Originally Posted by Pastor Mikie

Hebrews 10:25 is an exhortation written to persecuted Jewish Christians. That is literally true. However, the verse stands alone in its teaching of Christians coming together. We are social creatures. People withdraw for many reasons, but it is against how God made us. My reason for stating this is to get some feedback about how to answer people who say something like this: "I don't go to church because it's dead" or, "I've got enough of my own problems and don't need more problems", or, "There isn't a decent church around", or, "All they want is my money", or, "I can't find a church that doesn't 'correct' the Bible". Any thoughts?

It is true that a Biblically sound Church is hard to find. Although, well worth the time it takes to find one.

Once we are saved, we need to surround ourselves with others that are in Christ. In everything we do, we should be glorifying God. We assemble together to worship God. We assemble together for Christian fellowship and more important, to be edified in Christ. Sanctification. In a Church where the Bible is the final authority and the fundamentals are taught, there should be Church discipline in order to not stray from the narrow way.

Matthew 7:13-14 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

We should be rooted in the Word of God. We need to be listening to good Bible Preaching.

2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

In a different thread it is discussed that we are not of this world. Satan is the ruler, (god) of this world. To be a member of a Biblically sound Church is to have a place away from the world. The closest thing to heaven that we will experience on earth. To be in fellowship with other members of the body of Christ. Not only are we edified in Christ together, but we help one another, take care of one another as family should.

Soon after John the Baptist was thrown into prison, Jesus left the country near Jerusalem with His disciples, and went toward Galilee, the province in the north. Between Judea in the south and Galilee in the north lay the land of Samaria, where the Samaritans lived, who hated the Jews. They worshiped the Lord as the Jews worshiped Him, but they had their own temple and their own priests. And they had their own scriptures, which was only the five books of Moses, for they would not read the other books of the Old Testament. The Jews and Samaritans would scarcely ever speak to each other, so great was the hatred between them. It was a long and tiring journey from Judea back to Galilee, and as He walked along the broad, hot valley floor of the ascent of Lebonah, Jesus would have seen the low-lying hills to the east and the gradually rising heights to the west. He would then come to Sychar, near the ruins of the ancient Shechem. And here, being much wearied from their journey, Jesus and His disciples paused to rest at the well at Sychar.

This well had been dug by Jacob, the great father of the Israelites, many hundreds of years before. It was an old well then in the days of Jesus, and it is much older now, for the same well may be seen in that place still. Even now travelers may have a drink from Jacob's well.

Shechem was some 33 miles from Jerusalem in Samaria and Jesus said that He had to go through Samaria. Why? Because He had an appointment with a woman at Jacob’s well. He arrived at the well at 12 noon. He was meeting his future wife (Gentiles) at a well at high noon! He walked out his whole life for this woman by walking 33 miles!! He purposely arrived when the shadow on the sundial was gone!!!! The law was represented by that shadow. At 12 noon on a sundial there are no shadows. James said in Ja. 1:17,

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

Heb. 10:1 says,

“For the law being a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things…”

When Jesus sat down on that well it was high noon and the Son (Sun) cast no shadows. The Law had served its purpose. In Christ there is no Law that can govern the Spirit of Truth. The true light of man sat down on that well and capped it off. The water in the well could not forever quench the thirst of the Gentile woman. This water represents the Law that could not bring eternal life to mankind. Jesus is the Word, which will supply the water that will quench our thirst. He said in John 7:37,

“If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”

Not only will the water Jesus spoke of quench our thirst but it becomes a life flowing river of life flowing out of our innermost being to heal the nations.

Jacobs well was about a mile from Shechem and the disciples had gone there for something to eat. Jesus was left alone when this woman from Samaria came with her water pots. This was unusual in that most women of that day usually came to the well for water in the morning. She must have been an outcast and because she had been married so many times and was now just living with a man. The self-righteous women of Samaria would not have associated with her.

The difference between most Christians and those who overcome is that most Christians don’t realize that the Lord is leading their lives and things just don’t happen accidentally or by chance. Jesus knew that He needed to be in Shechem at high noon and when this woman came to draw it wasn’t just an accident that He was there to talk to her.

He was thirsty, too; and as He looked into the well, he could see the water, a hundred feet below, but He had no rope with which to let down a jar to draw up some water to drink. Just at this moment a Samaritan woman came to the well, with her water jar upon her head and her rope in her hand. Jesus looked at her, and in one glance read her soul and saw all her life. He knew that Jews did not often speak to Samaritans, but He said to her, "Please give me a drink."

This must have shocked the woman that this Jew was asking her to serve him. The woman asked Him, “Why would you being a Jew ask me to get you some water? Don’t you know that I am a woman of Samaria? I thought it was a disgrace for a Jew to speak to a Samaritan!”

Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God that He wants to give to you and who I am that I would ask you to give me a drink you would have asked me to give you some living water.”

She said, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep how can you have living water?” “Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well and drank of this water himself and his children and his cattle?”

Jesus said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water (Law) shall get thirsty again. But whosoever drinks of the water that I give him shall never get thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to everlasting life.”

Here was Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman in broad daylight. In Acts 26:13 Paul told the King,

“On the road at noon, O King, I saw from heaven a light that was brighter than the sun flash around me and those who were traveling with me.”

Proverbs 4:8 says,

“But the path of the just is like the shining sun,
That shines ever brighter unto the perfect day.”

Rebekah met Isaac at a well. Rachel met Jacob at a well. Moses met Zipporah at a well!!! And now Jesus meets this Gentile woman at the well that Jacob dug. Hmmmm!!

So she said to Him, “Sir, Give me some of this water so I will never have to come here and draw water again.” Then Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and bring him here!” The woman said, “I have no husband!” And Jesus said to her, “You have told me the truth but you have had five husbands and the one you are living with is not your husband!”

Besides getting her attention, why did Jesus talk to her about her husbands? She had five husbands, which represent her five senses. The one she is living with now represents her esp or her intuition. Even with all these she was still thirsty for her real true love and she had just met Him at the well. She had just met the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the heavenly bridegroom. She had just met her true husband. The one who would give her true love and eternal life springing up from within her. She would be able to have intimate relationships with him, which would result in eternal life. Now don't get carnal here or I'll lose you in this spiritual application! Jesus told the ones who served themselves and not Him in Mt. 7:23,

“And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

That Greek word “know” means to have an intimate relationship with. This story of the woman at the well is a spiritual type of the Lord being our true husband!!

After Jesus told her about her husbands she said, “Sir, I discern that you are a prophet and I have a question for you. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain and you say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”

Jesus replied, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming, when you will worship the Father neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem. You don’t know what you worship; we know what we worship because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is even here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth because this is who the Father is seeking to worship Him. This is because God is Spirit and those that desire to worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

He talked about true worship and even said it was going on right then. Worship was going on right then because Jesus was giving glory to His Father by ministering to this woman.

This woman was not ignorant of the things of God. She said to Him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ and when He comes He will tell us about all things.”

Jesus said to her, “That’s who I am!” I bet that made the hair on her neck to stand up. Wow! Meanwhile His disciples had just come back from town and were astonished that He was talking to a woman, let alone a Samaritan woman. They represent the religious world today and those who want to live according to the letter of the Law. Paul said in 1 Cor. 11:29-30,

“For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. 30For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.”

So many of God’s children are still infants in the spirit and cannot discern who their brothers and sisters in the Lord are because they really don’t know who they themselves are and don’t really know the Lord.

The woman was so excited that she left her water pots and took off and went back to town and told the men to come with me and see a man who told me about all the things that I have ever done. Could this be the Christ? They could see how excited she was so they went with her to the well to see this man called Jesus. Because of her amazing testimony about what Jesus had told her many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him.

So when the Samaritans come to where Jesus was they asked Him if He would stay with them and teach them. Jesus indeed stayed with them for two days. 41And many more believed because of His teaching them the word. Jesus stayed with them two days because the Third Day had not yet occurred. The veil was still between the Second Dimension and the Most Holy Place but was soon to be rent in two for the whole world to see.

The people of the town told the woman, “Now we believe because we have heard Him ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. Because of the doctrine of devils and men many Christians are not able to know and hear the voice of the Lord today. They have been taught and trained to depend on themselves.

If man is to worship God, then man must worship God AS HE IS, and not as man thinks He is or where man thinks He may be. Carnality and the natural man attempt to bring God into a realm that will enable them to see God according to their belief. Therefore some worship idols or images of metal, wood, or stone. Others worship the sun or the elements. Some must go to a building to worship God and others must have all manner of rites and ceremonies. Some must have a Jesus in a body of flesh, before they can worship God. But Jesus said that God was seeking a people who would worship God in the realm and sphere in which God is - in Spirit and Truth. Worshiping a physical location is not spiritual worship.

"Oh," you say, "I do not worship the location, I just go there to worship God." Precious friend of mine, if you must go there in order to worship God, you are worshiping the place! When we worship God in spirit and in truth, it separates us from all the "helps" and "crutches." Such worship takes away all traditions of men, all the ceremonies and all the rituals and all the forms that every religious body of people are cumbered with. We won't go to a mountain, neither will we find it necessary to go to a temple. We will not have to work anything up or pray anything down. Certainly the Lord draws His people together for seasons of fellowship, praise, instruction, and edification.

