Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
June 19 & 20, 2004
This chapter begins by pointing to the Pharisees who first came against John, and now they have learned of the growing numbers following Jesus. It states that He baptized, making more disciples than John. Having made this statement, it was qualified by the statement that He never baptized with water, only His apostles did so. Prophetically, we are looking at a time of spiritual baptism in the future, for He did not baptize of the Spirit until after His death and resurrection.
He knew that He was on the Pharisees’ religious hit list, so He moved out of Judea and departed for the Galilee. He took the straight route through Samaria, which led Him outside of Herod’s jurisdiction. This speaks today of a spiritual move outside of Roman control, in which church and state are locked together, while holding the messenger imprisoned in jail (John the Baptist, naturally speaking, and the bride, spiritually speaking).
Now the Samaritans were a mixture of a remnant of the ten northern tribes who had remained behind at the time of the Assyrian captivity, and foreigners who had been planted in the land by the Assyrians at that time. They believed in the first five books of the Bible written by Moses, which were tabernacle orientated and not temple centered. They also believed that the Messiah would make Samaria, not Jerusalem, the seat of government. They were, both naturally and spiritually, religious half-breeds who had inter-married with the gentiles, and had adopted certain of their religious practices. They simply did not fit into the religion of the Pharisees of Judaism. In fact, the Pharisees hated them as a people.
Jesus came to a city in Samaria called Sychar, which was in the plain of Shechem, meaning ‘the place of the world’. He was, to some extent, escaping the opposition of the religious establishment of Judea, by making His way back to the fishing country of the Galilee by way of Shechem, considered to be very much a gentile city.
Particularly interesting is the fact that this was a city, which was the original capital of the northern kingdom for a brief period of time. The Assyrian assault kept it small and insignificant. It is reminiscent of another city in Canada, the city of Kingston, the nation’s capital for a brief period of time before being moved to Ottawa, with the city remaining relatively small and fairly insignificant from then onward.
Shechem was located in the territory of Ephraim, which points us to spiritual Israel and the sons of inheritance. In Jewish history, this was the place where the Lord appeared to Abraham and announced that this was the Promised Land. He immediately built an altar to God there. It was in this same place that Jacob built an altar to the Lord, marking his safe return to the Land after a period of self-imposed exile.
Jacob had built a well in the small, adjoining village of Sychar, where Jesus decided to stop and rest on His journey to the Galilee. The only female descendant of Jacob, called Dinah, was defiled by the son of Hamor who lived there at the time. Upon conquering Canaan, Joshua also built an altar at Shechem, and a ceremony was conducted as directed by Moses, in which the blessings and cursings of the Law were recited (see Deuteronomy 27:12-13).
Sychar was located between two mountains, called Gerizim and Ebal. A Samaritan temple was constructed on Mount Gerizim, which rivaled the temple of Jerusalem. It would appear that the temple-building program was as important to the Judaizers as is the church cathedral-building program to the Christians. An altar rested on the other side of Mount Ebal, possibly still the altar built by Joshua.
It is very important to understand what is so significant about being between these two mountains. God warned Israel of the necessity for obeying Him and not turning away to worship other gods, because it would result in blessing and cursing, which would come to the people, according to whether or not they kept the Law. The blessing was proclaimed from Mount Gerizim, and the cursing, from Mount Ebal.
Moses commanded the Israelites to erect an altar of large stones, whitewashed with lime, on the mountain of Ebal, after crossing the Jordan to enter into the Land. They were to write on them all the words of the Law, after having crossed over, without using one tool of iron on them. The iron prophetically speaks of the iron Empire of Rome and the institutional tools used for the works of man under the spiritual controls of Romanism.
It was here that the people were to eat and rejoice before the Lord. This speaks of a place of great spiritual feeding. Moses had previously said that it was the voice of the Lord, which Israel was to obey. For she was to be the nation above others, a nation of holy people (see Deuteronomy 11:29; 27:4-13).
This is the background for the meeting place of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well. Shechem became the city where the pattern was established in the natural for kingdom inheritance. It is in this place that the spiritual nation of Israel will finally break through the curse of the Law to receive the blessing, belonging to the true Israel, which comes from the bosom of Abraham, and to no gentile nation of this world, which remains under the curse.
