Not Just a Stew of Facts

Posted on March 24, 2019 by ehurst

It’s time we took a quick review of The Cult. I remind you that there is no such literal, discretely organized cult, but that I use the term to label an influence and tendency in human affairs. It remains consistent and easily identified throughout history, and it acts as if it were a distinct group of people. In reality, it is a collection of people under the common influence of a group of demons. Some are more conscious of it than others, but there is no superhuman intelligence involved because there is no such thing. There is only a demonic influence that we can always count on for the same long term agenda. People come and go, but the agenda is what we can discern.

Keep in mind that a primary motive for whatever this cult does is to create chaos so a select few can profit. The humans serving this cult don’t want actual control of any government on the terms currently possible. To the degree the people involved are conscious of it at all, they are led by a false vision, seeking a condition when all the normal aspirations and dreams are exhausted and the world surrenders at their feet. It’s just another manifestation of the Antichrist, but with a specific mission from Satan to keep things chaotic. So this is not a conspiracy to take over any particular government, but to steer things within every government so that life is impossible and unbearable in the long run.

They are opportunists. Members cooperate quite often without any conscious intent. Two or more might be operating at what appears to be conflicting aims, but together they succeed in making a huge mess to prevent the humans involved from actually accomplishing anything. This is the ongoing Curse of Babylon, where God has decreed that there shall be no unity outside of faith in His revelation. So this particular group of demons were assigned the task of suckering people into pursuing human unity without ever doing anything that could actually make it work. Instead, they are always fed lies about what is actually possible.

This is separate from other cults, like globalism, imperialism, communism, etc. Those are led by other demons.

Now, there is a certain sense in which we can blame Judaism for all of this. That is, Judaism arose as the background for inculcating a certain human expectation, a false vision and dream that never dies, that Tower of Babel thing. The Cult is not Judaism, but uses Judaism as a front, as a way to capture a portion of the human race and endue that portion with character and traits to allow the demons to harvest an elite few who are truly horrific instruments of destruction. Again, they are not superior intelligence, but heart-led in the paths of demons. They have the incalculable insight of the heart, but committed to darkness. A manifestation of this heart-led evil finds expression in the Kabbala, for example. You can trace this out to a lot of religions today that use the same heart-led awareness to serve the Devil, and the names are endless. As with Judaism proper, Kabbalism and her children* are just garden patches from which a precious few are chosen by the demons to wreak havoc.

What I’ve described above is the basis for how I view history, and the frame of reference I use to analyze the history writings of others. It takes into account the inevitable bias of those who write historical narratives. Even the pretense of objectivity is a bias, as you might expect, because it adopts the false epistemology of Aristotle. It is the intellectual proposition that revelation is impertinent in understanding what has happened in our world. Thus, it produces a historiography that is slanted against Scripture, and against Christ and His message.

So if we examine the Third Reich, for example, we don’t stop with just a simplistic answer about how Hitler rose to power. There were multiple influences at work, all serving the chaos agenda of The Cult. Members of this cult were active in the Jewish bankers and the Jewish government of the Weimar Republic to promote a chaotic atmosphere that debased the German society of that day. The policies actually pursued were guaranteed to destroy the country, and with some conscious purpose to do so. Once it got nasty and unbearable, Hitler was promoted as the patsy to lead a reform movement that was actually nothing of the kind. It appeared to be a reform movement, but its real goal was to increase chaos and spread it outside the country. Some of the same people behind the scenes profited from both governments. A great many of them were elite Jewish Kabbalists, or folks who embraced other similar religions.

Nobody foresaw how it would turn out specifically, only that it was a great way to raise new symbols of propaganda, symbols that could be used to manipulate and herd the masses. We already know that wars are inevitable in a fallen world, but The Cult aggravates this situation to make things infinitely worse than they have to be. The symbols make it possible to provoke hysteria to inhibit sane inquiry into the causes and outcomes of events like WW2. It’s the kind of crap that leaves us with historical data that is falsely interpreted as lies to be taught to succeeding generations. If you took any history courses in the US since the close of WW2, you are unlikely to have a clue about the Weimar Republic, if you recognize the label at all.