I do not oppose such gatherings, as the Lord ordains. But true worship will not take place just on Sunday morning or perhaps a night or two each week. True worship is a CONSTANT, CONTINUAL STATE OF BEING. God is spirit, and who can know spirit except God take us unto Himself in the realm in which He abides. God, Spirit and Truth, fills all space, and is everywhere present, eternal and unchanging. When we live and walk in the spirit we are always dwelling at home in Him. We are always able to know and experience Him in the heaven of His presence, the true home and heaven of the consciousness of the life, reality and substance of God within. This is one of the great truths that the vast majority of church members have not grasped to this day. That is, that the place of worship has no bearing whatsoever on the act of worship. Today, in order to hold together the system, the religious system men have developed, there must be a place of worship, and men must gather themselves together at that place so that they may worship.

Anyone who claims to be able to worship God at any time and in any place becomes a heretic to the organized religionists. For, if the places of worship were taken away, and men truly worshiped in spirit and in truth, the whole religious system would fall apart. There would be no reason for it to continue. The whole religious system is built upon having a "place" for people to come to so that the works of men may continue to be carried out. Again, let me affirm that God does indeed gather His people together, but such gathering together is UNTO HIM, and the place and order becomes inconsequential. It is when the place becomes important, it is when preachers and organizations demand your attendance, your submission, and your allegiance to them and their program, asserting that you cannot make it in to heaven, or the Kingdom, or sonship, or immortality apart from their teaching, their method, their order, their program - it is there that worship in spirit and in truth is usurped by worship in "this mountain" or in "Jerusalem."

Religion always tell us where, when and how to worship but the Spirit, like a rushing wind, carries us off to that realm of spirit and truth far beyond the place, time and methods into the very presence of the Father for it is there we gather to worship! Let all who read these lines know of a certainty that worship in spirit and in truth is the worship of the New Covenant. This worship of the New Covenant and Testament is a new worship, which Christ Jesus, the heavenly spiritual man, the second Adam, set up almost two millenniums ago; and then put down and abolished the worship at the mountain, and the worship at Jerusalem, when He set up this worship in spirit and truth. And this spirit and truth must every man and woman know within themselves, by which they may know the God of truth, who is a spirit, within their spirit.

The outward Jew worships in the Old Covenant and Testament. They sing and pray and preach in their outward temple made with hands. The inward Jew worships in a temple, his body being the temple of the Holy Ghost, in the New Covenant and Testament, the new and living way, they sing and rejoice and minister and pray in the Holy Ghost, their bodies being temples of the Holy Ghost. This body is not the outward body of flesh, but the body of the inward man, the house from heaven, the spiritual body, the body of the Christ, which every man who is putting on Christ is building within his own reality of Christ within. The type has passed, and we know that the temple built with hands is no more.

But what do we see? Men are trying to reproduce it, or to invent a substitute for it, thus perpetuating the Old Covenant, to walk as outward Jews. Church buildings, cathedrals and temples are pawned as the meeting place with God! Call these "churches" if you will. THEY ARE NOT CHURCHES. The very name is a blasphemy. They are mere buildings; and there is nothing sacred or holy about them. They are not the "house of God" as the ignorant love to call them.

I praise God for the privilege of gathering together with those of "like precious faith," and rejoice in any assembling of saints that is truly unto Him: but in point of fact it is not in any building made with hands that the Father is worshiped. How greatly we misconceive our true position! We certainly need not the Tabernacle of Moses, the Temple of Solomon, nor any cathedral or so-called church building to worship the Father or to minister as the Lord's anointed; because we are constituted priests of the HEAVENLY TABERNACLE, which no human hand ever reared, and which is the true meeting-place between God and His spiritual priesthood. It is an indisputable fact that in all of the recorded history of the human race men have been prone to associate their worship of God with places and things, and to attach some special sacredness or power to that place of thing, until the places and things become more important than God Himself.

Many precious people imagine that because they met God in some glorious experience in such and such a building, room, or seat, they will find Him there again.

Jesus said: God is not a place, a building or a mountain; God is SPIRIT. You cannot confine God to a temple or a time. God does not move exclusively on Sunday morning at twenty minutes past eleven, following three choruses and two minutes of singing in the Spirit. His Spirit is everywhere, all the time. Whatever your expression or ministry is it should be able to function at any time and in any place, just as well as it does at "church." That is how Jesus ministered. He ministered in the fields, in the mountain, in the streets, in the homes, on the lake, and in the temple. His meetings never started at ten and ended at twelve. He was the temple of God at all times and in every place. And God manifested in His temple at all times and in every place.

