The Rise and Progress of the Father of Love Movement Part 2

 

Pr. Adrian Hope you all had a blessed day today.  We've heard some amazing stories.  Tonight I was going to speak a bit about the calendar, but I'm going to continue with the theme of the Rise and Progress of the Father of Love Movement.  [I want to] tell [you] a bit more about the story and the key parts of that story, at least as I understand it.  And before I do that, I'd like to pray.

Father in Heaven.  It's always a joy to be able to come to You and know that You are smiling upon us.  It's wonderful to be able to read the statements in the Spirit of Prophecy that say 'You never become impatient with us', and that is just such a beautiful thought, and that Your mercy is always there for us and we just thank You that You pour Yoaur blessing upon us.  You are so forgiving and so gracious and thank You for teaching us all the wonderful things that we've been taught.  And we pray that they will stay in our minds and we will remember the way You've led us.  We have nothing to fear for the future, lest we forget the way the Lord has led us and His teaching and our past history.  We thank You in Jesus' name, Amen.

I spoke the other night about the implications of accepting the fact that we are beloved children of God.   Confrontation, page 63.  "The foundation of the plan of salvation was laid in the temptation in the wilderness and gives to man the key whereby he may overcome." And the statement in Desire of Ages, page 213.  "The word which is spoken to Jesus is spoken to every one of us: 'You are my beloved child, and whom I am well pleased.'"  And this is righteousness by faith.

This is the big point they were making the other night: that if we accept that we are His beloved children at the baptism and we are accepted in the beloved, and we are His children through Christ through His relationship with His Father, then you are already reconciled in that process, and it makes the Cross mean something completely different.  The cross has to mean something completely different if you believe this.  And one of the first implications of that value system is that the relationship we have with the Father began to manifest itself in a presentation that I did at Eden's Landing church called God's Love in the Flames of Hell.

The implication is that the Father is the one who defines your value and it's through an intimate relationship with Him in Christ, [then] if God were to come to the point where He said, 'you've done the wrong thing, I have to kill you', that would mean that God could get to the place where He would say, 'you're of no value to me'.  And this is what began the push into the character of God because if all your value comes from your Father in Heaven and He's the one that's defining your value, how then could He introduce a doctrine that would absolutely negate everything that He says and His love for you?  Would that make any sense at all?  It doesn't make any sense at all.

And so I began to venture into that, into God's love in the flames of hell.  And that hell actually could be a very different experience from what we were taught.   And I approached this through the Identity Wars principle of a performance-based kingdom versus a relationship-based kingdom.  And I made a proposition that if God's kingdom is a relationship-based kingdom... and I talked about if you attended a funeral of someone that you didn't know, how much pain would you feel?  Hardly any, if at all.  But if you lose someone you're very very close to? What's the pain? Immense.

And so, I began to apply this principle to the doctrine of hell.  Who is it that's going to suffer the most in the flames of hell?  Those who know God the least or those who know God the most?  Is it a performance-based thing where God dials up?  "Let me see. We'll give this person 4000 degrees for 6 hours", some arbitrary figure where God determines this person has racked up this punishment… Apparently we decide that and God signs off on what we decide.  So we're going to rack up the degrees and the temperature and the days.

I began to question this idea, and I proposed the idea that... and this is the way I expressed it: Seventh-day Adventist ministers that turned away from the truth will experience more suffering and hell than Adolf Hitler.  Is that a fair proposition?

Audience Yes.

Pr. Adrian Why is it a fair proposition?   Because they knew their master's will.   And it says in the Book of Luke chapter 12, "That the servant who didn't know his master's will shall be beaten with few stripes. But the servant that knew his master's will and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes."  And this is proof of the relational nature of the suffering that is being described in the Book of Revelation, and it turns the doctrine of hell on its head.

And this was the beginning for me of looking at things differently in a relational; hell is a relational thing, not a performance-based thing, whereas we were taught hell is about temperature and endurance and it's a completely arbitrary thing.  And I thought it can't be that way.  And so, I did that sermon in 2007, and then that one got parked for a while.

Put it on the shelf.  We'll come back to that one.  That was the first sort of trying to put pieces together.   And then, of course writing the book, Return of Elijah I was thinking about it, before my concept, and this is a really big point in the book Return of Elijah, is how do you define equality?  What is equality?  This is a really big point for me.  What is it that makes the Father and the Son equal?  This is the question.  And I approached it from the performance versus relationship basis.  In a performance-based kingdom, what is it that makes the Father and the Son equal?

Audience Power.

Pr. Adrian Power—All the Omnies.  Omnipotence, and omniscience, are the things that make God equal in a performance-based kingdom.  But when you turn to John, chapter 10:15 references a different type of equality.  John, chapter 10, verse 15.  This is a relational type of equality that is being described here.  And what does Jesus say in John 10:15?   "As the Father knows me, even so know I the Father."  Is that equality?  On what basis?

Audience Knowledge.

Pr. Adrian Knowledge?  What type of knowledge?

Audience Knowledge of relationships.

Pr. Adrian A relational knowledge.

Audience Trust.

Pr. Adrian Trust.  And to know. To know. This is a different type of equality that is being described here.

And so we read in Philippians, chapter 2, verse 5, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God."

But the question is upon what basis did He not think it robbery to be considered equal with God?  What is the basis of that equality that He doesn't think it's robbery to be considered equal with God?

Audience He's relying on His Father’s word because it was ordained of the Father that His Son should be equal with Himself.

Pr. Adrian Okay! Thank you, Lester.

