God was not in a national covenant with the Samaritans, even though they claimed to hold to the Pentateuch, five Bible books written by Moses. Because they rejected the rest of the inspired Sacred Scriptures, they were not worshiping at the right mountain and they did not properly know Jehovah God who revealed himself through all those inspired writings. Rightly, then, Jesus could say to the Samaritans: “You worship what you do not know.” But speaking for himself and the nation of which he was an earthly part, Jesus could say: “We worship what we know, because salvation originates with the Jews.” (John 4:22) This was true, since Jesus Christ in the days of his flesh was a circumcised Jew, and, even as the Samaritans of Sychar said regarding him, “We know that this man is for a certainty the savior of the world.”​—John 4:42.

13. How might racially prejudiced persons react to Jesus’ statement, and what question might they ask?

¹³ Many racially prejudiced persons of today may stumble at Jesus’ statement: “Salvation originates with the Jews.” They might ask, ‘Does this mean that we must accept Judaism, get circumcised and go to the Jewish synagogue and make pilgrimages to Jerusalem if we desire to worship the true God?’

What of Jesus’ own nation according to the flesh? Could he keep on saying concerning that nation: “We worship what we know”? How could he do so? After hearing him preach for about three years the message, “The kingdom of God has drawn near!” the religious leaders of the nation, followed by most of the people, showed that they differed from him as to ideas of God. They showed that they preferred their religious traditions and precepts of men to what he pointed out to them from the inspired Holy Scriptures. They accused him of blasphemy and violently tried to kill him. At last their Supreme Court at Jerusalem did condemn him to death as a blasphemer of God. They even told the Roman governor Pontius Pilate that, according to their own law, Jesus ought to die for blasphemy. But in order to induce the Roman governor at Jerusalem to exercise his authority and have Jesus put to death they accused him of political sedition. Jesus’ death on an execution stake followed. So they were not with Jesus in worshiping what he knew!

18. Who was rejected by God, Jesus or the Jewish nation, and how has this been shown?

¹⁸ Can we go along with that ancient nation in that course of action? Not if we want to worship the same God that Jesus worshiped, the God that he knew. To this day the descendants of that nation have not repudiated that stand that they took toward the Messiah Jesus. They rejected Jesus’ message and also the proofs that he gave that he was the long-promised Messiah, but they were forced to accept the fulfillment of Jesus’ prediction that the “holy city” of Jerusalem and its gorgeous temple would be destroyed, never to be rebuilt by the Jews. True to Jesus’ words, the horrifying destruction of Jerusalem and its temple came within that “generation,” in the year 70 C.E. (Matt. 24:1-34) Thus, although the Jews fanatically tried to have it otherwise, Jerusalem ceased to be the place to worship the only living and true God. Not even a Jewish temple stands there today to recommend it as the city at which to render united worship to a Known God. But the truthfulness of Jesus as the real Messianic prophet of this Known God stands established by inerasable facts of history. So, not Jesus, but the nation that rejected him, was rejected by this Known God.

19. (a) If not with the Jewish nation, with whom, however, must we become partakers in their course back there? (b) By what kind of channel did salvation come to the Gentiles, and when?

¹⁹ So the fact that Jesus said, “Salvation originates with the Jews,” does not mean that eternal salvation is by means of that nation today and that we have to become a circumcised proselyte or member of it. We must become partners, not with the nation that rejected the Messiah, but with the Jewish “remnant” of some thousands of natural Jews who accepted the Messiah Jesus, in 33 C.E., and who became his faithful followers. (Rom. 11:1-7) After Jesus was resurrected from the dead and before he ascended to heaven, he gathered together the first members of this Jewish “remnant” of believers. On the day of Pentecost (Sivan 6, 33 C.E.) God used Jesus Christ to pour out from heaven the holy spirit upon those first members of the Jewish “remnant.” Thus they were able to worship God, not only with the “spirit” of genuine worship, but also with the help of God’s holy spirit, and also with the “truth” that was revealed by means of that holy spirit. (Acts 2:1-47) Later, in 36 C.E., this Jewish remnant passed on God’s message of salvation to the Gentiles or non-Jews. (Acts 10:1 to 11:18) So they were a channel by which salvation came to the Gentiles.

20. (a) In the critical time before Jerusalem’s destruction, what did Jewish Christians do, and did this deprive them of a place to worship the Known God? (b) With whom must we take our stand, if we desire salvation from God through Christ?

²⁰ Later at the critical time before Jerusalem’s destruction as foretold by Jesus occurred, the members of that Jewish remnant neither returned to Jerusalem to celebrate any feasts nor stayed in it. Rather, they avoided and fled from Jerusalem and Judea just as Jesus, like a true prophet, had warned them to do. In that way they did not get destroyed with Jerusalem and its temple in the year 70 C.E. (Matt. 24:15-22; Luke 21:20-24) But they were not thereby deprived of a true place to worship the God whom they knew. No, but they kept on worshiping him at his true temple, which is not made by human hands, and which can never be destroyed by human hands. (Heb. 8:1, 2) It is of this Jewish “remnant” that Jesus Christ could continue to say after Pentecost of 33 C.E. his words to the Samaritan woman: “We worship what we know, because salvation originates with the Jews.” (John 4:22)