The Rise and Progress of the Father of Love Movement Part 1

 

Pr. Adrian Welcome everyone online. Glad that you can join us.  We've got 12 people [online] already, including Azadeh, sister, bless you.  Blessed Sabbath. It's still Sabbath in Europe, so we can hang on to the Sabbath now.

(Singing hymns)

Pr. Adrian All right.  Well, thank you.  I think a fair few of us [are] here.  Let's kneel and we will pray.

Father in Heaven.  We just give You thanks for a blessed service. Thank You for the sweet fellowship that we've had.  And as we close Sabbath, we've felt the joy, the assurance that we'll all be together and have eternal life living with You always.  We thank You, Father, for this hope, this joy in the midst of a lot of sorrow and darkness.  And I pray that as we do the presentation tonight, You would lead us, guide us by Your Spirit in Jesus' name. Amen.

I've entitled tonight's presentation The Rise and Progress of the Father of Love Movement.  Is that a familiar title?  Rise and Progress.  Very interesting.  So I want to do a little bit of a history of the development of this message and how it has grown.  I think it's important that we understand how this message came about.  What were the key elements that led to where we are today?  And we are still in the very early days of this message.

And I just want to go back to some of the key elements that led up and some of the key events that have taken place.  And so, I want to go back to a few months ago, we actually laid to rest a dear friend of ours, Joy Bowers.  She was a school teacher, Adventist school teacher along with her husband down in Victoria.   And then they came through to Queensland and we attended a church with them, Kingston Church in the Brisbane area and Logan Brisbane area.  And while we were attending that church, Joy introduced me to the writings of Robert Wieland.  How many of you heard of Robert Wieland?

Audience Yes.

Pr. Adrian Okay.  You've heard of Robert Wieland.  And it was in the late '80s that I started to read some of his material.  And, of course, Robert Wieland was pointing towards the writings of A.T. Jones and E.J. Waggoner.  A.T. Jones and E.J. Waggoner were two Adventist leaders and Adventist pastors.   They came into the church, not as the original pioneers, but they came in, one of them was a son of a pioneer, Joseph H. Waggoner, and the other one came in the late 1850s, early 1860s, probably 1860s.  He had been in the Civil War, he had been involved in the Civil War, A.T. Jones, and he came into Adventism.

And of course, for those of you who are familiar with the history, they were the 2 men that brought the 1888 message.  And it was somewhat of an enigma to actually understand.  There was something about this message, about righteousness by faith that these 2 men were preaching, an emphasis on righteousness by faith.  But to understand exactly what they were saying and why they were saying it, I didn't quite understand.  A lot of the Adventist theologians just said, well, they were just emphasizing the good old Protestant doctrine of righteousness by faith.  And I thought, Well, what's so special about it then?  If everybody else is preaching it, then what's so special about what Jones and Waggoner are saying?

In any case, as I read Robert Wieland's material, I was [touched], particularly his 1895 sermons [this would be AT Jones' 1895 sermons] where he talked about the nature of Christ and Christ's taking on our nature and how he can fully identify with the challenges that we have in life.  And through reading that material, I was tremendously blessed at the nearness of Jesus and that He fully understood me in my trials and in my difficulties.  That was an emphasis that I had not really picked up anywhere else  as much as I picked it up in the writings of A.T. Jones.

In the early 1890s, there was another series of books that Jones produced about the empires of the Bible.  The Empires of the Bible, and then there was Ecclesiastic Empire, and The Great Nations of Today.  And I started to read this series and it's quite an extensive series of books. And in the book, The Empires of the Bible, I came across this statement by A.T. Jones, which was the ignition point for me in terms of everything that has followed after that.  It came from reading this statement, and I want to show it to you.  This is in the book, Life Matters, and in terms of the publications and materials, Life Matters is the basement; it's at the engine room of explaining the difference between the two kingdoms, and the value system that's involved.  It's right down in the motor of this whole movement, and we've just run out of [printed copies of] Life Matters.  So we're going to have to print some more.

It's a book that we haven't emphasized much lately, but it contains a lot of the foundational material of what drives this message, in my mind.  So, and this is on page 78 of the latest edition.  This is the statement that started the Identity Wars theme for me, and it as do with Nimrod.

"With the setting up of Nimrod's kingdom, the entire ancient world entered a new historical phase.  The Oriental tradition, which makes that warrior, the first man who wore a kingly crown, points to a fact more significant than the assumption of a new ornament of dress or even the conquest of a province.  His reign introduced to the world a new system of relations between the governor and the governed.  The authority of former rulers had rested upon the feeling of kindred, and the ascendancy of the chief was an image of parental control.  Nimrod, on the contrary, was a sovereign of territory and of men just so far as they were its inhabitants, irrespective of personal ties.  Hitherto there had been tribes—enlarged families— Society.  Now there was a nation, a political community— the State." (AT Jones, Empires of  the Bible)

That seed, in my mind, was like an explosion - in terms of the impact of this statement.  A clear difference between the two kingdoms.  Between the former kingdom of parental relationships and authority was existing on a parent-child grandfather paternal relationship.  But this was a new system which Nimrod introduced.  And of course, when we go to Genesis chapter 10, we see the first time the word kingdom occurs in the Bible is in Genesis chapter 10, and it's related to the person of Nimrod.