It was said that Jesus needed to go through Samaria on His way to the Galilee rather than take the commonly-used route around this unpopular region. In doing so, Jesus was going to make a statement spiritually, which, if understood today by the religious people, would shake them to their very roots. He was going to seat Himself right in the center of the promise to Abraham and Jacob, beside the only kind of well, which the fathers of the nation, born of the seed of man, could build. It was a well that contained the water of this world, which would leave men thirsting for more in a world between the two mountains, representing the blessing and the cursing of God’s Law upon Israel.
This is the location for entering the Land, for returning to the Land and for conquering the Land. Now Jesus was going to challenge all the traditional thinking of the Israelites by turning their understanding upside-down. He would meet with a woman to give her the message by the well, for the final covenant move, which would just precede the spiritual nation entering into the kingdom. He was about to demonstrate to her the difference between the water of this world and the living water of life.
He would demonstrate that neither sister of Israel, Oholah nor Oholibah, the nation nor the spiritual nation, had the slightest understanding of what real worship is all about. He was about to reveal that there was very little difference between the religion of Judea and the religion of the idolatrous, gentile nations in which Christianity is found today. Israel had been taken captive by the religion of Judaism, but the church of spiritual Israel is every bit as much in captivity to the religion of Christianity.
This was a ‘must-stop’ point for Jesus to give a crucial message of the crossover blessing, which would take place at the cross. The well of Jacob, with its water from beneath, would be left behind by the Samaritan woman and forgotten, for the well of living water from above, which would proceed from the pierced side of Jesus, after His death on the cross. That which had been the pattern of the wells where the fathers of the nation Israel had met their wives, would now become a spiritual pattern for the well of living water, where Jesus would meet the woman symbolic of His bride – the Samaritan woman at the well. This is where the inheritance of Israel comes to rest on the woman, Israel, who is one and the same as the woman birthing a true son (see Revelation, chapter twelve).
It was very near this well, where Jacob had given a plot of land to his son Joseph. There is the sense in which the presence of Jesus there at this time laid claim to this parcel of land promised to Abraham, making it spiritually His own. Neither Isaac nor Jacob, on the other hand, lay claim to either the land or the wells where their wives had first been met. There was no permanent association between them and the land or the wells. It was only here that the Lord was going to use the woman and the well to symbolically establish the well as the meeting place for the Bridegroom of the inheritance of the kingdom and His bride.
The time was about the sixth hour, you could say prophetically that it was around the time of the end of the sixth millennium, perhaps even the dawn of the seventh. It was close to dawn when the struggle between Jacob and the angel came to an end just before entering the Land, and he was both wearied and victorious in his encounter with man and God. It was only then that Jacob was called Israel. Jesus was wearied from His journey, when He sat down by the well.
A woman came to draw water, during the warmest hours of the day, which was a most unusual time for her to do so. Do the moments of destiny ever happen in any predictable pattern? The times are God’s alone to know, and this was a moment when everything, which took place, did not seem to fit either the norm or any particular time pattern. Yet it fit every prophetic message, which had ever been written previously in the Word about this momentous event of history.
Water had been used by John the Baptist for the purpose of symbolically cleansing men of their sins. One can only imagine what a threat the cleansing of man’s sin was for the religious Pharisees who used religious practices and regulations of man-made laws as a means of control over the people of Israel. Was Jesus not bypassing them in this walk from the religious center of Judea to make straight the way to the Galilee, the fishing center of His ministry, which would take Him through Samaria and into the land of the inheritance of Joseph?
The sun would have been very bright, and it would have been very warm when the Light, who dwelled among men, made the statement to the woman, “Give Me a drink.” One has to remember that this was Jacob’s well to which Jesus had arrived, the well Jacob dug when he set down roots in compromise with the world at Shechem. The words, which He spoke, were similar words to those spoken by Eliezer when he first met Rebekah, the wife-to-be of the son of inheritance, Isaac, after she had just filled her water pitcher at the well. Both asked the woman for a drink.
Why were the disciples not present at Jacob’s well? They had gone away into the city to buy food. How much of the bread of life in the Scriptures is offered for free today? Does the pastor preach for a salary and do the prophets write for financial gain? Is there a conference of any sort that does not carry the books of the featured speaker of the hour for an inflated cost? Is anyone healed at healing ministries, without feathering the nest of the healer?