He's resting in the word of His Father when He's thinking about equality.  He's not looking within. He's looking to His Father to determine if He is equal.  He is not the one that determined it Himself.  His Father is the one that determined this.  And the Son believes what His Father says, and therefore He does not consider it robbery to be equal with God; not because He has assessed this from His own resources, but because He has believed what His Father has said of Him.  This is poles apart [from how] most people use this verse,"...thought it not robbery to be equal with God", as in His pedigree of power and intellect, and age, and all of these types of things.

But I began to see a very different picture, and I realize that every time you see the word equal you automatically reveal the value system by which you operate.  Because equality requires you to draw on your value system to determine what that equality means.  Does that make sense?

So the Bible is testing you whenever you read the word equal or like in this verse (Philippians 2:5), you reveal yourself, and you reveal what's important to you.   You read through the decades of Adventism after 1915, and you look at verses like this and the commentary on verses like this, it's all about power, intellect, comparing of power, comparing of intellect, comparing of knowledge, comparing of wisdom.  And pitting these things against each other and saying the Son is equal with the Father.  The Son is equal with the Father because of His power, His intellect, and His abilities, thus revealing the value system that these men live by.

And if when you use the word equal in that context, how then shall we be equal with one another?  If the God you worship is equal by power, intellect and ability, how then shall [humans] be equal?

Audience By beholding you become changed.

By beholding you become changed - by power, intellect and ability.  And that is why there are so many people seeking to end their lives because they cannot keep up with others.  They feel inferior because they are not feeling equal, because they sense their intellect is not the same as other people, and so they say, "How do I get off this planet?"  People might wonder why sometimes I make statements that are quite confronting.  There is a direct relationship between the Trinitarian doctrine and suicide.  Do you understand what I'm saying?  The Trinitarian doctrine forces you into an equality system based on power and intellect.  And if you are plagued with the thought that you are not having power and intellect and ability and all of these types of things, you are careering down a different direction. That's why the Trinitarian doctrine is Satanic genius.   And for me to utter these words is utter blasphemy [to those who hold the orthodox Christian position]. (For more, see this presentation: Identity Value System and the Divine Pattern)

Audience Depending on your perspective.

Pr. Adrian But do you understand what I'm saying?  It's quite simple when you look at it; your equality system.  And I begin to think about these things, not that I wanted to focus on this, but it was a consequence of the value system that I was coming to see because of believing the words, "You are my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased", and believing the words of the Spirit of Prophecy that says that 'we are accepted in the beloved', that 'the word that was spoken to Jesus and spoken to every one of us' - it's such a change in understanding.  So I didn't realize when I walked this path that it would run into that doctrine and bowl it over.  I didn't know that it would do that.

And so, I forgot to bring my whiteboard.  Sorry about that.  It's all very clear up in here. (Pointing to the mind)  And so, based on the Trinitarian doctrine, you have Father and you have Son and they're equal based on power and ability.  And they are always locked in this position. (Horizontal, side by side)  But when the value system changed, the relationship changed to this (Vertical, source and channel) Some of you remember the sermons where I've done this movement?  [from horizontal to vertical] The Son is able to move into a submissive position under the Father's headship. And so, it's the value system that we find in Identity Wars that creates the possibility for the Divine Pattern to exist.  Do you want me to say that again?

Audience Yes.

Pr. Adrian It's the value system that we find in identity Wars from the Bible that allows us to shift from co-equal to source-channel.  Co-equal, source-channel.  And that's what led to the Divine Pattern. And as I began to study this and think about how we were made in God's image.  "In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (Genesis 1:27)   And God said, Let us make man in God's image.  What were you taught that Genesis 1:26 means when the word "us".  Who is us?

Audience One, two and three.

Pr. Adrian What does the Bible say in Hebrews 1:1?  "God, who had sundry times and divers manners spake unto the fathers through the prophets, hath spoken unto us in these last days by His Son, by whom also He made the worlds."  That's what it said.  So God created all things through Jesus Christ.  I remember writing to one of my leaders in the church, Spirit of Prophecy, Volume one, page 25, very bottom of the page.  Ellen White says, "And God said to His Son, 'Let us make man in our image'."  And I said, could you explain this to me?  No response.  I made the mistake of asking three questions and I got a response to two, but he left that one alone. I should have just asked that question.  Can you explain this to me?  "God said to His Son, let us make man in our image."  And what is the image? This (Co-equal) or this (source-channel)?

Audience The second.

Pr. Adrian Come to 1st Corinthians. chapter 11, verse 3, and this is revision for some of us: "But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God."

In this text, we see exactly the same headship that exists between God and His son, exists between the man and the woman, and between the man and Christ - it's the same headship.  Is that what you see in that text?

Audience Yes.

Pr. Adrian So if we have a problem with headship in terms of the male-female relationship, it means that we have a problem with headship in the Father-Son relationship.  And we're going back to this. (Co-equal).

The head of the woman is the man and the head of Christ is God.  It's after the head of man is Christ.  And so that led to the whole principle of the Divine Pattern.  But I have no idea how far that would go. And Narelle expressed that today about the Divine Pattern, [saying] thank you for encouraging her to look at the Divine Pattern.  I had no understanding, but it was just in reading that verse in 1st Corinthians 8:6, of course, this is a safe text to go to.  Why?  Well, firstly, it's in the Bible, but when you look at the original pioneer statement of the Adventist movement, this is the text that they use to describe God.  So we were on fairly safe ground. If we are worshiping the God of our fathers, at least in terms of this subject, 1st Corinthians 8:6,  "But to us there is but one God, the Father...", and who was it that said to me, Adrian, look at the word Father and look at the word Christ, and look at the two words that appear after the Father and Christ. And tell me, what do you see?  "The Father of whom and Lord Jesus Christ by whom." OF WHOM, BY WHOM.