Genesis 10:8 "And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth."  And that word, mighty one, if I remember rightly. Well, that's just: (Strong. Mighty).  Okay.  "...began to be a mighty one in the earth.  He was a mighty hunter before...", better translated against the LORD. "...wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter against the LORD.  And the beginning of his kingdom..."  That's where, you know, it's against the Lord because he had established his own kingdom.  "The beginning of His kingdom was..." What?

Audience Babel.

Pr. Adrian "...Babel or Babylon."  The beginning of his kingdom was Babylon.  And some translations say that Babel, (EL), means another way to God.  Another way to God outside of the appointed way. And you can read a book by Alexander Hislop called The Two Babylons, which speaks of Nimrod, introducing a system of taxation and banking that would allow for him to feed his army and enable a new state relationship to exist where you had a standing army.  Today we would call it the military-industrial complex.  This started with Nimrod, a new relationship between the ruled and the rulers.  No longer a father figure, but one who was a warrior.  The ones who stand at the top are the greatest killers and destroyers on the earth.

It's quite a unique thought, isn't it?  To think about someone like Queen Elizabeth, beautiful Queen Elizabeth, who ruled Britannia and led a nation that had killed millions or thousands of people.  We don't think of the queen [usually that way], but she's a monarch that rules through death and the threat of death, and she is a sovereign.  She is still tenuously the sovereign of Australia, although if you study that history carefully, probably in 1975, that all ended.  The Commonwealth of Australia is now...anyway, we won't go into that now.  But to think of these rulers, they rule by fear of death.  And I think of someone particularly like Joe Biden, he rules over the greatest military-industrial complex in the world at the present time.  And considering his state of health, that's a bit of a worry.  But again, his might is by his power to inflict death and desolation on the earth.  This is how men rule today, and we [Australians] are all under the leadership of Scott Morrison, not because he's our father or our uncle, but [because] he is a sovereign of territory and we are in that territory and therefore we are under his authority.  This is all part of the Nimrod system.  It all started with Nimrod.  This relationship between the governed and then the governors started with Nimrod.

And so, this led me to think: what is the difference?  How do each of these kingdoms work?  How do these two kingdoms operate?  And this is what led to the beginning of the book Identity Wars.  Where do you find your value?  What makes you valuable as a person? How do you fit into society?   What is it that makes you valuable in the society that you live in? And the whole, as I talk about in this book... we have a schooling system, a grading system where your intellect and your physical abilities are compared on a bell curve with everybody else of a similar age.  And you are graded and the grades that you receive are a psychological tool to separate you from everybody else, and to give you a feeling that you are intelligent or not intelligent based on the feedback mechanisms that have been given to you.

I remember in a class that I attended there was one of the guys in the class who could draw anything.  He [was] just tremendously gifted in the arts and drawing, but he really was lousy at mathematics and physics and all those other things.  And he developed the idea that he was dumb because he did not excel in the sciences, whereas he excelled in the arts, and because the arts were not favoured in the school that I attended, he thought that he was dumb because of the system that was grading him.  Which is unfortunate, isn't it?  It's very common, isn't it?  How many of you have come to believe certain things about yourself based on the grading that you had at school?

Audience (Inaudible).

Pr. Adrian Eddie is saying yes.  So depending on where you are on the bell curve and the marks that you get in relation to everybody else, [it] gives you a cue for you to work out, whether you should act like a person that's intelligent, or whether you should act like a person that doesn't know anything.  It is better to be quiet and don't ask any questions because any question you're going to ask is going to be dumb.  So don't ask.  Just pretend, and just go along with everybody else, and pretend you know what's going on, but don't say anything because you're too dumb to ask questions.  This is the system.

This is the system that we are all raised in, a system that is wonderfully designed to separate us and grade us and degrade us.  This is the beast system, this is the leopard system of Revelation 13, and it's designed to do this to separate us and to make us think this way.  And many of us are brain damaged, and we all have a Ph.D. (permanent head damage) because of the schooling system that we have grown up in, and we have been taught in a certain way.  And this has all been planned.  It's planned because we need to have a small group of people that act in a manner that they are the governors and the rest of us need to act in a submissive, governed way so that we can be of service to the empire.

So [this is] the education system that we have all been a part of, regardless of whether it was a religious educational system or not.  Regardless of which school you went to, we are all still part of that program because of the value system, because whether you like it or not, if you feel more valuable because you have marks that are higher than somebody else, you're in Nimrod's kingdom.  That's how his kingdom operates.  It's a value by performance in achievement that rewards accolades, or if someone has the capacity to remember things more than somebody else, he is rewarded more highly.  And because of the worship of knowledge and the worship of understanding, that's why people that are higher up on the [psychiatric/autistic] spectrum are the ones that are ruling the world.

I'm talking about the tech giants.  I'm talking about Elon Musk, I'm talking about Mark Zuckerberg.  I'm talking about Jeff Bezos.  I'm talking about these guys. These guys are super smart; they are higher up on the spectrum with analytics and analytical thinking.  But when it comes to human relationships and relating to other people, I think they struggle a little bit in those departments.  But [I'm] not saying anything negative about them, it's just the way the world is skewed in that direction to value those traits, particularly in the Western world.