And you don’t have to take my word for any of this. However, I have a mission to pray and meditate over such things, and then to share what I see. It means defying a lot of mainstream scholars on the whole gamut of subjects. If I’m going to take seriously the command to follow Jesus, that means by default I reject the world system. For me, that means giving some thought to the implications of how I confront the world system and all its claims. In some ways, you can boil this down to a data war, except that “data” includes the interpretive frame of reference, not just a stew of facts.

The US today is doomed for some of the same reasons as for the Weimar Republic because of distinct moral parallels, and the “solution” that will cause the destruction will be some kind of reactionary moral reform movement. In this case, it will be a civil war because the people leading the country right now are steered by the same destructive decadence of the Weimar Republic, and there remains a substantial portion of the population that will eventually demand a halt. And because the US is too large to control sanely by any one group, the backlash will serve to exclude the areas of the country that prefer the globalist (AKA socialist/communist) vision of humanity.

It’s not enough to see the facts; you have to understand how God does things. It’s revealed in His Word if you bother to pay attention to it.

*Kabbalism was intended to restore the blessings of the heart-led way without Christ (or any other part of revelation). A partial list of the children of Kabbalism: Freemasons, Thelema, Scientology,and Golden Dawn, for the most obvious ones. Portions of Islam follow the underlying philosophy, as well, as do the entrepreneurial brands of church management that give us some modern church franchises. The whole idea is to exercise control over the natural world, including humans, but bypassing the Flaming Sword.

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Teachings of Jesus — John 4:27-42

Posted on March 23, 2019 by ehurst

Continuing the same scene from our previous lesson, the Twelve came back out to Jacob’s Well while Jesus was still speaking with the woman. While they wondered about this highly unlikely scene, they kept their silence. She left her water pot and hurried back off into the town.

Her testimony was that the man she met at the well knew her life story without having met her before, nor apparently had He even traveled in Samaria before. Yet He knew all about her, so doesn’t that approximate what they were expecting from the Messiah? These people knew this woman had a history, and she wasn’t particularly religious by their standards. Yet her testimony on this encounter was quite moving, so they started heading out to see this man.

In those days, it was common for a well to have at least one large stonework trough of some sort and likely some benches or some kind of fixture where people could gather and sit. Further, it likely had at least some shade provided by trees. This is why Jesus had stopped to rest here in the first place. When the disciples returned, they would have occupied some of the available seating while they shared the food they had bought. We can imagine the disciples mostly had their backs to the town and were encouraging Jesus to eat with them. But Jesus was watching behind them at this crowd coming out of the city and decided now was not the time for a meal. So He told them He had food they couldn’t see. While it was a figure of speech, it had a literal element.

The disciples asked each other if someone had already fed Him lunch. I’m sure Jesus chuckled at that, but continued in the same mysterious vein. His real food was to obey the Father who sent Him, and right now He had a mission to complete. Then He went on mentioning how this time of year the wheat was still green, with another four months before it would ripen, and then dry and turn pale brown, almost white. Behind them the folks coming out the city were crossing the green fields, but wearing the off-white garments common to Samaritan men in those days. Jesus pointed out across the field and told them to look and see the white harvest.

Jesus had planted the seed of truth in that Samaritan woman. While something like that might typically take awhile to bear fruit, today it was bearing a multitude of fruit immediately. At this point, the disciples would have turned to see the approaching crowd and knew it was another time of ministry. They hadn’t dealt with Samaritans like this before, but the language and customs were close enough they already knew what to do. They likely hurried to put away the food they were eating and got ready to work.

