­pent of my man­ner of speak­ing to you, for I per­ceive that you are a holy man or maybe a prophet.” And she was just about to seek di­rect and per­sonal help from the Mas­ter when she did what so many have done be­fore and since—dodged the is­sue of per­sonal sal­va­tion by turn­ing to the dis­cus­sion of the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy. She quickly turned the con­ver­sa­tion from her own needs to a the­o­log­i­cal con­tro­versy. Point­ing over to Mount Ger­izim, she con­tin­ued: “Our fa­thers wor­shiped on this moun­tain, and yet you would say that in Je­ru­sa­lem is the place where men ought to wor­ship; which, then, is the right place to wor­ship God?”

• Jesus and apostles camped on

143:6.2Je­sus and the apos­tles went into Sy­char and preached two days be­fore they es­tab­lished their camp on Mount Ger­izim. And many of the dwellers in Sy­char be­lieved the gospel and made re­quest for bap­tism, but the apos­tles of Je­sus did not yet bap­tize.

143:6.3The first night of the camp on Mount Ger­izim the apos­tles ex­pected that Je­sus would re­buke them for their at­ti­tude to­ward the woman at Ja­cob’s well, but he made no ref­er­ence to the mat­ter. In­stead he gave them that mem­o­rable talk on “The re­al­i­ties which are cen­tral in the king­dom of God.” In any re­li­gion it is very easy to al­low val­ues to be­come dis­pro­por­tion­ate and to per­mit facts to oc­cupy the place of truth in one’s the­ol­ogy. The fact of the cross be­came the very cen­ter of sub­se­quent Chris­tian­ity; but it is not the cen­tral truth of the re­li­gion which may be de­rived from the life and teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

143:6.4The theme of Je­sus’ teach­ing on Mount Ger­izim was: That he wants all men to see God as a Fa­ther-friend just as he (Je­sus) is a brother-friend. And again and again he im­pressed upon them that love is the great­est re­la­tion­ship in the world—in the uni­verse—just as truth is the great­est pro­nounce­ment of the ob­ser­va­tion of these di­vine re­la­tion­ships.

143:6.5Je­sus de­clared him­self so fully to the Samar­i­tans be­cause he could safely do so, and be­cause he knew that he would not again visit the heart of Samaria to preach the gospel of the king­dom.

143:6.6Je­sus and the twelve camped on Mount Ger­izim un­til the end of Au­gust. They preached the good news of the king­dom—the fa­ther­hood of God—to the Samar­i­tans in the cities by day and spent the nights at the camp. The work which Je­sus and the twelve did in these Samar­i­tan cities yielded many souls for the king­dom and did much to pre­pare the way for the mar­velous work of Philip in these re­gions af­ter Je­sus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion, sub­se­quent to the dis­per­sion of the apos­tles to the ends of the earth by the bit­ter per­se­cu­tion of be­liev­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem.

• false Messiah led troops to

185:1.6It is sig­nif­i­cant that, while this vac­il­lat­ing Ro­man ruler sac­ri­ficed Je­sus to his fear of the Jews and to safe­guard his per­sonal po­si­tion, he fi­nally was de­posed as a re­sult of the need­less slaugh­ter of Samar­i­tans in con­nec­tion with the pre­ten­sions of a false Mes­siah who led troops to Mount Ger­izim, where he claimed the tem­ple ves­sels were buried; and fierce ri­ots broke out when he failed to re­veal the hid­ing place of the sa­cred ves­sels, as he had prom­ised. As a re­sult of this episode, the lega­tus of Syria or­dered Pi­late to Rome. Tiberius died while Pi­late was on the way to Rome, and he was not reap­pointed as procu­ra­tor of Judea. He never fully re­cov­ered from the re­gret­ful con­dem­na­tion of hav­ing con­sented to the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus. Find­ing no fa­vor in the eyes of the new em­peror, he re­tired to the prov­ince of Lau­sanne, where he sub­se­quently com­mit­ted sui­cide.

• worship not on M.G.

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.”