Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders

Monday, July 15, 2013

Dennis on: "Why Pick On Dave Pack?"






Why Pick At Dave?


Dennis Diehl - EzineArticles Expert AuthorI've had to ask myself "what's with you and Dave Pack anyway?"  Why does he, more than any COG theological prankster get under my skin?  Why not just let him be?    Humor me while I take a few minutes to answer this publicly. I have oncology massage shortly and don't have much time.  If Dave can say ridiculous things publicly, I can too.  :)  Well, at least I can as long as I don't sign up as a returning and repentant minister eviscerating myself at Dave's feet.   If I did that, I'd have to get permission to ever speak publicly in this life again.


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If Dave had a different personality, temperament , emotional make up, theological background and training, less ego and self centered views, somewhat shorter, less compulsivity, more of conscience, less hubris, a bit more compassion and a tad less HWA worship and nostalgia....I'd like the guy.   However....



Most of you don't know Dave's brother Bill.  Dave gives him a line in his autobiography.  Bill is one of the nicest, most authentic and genuine guys I ever met at either college or in the ministry.  He was pastoring Corning just before I did and everyone loved him. I often had a few months in a new church of people pouring out their hearts about the last ministers antic and unkind ways.  Most if not all of those guys are still either evangelists or ministers in the COGs.  Figures.  Anyway... You would think those two brothers were from different planets.  When you are around Bill, you just feel better or at least that was my experience.  Bill always had the big smile and enjoyable personality where Dave was always Mr. Look Down on You and Serious Demeanor.  Their reputation in ministry were night and day. Bill...I love ya man!  :)



Good-vs-Evil.11 at Heroes: What They Do and Why We Need Them



At any rate, why pick on Dave?  Why challenge him to "debate" theologically, which of course I am not stupid, he would never do.  Why point out the ridiculous nature of his public screeds or his theological fantasies? 



 I don't take any time to talk write about Gerald Flurry.  I don't care for the man and his ministry is even more flagrantly phoney and flawed and only the really brain dead will fall for it.  Evidently there are enough brain dead to keep it going but we'll see.  His ministers are Hitleresque clowns and it seems everyone even in the group hates to see them coming.  Nepotism is in place as with HWA until it didn't work and we may see that in the Living Church of God as well but that won't work out so well I'm thinking.  So what's my problem with Dave?




Dave passes himself off as very intelligent.  He is not.  He is clever but that is the cheap form of intelligence. It does not hold up to scrutiny. Dave lives in a very small world...his own.  Dave dismisses a man like Einstein because "he had wild hair."  Really?  Dave  pokes fun of Socrates and Aristotle as if he knew.  He thinks the world is 6000 years old or at least humans are and that Adam and Eve really are physically where it all began.  He believes serpents can talk and walked until they pushed God's last button.  He knows nothing of serpent evolution nor human for that matter.  Dave teaches Bronze Age knowledge and that is not intelligent.



Dave reads the Bible like a newspaper or blog site.  Like Thiel and others, Dave still believes that weather, wind, rain and fire are the tools "God" uses to get our attention.  They really are the tools these men use to get your attention on them and send them money out of fear of being left behind.  Dave has virtually NO real training in theology.  He is a mere Bible reader who then cuts and pastes it all together into a story that pleases him and sounds good to him.  Dave knows NOTHING of the history of the Bible and how it really came about.  That would destroy his story.  Dave knows nothing of Gospel origins, contradictions and politic.  He operates at a less than Sunday School level because at least in Sunday Schools you hear the word "Jesus" and stories of his imagined life and sayings.  Dave likes Matthew 24 but 5-7 not so much. 



Dave knows nothing, and it shows about Cosmology, Paleontology, Archeology or the real issues they raise in Old Testament Studies. In his autobio he even says he had to get his Ambassador degree in the mail because he went into the ministry his senior year and missed graduation and that last year.  Personally I am ashamed of my Bible reading AC education but I was young.  I actually thought it was a seminary when I signed up. 