Jesus then noted how they were about to harvest a crop they didn’t sow, as it were. This was not uncommon in agricultural work in those days. One man might sow the seed, but when harvest time came, it always required a herd of casual laborers working dawn to dark to get it all reaped during the brief window when it must be done. His disciples were entering into His ministry and would reap the harvest and enjoy the blessings.

So on the basis of that woman’s meaningful testimony, the leading men of the city came out and invited Jesus to stay at their expense. He did so for a couple of days with His usual teaching and miracles. When He felt it was time to move on, the men of the city noted to the woman that it was no longer a matter of her testimony, but they had seen and heard for themselves. For once she had not embarrassed them, but had done them a favor in prodding them to meet the Messiah.

His reception at Sychar had none of the complications He faced when He finally got back home to Galilee.

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The Edges Will Always Be Frayed

Posted on March 23, 2019 by ehurst

The path of Biblical Law will isolate you from the fallen world. And the Book of Revelation makes it quite clear that humanity will gradually decline into a more fallen condition, falling farther and farther below the grace of God. We know very well from divine revelation just how to build a society based on God’s favor, but we aren’t likely to find too many people willing to join us. So instead of building a society in this world, we are given visions of building a society that partially withdraws from this world, and creates a parallel society that seeks various ways to become disentangled.

We seek to inhabit a moral sphere between the Spirit Realm and the Fallen Realm. We can’t escape every element of the fallen existence without dying, but we have a mission to reveal the grace of God by living with a foot in each realm. We live in this world, but we are not of it.

In the New Testament, we see that Christ came to breathe life into the revelation of Biblical Law, AKA Divine Justice. He came to give concrete shape to that parallel society, chiefly because the business of building a separate society among other nations of the world had run its course. It was impossible to have that withdrawn biblical society as a nation in the typical sense, with politics and borders and a national identity, so the mission has changed and now we build a society in human hearts. It’s a nation of people whose identity is on a different level.

This happened at precisely the time when the Greco-Roman Civilization was about to end. The chaos of such an event is the best time to strip away human pretensions so folks can realize they need something better, something that isn’t subject to all the vagaries of politics, borders and national identity. Of course, we know why such chaos comes every now and then on this earth, and it’s pretty much the same reason God decided to end that peculiar nation thing. His Son came to earth and closed out that nation because no nation on earth can ever observe His revelation. Even if you slap them upside the head with a plain and concrete revelation of how to live in this fallen world, and pour out miracles of blessings to go with it, people still can’t stick to the plan from that basis.

Some portion will stick with it, and sometimes those few can grab the leadership and make it work for everyone, but the tendency is toward moral entropy. So God closed up shop on the special nation business and it became a matter of something more difficult to corrupt. The national identity of His Kingdom is based on heart-led commitment to Him, and none of the trappings of normal human national identity matter any more. The flaw in normal national identity is that it has to be based on something from that higher level, and fallen humans simply cannot stop themselves from cutting off that higher level. Thus, that New Testament plan resulted in a lot of churches that kept cutting off the higher level and trying to become a political national entity again and again.

In our time, God has seen fit to restore at least the vision of a New Testament parallel society, a heart-led national identity on a different level. It’s not an easy calling. So far it’s been so difficult that there are very, very few people embracing it. Granted, this time around God is shining that light of revelation much closer to the point of failure of the prevailing civilization. We have a lot less time to get it organized, but also a lot less time for someone to grab it and take off in the wrong direction the way misguided Christians did after the First Century.

Pulling away from the prevailing civilization is clearly no small task, as evidenced from the failure of the early churches. All the things you were taught to love as a child are suspect, and it’s painful to reexamine it all and discard so very much of it. The whole mythology of who we were in Anglo-America is gone. But then, it’s almost gone anyway, since the whole thing has run its course and the mass invasion of folks from other cultures is running full blast. It won’t help to be resentful about it, but those invading hordes have cultures God hates, as well. We have to build a new one from scratch.

