Dave made fun of my "wild and crazy hair" but..
People fascinate me. I have to say that obviously Dave Pack of Restored Church of God probably fascinates me the most, at this time. . Partly because I have known him since he was 20 and pastored churches around him as well as had family members with Mr Pack as their pastor, I have observed much and heard much of his way of being a "minister." Helper of people's joy, not so much in my experience.
Reading Dave's announcements is like carefully studying the Bible to compare what is said one week with what was said another. After the great failure of August 31, 2013 where the vast returning hordes of those God had disfellowshipped from the church until they could return to Restored Church failed to materialize, it was fascinating to me to go back over saved announcements to see how they were altered to reflect the great disappointment and yet keep the rather silly prophetic view of Haggai "very much 'on'". Specific dates became the proverbial "soon" and what was absolute truth became an amazing "parallel" and so on. It was like studying how one Gospel cleans up the mistakes and embarrassments of the other when you know where to look in the New Testament. It's a human thing.
One phenomenon has been the two times where Dave was expected to write an announcement and didn't. Once was when it was clear that August 31st meant absolutely nothing in God's plan of Unification and the other was to explain the silence since the Feast since Dave had said he'd be writing his final views right after the feast. He did not and people wondered where's Dave? Both of these times, someone else is sent by Dave of course, to inform the public that "Mr. Pack" would be writing soon and to stay tuned. The impression is that this "Mr. Pack" is not Dave himself writing in the third person.
Now of course, both "soon to be announced" statements could be written by someone other than Dave. I would certainly expect if so, they'd not get on the site without careful review and approval.. They can be written by Dave (the language, style and phrases are classic Dave) and given to another to post as if this is not so. If this is so it is interesting , maybe only to me, that Dave simply cannot bring himself to say, "Due to post-Feast time constraints, I..." or "I will be posting..." Mr. Pack cannot be so busy that Mr. Pack can't write one paragraph explaining his intentions. The previous million words of his "announcements" were certainly all his.
Both examples are reproduced here.
Now of course, both "soon to be announced" statements could be written by someone other than Dave. I would certainly expect if so, they'd not get on the site without careful review and approval.. They can be written by Dave (the language, style and phrases are classic Dave) and given to another to post as if this is not so. If this is so it is interesting , maybe only to me, that Dave simply cannot bring himself to say, "Due to post-Feast time constraints, I..." or "I will be posting..." Mr. Pack cannot be so busy that Mr. Pack can't write one paragraph explaining his intentions. The previous million words of his "announcements" were certainly all his.
Both examples are reproduced here.
Friday, October 4, 2013
New Announcement Coming Next Week Due to post-Feast time constraints, Mr. Pack is unable to post what will be his last announcement for some time about the Haggai/Zechariah prophecy. This long, important announcement will bring three final elements to the prophecy, and includes helpful excerpts from an extraordinary 1972 article by Herbert W. Armstrong about how Christians should view matters of prophetic timing. Next week’s announcement, to appear some time between Monday and Wednesday, will carefully explain additional matters about the prophecy’s timing that came to light a month ago. Readers will find it fascinating. No next “date” will be set, but the reader will be able to conclude for himself what may happen. Mr. Pack will explain what had not been understood.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Upcoming Announcements Mr. Pack will be posting two or three more “Friday Announcements” in the coming weeks. These will explain in detail additional expansive elements of the Haggai/Zechariah prophecy. They will open your eyes to things that God has long intended to do in His end-time Work that no one ever understood before, and you will see that His Word is plain!
The first will be this Friday, and will cover interesting points and scriptures everyone should keep in mind now. The next one or two will bring clarity to certain questions about “dates,” and how brethren should now view the “when” of the prophecy’s fulfillment."
Personally, my sense is that this is actually Dave writing the announcements and shifting them from a first person view to the third. I could be wrong but this is the same way Bible Scholars endeavor to discover who actually wrote or who did not write books in the Bible attributed to specific persons.