And so, this is the point that led to Identity Wars. It was in 2001 that I first spoke on the subject of identity wars and connecting in, and this realization of, "Oh! This is why Jesus came.' Matthew 3:17.  At the baptism of Jesus, what does the Father say to His Son?  "This is my illustriously, wonderfully smart son who knows everything and you know nothing in comparison to Him.  And He is mighty and strong and can leap [over] tall buildings in a single bound."

Is that how He introduced His Son?  No, the way He spoke of His Son was of a parent speaking of His child: "This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased (In whom I delight!)".

The value of the Son has been determined by the Father.  The value of the Son has not been determined by the Son. The value of the Son has been determined by the Father.  This is God's kingdom.  This is the way that God's kingdom operates.  And because God loves His son, God cherishes His son.  The value of the Son cannot change.  There is nothing that He can do or not do to change His value.  He is always the Son of the Father.  It is an enduring value that can never be changed.  This is such a revelation to me and it was based on, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."  And then I began to think about the war that Jesus had in the wilderness with Satan in Matthew 4 right after this event, and this is all familiar for many of us, but for some of you, this is new.  Right after the Father says, “this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  Jesus goes into the wilderness and then He is tempted 40 days of the devil.  And what is it?  What is it that Satan asks Jesus at the end of the 40 days?

"IF you are the Son of God to demonstrate Your capabilities.  Prove who You are by what You can do, and turn these stones into bread."  And this was such a revelation!  Look, here it is! Here is Satan [challenging where] Jesus has already been affirmed in His Father's Kingdom.  He is the Son of God, not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the living God (Zech 4:6).  He is the Son of the living God. Nothing will ever change this. Nothing!  But Satan, now he's drawing on Christ, saying, "IF you are the Son of God, demonstrate Your pedigree by performing a miracle. Show me Your Divinity by what You can do."  He's trying to draw Christ into his kingdom, where value is attributed to your own power or your own abilities, and these types of things.  But of course, if Jesus were to respond to Satan and work a miracle, He would be doubting what His Father had said to Him 40 days earlier.

Audience Like we said this morning, that doubt leads to transgression.

Pr. Adrian Doubt leads to transgression, leads to fear, and leads to all of those things.  These are important building blocks.  We're going over some of the foundation history of some of these things and why this was such a revolution in thinking.  The two kingdoms are clearly displayed in the temptation of Christ in the wilderness.  Satan is trying to draw Him to prove His Sonship.  And how many of us, as we're sitting there in an exam room and we can't remember all the things we're supposed to remember.  We're stressed, our mouth is dry, and we're writing furiously, trying to prove that we're worth something by what we can procure.  And when you've sweated and you've worked it all out and then you've finished your schooling, and then you are admitted to the degree.  A bachelor's degree, why do they call it a bachelor's degree?  And then you walk out and all these people in funny caps and gowns are there to greet you and to hand you a piece of paper and to say, by the merits of your own abilities and powers, we confer upon you the degree of blah, blah, blah.  Have some of you been through that process?

…

[There are] These two kingdoms and this book (Identity Wars) is laying out the basis of how our value was assured by our Father by simply becoming a child of God.  "You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."  You are my beloved child and whom I am well pleased."  And I didn't realize it at the time, because I needed to put one more piece in there for you, and I'll bring it up, in a little book called Confrontation [by Ellen White].

"Many professed Christians look upon this portion of the life of Christ in the wilderness as they would upon a common warfare between two kings, and as having no special bearing upon their own life and character. Therefore, the manner of warfare and the wonderful victory gained have but little interest for them. Their perceptive powers are blunted by Satan's artifices, so that they cannot discern that he who afflicted Christ in the wilderness, determined to rob Him of His integrity as the Son of the infinite, is to be the adversary to the end of time.  Although he failed to overcome Christ, his power is not weakened over man." - Confrontation, page 63.

So what is this telling you?  That the same test that Jesus went through is the test that all of us go through?  How do you determine your Sonship or your daughtership to God?  Is it by your power or is it simply by an act of faith?  And this is what Eddie spoke about this morning. Psalms, chapter 2, verse 7: "You are my son, (begotten Son) this day have I begotten You."  You have two choices - to believe it or not to believe it.  And if you are His beloved begotten son, then you have all the value in the world because the King of the universe is the One who is telling you:  "You are My son/daughter.  You belong to Me, you are precious to Me."

And if you believe this, you have all the value in the world instantly by faith, without works.  And this is what led me to understand the true meaning of righteousness by faith.  Righteousness by faith is accepting your true identity as a child of God, not by work, but simply by listening to the Word of God and believing it.  This is righteousness by faith alone.  Right here!

And so, in this story of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, I saw the simplicity of explaining righteousness by faith, and that's what Identity Wars is all about.  It's about distilling the essence of what Jones and Waggoner were teaching, and putting it together into this format based on the identity of Christ when He was baptized and the temptation in the wilderness, and to bring to you the simplicity of righteousness by faith.  And there is another statement here: "The scene of trial with Christ in the wilderness was the foundation of the plan of salvation." Pardon?  What is the foundation of the plan of salvation?  "The scene of trial..."   So what is the issue of salvation?  IDENTITY!