There’s no way we can simply forget all we’ve learned; we are still using English, for example. Our new parallel society and culture will be a mixture. And who can say what the mix will look like as this mission moves forward? If we can start this off properly, we’ll avoid the kind of lock-in that makes such a culture die too soon, where previous generations try too hard to control how their descendants think and act. We have to find that sweet spot of loving and living with succeeding generations, giving them enough, but not too much. We have to work harder to identify what is truly essential and let the rest hang loose.

At the same time, we have to make sure we establish a foundation that clearly points out what has failed. For once, we must lay down as firmly as possible that this thing must remain heart-led. We cannot let the prevailing intellectual assumptions stand. I’m sure we’ll screw up something, but let’s at least learn from past failures and not repeat that mistake. We don’t abolish cerebral mechanics, but we put them in their proper place as servants of the heart. If we can at least keep that in the center, the fringes won’t matter so much.

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If I Still Could…

Posted on March 22, 2019 by ehurst

I’ve discussed my military service in the past. The primary motive was not any particular patriotism, but simply my character. Soldering is in my soul, and more now than ever, despite being physically unable to serve for the past 25 years.

In fact, when I signed up I already knew some details of just how untrustworthy the US government can be, and the military in particular. The leadership of the military is chosen for their willingness to engage in idolatry, not because of any leadership virtue. Indeed, those truly capable have been kept from leadership positions since I can remember. There aren’t many people above the pay grade of E-7 that I would follow anywhere, and I’ve met maybe three officers I would follow, out of probably hundreds I’ve encountered. But it was in my soul to serve, so I put up with it. When I left, the Army was trying hard to get me to stay, despite already having serious trouble with my knees.

I was good cannon fodder. The military still needs good moral servants to die doing the job right.

Granted, much of what I experienced was based on entering the service right after we left Vietnam. That was a stupid war, and we had no business ever getting involved. However, it was profitable for certain groups. The profit motive behind the war is a critical reason why, to this day, we have never pressed the Vietnamese government to account for all those troops they kept as leverage after hostilities ceased.

If you have the time and inclination, this long article will explain some of the details of that massive betrayal. In particular, the author singles out John McCain as a traitor who violently struggled to hide the fact we left some 500 troops behind and still alive when we pulled out of Vietnam. While I didn’t know too much about McCain back when I enlisted, I did know that we had left some there. I knew I risked something like that happening to me; I knew my leaders would not hesitate to leave me behind in a situation like we had in Vietnam.

But again, I served because it was my nature do so. This is the proper motive for anything in this life: We do it because that’s what God made us to do. And I still wish I could serve, but I cannot imagine a situation where that would happen. Still, it’s what I would do best if I could.

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Life as a Video

Posted on March 21, 2019 by ehurst

I still believe the biggest battles will be fought online. However, it’s not so much cyber warfare but information warfare. There are almost no advantages these days in choosing one operating system or software package over any other. The primary tactic is the data: covering up accurate data and planting false data. This is not particularly new, but it’s quite egregious and obvious this time around.

After learning that the NZ mosque shooter also shot a video of his actions, I fully expected independent forensic analysts to find it despite monumental efforts to keep it hidden. There is at least one report on such an examination. These results are echoed by others if you take the time to look it up. I can verify parts of it from my own law enforcement experience, but I’m not a video analyst. The experts say the video appears a badly directed fictional movie.

Part of the battle here is that those who seek to oppress have long struggled to silence those who would dare to offer honest data on that oppression. Along with this, oppressors have hired people who would present similar data with a mixture of falsehood, as controlled opposition. The result is that the pool of information is polluted with crackpots and dishonest dealers. At the same time, the whole system seeks to inculcate an attitude of reduced interest and will so that honest people are kept from digging into the mess to try filtering out the crap.

So TPTB have moved to censor any honest reporting on the incident. Furthermore, the NZ government in particular has taken drastic measures to prevent anyone from even seeing the video, lest they discern events were not as publicized. The only way for folks in NZ to see the video is to use a VPN or something like the Tor Browser. Anyone daring to publish dissent from the official message is threatened with jail and further punishment.

