Samaria

• gangster-nobility controlled

97:9.20New life ap­peared as Je­hoash and his son Jer­oboam de­liv­ered Is­rael from its en­e­mies. But by this time there ruled in Samaria a gang­ster-no­bil­ity whose depre­da­tions ri­valed those of the Da­vidic dy­nasty of olden days. State and church went along hand in hand. The at­tempt to sup­press free­dom of speech led Eli­jah, Amos, and Hosea to be­gin their se­cret writ­ing, and this was the real be­gin­ning of the Jew­ish and Chris­tian Bibles.

• Samaria

123:5.13From four di­rec­tions Je­sus could ob­serve the car­a­van trains as they wended their way in and out of Naz­a­reth, and to the south he could over­look the broad and fer­tile plain coun­try of Es­draelon, stretch­ing off to­ward Mount Gil­boa and Samaria.

• Samaria

134:7.5Je­sus then started on his fi­nal tour, as a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual, through the heart of Pales­tine, go­ing from Beer­sheba in the south to Dan in the north. On this jour­ney north­ward he stopped at He­bron, Beth­le­hem (where he saw his birth­place), Je­ru­sa­lem (he did not visit Beth­any), Beeroth, Lebonah, Sy­char, Shechem, Samaria, Geba, En-Gan­nim, En­dor, Madon; pass­ing through Mag­dala and Ca­per­naum, he jour­neyed on north; and pass­ing east of the Wa­ters of Merom, he went by Karahta to Dan, or Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi.

143:6.1On the evening that Nalda drew the crowd out from Sy­char to see Je­sus, the twelve had just re­turned with food, and they be­sought Je­sus to eat with them in­stead of talk­ing to the peo­ple, for they had been with­out food all day and were hun­gry. But Je­sus knew that dark­ness would soon be upon them; so he per­sisted in his de­ter­mi­na­tion to talk to the peo­ple be­fore he sent them away. When An­drew sought to per­suade him to eat a bite be­fore speak­ing to the crowd, Je­sus said, “I have meat to eat that you do not know about.” When the apos­tles heard this, they said among them­selves: “Has any man brought him aught to eat? Can it be that the woman gave him food as well as drink?” When Je­sus heard them talk­ing among them­selves, be­fore he spoke to the peo­ple, he turned aside and said to the twelve: “My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me and to ac­com­plish His work. You should no longer say it is such and such a time un­til the har­vest. Be­hold these peo­ple com­ing out from a Samar­i­tan city to hear us; I tell you the fields are al­ready white for the har­vest. He who reaps re­ceives wages and gath­ers this fruit to eter­nal life; con­se­quently the sow­ers and the reapers re­joice to­gether. For herein is the say­ing true: ‘One sows and an­other reaps.’ I am now send­ing you to reap that whereon you have not la­bored; oth­ers have la­bored, and you are about to en­ter into their la­bor.” This he said in ref­er­ence to the preach­ing of John the Bap­tist.

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.

• Pontius Pilate was procurator of

185:0.1Shortly af­ter six o’clock on this Fri­day morn­ing, April 7, A.D. 30, Je­sus was brought be­fore Pi­late, the Ro­man procu­ra­tor who gov­erned Judea, Samaria, and Idumea un­der the im­me­di­ate super­vi­sion of the lega­tus of Syria. The Mas­ter was taken into the pres­ence of the Ro­man gov­er­nor by the tem­ple guards, bound, and was ac­com­pa­nied by about fifty of his ac­cusers, in­clud­ing the San­hedrist court (prin­ci­pally Sad­duceans), Ju­das Is­car­iot, and the high priest, Cai­a­phas, and by the Apos­tle John. An­nas did not ap­pear be­fore Pi­late.

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.