"IF you are the Son of God, command these stones to be turned into bread."  "The scene of trial with Christ in the wilderness was the foundation of the plan of salvation, and gives to fallen man the key whereby he, in Christ's name, may overcome."  Now, I didn't realize this at the time, but in accepting this as truth, accepting this is a reality that at the baptism of Jesus and in His victory over Satan in the wilderness, He had claimed for us the absolute assurance that we are His children.  And we know this because in The Desire of Ages, on page 113, we can go and have a look at this.  These are really foundational passages.  It says

"And the word that was spoken to Jesus at the Jordan, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,' embraces humanity.  God spoke to Jesus as our representative.  With all our sins and weaknesses, we are not cast aside as worthless. 'He hath made us accepted in the Beloved.'" (Ephesians 1:6) - Desire of Ages 113

But the question, I need to ask you is, when did He make us accepted in the beloved?  From the foundation of the world.  "For the works are finished." Hebrews 4:4,  "...from the foundation of the world."  And if we were accepted in Christ, from the foundation of the world, then what does the Cross of Christ do to change this reality?

Some [of you are] adventuring to say the obvious.   It does/has nothing because it did not come from God. "Sacrifice and offering I did not require, burnt offering in sin offering I never required." (Psalms 40:6) I didn't realize this at the time.  But if this is true, the scene of trial with Christ in the wilderness lays the foundation of the plan of salvation and gives the fallen man the key whereby he may overcome.  The cross does not change this reality of your sonship and daughtership to God.  The Cross of Christ only makes manifest the extent of the love of God and His willingness to save you, in spite of the enmity that obviously exists in all of our hearts towards God and His Son.  The cross is the culmination, but the scene of trial in the wilderness is the foundation.  Do we understand?

I did not understand how significant this was, but ultimately it was the book and the principles of Identity Wars that lead to the principles in this book, At-One-Ment: that the atonement is very different from what we thought because we were all taught that God was very, very angry with us because we had sinned.  We are children of Adam and we have sinned.  As it says in the Psalms 7:11 - "God is angry with the wicked every day."  Have you read that text?   Well, what does that mean?  [It encourages in us] a picture of God that He's really upset.  He's not happy with you, and if He's not happy with you, then how can He say: "You are My beloved child in whom I am well pleased."  How can you believe this?  [It's not] until Jesus dies on the Cross, [then] God's wrath is appeased.  God's wrath is satisfied, and then God can love you because His Son was bloodied and murdered on a Cross.  So that you then can have access to God.  Who wants access to a God like this?  [A God] who would kill His own Son because He's so angry [in order] to save us?  To save me from what?  To be brought into the arms of a bloodthirsty God that would kill his own son because he couldn't have enough self-control and anger management to stop his anger until he killed someone.

Audience To save you from Him.

Pr. Adrian To save me from Him.  And when you think about it in that light, what were we thinking?  But I didn't know all these things when I looked and realized in the beginning that my acceptance with the Father is in Christ Jesus, and in His identity we are accepted in the Beloved.  This is a revolutionary thought, and that's why the Father of Love movement begins with Identity Wars.  It begins in the temptation in the wilderness and the victory that Christ won for us.  Can you comprehend when Jesus fell to the ground after Satan left Him and the angels came?  Christ had won for us the victory that we are children of God by faith alone. Tremendous. Victory!

All heaven rejoiced that a man could take hold of the Word of God, "You are my beloved Son, and in whom I am well pleased."  Hunger could not dissuade Him, evil angels could not convince Him [otherwise], and nothing could bring Him down from that absolute assurance that "I am the Son of God."  And this is our assurance of salvation, and it is in Christ's identity; your identity is in His identity.  We are accepted in the beloved and this is why the Sonship of Jesus Christ is everything to us, and this is why the doctrine of the Trinity is our mortal enemy.  Because it obscures the relationship between God and His Son, it obscures the acceptance that God has for His Son.  And you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little bit passionate about this subject, but it only comes out of the fact that I am deeply in love with the begotten Son of God because He has rescued me. He has set me free from the fears and the tyranny that once ruled my life.

So from Identity Wars there came a complete explosion, in my understanding, through to the book Return of Elijah.  After writing Identity Wars, I then began to write the book Life Matters in 2008, as I was systematically trying to piece together in my mind the implications of these 2 kingdoms and how you obtain value; and the difference between Abraham and Nimrod and what were the Kingdom implications of these 2 things.  Thanks be to God that in the way that I was trained in systematics, this has to fit this and that affects this, and that goes there, and this goes here, and this affects all these things. And I was able to work through these things by the grace of God.

But then, I asked myself a fateful question.  If I find my value alone in being a child of God, how does Christ find His value?  Does He find His value in His Father or in Himself?  And that was what led to The Return of Elijah.  The book Return of Elijah. (Holding the book to the audience) Where does Christ find His value?  What is it that makes Him valuable?  I was taught as a young person growing up that Christ, and it was never stated this way, it just was: "Christ is equal with the Father because of His omnipotence, His omniscience, and He was willing to give up His omnipresence for us" - although I've never read that in the Bible.  Have you read that in the Bible?  But He was with God because of His inherent power, because of His inherent capabilities and all these types of things.  And I'm thinking, what if Jesus finds His value in His power and His intellect? [I would have to do the same.] Then it is inconceivable that... How can I find value in my power, my intellect, when I have none?  And how can Jesus then be my perfect example?  How can I look to Him to be my example of how to live when He doesn't live like me?