It could be said that anyone wishing to follow the Lord would find it very difficult without some handy cash in hand, for the food of today’s ministries, which costs money. This is the condition of the apostolic church, captive to the Romanism of Christianity, when it is the time for Jesus to meet His bride at the well, where the real Bread of Life is freely given from above to all.
Surely, it was time at last for the Lord to come to the well, the place of meeting with the bride of Israel, for He was getting ready to call her to her great calling and to her inheritance within the house of Israel in the kingdom of God. He had come to her in a face to face encounter, asking her if she were willing to serve Him, since she had come to draw water for her own needs.
Her mind raced as she tried to understand how in the world this Man, a Jew, would ask her to serve Him. First of all, Jews did not speak to Samaritan women as openly as this, for she was of the faith they hated and despised. Could this Man really want her to serve Him, an Israelite of Judea?
Prophetically speaking, Jesus was meeting with this woman at a time when the apostolic church was nearly in ruins for lack of food, or teaching. Jesus’ disciples were simply not in evidence as they searched for some real teaching, something far beyond the morsels coming from the seminaries and theological colleges.
“How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” The fact was that Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus replied, in so many words, “If you had known and had understood the gift of God and who is asking you to serve Him, you would have been seeking Me to give you the living water, which comes from above.” The woman could only understand Him with her limited capabilities of the natural mind. She did not see anything He could use to draw water out of a deep well, so how was it possible for Him to give her a drink?
Here we have the mindset of religion that holds the institutional church back from the invitation of Jesus. In their lack of spiritual understanding, they can only visualize Him as a Jewish man like all other men, depending on the tools of man to make things work for them. If there were no visible container, men would conclude that it was impossible to provide water; one must be available for the other, according to the logical thinking of the carnal mind.
Jesus might have asked Himself the question as to how He could reach into the carnal mind of this woman, to give her understanding. He chose to dig deeply into His cup of divination (one like the cup of divination, which belonged to Joseph), and speak prophetically to her about things, which were true about herself, things no one could know unless they knew the beginning from the end, and all that is in between.
Being the Word made flesh He was able to give her prophetic words of identification for the bride. But first, she had to question whether or not He was greater than Jacob, for she knew from teachings that a Messiah was to come, and only He could be greater than Jacob who had drunk from this well with his sons and livestock. The prophetic would draw her closer, in her need to understand who this Man was and how she might relate in a more intimate relationship with Him.
He answered her by saying that whoever should drink of the water from that well would thirst again. Jacob’s well, in other words, had no staying power. In contrast, the water Jesus could offer her would become a fountain of water springing up into eternal life. Here we have the difference between the physical nation of Israel, and the spiritual nation of Israel.
Is religious Christianity not in the same sort of mind-set as this woman, seeing only that salvation belongs to the fallen nation, Israel, irrespective of the fact that the cross rests between the nation and the spiritual nation? Christianity often denies the power of Jesus for salvation, by reverting back to the belief held generally that Abraham’s inheritance did not rest in the hands of Jesus, but rather in the bloodline of a nation.
Seeing that she was trying to understand Scripture and, at the same time, fit it to her encounter, which was unfolding before her eyes, Jesus zeroed in on one of the main messages running throughout the Bible, the message of the changing of the waters in men’s lives. Here He was with the woman at the well, which was prophetic of His future meeting with His bride with whom He would establish a powerful relationship in the distant future.
It is this relationship with Him, rather than head knowledge about Him, which gives life to man, requiring a change of the spiritual waters in man’s life from the seawater of death to the living water of life. It is the same message again, about the water, which was given to Nicodemus. Jesus speaks of spiritual water, the likes of which will cause one to never thirst again, for it satisfies all the needs of man. It is like a bubbling spring from within unto everlasting life, unlike the water, which the Samaritan woman would draw from the well she calls Jacob’s.
Jesus was literally offering Himself to her for the taking. Could she make the leap from religion to life in the way and the truth? The signs all said “Go”, for she wanted what He had to offer. The door was wide open to her, after her encounter with the living God; this woman wanted nothing more of the well waters of this world. The lure of them was no longer of any interest to her. She wanted to never thirst again by drinking deeply of the water of her Lord, who had appeared before her in a similar manner as He would one day appear before the apostle Paul, who, like the woman, would have an instant conversion in the Spirit.