How such a thing happening in NZ could affect us here in the US is a subject for debate. However, this echoes recent political moves by governments in the UK, Canada and Australia, as well. The same kind of draconian censorship has long been established in selected European countries on certain subjects of public interest. There have been attempts made in here the US with mixed results, but we have the bigger problem of major tech corporations acting on their own political biases.

It’s not that cyber warfare — attacking the software and operating systems — has reduced any, but that the primary field of battle has always been information and human awareness. It’s tough enough when we know that quantum level reality is so highly variable, but when the simple business of getting the facts, even without analysis, is blocked by governments, we can be sure nobody in their right mind would trust those governments or Big Tech. It tends to back up the joke that “you should never believe anything until it is officially denied.”

With Congress becoming quite literally a stage presentation (the video is worth your time), we should not take seriously the underlying claim that this is serious business. It’s all scripted behind the scenes by powerful thinkers who lack the charisma to run for public office. This is what our form of government encourages. I can’t wait to see who plans to take over the Republicans, and how they’ll script it. We aren’t cynical enough.

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Another Road Sign

Posted on March 20, 2019 by ehurst

It takes longer to set this up than it does to tell it. I’m posting a road sign here and it doesn’t warrant a bunch of explanation on my part. It does warrant a bunch of exploration on your part. The science is there if want that, but it’s more a matter of heart-led gate opening so your mind isn’t constrained by a lie:

Time and synchronicity is largely an illusion. God is not constrained by either when working in your life.

Now run with it.

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Parable of the Bridge

Posted on March 19, 2019 by ehurst

He stood on the road, surveying the damage.

Somewhere upland from here the flooding had pushed something in place that blocked its original course, and the overflow had run across his land. It carved out a massive channel that left a nasty scar on the land. The worst part was that it cut his road.

This was the road that had encouraged traders and travelers to cross his land. He built it so he could barter and exchange news and keep in touch with family and friends. Now his road was out and it would mean isolation and disruption of their lives, too.

So he went to his forest and began cutting trees. The two giant cedars became the primary beams to cross the hideous scar. There were smaller cedars to buttress them from below. He had to hire a lot of help, of course. Not a few of them did little more than keep an eye on the situation upstream to make sure he didn’t get caught in any further flash floods.

And once the bridge was complete, he still had to do a lot of work hauling wagon loads of rock to line the banks in weak spots to ensure any future washing wouldn’t destroy any more. But it was the bridge that required constant maintenance and took up a lot of his time, more than the rest of the whole road he had built and maintained.

————

The whole idea of being part of a community of faith is to have people come and go in your life. God made us social creatures; our gifts are designed to benefit His Kingdom, not just ourselves.

Sometimes a flood of temptation will catch you off-guard and rip through your life. Your sin will hurt others. Some kinds of sin can’t be just gotten rid of; it may leave a scar that marks you for life. For those times, you need to do the work to build a bridge so people can learn to trust you again. It takes lots of help from your covenant family, including those who will warn you when the temptation starts washing into your life again. But if you don’t do that work, you become a threat to the community of faith.

People who choose to never trust you again must be left to make their own decisions. Things will never be the same, but they can still be full of blessings.

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Faith and Pedophiles

Posted on March 18, 2019 by ehurst

What happens when a pedophile becomes a heart-led servant of Christ?

If you go by the experience of mainstream American Christianity, you don’t have a clue. The mainstream churches have no plan for dealing with moral and spiritual recovery of pedophiles, or any other sexual perversion, for that matter. Those few who have come up with something rarely get it right. They ignore what the Bible says (Galatians 6:1-5) and develop something that mirrors the bogus therapeutic failures of secular society.

There is a minority literature out there, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who reads it. The social hysteria about this problem prevents anyone taking seriously the power of the Holy Spirit in redeeming and healing people from this demonic idolatry. It’s funny how they can work with drug users — though typically getting that wrong, as well — but nobody wants to talk about pedophilia.

