water of life

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.

153:3.2One of the vis­it­ing Phar­isees, mount­ing a lamp­stand, shouted out this ques­tion: “You tell us that you are the bread of life. How can you give us your flesh to eat or your blood to drink? What avail is your teach­ing if it can­not be car­ried out?” And Je­sus an­swered this ques­tion, say­ing: “I did not teach you that my flesh is the bread of life nor that my blood is the wa­ter thereof. But I did say that my life in the flesh is a be­stowal of the bread of heaven. The fact of the Word of God be­stowed in the flesh and the phe­nom­e­non of the Son of Man sub­ject to the will of God, con­sti­tute a re­al­ity of ex­pe­ri­ence which is equiv­a­lent to the di­vine sus­te­nance. You can­not eat my flesh nor can you drink my blood, but you can be­come one in spirit with me even as I am one in spirit with the Fa­ther. You can be nour­ished by the eter­nal word of God, which is in­deed the bread of life, and which has been be­stowed in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh; and you can be wa­tered in soul by the di­vine spirit, which is truly the wa­ter of life. The Fa­ther has sent me into the world to show how he de­sires to in­dwell and di­rect all men; and I have so lived this life in the flesh as to in­spire all men like­wise ever to seek to know and do the will of the in­dwelling heav­enly Fa­ther.”

165:3.8“How long will you tarry in the val­ley of de­ci­sion? Why do you halt be­tween two opin­ions? Why should Jew or gen­tile hes­i­tate to ac­cept the good news that he is a son of the eter­nal God? How long will it take us to per­suade you to en­ter joy­fully into your spir­i­tual in­her­i­tance? I came into this world to re­veal the Fa­ther to you and to lead you to the Fa­ther. The first I have done, but the last I may not do with­out your con­sent; the Fa­ther never com­pels any man to en­ter the king­dom. The in­vi­ta­tion ever has been and al­ways will be: Whoso­ever will, let him come and freely par­take of the wa­ter of life.”

193:2.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead be­cause you thereby know that you and your breth­ren shall also sur­vive mor­tal death. But such sur­vival is de­pen­dent on your hav­ing been pre­vi­ously born of the spirit of truth-seek­ing and God-find­ing. The bread of life and the wa­ter thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the king­dom. These great truths and these uni­verse facts are all re­lated to this gospel in that they are a part of the re­sult of be­liev­ing the good news and are em­braced in the sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ence of those who, by faith, be­come, in deed and in truth, the ev­er­last­ing sons of the eter­nal God. My Fa­ther sent me into the world to pro­claim this sal­va­tion of son­ship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this sal­va­tion of son­ship. Sal­va­tion is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will im­me­di­ately be­gin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in lov­ing ser­vice to their fel­low crea­tures. And the fruits of the di­vine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-know­ing mor­tals are: lov­ing ser­vice, un­selfish de­vo­tion, coura­geous loy­alty, sin­cere fair­ness, en­light­ened hon­esty, undy­ing hope, con­fid­ing trust, mer­ci­ful min­istry, un­fail­ing good­ness, for­giv­ing tol­er­ance, and en­dur­ing peace. If pro­fessed be­liev­ers bear not these fruits of the di­vine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are use­less branches on the liv­ing vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Fa­ther re­quires of the chil­dren of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, there­fore, you are not fruit­ful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your un­fruit­ful branches. In­creas­ingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you pro­gress heav­en­ward in the king­dom of God. You may en­ter the king­dom as a child, but the Fa­ther re­quires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spir­i­tual adult­hood. And when you go abroad to tell all na­tions the good news of this gospel, I will go be­fore you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you.”

121:5.12But do not make the mis­take of con­fus­ing the teach­ings of Je­sus with the mys­ter­ies. The pop­u­lar­ity of the mys­ter­ies re­veals man’s quest for sur­vival, thus por­tray­ing a real hunger and thirst for per­sonal re­li­gion and in­di­vid­ual righ­teous­ness. Al­though the mys­ter­ies failed ad­e­quately to sat­isfy this long­ing, they did pre­pare the way for the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Je­sus, who truly brought to this world the bread of life and the wa­ter thereof.

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.”

182:1.11I am the liv­ing wa­ter.

166:3.5“But fear not; ev­ery one who sin­cerely de­sires to find eter­nal life by en­trance into the king­dom of God shall cer­tainly find such ev­er­last­ing sal­va­tion. But you who refuse this sal­va­tion will some day see the proph­ets of the seed of Abra­ham sit down with the be­liev­ers of the gen­tile na­tions in this glo­ri­fied king­dom to par­take of the bread of life and to re­fresh them­selves with the wa­ter thereof. And they who shall thus take the king­dom in spir­i­tual power and by the per­sis­tent as­saults of liv­ing faith will come from the north and the south and from the east and the west. And, be­hold, many who are first will be last, and those who are last will many times be first.”

127:6.7That evening about twi­light these four sat down and par­took of the first Pass­over feast ever to be cel­e­brated by de­vout Jews with­out the paschal lamb. The un­leav­ened bread and the wine had been made ready for this Pass­over, and these em­blems, which Je­sus termed “the bread of life” and “the wa­ter of life,” he served to his com­pan­ions, and they ate in solemn con­for­mity with the teach­ings just im­parted. It was his cus­tom to en­gage in this sacra­men­tal rit­ual when­ever he paid sub­se­quent vis­its to Beth­any. When he re­turned home, he told all this to his mother. She was shocked at first but came grad­u­ally to see his view­point; nev­er­the­less, she was greatly re­lieved when Je­sus as­sured her that he did not in­tend to in­tro­duce this new idea of the Pass­over in their fam­ily. At home with the chil­dren he con­tin­ued, year by year, to eat the Pass­over “ac­cord­ing to the law of Moses.”

34:6.8It is the pres­ence of the di­vine Spirit, the wa­ter of life, that pre­vents the con­sum­ing thirst of mor­tal dis­con­tent and that in­de­scrib­able hunger of the un­spir­i­tu­al­ized hu­man mind. Spirit-mo­ti­vated be­ings “never thirst, for this spir­i­tual wa­ter shall be in them a well of sat­is­fac­tion spring­ing up into life ev­er­last­ing.” Such di­vinely wa­tered souls are all but in­de­pen­dent of ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment as re­gards the joys of liv­ing and the sat­is­fac­tions of earthly ex­is­tence. They are spir­i­tu­ally il­lu­mi­nated and re­freshed, morally strength­ened and en­dowed.