But many who live in drought-stricken areas have seen how, without water, the grass and plants suffer and the crops are reduced. When something goes wrong with the water supply—like when they told the students in our school district not to drink from the drinking fountains and told residents to boil our water at home—it makes us consider the water we so often take for granted.

For many it's a life-or-death issue. Reuters magazine said this about the world's water crisis:

“Three billion people could be facing little or no access to clean water by the year 2025, unless the world takes urgent action, says the UN. Without change, it is easy to imagine a future where nations go to war over scarce supplies and millions literally die of thirst” (July 2002 cover story).

We live in a desperately thirsty world, not only thirsty for clean, fresh water, but especially for the spiritually pure water of life. God uses physical thirst as a type of the much-more-important spiritual thirst that He promises to satisfy.

Why are we in this mess? The simple answer is that man has rejected God and tried to replace Him and His life-giving ways with things that don't satisfy. Jeremiah records God's words about where man has gone astray. Jeremiah 2:13 says: “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

Man comes up with his own spiritual paths, and his own ways of living, that don't satisfy—that leave us dying of thirst. In the physical realm we make shortsighted choices that end up befouling and polluting our waters. Ignorance and greed have contributed to this world's water crisis, and now we worry that hate-filled individuals will terrorize us by attacking our water systems.

In the spiritual realm, our world is even more ignorant of the effect of spiritual pollution. When man rejects the Instruction Manual, he rejects the test kit that allows us to recognize the pure spiritual water of life. God's test kit also allows us to recognize the spiritual pollution of false doctrines, polluted holiday customs and practices, and wrong ways of thinking that leave us with sorrow and tears—and dying of spiritual thirst.

The Bible shows the end result of all the degrading and polluted ways of man. Before the end of man's civilization Revelation records a number of devastating plagues that will help bring man to his senses. Many of these plagues will affect the water. Revelation 8:10-11 talks about a third of the waters becoming bitter. Revelation 16:4 tells of rivers and fountains of water turning to blood. Revelation 11:6 explains that the two witnesses will have the power to stop the rain and turn water to blood.

Then after all this devastation God will intervene to save our thirsty and devastated earth. Revelation 7:16-17 gives a wonderful promise to the great innumerable multitude that comes out of the Great Tribulation: “They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

What a wonderful time is in store beyond this age! During the Feast you probably read one of my favorite millennial scriptures in Isaiah 35:1 and verses 6-7. There it talks about the desert blossoming as the rose and thirsty lands becoming springs of water.

This physical healing and blessing of water in abundance is a shadow of something far greater—spiritual rivers of living water (John 7:37-39).

This is an incredible promise of the future, but it is also something we can practice now! Christ said we could have streams of living water flowing out from us now that Christ has been glorified. Let's drink in of the spiritual water of life from God's Word and through His Spirit, and let it flow out from us. And let's not take water, whether physical or spiritual, for granted. Let's thank God for the water of life He provides! UN