Let me shake you up: The personality make-up of a pedophile is what makes them also the very best teachers of children. They can empathize with children in ways few adults can comprehend. The only difference between a pedophile and a great teacher is that the pedophile is focused on self-gratification, whereas the teacher is focused on the community. It really is that simple.

Granted, there is more than one kind of pedophile, but the truly nasty predator types have another problem entirely, and it’s misleading to call them pedophiles. They suffer from some other affliction and children are simply their targets. You wouldn’t know that from reading the mainstream clinical literature. The mainstream reaction jumps from “not my problem” to “kill `em all” without stopping to consider redemption and recovery to build shalom.

By choosing the image of pedophiles, maybe I can shake loose the evil castle (2 Corinthians 10:3-6) of lies about the business of the community of faith. A church is the one place on this earth where you can unburden your soul and expose your true self because the people there won’t betray your trust and rip you to shreds out of self-righteous petty fears. There is a whole range of human misbehavior that is handled poorly by most organized religion. We don’t even have a good lore for understanding for it. It’s time to write that lore. Do you even know the difference between a pedophile and a child molester?

I’m not going to prescribe any answers. When I deal with such things, I do it according to my calling, gifts and experience. You’ll have to do that same. But as one who exercises the gift of prophecy, I warn you that if we continue failing on this issue of redeeming God’s children from their weaknesses, God’s wrath will fall on us. This sin of building a false “community of faith” means there is no hedge of protection for our children. We have not because we don’t seek God for our supply (James 4:1-6).

When churches can normalize how they handle pedophiles seeking redemption, and stop treating them with the spite of Satan, they can stand confident in the grace of God to face anything else the Devil throws at them.

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Faith Persists

Posted on March 17, 2019 by ehurst

In one of my less pleasant dreams, a right-wing militia group was executing doctors and nurses.

I didn’t have to ask why. Even in my dream state I knew that some of the fiercest Marxists in America are nurses and other medical personnel. I’ve known a rather large number of nurses socially, and I’ve heard them discuss the things that drive them. They worship mainstream medical science. Not the genuine scientific research, but the kind of medicine steered by Big Pharma. They become invested with an elitist sense that they have a God-given mandate to tell you how to live.

These are the kind of people who will lie to your face, as if they accept your decision, and then will call Child Welfare to take away all your kids because you don’t feed them right, or something equally petty. I don’t hate nurses; I will never trust them. If there is any single professional group that is wholly owned and marching to the orders of Big Pharma, it is nurses.

While doctors can be just as bad, of those I’ve encountered, a significant portion are quite patient-centered. If you do your homework, they are relaxed about you ignoring their advice. God has been good in putting me in the hands of a VA Primary Care physician who understands my choices and doesn’t deal with me in dismissive arrogance. I’ve encountered plenty of bad doctors at VA medical facilities, but this is one of the good ones.

This brings us back to the business of living a heart-led life, a life of conviction. Americans are taught to think in terms of instrumentality and effectiveness. That can be valid until you bump up against a sense of conviction. Our culture tries to bury that kind of thing. It’s hard sitting here in the middle of the US and striving to awaken the long lost intellectual tradition of letting the heart’s moral wisdom lead. It’s hard for me to even describe how folks in the Ancient Near East (ANE) never even questioned such a thing. For them, the heart must lead or you aren’t actually alive.

It’s not that they weren’t aware of concrete material logic, but that it was discounted as the means to ultimate truth. Having a clear and precise understanding of the facts was never enough. There was still the question of moral importance. They were convinced that nothing was properly viewed only on one level. If you weren’t in touch with the moral realm of Creation, you didn’t know anything anyway.

I don’t really care about living long. I suspect I will, but that’s hardly the issue. What matters is that I live fully. I work at fitness because that’s how I get in touch with Creation, and through that, with my God. When I work out, I pray and command my body to conform to my faith. I have every reason to believe my body will respond. I’m watching it happen. It’s not psychosomatic; it’s a genuine heart-led communion designed into us.

