I saw a fortified stone castle-village, surrounded by a dry moat, standing in isolation in the middle of a bare brown plain. The drawbridge was down and a horse-drawn cart approached from the distance, crossed the drawbridge and entered the castle grounds. The cart was covered with straw, and there was a small keg of alcohol of some kind hidden underneath the straw. Some people from inside the castle took the keg away with them and presumably consumed it.
After some time had elapsed another cart approached carrying a very large keg of red wine. This keg wasn’t hidden from view, so it was no secret that it was entering the castle grounds. The people inside the castle were in the middle of a drought and water was a really scarce commodity. They gathered around the cart hoping that the keg contained water.
They were disappointed when they found out it contained red wine and not water, but their thirst was so great by this time that there was a discussion about whether or not they should drink the wine anyway—because of their great need for liquid of some kind.
Some argued that drinking wine was something they’d never been allowed to do, and they were very fearful of what might happen if they drank it. However, it was a really difficult decision, because they knew that if they didn’t have SOMETHING to drink, then they all would soon die.
Some of the more desperately thirsty people decided to try it out, and they found to their amazement that once they poured the wine out of the keg and into a cup, it was transformed into water. The suspicious crowd watched them carefully as they drank it and finally decided that it didn’t seem to have any adverse effects. They were less fearful of it now that it appeared to be water—something that they recognised and trusted. The people who were drinking it were instantly refreshed and turned beaming faces towards the crowd and urged them to try it for themselves. When the rest of the people realised that it appeared to be safe enough to drink, they all gathered around the cart to ask for some of the life-giving “wine/water” for themselves.
Because the drought was still in progress, the castle people eagerly looked forward to the arrival of another cart carrying this wine/water to them. Because the cart came from a distant place, they had to wait a long time before the next load arrived. Eventually deliveries seemed to become more frequent and then at regular intervals so that the people living in the castle began to knock down the castle walls in various places so that they could build extra drawbridges to accommodate the arrival of all these carts which eventually came from all directions. From an aerial view the castle now looked like the hub of a wagon wheel, so that the trails made by the constant approach of the carts formed the spokes of this wheel.
House of Seventh-day Adventism,
if you have ears to hear,
hear the word of the Lord!
"O thirsty people! How long will you continue to remain in your fortress of drought? How long will you wait to drink the water of life that I have been trying to give you ever since you founded your city?
"At the time of your foundation, your spiritual forefathers secluded themselves and reaped disappointment from their mistakes. Then, when they were most vulnerable, a lying spirit entered through the open gates. What seemed to be strong doctrines for building the foundation of your church were brought in—but they were only straw and stubble, and hidden underneath was a toxic, spiritual poison, which your forefathers drank, and which would pass down to their spiritual children and granchildren.
"The poison they consumed has brought drought and spiritual famine, for the water of life in My words becomes scarce when you drink from the spirit at the bottom of doctrines made of straw. But after time, many among you have begun to realize that you have been dying of thirst for the life found in My grace, and so the words of My grace have come in from Christian churches outsided of Adventism.
"At first it was inconceivable that something coming in from outside your church might bring life, and so you were suspicious because you had been strictly taught to refuse such drink 'from outside'. But when My grace was poured into your cup—into the container of your church—I allowed it to appear as something you would accept, as something that did not threaten the way of life you had chosen (even though it had only brought you drought). It was diluted, but even in its diluted power My grace has been able to bring joy to many among you and cause others to desire the same refreshing joy.
"And so the deliveries of My grace have become life that sustains you in your drought, in your isolated fortress. You have begun to unconsciously look outward—to mainstream Christianity—for life-sustaining deliveries of My grace and My word of life. Some of you have even begun trying to knock down parts of the walls of division your forefathers put up to protect you from mainstream Christianity. And I have continued to send many 'deliveries' of the word of My grace to sustain you, because I love you so much.
"But as long as you remain in your castle and drink from the poison of the spirit in your straw doctrines, your drought cannot completely end. You can continue to receive life from outside your walls, and you can knock down parts of your walls as best as you know how to better allow My grace to come to you from outside your church, for I am faithful and loving to respond to your thirst by sending you words of My grace from outside your walls.
"Yet I long to give you so much more! I long for you to come forth! I long to draw you out of your drought forever. I long to bring you more than deliveries—I long to bring you to My house of wine, to set you at My banquet table where you may drink your fill and rest under the banner of My love, without fear of drought or lack of water ever again.
"Will you stay in the land of drought? Or will you come forth to a land where the mountains drip with new wine, where the hills flow with milk and the ravines run with water?"
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