For example, most ministers assume and are taught that the Apostle Paul wrote Hebrews. No real scholar believes this for very good reasons. While there are many technical reasons, one of the more obvious ones is that in Paul's genuine writings he refers to himself very very often. In Hebrews, this is just not the style and people don't change their styles. I might say something anonymously in a posting but those who know me can easily say, "that's Dennis." I can write something as "M.T.Hall" yet it takes not genius to see, "that's Dennis". :)
From:http://www.judaismvschristianity.com/paulthe.htm
"I wanna talk about me!"
No other epistle author in the Bible wrote like Paul. This would be true on a number of levels, but one aspect is of particular interest when we are considering how Paul views himself. He had a way of drawing attention to himself with his usage of personal pronouns. When it comes to how often he uses words like, "I", "me", "my", or "mine", the overall rate in his epistles is almost three times that of his next closest rival. There are a number of reasons why many scholars today believe Paul was not the author of the book of Hebrews. One obvious reason is, in the other epistles credited to him, Paul doesn't hesitate to identify himself along with his supposed credentials. The author of Hebrews is strangely silent on these matters. Many scholars believe Barnabas was the author of Hebrews, but I think Apollos is a far better candidate... but that's a different subject. The point is, no one knows for sure. But Paul certainly couldn't be in the running as the author of Hebrews when one also considers the statistical rate of the personal pronoun usage. The author of Hebrews refers to himself only 9 times, which is approximately 1.3 personal pronouns per thousand words. To help put this in perspective, let's compare the book of Hebrews to the book of Romans. They are both relatively large books of similar length, divided into 13 and 16 chapters respectively. Yet in only the first half of the first chapter of Romans, which is 16 verses worth, Paul uses twice as many personal pronouns as the author of Hebrews uses in his entire book! In the book of Romans, Paul refers to himself 103 times, which is rate of about 18.2 per thousand! That is 13x greater than Hebrews. In 1 Corinthians, Paul refers to himself 175 times, in 2Corinthians 103 times again, and in the relatively short book of Galatians, he refers to himself 69 times which is a rate of 25 personal pronouns per 1000 words!"
In most professional ministries you simply do not employ this style of speaking when teaching about the Gospel, Jesus and all associated (balanced and genuinely Biblical) topics. Paul had a bad habit of saying he would boast in Christ and then boast in himself. It's why scholars get suspicious of Paul when he says, "I lie not..." They think he must be lying.
Anyway...this switch form the first person to the third person is interesting. Dave's "authorized biography" also gives the impression it is written by another about Dave's life. Even Herbert Armstrong wrote his autobiography in the first person. Dave chose not to.
Why do people speak in the third person anyway? I'd feel awkward if I said, "Mr Diehl believes that Dave writes everything on his site and no one touches it," if it was me telling you this. Maybe it's just me. But why the third person?
Response No. 1, by Elsa Ronningstam, associate clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and author of Identifying and Understanding the Narcissistic Personality: Referring to yourself in the third person creates distance between "I" and "he." So if you have an exaggerated view of how great you are, you could be using this distance to make yourself even bigger. Or, if you've achieved major success suddenly, using the third person could be a way to adjust to the bigger role that's been assigned to you. It's a way to enlarge yourself to fit that role.
Response No. 2, by Mike Birbiglia, stand-up comedian who currently stars in the off-Broadway show Sleepwalk with Me: People love to rip those who refer to themselves in the third person, but they don't understand the power that comes with it. The third person is how you indicate that the topic is not open for debate. You are speaking about facts that just so happen to include you. Like when Alonzo Mourning says, "Alonzo Mourning has to make the best business decisions for Alonzo Mourning," everyone steps back a little, and somebody hands him $15 million a year for seven years. But that same sentence in the first person would have sounded like, "I just enjoy playing basketball with my friends and all the free Gatorade." See the difference? ....