Dave thinks Genesis 1 is how it all happened scientifically when in fact, Genesis 1 is a political statement that goes something like this:


"You worship wind, rain and fire, animal, vegetable and minerals.  Our God MADE your gods..."





If Dave understood anything about the origins of the real world, he'd not say with a clear conscience many of the things he does.  Lots of ministers wouldn't.  Dave perpetuates ignorance.  I'd like to see a list of books that Dave has read over the past ten years outside of his very small box of knowing.  How about "Evolution-What the Fossils Tell Us and Why It Matters."  Nah....demons!      Bronze Age types are stuck in Bronze Age knowledge and their followers would never tolerate an update of knowledge.  It threatens the fairy tale that Dave weaves.  Ignorance is dangerous in the long run to good mental, spiritual and even physical health.  A good read of Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed wouldn't hurt either.



Dave would never utter the words, "Woman, you have NO VOICE!"  if he understood Genesis 2-4 were written to debunk goddess worship in the nations around Israel , blame women for everything and leave them having painful childbirth and saying "yes sir," to husbands so patriarchy could rule Israel.  Israel was going to have male priests, temples and bloody meat sacrifices and that was final.  That is also the lesson of Cain and Abel.  Well actually maybe if he knew this he'd say it even louder because God crushed women early in the game.  As was said to my dad ,  "You know Fred,  it's not easy being married to Dave Pack..."



Dave's theology is dangerous to others real lives.   Where in the world of Christian ministry would you hear such threatening blather as in Dave's Clarion Call sermon?  Look it up. Read it. Send me your retirements, your estates, your home sales, take out second mortgage, sell stuff and send me the money post haste!! Don't wait until you die to send me what is in your will!   Really?  How do I live after that stunt?
 
At least understand that the actual meaning of "here a little, there a little, line upon line, precept upon precept" is NOT the way to study the Bible.  In context, God is MOCKING the drunken priests with baby talk for their lousy theology.  That phrase is not meant to define how you find Bible truth.  It is more saying  "na ha , na...oh wotsa little priest blathering about now...."   Go do your homework Dave.


The fact one can only do that once may leave him desperate for money in the future. Maybe that time is now which is why he is putting all his eggs in the August 2013 basket.  Bills have to be paid over time, not once.  What do you think the public reaction would be if his sermons and news updates were read on TV or put in the newspapers?  What would the Wadsworth Chamber of Commerce think of such tactics by a minister so called?  How about running that "I am Joshua the High Priest past some local psychiatrists or counselor types and what would he get?   Have a conclave of educated theologians from Akron or Cleveland and explain Haggai to them and see how that goes?  Dave is dangerous because he is so very wrong in his theology. 


Dave is dangerous because he shields himself from accountability both financial and theological.  You simply are not welcome to correct, enlighten or educate the man.  He certainly won't do it himself.  Ok, lets throw mental health counseling in there as well.  Take a personality test?  No way...   Have a psychologist read his writings..um..no. 


Dave is deeply hurting people again. . He has blocked that out.  It won't get better.  Dave does not teach people how to actually live in the real world.  He teaches them how to give in his fake world.  Dave teaches people to be so tuned into the unknowable and speculative future that they are of no present good to anyone.  Pray, Pay, Obey and Stay..right?  That's it!  Dave contradicts Jesus, if I may be so bold to use that untrusted RCG word. 


Dave is setting his church up for a big fall.  He's 64 with no heir apparent.  Who would want to inherit the mess of RCG or the bills?  It would be a mad dash to file cabinets that hold the results of everyone's 35 ways litmus test for returning to RCG to blackmail others into submission.  Once we get past August 30, 2013, which is just weeks away, lots of things are going to be more clear to lots of folk than they evidently are now and it won't be clear as Dave counts clearness.  At least we won't have to wait three years as we did with Ron Weinland to see where this is going ....again.