Act on your convictions. Seize faith and forge ahead with persistence to see the glory of the Lord in your life. It is the nature of faith to persist beyond human life.

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Teachings of Jesus — John 4:4-26

Posted on March 16, 2019 by ehurst

First, a short reminder: The Samaritans were not “half-breed Jews.” Something like 90% of the original population of the Northern Kingdom had been taken away by Assyria, and replaced with pagan folks from Hamath, and some from Elam and from other places scattered around the Assyrian Empire. They were granted an apostate priest from the old Northern Kingdom to teach them about the local deity, who gave them a very perverted version of the Books of Moses. Mostly what they learned were the rituals and some history. When the Judeans (Southern Kingdom) returned from Babylon, the Samaritans pretended to worship the same god and welcomed them home. When they weren’t allowed to bring their paganized version of worship into the Covenant, they became permanent enemies of Judea. The two had harassed each other for centuries.

Jews in Jesus’ day typically crossed the Jordan somewhere within Judea, hiked along the east bank until they were beyond the northern border of Samaria, then crossed back over into Galilee. They wouldn’t dirty their feet with Samaritan soil. But for reasons not stated, Jesus just had to pass through Samaria. The disciples were with Him. They stopped one day at Jacob’s Well and Jesus took a break. The disciples went into the town near the well to buy some food. They took with them the little animal skin bucket they normally carried that He could have used to draw water, so He was left in the heat of midday without access to the water far below ground level in the well.

Most days the women of the village of Sychar would gather in the cool of the morning to draw their water for the day and to gossip. They likely did it again in the evening. This gal was a social outcast, so she came during the middle of the day. Jesus asked her for a drink. It was a normal request and in the process of giving Him a drink, she commented on how Jewish men seldom spoke civilly with Samaritans unless they wanted something. She would know about that, of course, as we shall see.

Jesus ignored this rude gibe and told her something totally unexpected. She had a way to get water from the well, but He had “living water.” It was a common expression for water springing up from a natural fountain. She was puzzled how He could claim to have such water when He didn’t even have the means to get water from this well. He responded with an even more extravagant claim about how His living water would quench thirst forever.

She was still focused on mundane things, of course. Perhaps it was sarcasm when she said that it would sure be nice to have water bubbling up inside of her so she could just quit bothering with this chore. Jesus needed to prod her into thinking on a different level, so He changed His tack and asked her about her husband. Could she bring him out to meet Jesus? She admitted she had no husband.

Jesus then showed He was hardly your average Jewish man. He seemed to know everything about her already, noting that she had been married and divorced five times already, and was shacking up with yet another man. She was little different from a prostitute. She didn’t argue with Him, but simply noted He must be a prophet, at least. Moving the subject off herself, she asked this prophet a question that must have been annoying her for quite some time. Why do Jews insist on having their Temple in Jerusalem when the Samaritans had been worshiping at Bethel since ancient times? Where is Jehovah’s throne?

His reply was quite unexpected. He said that very soon everyone who actually cared to worship the Heavenly Father would not bother with either location. Granted, the Jews were the original people of God, and their version was correct as far as it went. The Samaritans came late to the game and were fed a bunch of nonsense. But that distinction didn’t matter, because all of that was done. It was already time to make a new distinction. From now on, it was going to be a matter of a higher realm — it was all about the spirit, not the flesh. God was now seeking those who would worship Him in a spirit of earnest commitment. God was not an earthly ruler, but a spirit being and you cannot deal with Him on a lower level. You have to meet Him on the spiritual plane.

She was lost by this. All she could say was something about how, when the promised Messiah came, surely it would all be straightened out. Jesus told her that He was the Messiah. His explanation was the divine truth of things. Here Jesus flatly claims to be the Messiah to a Samaritan, a woman with nothing to lose by believing Him.

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