Do you see the pattern OF whom and BY whom?  That's when a whole new pair of glasses just suddenly went on when I was reading the Bible.  Looking at the Bible OF whom, BY whom, I started to see things in a very different light.  But again, you're looking at this (co-equal, side by side) shifting to this (Source-channel, one head of the other), creating a whole new pattern, and then realizing that man was made in the image of God... and as I thought about this, "Let us make man in our image," and I thought, how far does this extend?  How far would this go?  Is it only the fact that it's male and female?  And that's what led me to start to think about our communication systems.  The way that we communicate with each other, the way that we come into life. 

So we're just tracking through on this, following this through from the value system to the shifting, and then what we start to see in Scripture.  And that's when everything started to open up in terms of "Oh, the Ten Commandments is not written on 1 document, it's written on 2!" And what is the relationship between the first 4 and the last 6?  Source-Channel.  And my eyes [were] just like, WOW!  That's amazing!   And then looking at the sanctuary, "Oh!  The Holy place and the Most Holy place, to me, is some of the most beautiful symmetry.  And to see that the Father-Son relationship has its signature all across all of these things.

We know that Christ is the image of the invisible God.  "God invisible. No man has seen God at any time."  1st Timothy, chapter 6, verse 16, "God immortal, invisible, God only wise..." and [next we have] invisible, visible.   And the fact that we have a process of thinking which is invisible. Thank God! And most of us have a filter as to what comes out here (mouth) but not everybody.  And that can be rather awkward.  When the invisible always becomes visible, it's going to be a bad day. But invisible-visible, that the way we communicate has the image of the Father and the Son stamped into it.  Christ is the Word of God.— God's thoughts made audible.— Manifest. This is amazing!  I am always just [like] wow!  That's incredible.

And that's what made me think when I started talking about the Divine Pattern.  And I need to mention this because in 2011, just before I began to write this book in September of 2011, I received a message from my former mentor in the United States, and he had built a whole system based on paradox, the paradoxical principle.  What's a paradox?

Audience Something that appears contradictory but it isn't.

Pr. Adrian Something that appears to be a contradiction but isn't.  And he said, [that in] the Bible, the truth; there are two poles of truth that seem opposite, but through Christ, they are mystically made one.  And I had built my whole theological framework on that system because of my mentor.  If you look at my early [work], my God's last message of love training materials, I have paradox all through it. And you guys remember the sermons that I did based on paradox, and we all thought it was [wonderful], yeah!  It was great stuff!   Except it was completely wrong, but it sounds good and it sounds right - paradox.  And this is because of a Father and Son that are co-equal.  Two poles of truth and the Father and a Son, if they are co-equal, I mean, let's face it, [if] you have two Beings that are exactly the same, and you want to go to the Source, where do you go?

Audience Right.

Pr. Adrian Dear Father, dear Jesus.  Sorry, Father, I'm talking to Jesus. But I don't want to leave You (Father) out. But I need to talk to You (Jesus).  And I'm so confused!

Audience Yes!

Pr. Adrian You've had that conflict?

Audience Yeah!

Pr. Adrian All this confusion!  Because of 2 poles of truth, based on 2 co-equal— 2 co-eternal Beings. Oh, 3 co-equal— co-eternal Beings.  And it creates confusion when you pray, and I still remember I'm talking to Jesus, my beloved Savior, and sorry, Father and I should be talking to You.  I had this guilt!   Like, you know, I'm talking to Jesus all the time.

Audience And then the Holy Spirit.

Pr. Adrian And then the Holy Spirit....  And as we were told, you know, you should pray to the Holy Spirit.   Well, I've never read that in the Bible. And this is some of the problems that begin to come because of the structure in your mind.  You got three. Three co-equal— three co-eternal Beings, and it creates confusion in your mind.

And so, just before I started to see the Divine Pattern, this shift has taken place, Source-Channel, and I'm starting to see it in the Bible.  I'm like, Wow!  This is amazing!  And then I was just about to write and my mentor, who had taught me the paradoxical principle of 2 poles of truth, wrote to me and said, "Adrian, I want you to stop writing everything. I want you to take your websites down, and I want you to read this book that I've got for you and it's called Humility."

Audience Oh! Shocking!

Pr. Adrian I mean, look, any day of the week, you can give me a book called Humility and I'll read it because I need humility.  Just really, you're never going to lose that, you know, I'm not going to say “you're going to tell a Dutchman about being humble?”  He always needs to [remember to] be humble [as he] always [has] problems with humility.

But why would he tell me this?  Just as I'm about to venture into this territory, then get this contact saying, 'stop this'.  Stop, … and he's my mentor and I'm like, …Lord, what do I do?  I don't know what to do!   So I'm praying and I'm thinking about it and just seeing more of these connections and the Divine Pattern in the sanctuary and I just said, Oh, I've got to write this.

So I started writing this book (The Divine Pattern).  I wrote it as a series of articles, beginning in 2011.  And as I'm writing this, I'm like, this completely dismantles everything that I've believed.  It utterly throws it all in the bin.  All of it.  And this little voice inside of me said, "You rebellious little scoundrel."

Audience Oh no!

Pr. Adrian "You're just rebelling against your forefathers.  You're just rebelling against those who taught you, and you're using that cunning little pea-size brain of yours, and you're trying to destroy everything that you were taught!"  I'm sorry, Lord.  Sorry, this is just so exciting!  I can't help it! I've got to keep writing this!  But as I wrote, I just felt such joy and happiness in writing. I was getting answers to questions that I couldn't get before. So I had to break out of that shackles and realize, wow!  This is highly significant.