Speaking in the third person rather than the first is an odd habit. It has deep roots in a kind of distancing oneself from what one says . If I say "I did a really stupid thing..." that sounds like I am involved with it and both accept and take responsibility for it. If I say "Mr Diehl did a really stupid thing..." it sounds like I want to admit it but I don't wish to be associated with it or take responsibility for it. It's somewhat like saying that I am not the author of a prophecy or a prophet but I am just telling you God's prophecy. This way, if it goes wrong, I can remind you it's not me that came up with this stuff. If it goes well, I will reap some form of power or credibility from the weak minded for it however, but if it goes sour, not to worry. God has given us more time and there are new things to reveal that we never before could have understood.
Why do I care about this? I care because these types of personalities hurt people to the core in the name of religion which is supposed to free .Thirty Five years on in life, I still am cleaning up after Dave Pack and his Trail of Tears. I don't kid myself either. Dave Pack and his Restored Church of God reminds me all to well of the kind of theological mistakes I made as a kid that resulted in me ending up in the ministry of Church that was a doomed personality cult. I did not recognize this as a kid and young minister. Once deeply embedded in it, I just wanted to encourage my churches with the hope given in scripture and help them get through the stinky stuff of real life. I could not have cared less about "HQ" after just a few short years. It was like the question in Fiddler on the Roof. "Is there a proper blessing for the Czar," the peasants asked the Rabbi. "Yes...May God bless and keep the Czar....far away from us!"
These types major in the minors as if the minors mattered and get folk off the track of a genuine and encouraging spirituality. Aside from the FACT that Dave Pack's view of himself as being spoken of by the very minor prophet Haggai is pure fantasy and a gross misapplication of scripture, this kind of egoism can lead to disaster for all concerned as I suspect it will again.
The first will be this Friday, and will cover interesting points and scriptures everyone should keep in mind now. The next one or two will bring clarity to certain questions about “dates,” and how brethren should now view the “when” of the prophecy’s fulfillment."
Personally, my sense is that this is actually Dave writing the announcements and shifting them from a first person view to the third. I could be wrong but this is the same way Bible Scholars endeavor to discover who actually wrote or who did not write books in the Bible attributed to specific persons.
For example, most ministers assume and are taught that the Apostle Paul wrote Hebrews. No real scholar believes this for very good reasons. While there are many technical reasons, one of the more obvious ones is that in Paul's genuine writings he refers to himself very very often. In Hebrews, this is just not the style and people don't change their styles. I might say something anonymously in a posting but those who know me can easily say, "that's Dennis." I can write something as "M.T.Hall" yet it takes not genius to see, "that's Dennis". :)
From:http://www.judaismvschristianity.com/paulthe.htm
"I wanna talk about me!"
No other epistle author in the Bible wrote like Paul. This would be true on a number of levels, but one aspect is of particular interest when we are considering how Paul views himself. He had a way of drawing attention to himself with his usage of personal pronouns. When it comes to how often he uses words like, "I", "me", "my", or "mine", the overall rate in his epistles is almost three times that of his next closest rival. There are a number of reasons why many scholars today believe Paul was not the author of the book of Hebrews. One obvious reason is, in the other epistles credited to him, Paul doesn't hesitate to identify himself along with his supposed credentials. The author of Hebrews is strangely silent on these matters. Many scholars believe Barnabas was the author of Hebrews, but I think Apollos is a far better candidate... but that's a different subject. The point is, no one knows for sure. But Paul certainly couldn't be in the running as the author of Hebrews when one also considers the statistical rate of the personal pronoun usage. The author of Hebrews refers to himself only 9 times, which is approximately 1.3 personal pronouns per thousand words. To help put this in perspective, let's compare the book of Hebrews to the book of Romans. They are both relatively large books of similar length, divided into 13 and 16 chapters respectively. Yet in only the first half of the first chapter of Romans, which is 16 verses worth, Paul uses twice as many personal pronouns as the author of Hebrews uses in his entire book! In the book of Romans, Paul refers to himself 103 times, which is rate of about 18.2 per thousand! That is 13x greater than Hebrews. In 1 Corinthians, Paul refers to himself 175 times, in 2Corinthians 103 times again, and in the relatively short book of Galatians, he refers to himself 69 times which is a rate of 25 personal pronouns per 1000 words!"
