19, 20. How did Jesus illustrate the urgency of the preaching work?

¹⁹ Third, Jesus treated the ministry as something urgent. Remember his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well outside of Sychar. Jesus’ apostles apparently did not see in that situation an urgent need to share the good news with others. Jesus said to them: “Do you not say that there are yet four months before the harvest comes? Look! I say to you: Lift up your eyes and view the fields, that they are white for harvesting.”​—John 4:35.

²⁰ Jesus drew that illustration from the season at hand. It was evidently the month of Chislev (November/​December). The barley harvest would not come for another four months, about the time of Passover, on Nisan 14. So farmers did not feel any urgency about the harvest just then. It was still a long way off. But what about the harvest of people? Ah, many were ready to hear, to learn, to become Christ’s disciples and gain the marvelous hope that Jehovah held out to them. It was as if Jesus could look out over those figurative fields and see that they were white with all the ripe grain swaying gently in the breeze, signaling their readiness to be harvested.c The time was at hand, and the work was urgent! Consequently, when people of one city tried to keep Jesus with them, he replied: “I must also declare the good news of the Kingdom of God to other cities, because for this I was sent.”​—Luke 4:43.