And so, to go to the Bible and to see 1st Corinthians 8:6, and to see in the Scriptures. Source, it's right there in 1st Corinthians 8:6.  "Origin the point from which all things flow, OF WHOM, "ÈK", from whom all things flow.  And Christ, "Diâ", BY WHOM, is a channel of an act.  Channel is there Origin is there.  It's in the Scripture. You look for 2 poles of truth in the Scripture.  It's not there.  So ultimately it was the Scriptures that gave me the confidence that this is the truth.  I must stand on the Word of God alone.  And as much as I love my mentors, if I truly honour them, I would advance in the light of the Word of God that they taught me how to read, that there was more light to come, more things to come. And if I truly honour them, I would continue in the light as God shows it to me.

And so, the Divine Pattern led me to consider the relationship between the commandments and the book of the law because suddenly I began to think about going into the Most Holy place. How many documents are in the Most Holy place?   There are 2 documents in the Most Holy place. And again, what is the relationship between the 2 documents in the Most Holy place, the Ten Commandments and the Law of Moses?  What's the relationship?  If you're in a co-equal system then we'd say that the Ten Commandments and the Law of Moses are co-equal, [and] some religions do.  Judaism would say that the law of Moses and the Ten Commandments are exactly the same in order to reconcile them in a co-equal system, and if you can't make them co-equal, one of them has to go, doesn't it?

And so, what did Christianity do?  Well, we nailed the law of Moses to the Cross so that one could remain supreme, because we all know that the Ten Commandments... you know, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and to keep the commandments.  Jesus talks about the commandments.  And so, I began to think, well, what is the relationship?  Well, in a Divine Pattern relationship, the Ten Commandments is a Source, and the law of Moses is the Channel. And that's when the light went on.

And we come to Patriarchs and Prophets, page 364, and this is another presentation I did in 2007 called The Authority of the Spirit of Prophecy where I begin to think about the relationship between the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy.  Those of you who have been raised in Adventism, do you remember the struggle you had about what authority the Spirit of Prophecy has?  Well, it's the "lesser light".  What does that mean, you listen to it less?  Is that what "lesser light" means?  You take 2 out of 3 paragraphs as gospel, and the rest you just toss out?  What is "lesser light"?   You take out the bits that you don't like.  Because I always had this struggle in my mind, like, I'm reading so much of the Spirit of Prophecy, I need to be reading more of the Bible.

And again, this war between what I'm reading, because of this co-equal concept.  And relating the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, and suddenly, oh! Bible (Source), the Spirit of Prophecy (Channel).  It just made so much sense!   As Jesus is the brightness of the Father's glory (Heb 1:3), the Spirit of Prophecy is the brightness of the Bible's glory.  Are you sure?  I have upset a lot of people by saying that once, twice, three times, four times, five times.  And let's think about this one.  Let's test this one out.  Jesus is the way to the Father... is the Spirit of Prophecy the way to the Bible.  Does that fit?  Why did God give the Spirit of Prophecy?  Because we didn't know how to study the Bible anymore because we were so deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid.  We couldn't read it anymore.  So God gave us a gift to lead us back to the Bible. This is how God works. That really upset some people when I said that.

But the lesser light, in this case, like in the case of Jesus, is the brightness of the Father's glory. The beauty of the Gospel... Have you read Desire of Ages?  That is the most beautiful book on earth outside of the Bible.  And it explains the Gospel. It is magnified glory, magnified light!  It gives us insights and depth, and expansion of the Bible and the Gospel.  It is the most beautiful book. I love to listen to it regularly all the time.

And so, I put this to you, the Spirit of Prophecy is the way to the Bible.  That makes a lot of people uncomfortable.  All I need is my Bible!  But why did Jesus give us the Spirit of Prophecy if you don't need it?  So I began to think about these relationships.  Source-Channel.  Source-Channel.  And I was going to PP 364,  "These directions relating to the duty of the people to God, to one another, and to the stranger." Talking about the law of Moses, [that the statutes] "... were only the principles of the Ten Commandments amplified and given in a specific manner." Source-Channel.  Relationship between Ten Commandments in the Book of the Law.  When I read that statement I was [like], There it is!

I'll go back a little bit [in Patriarchs and Prophets page 364].  "Moses was commanded to write, as God should bid him, judgments and laws giving minute instructions as to what was required. These directions relating to the duty of the people to God, to one another and to the stranger, were only the principles of the Ten Commandments amplified."  So if it's only the principles, the Ten Commandments amplified, then what is nailed to the cross?

Audience Our sins.

Pr. Adrian Cheirographon. (Col 2:14) Our sins.  That's quite a powerful statement. Death decrees, dogma. [See the booklet – Showing Respect for Colossians 2:14-17] Yeah, all those things are nailed to the Cross.  This relationship, Source and Channel, is what began to open up on the subject of the festivals.  A good friend of mine, Frank Klin in the United States, was listening to what I was preaching about Source and Channel. He said, "Adrian, have you ever considered that there's a divine relationship between the Sabbath and the Feasts?"  And I was like, “No.” …  there was a time when I was like, “No! I'm not going down there.”

And I began to think again about the Father and Son relationship... we think of Exodus chapter 23 when God talks about the angel of His presence and He says. "My name is in Him."  Is the Father's name in His Son?  His character and His name. And I began to think, is the Sabbath name in the feasts?

Audience Yes, yes.

Pr. Adrian "My name is in Him."  So the Sabbath says of the feasts, "My name is in them."  Oh, that really got my attention when I started to think about this, and of course, why don't we see these things?   And I began to think about it.  We say “The law of Moses is nailed to the Cross,” but in the typology, the book of the law is not at the foot of the altar of sacrifice.  It's on the side of the Ark in the Most Holy place.  If it's in the Most Holy place, does that suggest that it's Most Holy?