Now the Lord was ready to completely win her to Himself with the message of the prophetic Word. For no one but God can provide prophecy with the knowledge of future events, which can only be known by revelation from above. So He commanded her to go and call her husband and then come back. What followed was her confession of sin, for Jesus would not proceed any further without such confession. She truthfully replied that she had no husband, making a statement about what lay at the heart of the sin of man, which dwelt within her.
When Adam and Eve walked away from God, the marriage relationship between God and man was broken. Man became like a husbandless woman who had turned to harlotry, to then become subject to the controls of the satanic ruler-ship of man over man. Sin allowed Satan to replace the living Spirit within man with the spirit of death, so that man was no longer submitted to God, but rather to him. We had a situation then of sheep lost and without direction, once the Shepherd had departed.
Well did Jesus know Samaria’s condition in which five empires of satanic rulers had reigned over her people. From the days when the Assyrians first took the Samaritans into captivity, followed by the captivity of the next four empires of the Babylonian system, Satan would occupy the role, which belonged only to the husband of man, after the Light of the world, Jesus, had departed from His wicked creation.
But the situation was about to change with the revival of the fifth and final empire of the Babylonian system of empires, the Revived Roman Empire. Satan would have no access to the bride of Christ, for He was going to take His rightful place in her life again, as her Betrothed. In the same manner in which Isaac and Jacob, the sons of inheritance, had met their brides Rebekah and Rachel, respectively at the well, He, too, must fulfill the prophecy of the Son of inheritance, meeting His bride of inheritance, or comparable partner, at the well.
We now move prophetically into a time when new revelation, sealed to Daniel, was about to be opened. Jesus began using the prophetic, which would establish who this woman was, with her credentials coming from the prophetic Word, just as He had His credentials, not from man, but rather from the Father above. No man, no priest, no denomination or any religion could give them to her.
With prophecy, Jesus was about to fit her directly into her proper slot within the inheritance of Israel. The Lord would use this encounter to address the fact that she had five husbands (prophetically speaking of the empire kings who had ruled over her long national life), but that her time of captivity was over. He had come to place His last covenant move into her hands, the hands signified by those of the Samaritan woman’s hands, which held the water pot full of the water of this world. She can also be equated to the servants who were in charge of filling the water pots with water at the wedding feast of Cana.
The Lord now had her full attention. At the very least, she believed that this Man must be a prophet, but she had just fallen short of equating Him to being one with God. She attempted to identify her religious stance, and just who she was spiritually speaking. In prophetic language her words might have become the words spoken by the true church, still in captivity to religion. “We are Christians. You see, we worship on our own religious mountain and have our own temples like the temple of the Jews in Jerusalem, but we definitely are different, even though Jacob is the father of us both.”
It was time for Jesus to reach forth to His true church with the truth, which, for this woman, would be like receiving a ‘double whammy’ to her understanding, which would bring about life-changing results in her. He was about to distinguish for her the difference between what He was telling her and what she had been told by her religious priesthood, regardless of the brand of religion. He explained the difference that existed between Himself and His followers and the religious priesthood, which was housed in temples of all sorts with the laity under their authority.
Jesus explained the situation in words similar to these: “I am the truth, but they are religion. At this moment, the kingdom is set before you, where worship will no longer be in the temples or in any other buildings of worship, in which you have been worshiping for centuries. All such buildings will disappear and men will worship the Father only in spirit and in truth.”
What a shocking statement this was for the Nicolaitan priesthood and the laity of the religious systems! How would the hired musicians take this piece of news? Was it possible that the Christian denominations of today could have gotten the system of religion all wrong for so many years, even for over a millennium of time? Such ideas as were coming from Jesus would be considered nothing short of radical.
What amazing faith this Samaritan woman must have had to accept the message and then witness to others who would not necessarily be as agreeable to receive this radical message as she was. But then she had had a personal encounter with Jesus who described His relationship to her in terms of that of a husband for His wife. Would He do so without offering her the very plan for love, which He had created for marriage – that of a bridegroom for a bride? It would be the love, which would sustain His church and wife through all difficulties.
Did the Spirit not lead Martin Luther and Christopher Columbus, men within the Roman system, to break loose, in order to follow the directives of God in their lives? It is true that the Spirit led them, but it was in spite of their place within the system of Christian Romanism. They functioned with the religious church as their adversaries, and did not back down on matters of principle as they responded to the true authority of God over their lives. They contributed to His work of preparing the way for His kingdom here on earth.