I have to find value in Him, but He finds value in Himself.  Looking unto Jesus, "the author and finisher of faith" (Heb 12:2).  But this Son that I was introduced to has no faith at all except in Himself.  Who then...  as Eddie said this morning, Who is the one that has faith in Himself?  It's Satan.  If you worship a Son of God that has faith in Himself, you are worshiping Satan. Unwittingly, yes, but nonetheless, it is an idol.  It is idolatry.  And this is why many people come into the doctrine of the Son of God because it opposes the established teaching of the Christian church (meaning they came to it in response to it being a Papal tradition, not due to positive theology that it undermined). I did not come into it on that basis.  I came into it on the basis that the doctrine of the Son of God predicates and is absolutely necessary to the doctrine of righteousness by faith.

And this is what I seek to explain in this book, The Return of Elijah.  Righteousness by faith alone.  This is what was being taught by Jones and Waggoner in 1888.  We see this in the book, Christ and His Righteousness, pages 11 and 12, when Waggoner talks about how did Christ obtain the title of God as the Son of God?  Not by any form of achievement, but by the right of inheritance.  Waggoner understood this.  He had an understanding of this concept of inheritance, which led to the doctrine of righteousness by faith.  So the doctrine of this Son of God, the only begotten Son of God who inherited all things from His Father, is absolutely critical to being righteous by faith alone.

Do you understand the implications of this?  This is why it says "He who has the Son has life: he that has not the Son, has not life." (1 John 5:12)  It made sense to me then why this has to be, because Christ has obtained His acceptance with His Father by the Word of God, the Word of His Father, not by His works, not by His abilities, not by His powers.  And it was such a wonderful thing.  But I remember when I first asked myself the question, How does Jesus find value with His Father?  Is it by His own power that He measures?  He pulls out His measuring rod and compares His omnipotence with the omnipotence of His Father and says, "Yeah, we're equal.  I like you."… When one person is measuring his strength and capacity and capability against the one that brought him into life, what does that suggest?

Audience Insanity.

Pr. Adrian Insanity, thank you!  How many children measure their intellect and capability against their parents?  How many need to make a confession right now?

Audience (Laughter).

Pr. Adrian Where did we get this idea from?

Audience Our parents.

Pr. Adrian Satan.  From our parents, who got it from their parents, and from their parents, etc., etc.

But in the book, Return of Elijah.  It's just an explosion.  … Lorelle and I were actually in a caravan, we were staying at Trevor and Sarah [Russell’s] place, and I was thinking about all of these things, and I'd just been juice fasting for a couple of weeks just because of my health condition at the time.  And so I had a bit of clarity, and I woke up at 2 in the morning [and there] was this explosion of texts and stuff connecting together, and this going here, and this fitting here, and I'm just lying there, and all this stuff is fitting together.  And it was just by 5:00 in the morning, it was like, "You need to write.  You need to write this down. You need to get this down now."  So I got out and I began to write. I wrote 170 pages in two weeks just trying to get all this down.

There's definitely an inspiration that helped to put that together.  I asked my brethren in the church, by what inspiration that I did do these things?  They said we cannot tell.

Audience Neither will I tell you.

Pr. Adrian Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things! (Matthew 21:27) To produce a manuscript of this capacity in a 2-week period is impossible.  Impossible.  Which led them to the conclusion that I had been planning this for 2 decades at least.  Which is not true.  It was just BOOM!  This realization that this fits here and this goes with that, and that goes there. And this, this Adventist pioneer and bang. Bang, bang. Bang.  And all the pieces just came together, BANG!  Like that.  And suddenly this book appeared (The Return of Elijah).

Audience The Big Bang Theory.

Pr. Adrian (Laughter) The thought did cross my mind.

Audience (Laughter).

Pr. Adrian But it was completely guided.  And when I had finished this book, when I'd finished putting this not in this form, but in its original form.  I distinctly remember, I walked outside and looked up into the stars, and I just cried, and I said, "I found you."

Audience Amen.

Pr. Adrian "I found you."  And He said, "Well. I found you. You are the one that was lost. I found you."  And I just went for joy, and as I stood, there, I knew in an instant having fallen in love with the begotten Son of God and having taken hold of this truth, that it would cost me everything that I had claimed as my own.  And unfortunately, I was a prophet in that case, and it came to be true. I lost everything that I had.

Audience "Count it all dung."

Pr. Adrian "Count it all dung."  Thank you, brother!  "For the excellence in knowledge of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 3:8)   It was beautiful.  I have found my sonship in the Sonship of Jesus Christ, His acceptance with the Father.  And as I said, on the night in which I was disfellowshipped, I said to them, "I had served. I had lived my life doing the work of a son."  I can't remember exactly what I said.  "Doing the work of a son, having the title of a son, but I never really had the full assurance that I was a son of God because I worshiped a Son of God that had the title of a Son, did the work of a Son but wasn't a Son!  That's why I had so much trouble, that's why I had so much difficulty, and that's why I'm so passionate about this.  I found Him whom my soul loveth. He set me free from all of these things and all the tyranny.