Audience Yeah.

Pr. Adrian This is kindergarten stuff, isn't it?  This is logic and it makes perfect sense.  But the Divine Pattern is what was needed to unlock this and think about Jesus: "To Him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down on my Father's throne" (Revelation 3:21), Jesus sits beside His Father on His throne.  Does the book of the law sit beside the Ten Commandments in the throne room?

Audience Yes.

Pr. Adrian Do we see the parallel?  It just, like, wow!  This is just an amazing connection, but it's the Father and Son relationship, which gave me the context of the relationship between the Ten Commandments and the book of the law.  And then it makes sense what Jesus said, "Not one jot or tittle shall be removed from the law until all be fulfilled, till heaven and earth pass away. (Matthew 5:18)"   Has heaven and earth passed away?  No.  And when Jesus uses the word law, He's referring to what word?

Audience The law of Moses.

Pr. Adrian Torah! Torah!  Not one jot or tittle of the Torah will be taken away.

Audience Christ represents the law, right?

Pr. Adrian The law is a reflection of His character.

Audience And He kept it perfectly.

Pr. Adrian Yes.  Like I say to people when Jesus was nailed on the Cross, He is representing the law. So the law was nailed on the Cross and the law and Christ were buried.  And when Jesus came out, so did the law.  Rose again, came back.

Audience To magnify.

Pr. Adrian To "magnify the law, make it honourable" (Isaiah 42:21). He didn't come to destroy the law. He didn't come to take it away or to do any of these things.  But it was the Divine Pattern that helped me to read the Scripture in this light and to see these things.  And most of you are familiar with that beautiful text in John 1:17 which says "The law was given by Moses..."   And what do the King James translators say next?   "BUT grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."  The BUT is a supplied word.   And so we say, get your butt out of there!   "Because the Law came by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."   This is so important to understand this relationship of source and channel, to understand the Gospel.

"The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24)."  "For the law made nothing perfect but the bringing in of a better of hope (Hebrews 7:19)."

I remember having a discussion with a dear friend of mine in the Godhead movement.  All of his arguments were hanging on supplied words, and when I pointed that out,  you know where it says, "For the law made nothing perfect but the bringing in of a better hope."  He would say DID!   I said that word is supplied.  Your emphasis is on something that doesn't exist.  "So the law made nothing perfect but the bringing in of a better hope". Meaning the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.

And this all started to make sense within the Divine Pattern and how the Divine Pattern works and comes together.  I was just praising my Father, and the realization of so many things that have been mysterious and conflicting in my mind suddenly would burst into light.  And they all fitted together and it was all so beautiful.  I remember presenting this to some of my brethren in the United States 8 years ago, and the response was, "You take the Divine Pattern too far."  But 1st Corinthians 8:6 says that the Father is the Source of ALL and Christ is the Channel of ALL.  So everything has to be Source-Channel, so you can't take it too far, because it's all Source-Channel, and it all has to be this way.

I remember I was given the book New Discoveries from Old Manuscripts by John Vandenburg in 2013, and someone gave it to me and at that stage, I was like, "Oh, dear!"  And I put that aside.  But after studying the Divine Pattern and really coming back to the Feasts, I went back and I started to read that book.  And even though I would say that its framework was a bit skewed, he brought out many, many important points that I hadn't considered before, and suddenly Bible verses started to come out to me like 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, where Paul actually says, "Let us therefore keep the feast."  Why did I read that as 'Let us not keep the feast'?

Audience Did you supply a word?

Pr. Adrian I did supply a word. (laughter)  Why did I read it that way?  Let us, therefore, keep the feast whenever I want to keep the feast.  And I distinctly remember September of 2013, going back to that time.  And we were talking about it because there's a statement in the writings of the pioneers and even Ellen White that says that the camp meetings of the Adventists fulfilled the Feast of Tabernacles and the Passover and all these types of things.  So we would use that quote to say, well, we don't need to keep the feasts when God says to do them.  We'll do that when we want to do them.  Isn't that like Christmas and Easter?  Isn't it doing it when you want to do it?

And I still remember Jesus very gently saying to me, 'Adrian, why is it that you're quite willing to have a camp meeting at any time of the year, except for the time that I ask for them?'  Ouch!  Do you detect a difficulty here?  And that's what led me to Colossians. You know what's interesting about Colossians... one of the statements there is presented to us.  Colossians chapter, 2, verse 20, "Wherefore if he be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, ye are subject to ordinances."

What ordinances?  "(Touch not; taste not; handle not.)"  And all my brethren were saying touch not the feast; handle not the feasts..."  What is legalism?  Legalism is just as much prohibiting people from doing things as encouraging/[making] people to do things, and I could never get that point across to people in saying, 'If you keep the feast you're insulting Jehovah'. When you're saying in order to be saved you must not keep these feasts - that is legalism.  Being saved by not doing something is legalism. I am not doing this in order to be saved.  Or not to insult Jehovah.  I'm not doing this to insult Jehovah but the ordinance is :(Touch not; taste not; handle not.)"   And I would say, why are you saying touch not the feasts; handle not the feasts in order to be saved?  That's legalism.  So anyway.

Audience What about Colossians 2:14?  The handwriting containing ordinances...