These were men of great insight, sharing responsibility, in many ways, for initiating the exodus of the church from the religious system, and separating it in readiness for returning to its original foundation of the apostolic church, free of Romanism and religion of any kind. The meeting at the well cannot be isolated from those events, which took place before in preparing the way for this woman, whose time of labor was now at hand. It was time for Jesus to make her ready for the delivery by means of a personal encounter with Him.
Jesus compared both the religion of Judea, known as Judaism, and the idolatrous religion of the Samaritans, which leads them to worship what they do not know. He then spoke of Himself as ‘We’, referring to both His church and Himself in identifying the true Jew, saying that the day would come when they will worship the Father, neither on their mountain, nor in Jerusalem, having no need of temples and altars. Likewise, the woman of the end days’ apostolic church, meeting her Beloved at the spiritual well where the waters will be changed in her life, will have no need of a temple or mountain in order to worship Him.
The invitation went out with the words, “Salvation is of the Jews”. The explanation was simple: “My dear woman, only those who worship in spirit and in truth are the true Jews. They are not Christian, Judaic, Islamic or Buddhist; they are those who believe on Me for their salvation. This is the very hour, this sixth hour, when I am coming for My bride in a face to face encounter like that, which I had with Moses, so that she might know the truth about who I really am, as the God whom she shall worship – the great I AM.”
The woman entered fully into this dialogue by explaining how little she knew about the Scriptures concerning what Jesus was telling her. She knew that the Messiah was coming, and she fully expected Him to tell mankind all things, for the mysteries were hidden in the Word, and she was aware there was to be an opening of the Scriptures. The message to this effect was well-known from the prophecy of the book of Daniel, where it was revealed that there were still more scriptural scrolls to be opened to the understanding of man. At the time of Revelation it was revealed to the apostle John that only Jesus would be the One able to open such understanding, and to whom else would He reveal it than to His bride, just as He was opening the understanding of this woman at the well by prophesying over her.
The important message of Revelation, which has escaped the religious priesthood for centuries, is that only the Bearer of truth, and not of religion, can unseal Scriptures, for the testimony of Jesus is given in the spirit of prophecy. The response of Jesus in words such as these says it all: “My beloved bride, now you know Me, I am He, your awaited Messiah.” It is as though He had lifted the veil that lay between them, and at this moment they came into the intimacy of truly knowing each other.
With this incredible, prophetic meeting, the understanding is given to the reader that Jesus will make Himself known to His bride in a very private and personal way, in order to bring about a return of the true church to its apostolic roots. Those of the religious world will marvel at the very fact that He has chosen to reveal Himself to a woman. However, the true church will not question the choice of the straight way Jesus has taken.
The priesthood of today is not unlike the Pharisaical priesthood, which Jesus left behind in His day when He departed from the institution of religion in Judea to travel to the Galilee, leaving them and their religion behind. They will question the right of God, Himself, and the validity of a woman who dares to claim understanding greater than theirs, the so-called scholars of the Scriptures. And for this very reason of religious, theological pride, He will reject the institutional church priests again, for those who will believe Him, His Word and will also reject religion.
The Samaritan woman dropped her water pot ‘like a hot potato’, never to drink from the waters of the world again. She was hooked on Jesus, having once drunk of the living water, which was like no water that she had ever known before.
It was at this point the disciples returned, you might even say, at the time when the apostolic church would be restored and, once again, ready to function as it had functioned in its early years. The church will consist of those who can accept the fact that Jesus has come to reveal Himself to a woman rather than to a man. But then why should that surprise them, for was it not Mary Magdalene, to whom He first revealed Himself after He had arisen and before He revealed Himself to the others? Did she not do the same thing as this woman did, when she immediately rushed out like an evangelist to tell the others?
For this woman, it will be instant conversion, with a life-changing moment, because of a very real encounter with Jesus, about which one can only dream. To what could one attribute her success as an evangelist? She did not call the others to her ministry or to begin any other form of ministry. She simply directed the others to Jesus, or it could be said, to the Word, instead of to another form of religion; for Jesus is the Word made flesh.
She spoke of His being a prophet, when He told her things about herself, which would be normally unknown to Him. This woman had the credentials of the prophetic Word attached to her lifestyle, and was in the right place at the right time, when Jesus came looking for a bride, no different from Jacob meeting Rachel at the well. He had made sure she was identifiable in the prophetic, human stories of Scripture, so there could be no reason for men to doubt her special calling from Jesus.