I regularly hear the sound of twisting girders of metal just collapsing all around me.  And freedom.  Freedom!  When you've experienced tyranny and you've been raised in a system that shackles you, and holds in your mind, and keeps you in fear, and then you taste freedom. Gratitude can be the only thing that comes forth from you.  Gratitude that you've been set free by the only begotten Son of God.  And that's why that feeling of love is constant.  You've set me free in simply believing in who you are.  I have righteousness by faith.  It is mine completely and absolutely.  It's such a simple transaction.  It's not complex at all.  And it should be this simple.

"Well, why then, Adrian, do you have to write so many books about this?"  Well, because I was in such deep darkness, and I'm trying to explain to myself how to get out of this because of the web of lies and deceit.  It doesn't need to be this complex, but it is this complex because we are transitioning from an absolutely satanic system into the Kingdom of Light.  And so, we have to explain some of these things.  I had to explain these things to myself to try and make sense of them and to make sure that I wasn't just shortcutting my way into some heretical falsehood.

And so, I jumped ahead a little bit in the story, I've gone forward, but [now] we go back a little bit in the story of Identity Wars and presenting this in the church in 2006 [prior to Return of Elijah].  And Eddie accompanied me when we went to Sydney.  We flew down to Sydney and I did the Identity War series.  We did it over 2 months, 2 weekends in April and May.  I didn't know it at the time, but both of those weekends happened to be new moons.  Interesting, isn't it?  This is where the Bible started to open up in so many places.  Texts like Malachi, chapter 4, and the last 2 verses of the Old Testament suddenly begin to make sense.  And for those of you who have been on this journey, they're all very familiar texts to you.

What is it?  When you think of Elijah, you think of that superhuman prophet that could cut down men with a sword and all in a day's work, a man of death and destruction.  But what's interesting about the last two verses of Malachi, says, "Behold, I'll send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."  Or, in other words, let the curse fall without intervening.  The work of Elijah is to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, to get them to recognize their value in their father.

And this leads us to Proverbs 17, verse 6: "Children's children are the crown of old men..."  And what?   "...the glory of children are their fathers."  And the word glory, as we learned from Jeremiah 9:23 at 9:24, "Let not the wise man glory or find value in his wisdom.  Let not the mighty man glory in his might, but let him who glorieth glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD which exercises lovingkindness and mercy in the earth."

This is what it means to know God and to know His mercy.  "The glory of children is their father." And thus began a whole journey for us in understanding the principle of the blessing.  And this is where the parental blessing or the ministerial blessing or the elder blessing, speaking blessing over our children, over the members of the congregation, speaking words, "You are my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased."  This was all predicated on what we have been talking about. This is where it came from.  And it was a wonderful experience to be able to have a blessing ceremony.  The first one that we did was Eddie and Fiona's son, Nathan.  Blessing ceremony.  I remember it like yesterday. We had the guard of honour walking through.  That seed is yet to bear fruit, but it will bear fruit.   And assurance to all those things which are not as though they were.  Who brings them forth from the dead?

And we begin to look at these things.  And I still remember that time when we were at the church and I invited the children to come forward because I asked my Father in Heaven: 

"What is it that you have called me to do?  What is my work to do?"

"To turn the hearts of the fathers to children, the children's to the fathers." 

And Jesus in Mark chapter 10, where He called the little children to Himself, and He placed His hands upon them and He blessed them.  Is that the work that God has called ministers to do on behalf of God, to speak on behalf of God and to tell the children that they are loved?  Now, remember when I took these children and I prayed over them individually, one by one.  And there was one little girl.  She was about 10 years of age.  Her father was in jail.  And I said, "Lord, what do you want me to say to this little girl?"  And I just said, "Father, help this beautiful child to know that she is Your beloved daughter in whom You are well pleased, that she is precious to You, that you love her immensely, and we all love her and care for her."

And then the next day she's sitting and she's playing, and she's talking to her mother.  And she looks up at her mother and she says, "Mom, guess what?"  She says, "What, darling?" She says, "I'm precious."  And she said, "Why is that, darling?"  "Because the pastor said so."  That's when she rang me up and told me that.  That completely changed my ministry.  It completely changed everything that I was doing.  How many children at 10 years of age, if they could really know that they were precious, could be saved from all the peril of teenage life?  All the efforts and desire to become valuable by throwing yourself at the opposite sex and throwing yourself away, and then having a horrible litany of memories in your head as a result of doing that.

If you could only know that you are precious, then it would build resilience; so you wouldn't have to throw yourself at anyone that came along, like happens to so many, and engage in such stupid childish things - [like] getting drunk or doing whatever else, and not remembering what happened the night before, except you have to live with the cost.  This is the ministry that we were called to.  And this is why it's a key part of [what we do], and that's why next Sabbath we're having a blessing, a time of blessing to invite people forward.  And when we did this on the Sabbath at Eden's Landing - aptly name, isn't it?  Eden's landing - that when we finished blessing the children, someone put their hand up and said "Pastor, would you bless our marriage?"