Pr. Adrian "The handwriting containing ordinances."  The dogma (ordinances) has nothing to do with the law of Moses, as we discovered later on.  So this is when I decided I would attend my first feast.  And I've detailed this too before. I went to the United States in 2013 for the Feast of Tabernacles, and that is when I experienced a convergence of the Father-Son Divine Pattern message with the feast, and it just lifted the whole message into a new context, into a new experience, and there was an outpouring of the Spirit that occurred at that particular time.  And I remember at the end of that time period, I made a statement to everybody there because of the great sense of the Spirit that we experienced at that feast and the joy and the radiance of that time.  And I quoted at the end of that feast, Isaiah 53:1, "Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?"  Well, I said to the brethren: "who is going to believe our report of the outpouring of the Spirit that we experienced at the Feast of Tabernacles?" And as I've said to you before, I'm very, very glad that in the 6 months leading up to that feast, I was very ill, I was very sick, and I really couldn't function very well at all. And I went to that feast and I spoke for 10 days in a row. I was up every night late and I just had energy.

And then I came across this statement in Testimonies, volume 2 page, 704, "In the Sabbath is light, health and special strength." 

Those who are diligently seeking to keep the Sabbath from the heart would find in the Sabbath light, health and special strength; I was finding that health in the keeping of the Feast of Tabernacles.  I experienced a health experience at that particular time.  And that was something I couldn't deny.  I couldn't deny what was taking place.  And that was a magnification.  And then I began to see other things that really made sense to me because the Adventist movement decided to keep Sabbath from sunset to sunset.  Why did they decide to do that?  J.N. Andrews did a study in 1855, and the key text that he used to prove that was Leviticus 23:32, which is "From even to even you shall celebrate your Sabbath."  The problem is that Leviticus 23:32 is not referring to the seventh-day Sabbath, but it's referring to the day of Atonement.  So the way to the Sabbath is through the feasts. If you want to know when to begin your seventh-day Sabbath, you have to find it in the magnification of the feasts.

And again, that's just like, wow!  There it is! To go to the Sabbath: from even to even you shall celebrate your Sabbath.  And it's interesting when you read... and I've got it in the book Time to commence the Sabbath when Ellen White was asking the question, "We've been keeping 6 p.m. to 6 p.m. for ten years now."  And what did the angels say to her?  She's thinking about the seventh-day Sabbath, but the angel said to her "From even to even you shall celebrate your Sabbath. Study it."  Why is the angel referring to a feast day Sabbath to answer a question regarding the seventh-day Sabbath unless one is leading to the other? That was a big point in my mind.

Another key point I came across, and I'm sure you're familiar with these. Do you remember the statement about the "sharp rigid outlines"?  "Sharp, rigid outlines", it threw me for a loop when I first read that.  I mean, what do you do with statements like this?  "The instructions given to Moses for ancient Israel with its sharp rigid outlines." Why does she say sharp and rigid?  That just doesn’t sound beautiful and lovely.  "Sharp rigid outlines"... is she writing it [that way] because that's the way we think about them?  Could be.  "...sharp rigid outlines ought to be studied and obeyed by the people of God today" (Letter 259, 1903)   Why did she write that?  That explodes my whole Adventist framework because the law of Moses was nailed to the Cross except for tithing.

Audience "Sharp and rigid" to me just means that it can be, it's not working?

Pr. Adrian It's clearly defined clarity, certainty.  How do you read?

Audience In black and white.

Pr. Adrian Yes, very, very clear. There's no messing around.  It's very, very clear.

And so, I distinctly remember when quite a number of my friends had just been disfellowshipped from the church, and one of my friends was saying, "Adrian, you need to get onto this feast question", and I was just not in [the right] frame of mind.  I was just not really there. And then he said to me, "Adrian, you're dividing the Godhead movement by not keeping the feasts."

Two years later, by that time I've read the study and I've got myself there, and by that stage, he'd rejected the feasts and I'm promoting the feasts.  So he comes to me, and says, "Adrian, you're dividing the Godhead movement because you're keeping the feasts."

(laughter) Oh, "I did not come to bring peace but a sword" (Matthew 10:34). (laughter)  Can't win, can you?  Can’t please them all.  So I just thought, okay, very good.  So that was such an amazing time, and then going to the United States and coming back from the United States, having studied this and I remember all [the feast] people talking about vernal equinox and calendars, and I'm going, well, how am I going to present this to my brothers and sisters back in Australia [with these] calendar wars going on over here and I don't want to be part of this.  This is really stressful.

And I'm up in the country of Washington State with this wonderful old guy, lovely big beard like Moses.  He pulls out all these quotes showing how the Adventist pioneers established the Day of Atonement on the Karaite calendar and the barley, and it was like, “Of course!” All we have to do is go follow what the pioneers did, and that will give us the calendar that we need to follow. It's not rocket science; it's quite simple.  And that's when we connected the Midnight Cry.  That first statement from Ellen White in Early Writings, Page 14, connects the Midnight Cry to lighting the path all the way to the city.  And the Midnight Cry as we've got over there (pointing to books on the table) by Samuel Snow, includes the Karaite calendar.

It's all part of the Midnight Cry, and the Midnight Cry is about receiving more oil.  And how do you receive more oil?  Through the calendar and coming to this feast at the time [appointed', the Sabbath and the feasts. It just is layer upon layer, such perfect sense to my mind.  And then coming back to Australia and talking to some of my friends and I got excited.  I said, "So this is it!  This is it!"   And people saying to me, "Oh, Adrian, we've been thrown out of the Adventist Church and we've lost all of our friends and then you come with this crazy feast teaching.  Do we really have to do this?"  So it's just like, well, you know, once you've been cut loose from the institution of your birth and you've been shown the door, it's like, what have you got to lose?  Seek the truth.

Audience True worship.