In short, I suppose Dave Pack punches every button in my that fuels my personal regrets about the decisions I made way too young about topics way to big for my britches.  It's hard to get passed that with RCG in everyone's face wanting to drag everyone back to the idealistic past which never actually was.  I learned a lot from my experience.  It has been very painful for a guy like me.  I absolutely believed it and meant well until I didn't.  I had my blind spots, my denial and my sitting on the outside to others but standing on the inside to myself.  I want those to match at least for the rest of my life.  I have had to reeducate myself on all the things I realize I LOVED as a child.  I realize, while I didn't have the facts, I loved dinosaurs, fossils, galaxies, Neanderthals and Oldavai Gorge since I was a kid.  The 60's were chaotic and I turned to religion to explain it when I should have turned to paleontology, cosmology and archaeology instead.  My bad.  My dad told me recently he always wanted to be a New York State Trooper.  So I guess lots of folk make the wrong choice when young and don't know what else they could have done.  I realize when I was kid with my telescope out on the lake in the dark of night, the universe was calling to me to study it.  When I found fossils of trilobites in the shale along the stream, evolution was calling me to find out what went on.  


Dave Pack reminds me of my own bad decisions in life.  Or maybe they were just decisions.  One can't be here if they had not been there. 


When I went to Israel  to dig at Megiddo, having won the essay contest that year in Biblical Archaeology Magazine,  and sat for hours with Israel Finkelstein before he wrote The Bible Unearthed and he explained to me what he understood about the reality of the Old Testament, I knew I was doomed in ministry.  John Shelby Spong put the icing on that cake for me.  When I wrote John to thank him for his book Rescuing The Bible From Fundamentalists,  he wrote back to thank me too and then said, "you won't survive your church."



Dave reminds me I wish I had never heard of it...



I may have no secure future financially, whatever that means in this day and age.  I may not have chosen to keep the old old story going like others,(I was asked to),  but every penny I make is conscience healthy and earned. I know who I am in my soul and being authentic is important to me more than ever.   WCG may have got my youth, but it did not get my soul and neither will or should a deluded non theologically trained, scientifically ignorant but clever guy like Dave Pack get me on the other end of life.  How about you?



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If you are a minister thinking of taking up with Dave...call me
EMAIL ME!
"post haste"

Contact Dennis at DennisCDiehl@aol.com

15 comments:

  1. Dennis, thank you.

    You showed us that Davie Pack is in the Bronze Age.

    I have to admit that it was an epiphany.

    I thought he was in the Stone Age.

    Are you sure you didn't skip an Age?

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  2. Well the Bible is a Bronze Age manuscript with a bit of a Roman/Greek update. If it was Stone Age it would have begun with, "In the beginning..yaba daba dooooo...."

    :)

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  3. Oh..and Pebbles would have killed Bam Bam and eventually we'd have another sun god born of the Virgin Wilma. Betty would have given birth to Barney the Baptist and Fred eventually would have fallen off Dino blinded by the light on the way to the quarry and become the Apostle Fred.

    Eventually the Apostle Fred would have been followed by Garner Fred Hamstring , son of Hubert W. Hamstring. From this we would jump off in zillions of directions but landing safely with the Restored Yaba Daba Doooo Under Joshua the Flintknapper where we find ourselves today.

    I mean had it been a stoneage story and all.....

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  4. Well, OK, I can accept the idea that Davie has his head stuck in the Bronze Age (although I'd bet he wouldn't be able to make bronze because he doesn't know how), but if he has his way, he's going to bring us the Ice Age.

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  5. There for a second, Dennis, I was worried that you were talking about Fred Phelps!

    He's definitely Stone Age!

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  6. "Why pick on Dave Pack?"
    Because you need to open the eyes of the deceived like this man...

    Peter Fontaine 3 hours ago
    The bible IS the authority. Matthew 12:30 He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathers not with me scatters abroad. 1 John 2:19 "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us." They left the Body of Christ. Too late to try and start building a new foundation. There's no time for that. The foundation is already laid down. RCG.

    See what I mean! The last three sentences explain the mind controlling of Packism. If only they read the entire bible, the whole gospel. What a shame! Jesus Christ came not to bring peace, but division. Truth divides. They are in a box of lies. RCG foundation is built on sand.

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  7. Speaking of family, Dave and Bill had a cousin Stan who was also an AC student during that time frame. He, too, was a kind of a humble, likeable guy. Stan's parents had moved to Pasadena to be close to their son, and his dad obtained employment at the college. They were also nice people.