And so, this couple came forward and we prayed over husband and wife.  They got up, tears streaming down their face. Next.  "Pastor, bless our marriage."  "Our marriage."  Until everyone had been blessed and everyone was in tears.  And everyone felt so full of the love of God.  Oh, this is what church is about!  This is what it's about and this is what we're called to do.  And for the first time in my life, I felt like a real pastor.  For the first time in my life.  This is what I've been called to do.  It wasn't rocket science.  It wasn't complex but it was simply - and I've talked about this in other presentations - having the confidence as a child of God to stand up and to say to people: "On behalf of my Father in Heaven, I call you forward to receive a blessing."  What kind of arrogant individual would stand up and do that? (Laughter).

Audience (Laughter)

Pr. Adrian Satan prevents men from stepping up to bless because they have no value within themselves. They feel themselves unworthy and incapable of doing these things.  And who would listen to me anyway?

Liam I do.

Pr. Adrian Bless you, Liam. Did you say please now?

Liam Amen.

Pr. Adrian Do you want a blessing?

We interrupt this broadcast.  We're going to say a blessing.

Father in Heaven.  I thank You.  I thank You for your beloved Son. Your Son Jesus and Your son, Liam.  I just pray that he will hear Your voice. "Liam, You are My beloved son. I was there on the day you were born.  I cried tears of joy.  You brought Me so much happiness, and you still do today."  And Lord, I know that You will bless him.  That he will be a mighty man of God; he will do great exploits, not by works, but by faith alone.  And then You will bless him and fill him with joy, and that he will know that he is Your beloved son, and everyone will see it in his face that he knows that he's loved and cherished by You.  And I thank You in Jesus' name. Amen

Audience Amen

Pr. Adrian That's what it is to be a pastor.  Thank you, Liam.  That's why we need to be reached at that level, at that place.  It's not a difficult exchange, but a community needs to be structured in a certain way for these things to take place.  It doesn't just happen. Because if we are all egalitarian, if we all are equal, if we're all on the same level and Bart Simpson is right, then who needs to get a blessing from anybody else?  I get a blessing for myself.  I decide my value by my achievements.  "Is this not great Babylon, which I have built by the might of my power for the glory of my Majesty?" (Daniel 4:30)   And when you believe this, then what we just did then has no value whatsoever.  It is a meaningless ceremony of empty words.  And this is what you get when you worship God the Son.

Audience Why are so many people depressed?

Pr. Adrian Yes, that's what we talk about here.

Audience I mean, if you get a blessing for yourself, why are you upset?

Pr. Adrian Yes. Mirror Mirror on the wall, who's the greatest of them all.

Audience And whose faith do you have?

Pr. Adrian Whose faith?  Coming back to Eddie's presentation.  Whose faith?  Are you worthy enough to esteem your own value for yourself?  Well, if you are, why do you keep doubting?  Why do you keep doubting your value?  Because you cannot manufacture it yourself.  It is given to you as a free gift by your Father in Heaven.  These are the foundational principles of this message.  This is the origin of the Father of Love movement.  This is where it begins.  And it starts with that quote from A.T. Jones.  And what a beautiful place to inherit or begin this message, from one of the messages of the 1888 message.

And lay it out in such stark contrast.  And who would believe that one paragraph could cause such an explosion in my mind?  Of course, the Spirit of God is doing this and I'm completely animated by these themes that give me tremendous joy because of having lived in the other kingdom.  Of having felt the disappointment of losing, of walking off a football field, losing a game and feeling that emptiness inside or a cricket match.  Or having dropped a catch when everyone was depending on you, and [everyone] was looking at you like, "Dude, why are you on this team? You just wrecked it for all of us."  Do any of you remember those feelings?  When they pass the ball to you, all you had to do was pass it to the guy and he could score the goal, for the goal is wide open, and you completely missed the ball.  I was haunted by things like that in my dreams at night.  "Oh, what's wrong with you?"

Audience Or they pick teams and you never get picked.

Pr. Adrian Or, you're picking teams.  You get picked last.

Audience Yeah.

Pr. Adrian But what about if you get picked first and you completely screw up, what do you do then?  This is how we've been raised.  This is all the trauma that we've had to deal with, and all of these things.  Sports!  There's nothing funny about sports.  Sport is deadly serious.  Sport is at the vanguard of Satan's kingdom, its absolute war against the Son of God.

Audience War in peacetime.

Pr. Adrian Yes.  It's preparation for war.  Olympics, all of these things.  And if you watch these things and you glory in these things, you are walking away from your identity as a son or daughter of God. And it wasn't until I accepted the Son of God as the only begotten Son of God and the value system that comes from that, that I could finally be released from the tyranny of sport.  Sitting there, glued to the television, watching the Ashes series because my value is bound up in the ability of Australians to beat the British.  Insanity.  Absolute insanity.

And so, this is where these things begin.  And of course, I'll continue more of the story a little bit later on, but I just wanted to lay some of the foundations for you tonight.  You know, people say to me, "Adrian, we admire your integrity to stand down because of this begotten Son thing, but it's really not a salvation issue, is it?  It's really not that important. God the Son, the Son of God, it doesn't matter what beloved you believe in, as long as you're in love, right?

Audience Wrong.