Pr. Adrian True worship.  Follow the Lord.  Now, of course, that involves responsibility.  When you break free of the creed, you can run off and do all kinds of crazy stuff, can't you?  So yes, it creates all kinds of crazy stuff.  I always tried to find multiple layers of evidence.  And that's why the whole framework of the Father-Son and the Divine Pattern, and the Source-Channel, and I found 7, 8, 9, and 10 layers of evidence.  It was irrefutable to me in my mind, and therefore I said, you know, we have to do this.  And that's always been a challenge, and from a pastoral perspective, over the last 7 years, there's been a bit of agony in my heart as people are trying to keep up with the material that we're presenting.  And thinking [to myself], you need to slow down, you need to go much slower.  But I felt that my Father was saying, "Adrian, just get to the top and when you get to the top, you'll know why you had to go so fast. I know it feels strange because you've got lambs, and it's hard for them to keep up."  And I can tell myself, 'but if you leave a paper trail, they'll be able to follow it eventually.' (all the books and articles)

Write out what you're saying and write out what you're seeing; they won't all understand it now, but they will understand it later on, and just get to the summit. Get to the summit.  And for me, this is the summit, (Holding a book) The Atonement, to finally put all the pieces together and make it all just make sense.

And so, I wrestled in prayer with the Lord about us: 'Lord, you know, like if I make this decision, if I do this and it's another jolt to the community and I have to take on more information and have them learn more things, and then they have to be in conflict with other people.  Attacking you and sending you videos and all this kind of stuff.  And we just want a happy church and we don't want all this conflict, and we don't have to establish more and more beachheads and get over there.  I'm too tired!  We can't keep up!'

So we're in a 7th year, so we're trying to just have a bit of a breather, but we've got more stuff coming.  Just putting it out there.  How do they say it?  Just saying!

The implications of this (The book The Atonement), and so there is more stuff that is going to challenge God's community in terms of the application of what we understand and what we believe.  And it will bring conflict because the Word of God is sharp and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, and it's going to challenge us to the very core.  And when I look back over the way the Lord has led us in the past, I can say, praise God, but I also have memories of absolute carnage, of friendships that I once had that have been butchered and destroyed. Why? Because I was pigheaded?  I could be, I can't eliminate that factor.  I'm passionate about truth, about the desire to know what is true.  And as I've discovered the hard way, sometimes excitement can be interpreted as anger by people if they want to interpret it that way.  Excitement!  Intensity!

Audience Loving and passionate about the banging on the desk.

Pr. Adrian Yes, banging on the desks.  Sorry to those online. (Banging on the desk)

Audience (laughter) You haven't done that for a long time.

Pr. Adrian I try not to.   Look, I've gone through that process of saying, 'Lord, why didn't you choose someone that was very placid and relaxed and very calm and spoke with a very gentle calm voice?'

But it's true.  It's true!  But [it's] excitement and love for Jesus.  That's the intensity that comes out, and to follow the Lamb wherever He should lead you, and wherever He would go.  And sometimes it's like, "Oh, okay, Lord. Here we go."  But there's always joy in walking into truth. And so, in accepting the truth of the festivals, and the statutes, and the judgments, I went through another whole disfellowshipping process of being kicked out of relationships that I once had.  And so it wasn't once, but it was twice.  And then there was the third time when we accepted the character of God.  And that's when I committed the unpardonable sin for many people of saying that God doesn't destroy.  I remember one gentleman saying - I think Stephen might remember this.  This gentleman said, "if you want to believe in Jesus, the Son of God, I can deal with it, and if you want to keep those crazy little feasts, it's ok, but if you say that God doesn't kill, you are my enemy."

Audience Oh grief.

Pr. Adrian Okay. (laughter)  Yeah, awkward silence, I was like. Okay!  And you know, you go through all this process of when you're talking to people and it's, you know, we have this, it's like 'Not Bacon', you know, it's like - "Well, God does kill, but it's how!"   "How does He kill?"  "Well, He withdraws."  "Oh, that's just fake, you know, you’re just making it up."  Because you don't want to come out and just say, 'God doesn't kill people', because it's just too much light for people to deal with and so you try to soften it down and make it a bit easier for them to tolerate and I understand.

But I distinctly remember in 2017, in Pentecost of 2017, when we were in Talking Rock and I was praying a lot about this and we'd gone through and got all the key pieces, at least in my mind, all the key pieces of the stories of the Old Testament that really concerned me that I needed to answer, and I had to have a Bible answer for those questions.  And in 2017, I felt impressed to tell people we have the evidence to prove that our Father is not a destroyer. And if you resist this message, you will end up in a position that you don't want to be in.  And what is that position?  You are constantly telling people that God kills people.  Do you want to be in that position?  Do you want to fight against this message?  Because we have the evidence that God does not do these things and you will find yourself more and more aggressively presenting that God kills people.  And that's going to make you look, well, a bit sad.

And therefore, because we have the evidence; to worship a God that kills people is idolatry of the highest order.  It is rebellion against the God of heaven.

Audience This is for anyone who has a misconception of God.

Pr. Adrian Is worshiping an idol.  But why does it have to be said so stridently, so plainly, that to worship a God that kills people is an idol?  It is Molech, and it is Asheroth because their gods kill people. But I had to be convinced in my mind that this is the truth, and can I prove this from the Scripture in a consistent system?  Again, it was the Divine Pattern, and this is what I try and explain in the book, Escaping the Pentagon of Lies.  It is the Divine Pattern of Father and Son that holds the key to unlocking all the points that we needed, especially on the Covenants, to understand why God is allowing Himself to be presented as a killer in the Old Testament: because He is causing our sins to abound (Romans 5:20) in allowing us to read it in this way.   And He's allowed it to be written so brilliantly that all the Scripture does is bring out of you what is inside of you.  It's absolute wisdom.