    There would seem to be a veil, something that keeps all of us human creatures from seeing ourselves as we really are. This is the way an extremist, an out and out fanatic, a breaker of the human spirit, and an unsympathetic hanging judge manages to see himself instead as the beneficent one, faithful to truth, someone every living person on the planet will automatically respect, on a mission straight from God.

    Sad to say, all of the qualities Dennis enumerated are part of the general perception of Dave, his reputation as accumulated over a lifetime. Seemingly, he's got different filters than the rest of us. As I commented about a month ago, he is not unlike Pepe LePew, a Warner Bros. cartoon character. Only, rather than using the word humorous to describe his predicament, you'd have to use the word tragic, since Dave is a human being and not a cartoon skunk.

    The clock is ticking. Something very not funny is going to happen soon, something artificially caused by a man and his insufferable ego.

    BB

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  8. Pete Fontaine you need to read your Bible (instead of Pack's books). RCG has built no foundation. Jesus Christ built the church upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles. He is the Chief Cornerstone. The COG has never been an organization (although organized). If we have the Holy Spirit we are members of the COG. I left the corrupt RCG over 9 years ago and have never looked back!

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  9. With merely a month and a half remaining for Dave Packs prophesy to be fulfilled, I can tell by the silence emanating from Wadsworth that thousand of COG people have not even started to join Dave's church.

    If COG members and ministers were shifting their allegiance to Dave Packs church, you can bet your last nickel that he would be bragging and boasting about it by now. But he isn't, because no one is buying his false prophesies, and certainly not in the numbers or time frame that he claims God revealed to him to proclaim.

    He is a fraud. Just a matter of time and August will end, and his members he has been deceiving should be able to see it for themselves.

    TLM AKA Nemesis of Pack

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  10. Sad to hear that such a fine man like Bill Pack has a brother like Dave Pack. I hope he is happy and is having a good time despite what he brother is doing.

    -------

    "I don't take any time to talk write about Gerald Flurry. I don't care for the man and his ministry is even more flagrantly phoney and flawed"

    I understand that feeling.

    That was my attitude towards UCG and Dave Pack and RCG, until he started making these delusional "Special Announcements."

    This is because when I was an Armstrongite my experience mainly centered around LCG and PCG. There was a brief time in 2001 that I explored PCG and I seriously wondered if they were "God's True Church" or LCG. I chose LCG.

    It took me until 2008 to realize I should have renounced the whole Armstrongite mess. I didn't in 2001, but I did in 2008.

    Because of this in regards to present COG groups I am mainly fascinated with learning about LCG and PCG.

    I never serious thought that UCG or RCG or Weinland were worth following while I was an Armstrongite, so I did not pay much attention to them.

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  11. Welcome back TLM. You're comments are always appreciated as you have more RCG credibility than all of us put together!

    I think you are right. If Dave had already been seeing changes in attendance or made a killing in even one or two ministers, he'd not be able to keep it to himself. He'd use it to encourage others to do the same. You know, "If they came over to RCG, what's your problem? Come on down!"

    However Dave is also wont to "not quite be able to reveal things at this time,"

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  12. Where is "Bill" today? Anyone know?

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  13. There is another thing I'd like to throw into the general discussion. Does anyone believe that Dave is telegraphing these ministerial qualifications of his to a specific target, or targets?

    What occurred to me, is this list reminds me of what can happen with minimum bid specifications in sales situations with branches of government, or major companies. Unscrupulous vendors will collude with a department head to create specs which deliberately favor the product of their preferred vendor, while locking out all others. It is a more common practice than most people realize, and is nearly undetectable.

    I agree with Dennis that our famous drummer buddy formerly from Dave's Motley Crüe, can probably give us some of the best insights.

    BB

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  14. We must unpack the pack of lies of Pack. If he only kept his writings short, he would not contradict himself and loose his short memory span that gets him into trouble. What comes out of a man defiles him.

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  15. Is Bill freakishly tall like his brother?

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