John 4
3 Jesus left Judea and started for Galilee again. 4 This time he had to go through Samaria, 5 and on his way he came to the town of Sychar. It was near the field that Jacob had long ago given to his son Joseph. 6-8 The well that Jacob had dug was still there, and Jesus sat down beside it because he was tired from traveling. It was noon, and after Jesus’ disciples had gone into town to buy some food, a Samaritan woman came to draw water from the well.
Jesus asked her, “Would you please give me a drink of water?”
9 “You are a Jew,” she replied, “and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink of water when Jews and Samaritans won’t have anything to do with each other?”a]
10 Jesus answered, “You don’t know what God wants to give you, and you don’t know who is asking you for a drink. If you did, you would ask me for the water that gives life.”
Richard: Here Jesus approaches the Samaritan women. He offers the woman living water. It is interesting that many Samaritans accepted and believed in Jesus, even though they are not considered true Jews by many Jewish people. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans)
2 Kings 6
24 Some time later, King Benhadad of Syriae] called his entire army together, then they marched to Samaria and attacked. 25 They kept up the attack until there was nothing to eat in the city. In fact, a donkey’s head cost about two pounds of silver, and a small bowl of pigeon droppingsf] cost about two ounces of silver.
26 One day as the king of Israelg] was walking along the top of the city wall, a woman shouted to him, “Please, Your Majesty, help me!”
27 “Let the Lord help you!” the king said. “Do you think I have grain or wine to give you?” 28 Then he asked, “What’s the matter anyway?”
The woman answered, “Another woman and I were so hungry that we agreed to eat our sons. She said if we ate my son one day, we could eat hers the next day. 29 So yesterday we cooked my son and ate him. But today when I went to her house to eat her son, she had hidden him.”
30 The king tore off his clothes in sorrow, and since he was on top of the city wall, the people saw that he was wearing sackcloth underneath. 31 He said, “I pray that God will punish me terribly, if Elisha’s head is still on his shoulders by this time tomorrow.” 32 Then he sent a messenger to Elisha.
Elisha was home at the time, and the important leaders of Israel were meeting with him. Even before the king’s messenger arrived, Elisha told the leaders, “That murdererh] is sending someone to cut off my head. When you see him coming, shut the door and don’t let him in. I’m sure the king himself will be right behind him.”
33 Before Elisha finished talking, the messengeri] came up and said, “The Lord has made all these terrible things happen to us. Why should I think he will help us now?”
Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959
Who was Jesus? During the four thousand years of the historical dispensation, no one was qualified to introduce the happiness of God. By the coming of Jesus, however, God’s happiness was to be introduced at last and the garden of happiness which God permitted was to be built. We should understand that Jesus was such a new being in history. The Israelites at that time should have known that Jesus represented the sole substantiation of the hope of their ancestors, the substantiation of the happiness their ancestors had fought to attain. He was the hope for the restoration of Israel’s national sovereignty and the establishment of the heavenly foundation.
Jesus resurrected the hope of the ancestors and of the earth, which was buried deeply in the heart of God. Moreover, he was the representative of God, the one whom God had sent to bring about the world where the ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven could be fulfilled. Jesus was our representative, the representative of humankind who would build the garden of happiness. The Israelites should have known this; however, they did not realize this. Therefore, even though Jesus came to this earth, he had to go without becoming the central person of the new world. He had to go without possessing the people of the new world and without building the society and nation of the new world.
The world we live in today is fallen. Because nothing in this fallen world became the reality God hoped to fulfill, God can rejoice in nothing. God looks at this world with judgment, therefore, our lifestyle, environment and nation cannot communicate purely with His heart.
What does God long for now? He is longing for something new. When Jesus appeared before Judaism and the Pharisees who bragged of being the chosen, he said, “The things you assert and have pride in are not enough.” We should know that Jesus’ three-year public life course was the record of the battle he fought to declare and proclaim that everyone had to go through him, that he was the cosmic new being who brought a new ideology and world view. Jesus hoped that his disciples and the numerous people who followed him would become new people. Nevertheless, among those who met Jesus at that time, only a few believed and understood that Jesus came to introduce and build a new heart, a new ideology, a new life, and new happiness. Therefore, when Jesus came, he could not speak fully about these things and the blueprint for the new world before he departed.
Nicodemus appeared before this agonized Jesus. He was a government officer of Judea, a person in the position of a teacher and leader of the chosen people. Jesus emphasized to him the necessity of being reborn. We are destined to be reborn today, just as Jesus said.
If there is a last days in the six thousand years of history, then God expects to resolve everything at that time. God knows that He should judge and resolve this sinful world at a certain time. Therefore, we are walking our course of faith today fearing the last days. What kind of time is the last days? It is time to liquidate the old and assert the new.