And people say, we need to rewrite the Scriptures.  No, we don't.  We don't need to change it and call it the Remedy.  We don't need to do that.  We need to leave it exactly the way it was written because it brings out of you what is inside of you.  And it needs to do this in order to cause your sin to abound that grace might much more abound. (Romans 5:20)  So King James will do fine.  New King James will do fine, NIV, no, well, occasionally.  So we don't need to change the Bible because the Bible is written exactly the way it's been written in order to bring out of us [the diagnosis of our condition].   And to test whether we're willing to search below the surface level and harmonize all the pieces together.  And to realize that the beautiful Hebrew language has variants of meaning which allow you to go much deeper than what you have before (See 'The Enigma and Mirror of Biblical Hebrew').

And so, that leads me to the events of 2016.  And we [are] just coming to the close of this because it was... and I need to go back a little bit.  I did a presentation for our brethren in Germany. It was in 2012 that Jutta Deichsel, who is our chief translator in Germany, wrote to me about some of the messages that we were sharing, and by October of that year, she was editing and translating Identity Wars into German.  And then by the end of that year, she wrote to me and said, "I have a problem with what you've written in Identity Wars."  Because in there I had stated how that God essentially sacrificed His Son.  Some of you may remember what I confessed. Look, I screwed up.  I've got this completely wrong in chapter 10 and chapter 11 of Identity Wars.

And she was saying to me, I'm having a problem with this Adrian, and she said it very, very nicely.   And it took 12 months, and then she reached out to me again and appealed to me in regard to the character of God and the subject of His character.  I remember what I had done in God's Love in the Flames of Hell, and I talked about that and I could see that but then you could see that I was on the back foot, and I went back and read the emails again, and I was a little bit unhappy.  But that started a thought process in my mind.

And she, not long after that, invited me to come to Europe and to do meetings in Europe.  And so... it's interesting that a number of years later I was in Germany and we're doing meetings - and I talk about that in Escaping the Pentagon of Lies-Mirror key found in the forest in chapter there, where suddenly the whole Mirror principle came together on my mind while I was in Germany and we raced back and I did that presentation on the Mirror.  And it was after that we flew to the United States and we did the Escaping the Pentagon of Lies series in October of 2016, and it was after that, that there was just such a fervour among many people that had participated in that process.  And on Facebook - it was actually Sharon Petryczanko from Talking Rock - she set up a Messenger chat group called Father of Love.  And we were talking in this group.  And so I took that label and we created the Father of Love group on Facebook, we sort of went from there because people were just buzzing. They were getting excited about all the things that were coming together at that particular time.

And so that's kind of where the Father of Love developed and we took all of that and said, "Yes, Father of love, that makes perfect sense," and we've sort of gone on from strength to strength from that particular point.  And I wanted to relay some of this history to you because I just praise God for the way that He's led and the way that He's brought things about.

And I think back 12 years ago when I was very, very sick and in the very beginning it seemed like I was finished.  It was just a few crazy ideas and believing in the Son of God.  Who could have imagined that we would come to where we are today and how God would lead and do what He has done?  I'm still, "How did You do that, Lord? How did that work?"

And so, I'm very, very thankful for the way that He has called all of us.  If you're listening to this presentation, God has called you to be part of this most precious message. This beautiful truth, and the way that it's been systematically laid together, it's solid, it's strong.  We've tested it, and it's a solid, immovable platform that has been built here. You can have confidence in it if you study it carefully.  And I know that now we can go on to the completion of the building of the temple.  But as I said, there are some shocks ahead.  There are some challenges ahead. There are some things that will test us.  There are character elements within us that still need to be purified out of us.  And purification process is usually not fun.  And why is it not fun?  Because we're selfish and evil, that's why it's not fun.  If we weren't selfish and evil and we were all humble, it would be easy.

[There is] selfishness and evil that we're not even aware of [being] inside of us that God brings to our attention.  If we have humility, we will be able to slide through into a better character experience.  And one of the rough parts about this is that we get to experience our character imperfections as we mix together as a community.  And one of the best places to experience character imperfections is to come to a camp like this, and live together for eight days.  "Oh. I'm ready to be over with it." (laughter)  "Why don't they just get with the program?"  Who's program?  And that's why [we have] the book of Judges: "Every man did, which is right in his own eyes."  And that's what we get, every man doing what's right in his own eyes, and that's where we get conflict and we get stuff going on.  And yeah, we know sitting in the tent mulling over... (angry and bitter)  Isn't it great?  So we're all part of the family, and we all love one another, but we've just got stuff going on.

And this is God's appointed means, you see?  [When] you go to a weekend camp you can put up with each other’s smell for just long enough so we can get away and go home, but it's 8 days, and there's nowhere to hide, and we have to do it twice a year.  So, yeah. Pentecost is only a weekend, so you can put up with that.  Start living in the same quarters and start doing things, and that people got different ways of doing things and all that, it all gets very, very interesting. But I'm confident that the Lord is leading us.  Thank you for listening.  So shall we pray?

Father in heaven, we just thank You.  Thanks for the opportunity to revise the history and just some of the key points, some of the key doctrinal elements as we go through.  And, Father, we just pray that You would continue to lead us and guide us as we move forward and that we would imbibe these truths.  Please write them on our hearts and on their minds, and let us think of the people outside that do not know these beautiful things that we know.  Help us to know how to share them with other people.  And Lord, we pray for the perfection of character to carry our cross, to be a blessing to all around us and not to please ourselves.  And we just thank You in Jesus' name. Amen.