Her initial role was to offer the invitation to the others to come and see for themselves. She spoke such words to them as, “If you can hear what I am telling you about Him, in that He has spoken prophetically to me, then come and listen for yourselves and make your own decisions about who this Man is, of whom I speak to you! If you fail to check out what I am telling you, then how can you ever know for yourselves whether or not the things I am saying are true?”
This woman will put in place the best possible pattern for evangelism, which places the onus squarely on the shoulders of the listeners to decide for themselves whether or not her message fits the Scriptures. She will never hit anyone over the head with a pile of religious talk, and will use neither religious language nor religious practices.
Meanwhile, back at the well, as we move back to the time when Jesus was with His apostles, they have returned to where He had remained with the woman, bringing with them food and then urging Him to eat. “Will they ever get it straight?” Jesus might have asked Himself and then responded to them saying, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” They might well have asked themselves where it had come from, as they looked around them for the food of which He was speaking.
Jesus said that the food He eats is to do the will of the Father who sent Him, and to finish His work. “Your lives will be so full when you do this, that you will never again hunger for the fruit of the tree, which was forbidden in the Garden.” He might have added, “Pay attention, My dear disciples! It is like the four months between Pentecost and the Feast of Trumpets. You, My disciples, are about to become My apostolic church, which will put the foundation in place for My bride. One sows, and the other reaps. You are like the sowers, while she, as the female branch of the church, is like the reaper, who will reap the harvest at harvest time. She comes to rest on your foundation once again to bring to fruition the fruit of the marriage bed. She must enter into the labor of you, who have gone before her.
It is all about reaping and gathering fruit for eternity, so that as many as possible can be saved within the developing, spiritual nation of Israel as one family belonging to My house of Israel, rejoicing together at the completed works. Keep your eyes raised up and on the fields, like Ruth. Do not look to the right or to the left, for as you sow, the harvest has begun growing, even within the captivity of religion! You have been sowing for a long time; now the harvest is ready for reaping.”
History has been carrying this message for mankind all the way from the Garden of Creation to the present day. Some seed has fallen on good ground and some, on bad, but there has always been a remnant within Israel, no matter what her condition or state. She has been like a birthing woman laboring to bring forth the good fruit, the man child, the child of her labor, just as Jacob struggled with God and man, all through the night, the time of darkness.
“I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors (John 4:38).”
Many of the Christians, just like the Samaritans and the Judeans caught in the grip of religion today, will come to believe on Jesus because of the prophetic utterances of the bride spoken from the Word. All important to her position are her credentials, which the Lord has given to her within the prophetic Word, so that the Word will clearly identify who she is.
Jesus stayed with the Samaritans for two days (a day is as a thousand years). They were brought to believe, just as two millennia have brought the true church to believe, like wheat among the tares, to then move on, bringing many more to the feet of Christ. The bride will not direct them to herself or to her agendas, she will send them scurrying to the Word of God to study and find Jesus for themselves.
Institutional churches direct straying mankind back to the institutional church of their choice, as to their choice for the flavor of the day, and to the authority of the priesthood every time. But the bride will direct them to the Word and to Jesus for their only authority, so that they will be able to hear His voice and understand for themselves. Inward, intimate knowledge of the truth cannot coexist with outward form and ceremonial practices.
The bride will instinctively do what the apostles had to learn from their three-year journey with Jesus. Learning spiritually at His feet from His direct teaching, the Samaritan woman instantly went out to the others to declare her love relationship with Him. The bride, like Paul, will understand through a momentary encounter with the risen Lord that she can only stand in truth, never to stand in religious compromise again.
The work of Jesus on the cross is all that is required for salvation. Religious practices of any sort negate this, and, like the Samaritan woman, the religious Christians and those in Judaism must learn to put the pot of water down and leave it there, when they meet Jesus at the well as His bride. There will be very few worldly priests involved in this meeting. Her testimony will become the mirror of His testimony and, in this one-flesh relationship, she can look in the mirror to see a reflection of her Lord.
She can rightfully make Him her only authority. No meetings of soaking in the Spirit will be necessary, or will she need to participate in any large healing conferences of miracle workings to receive her credentials. She will simply accredit herself by the use of the prophetic Word in bringing others to the Lord. The understanding, to which she wants to lead the others, is to the knowledge of the divinity of Jesus, and His role as the Savior for not just one nation, but rather for all of the nations of the world.