This will be the mark of the manifested sons of God. Their ministry will not be in church buildings nor in auditoriums. Their meetings will not be scheduled for certain hours on Sunday and Wednesday. There will be no newspaper or television advertising. There will be no campaign manager, music director, or prescribed order. They will appear and show forth the glory of the Father in the restaurants, in the homes, in the fields, in church buildings, on ships at sea, in airplanes streaking through the skies and trains racing through the night. It will be the sovereign, spontaneous, continuous, unrestrained, unplanned, unrehearsed, omnipotent outflow of Life, Light and Love. It will change lives, transform churches, revolutionize cities, and conquer nations.

It will redeem society and sweep the nations and all things into the Kingdom of God. IT IS THE MINISTRY OF THE SPIRIT. Even now we must learn to live and walk in the Spirit if we treasure the beautiful hope of sonship to God. They that worship God must do so in a state of being: in spirit and in truth.

May God help all who have received the call to be overcomers to realize that we do not have to go to Jerusalem or to a mountain, or be at a special time or place to worship the Father, or use special words or a certain form, or go through the religious places because our whole life IS WORSHIP. The great apostle Paul declared, "I am poured out like an oblation." Like incense, his whole life was an offering to God. May God almighty do a work in us and cause us to be true worshippers, that whether we are in the desert, or in the mountain, or in Jerusalem, or at home, or in a gathering of the saints, whether by voice, or by offering up, or whatever we are doing, reality be in us, so that whatever we do, we are doing it out of that reality.

Yes of course we are to worship God in Spirit and in Truth, daily. No, let's not worship a building or rituals, etc...

To surround ourselves with like-minded Christians is a help, not a hindrance.

To be in the world is not an easy thing, I can use all the help I can get.

Only speaking for myself, to have two days a week to be surrounded by my Church family is a true blessing and has been a huge help in being edified in Christ. To listen to Biblically sound preaching twice a week to go along with my daily Bible study has been a huge help in my edification in Christ.

My Church family is nothing like the earthly family I have been given. My earthly family has rejected me for speaking the name of Jesus Christ and telling of His wonderful good news. My Church family is always there for me when I am in need and I am also there for them when they are in need. We are a true family. We are fellow members of the body of Christ. Amen!

I just wanted to add that we do meet in a building, so yes, I must go to this building twice a week to be surrounded by my Church family. This certainly isn't building worship though!! I go to worship God with fellow members of the body of Christ and to have Christian fellowship, which is a wonderful thing indeed!

Eagle, you went from the realm of attempted Bible study into the realm of fantasy and reading what you want in there. This passage is not a type and the only symbolism in it is the living water which pictures salvation in Christ. The passage is literal history - but you seem to prefer eisegesis (reading what you want into the text) instead of exegesis (bringing out what the text actually says). If you do this to all your Bible studying, no wonder you don't think the Bible is the Word of God (but contains the Word of God - whatever you try to "take" out of it). I had to stop reading your post part way through because it goes too far in winging your personal ideas.

Jerry

Most of the teachings of Jesus were in parable form. In types and shadows and can only be understood as the Spirit reveals the true meaning of them. The parable of the sower is a good example of this.

Every inspired scripture has levels of understanding and can only be fully understood as the Spirit reveals the true meaning. I am sure that in your studies that you have read a certain passage many times and then one day as you read it you see something that you have never seen before.

This is why Jesus keep saying, “To him that hath an ear let him hear!”

Hi Pink Frog. I certainly agree with the general idea of gathering together because it is very scriptural. But, on the other hand, there are many (millions?) Christians who have been going to church for many years and have hardly grown. I guess this is because of genuine lack of spiritual hunger. They have been relying on the Sunday morning sermons to feed them, hoping this would be enough. This would explain why most Christians, born-again Christians, are undernourished, and many of them backslide. No wonder Jesus said:"When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8)(I had to use my concordance to find this verse). Also, i must sadly admit that all I have learned about the Christian faith since I got saved in 1975, I have learned mainly OUTSIDE the church, sad to say. What I mean by "outside" is my own home, where I used two main tools: BOOKS AND COMPUTER. This is not to say that fellowship is not important because it is in God's Word. But what is fellowship??? One example that comes to my mind immediately is Chrisitan penpalling. Two years ago, I started penpalling with 2 Christians of my age. And we haven't stopped talking ever since, greatly learning from each other (on spiritual matters) and yet we have never met, simply because I live in London and one lives in Oregon (USA) and the other the North of England. Still, would it be quite correct to call this "fellowship"? Fellowship has to be more than a few or a lot of bodies gathered together under a church roof.
All this to say that I haven't been going to church for the past 2 years and missed it very little. But since January 9, I started to attend a homegroup where there are only 4 or5 of us. But the dynamics of the group are simply electrifying. We share our excitement about the soon coming of the Lord. That is something I could not do while I was going to church because the pastor there never bothered preaching or teaching about the endtime (too controversial, I guess). Looking forward to hear from you, Pink Frog.