Pr. Adrian Wrong.  Absolutely wrong.  It's absolutely integral to righteousness by faith.  There comes the rain. (Just began to rain).

Audience Let it rain.

Pr. Adrian Let it rain.  Let it rain.  Let it rain.  In every one of these chapters, I go through it step by step, showing the relationship between the Sonship of Christ and righteousness by faith.  At least it makes sense in my mind…

Audience I have a question.

Pr. Adrian You have a question.

Audience If those of us who aren't blessed enough to have a strong, godly man as the head of a house and it's left up to the women, can we also have a blessing over it?

Pr. Adrian Of course.  This is what we talk about in the book Divine Pattern.  Of course, if there is no man in the house to do this, of course, the mother can speak with the blessing over her children.  But we also find, as it says here, that if she has a community where she can take her children to have her children blessed by the elders and the leaders of her community, they can fulfill that spiritual function of male headship to provide that blessing for the children.  And this is what is all about, the Divine Pattern and how communities function in this kind of a situation.  "When my mother and my father or my father forsake me, the Lord will take me up." (Psalms 27:10)  The Lord will take care of me.  How does He take care of me?  He provides a structure.  He provides a channel of blessing system in order for children to still hear the words, "You are My beloved child and whom I am well pleased."  That's the way it was designed to be.

That's why we need a community.  That's why someone saying, "Well, I've got my Bible I don't need anybody else" is always going to fail.  And that's why I did presentations like: You have to become a child of Abraham to inherit eternal life.  You have to be submissive to another man. The promises that were made to Abraham are not made directly to you.  You cannot claim any of those Scriptures outside of the person of Abraham.  They are all made to him and you inherit them through him.  I remember I horribly offended a lot of people when I started saying things like that.  What?  An intermediary?  Someone between me and God?  Was that not what Satan said [complained about]?

Audience Absolutely.

Pr. Adrian An intermediary between me and God?  What?  Christ?  Abraham is a symbol of Christ.  All the blessings were given to him.  He is an earthly example of who Christ is and that's why, "If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham seed, and heirs according to the promise." (Galatians 3:29)  You must become children of Abraham.  You must be his spiritual children in order to receive the promises of eternal life.

So I pray that this introduction has been a blessing for you.  Again, a lot of these things are laid out in the books Return of Elijah.  And Identity Wars, of course, is the starting point and Divine Pattern.  I know that some of these things take a little bit of time to understand, but I think it's worth the investment to try and put these pieces together and how these things work.  You don't have to understand all the pieces, but it does help.  I pray that you've been tremendously blessed and of course, above all things that tonight you would claim your sonship and daughtership to our Father in Heaven, by what the Father says: "You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased."

I remember in the back blocks of Romania, I was talking through a translator.  A young Orthodox couple had come to these meetings.  There was no driveway to get to the house.  You had to walk up to the house that had no driveway, and [I remember I had] to go up there with a wheelbarrow to take all my stuff up to the house here in Romania.  And as I was inviting the people to come forward for a blessing, this young man came forward and I knew nothing about his history, his background. And when it came through, the translation, the words, "You are my beloved son and whom I am well pleased", his girlfriend began to sob.  She began to cry for joy. To just simply hear these words.  That this man that she loved, that had been through so much trauma and difficulty, obviously is now believing that the voice of God is speaking through this fallen human agent and hearing the words, "You are my beloved son in whom I'm were pleased."  It was such a beautiful experience [even] through the translation the Spirit could still work.  And this beautiful couple were radiant with a sense that they were children of God.  That they were loved of God.  And what did they have to do to achieve this?  Believe!  To simply believe it, that they are beloved of the Father.  It's such a beautiful thing.

We should sing a hymn, shouldn't we, Fiona?

Fiona Yes. It makes me think when you mentioned Eden's Landing, that Ed's mum used to always say... because she grew up without her father, he was killed before she was born.  Well, she said, "I know what it's like to grow up without a father, without having a husband for her mother, nor a father for her and her siblings."  And she said by this process, by this blessing, that turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to their father at Eden's Landing, she saw husband and wife coming back together.  She saw children coming back to their parents. Then she said she saw it, literally, that families were brought back together. Children that didn't have fathers were blessed by the whole system.

Pr. Adrian So here we go.  A witness.  A testimony.  Amen, thank you for reminding us. We need reminding of some of the foundational pillars of this and the blessing that came. Shall we sing for 468?  A Child of the King.

(Singing)

Pr. Adrian I invite all of you children of the King to kneel with me.  If you're able. We shall pray.

Dear Father, what a joy it is to call You Father and to know that we are Your beloved children and Lord Jesus, that You have won for us.  The simplicity of that transaction.   To believe that we are Your children.  Not by works, but by the faith of Jesus.  Your faith. Lord Jesus, You know You are God's Son.  You know that He loves you and that knowledge You offer to us freely by your Spirit.  I pray that for all of us listening tonight, that we would enter into that transaction.  That comes simply by believing that Jesus is the Son of God and that He obtains His value from the Father alone.  And that we would take hold of this and that this reality would transform us into the sons and daughters of God.  It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. (1 John 3:2)  And we thank You, Father, in Jesus' beautiful name. Amen.