Jesus then left the Samaritans, for His time with them was over. This speaks of the end of the Church Age when He returned home to Galilee, and once more to apostolic fishing country. It was there, where the fishing nature of the church began, when Jesus called forth the fishermen, called Andrew, Peter, James, and John, to become fishers of men. The bride must join their ranks as a fisher for the Kingfisher of men. It was Jesus’ own country within Israel, where He received no honor. After the fullness of the gentiles is complete and the bride has completed her calling, Jesus will come back to the nation, which rejected Him to reveal His identity as the Messiah, and receive the full honor, which He deserves from that nation.
Now, this is when the Passover becomes a reality for spiritual Israel, and the church, having been separated by the blood of the Lamb, is ready to be taken out of this world before the judgment rains down. The true exodus of Israel is from this religious, empire world rule, of which Egypt was only the first empire. This time, Him whom they pierced, they will receive as they weep for Him and for their lost first son inheritance. But the Lord is a Lord of second opportunities, and they will be given a second opportunity for salvation in Him.
The chapter concludes with a return to Cana, the site of the wedding feast where the water was changed to wine. But the time is different and it is now the Lord’s time about which He alluded to His mother when He said that His time had not yet come. It is now time for the Son of God, the Bridegroom, to celebrate His wedding feast with His bride, when the best wine has been saved for the end.
The certain nobleman mentioned here represents the bride in John, just as the man of nobility, called Theophilus, represents the bride in the book of Luke. The son of the nobleman was in need of healing. The bride in captivity needs to come out of religion, which causes blindness, paralysis, deafness, leprosy, and finally results in death, itself. She is very much in need of healing before she can bring forth the adopted son of God, as the perfect fruit, which the Father desires from mankind. This nobleman sought the Lord, so that his son might live. The woman birthing seeks life for the man child, so that the child can be taken up to the throne of the true Father.
Jesus never ceased to bemoan the fact that everyone wanted a sign or a miracle before believing. But this nobleman was different. Though the Lord reigned from on high, he called upon Him to come down and meet with him. He was very afraid of the death of his son, which points to the woman desirous of not losing the child in labor. Surely her Lord would not bring Israel, the bride, to this point and then leave her in a state of labor, with her baby dying. No, she did not have to see to know what the Word told her, being all she needed to believe. She knew that simply calling on His name brings Him from His place on high, to save those who believe on Him.
It is at the seventh hour and in the seventh month that atonement has been made. The promise is for the bride to deliver a healthy child, who will receive the inheritance of Israel, and the inheritance of Abraham. The bride needs only to come into the presence of, and into a relationship with Jesus; she does not need any great healing conference to do the job. Again, at the beginning of the seventh hour, when this healing will take place, we are looking prophetically at the beginning of the seventh millennium, when the bride will birth the son, who is raptured into the heavens and into son-ship with the Father.
This could never take place when the apostles were with Jesus, but, rather, only at the time of a revived apostolic church in the end times, which has come through the Church Age and is completely out of religion. With the salvation of the bride, the whole household of Israel will come into its salvation, after the last covenant move of the Lord, when Israel finally witnesses with a walk on the reflecting light of the moon, which receives its light from the sun (the Light of the world), being seen by the entire world. She will constitute the 144,000 Jewish witnesses, who will be seen raptured to meet their Lord in the clouds, after three and one half days, as a perfect image of their Lord’s resurrection.
This is the fulfillment of the first sign of Jesus at the wedding feast in Cana, in the Galilee, when Jesus turned the water into wine in the water pots, not unlike the pot carried by the Samaritan woman at the well. You could say the water was changed from the deadly, spiritual waters of the world to the water of the Spirit of life. Could there ever be any greater wine than this at any wedding feast?
With the living water returned to the vessel or temple of the body, the good fruit of the son can now be born again for the Father, and healed in the fishing country, in the final hours of history. The water in his/her life must be changed, just as John the Baptist cried out and, as will the bride cry out also. But then, Elijah made the same call for Israel, the nation, to come out of her idolatrous, religious worship and back into the truth of the God of Israel. It would not be possible for her to remain a ‘fence-sitter’.
With the conclusion of this chapter of John, the bride’s name is firmly planted on the wedding invitation to the wedding feast of the Lamb.