In most professional ministries you simply do not employ this style of speaking when teaching about the Gospel, Jesus and all associated (balanced and genuinely Biblical) topics. Paul had a bad habit of saying he would boast in Christ and then boast in himself. It's why scholars get suspicious of Paul when he says, "I lie not..." They think he must be lying.
Anyway...this switch form the first person to the third person is interesting. Dave's "authorized biography" also gives the impression it is written by another about Dave's life. Even Herbert Armstrong wrote his autobiography in the first person. Dave chose not to.
Why do people speak in the third person anyway? I'd feel awkward if I said, "Mr Diehl believes that Dave writes everything on his site and no one touches it," if it was me telling you this. Maybe it's just me. But why the third person?
From Esquire:
Why the F%$# Do People Refer to Themselves in the Third Person?
Major Human Flaw: Some people refer to themselves in the third person.
Speaking in the third person rather than the first is an odd habit. It has deep roots in a kind of distancing oneself from what one says . If I say "I did a really stupid thing..." that sounds like I am involved with it and both accept and take responsibility for it. If I say "Mr Diehl did a really stupid thing..." it sounds like I want to admit it but I don't wish to be associated with it or take responsibility for it. It's somewhat like saying that I am not the author of a prophecy or a prophet but I am just telling you God's prophecy. This way, if it goes wrong, I can remind you it's not me that came up with this stuff. If it goes well, I will reap some form of power or credibility from the weak minded for it however, but if it goes sour, not to worry. God has given us more time and there are new things to reveal that we never before could have understood.
Why do I care about this? I care because these types of personalities hurt people to the core in the name of religion which is supposed to free .Thirty Five years on in life, I still am cleaning up after Dave Pack and his Trail of Tears. I don't kid myself either. Dave Pack and his Restored Church of God reminds me all to well of the kind of theological mistakes I made as a kid that resulted in me ending up in the ministry of Church that was a doomed personality cult. I did not recognize this as a kid and young minister. Once deeply embedded in it, I just wanted to encourage my churches with the hope given in scripture and help them get through the stinky stuff of real life. I could not have cared less about "HQ" after just a few short years. It was like the question in Fiddler on the Roof. "Is there a proper blessing for the Czar," the peasants asked the Rabbi. "Yes...May God bless and keep the Czar....far away from us!"
These types major in the minors as if the minors mattered and get folk off the track of a genuine and encouraging spirituality. Aside from the FACT that Dave Pack's view of himself as being spoken of by the very minor prophet Haggai is pure fantasy and a gross misapplication of scripture, this kind of egoism can lead to disaster for all concerned as I suspect it will again.
11 comments:
One of the reasons most scholars feel the Gospels were NOT eyewitness accounts, and there are many other reasons for this, is that they are written in the 3rd person. Nowhere do they say, "And then Jesus and I..," or "Then I saw Jesus do..." They are just narratives with Matthew copying 600 of Mark's 666 or 678 verses depending if one takes the last 12 verses as original which they are not. Luke copies 300 of Mark's.
Maybe Jesus wrote the Gospels himself in the 3rd person? That would be weird and we have no evidence that the Gospel Jesus could even write. He certainly left no personal writings as all written was written by others about him.
Maybe Jesus wrote the Gospel of Mark which others copied like Dave, I mean, Mr. Pack wrote his authorized King David bio?
Regarding Fiddler on the Roof and the Jews' resentment of the Czar:
The Czar and the royal family were murdered by Jews.
According to Nobel Prize winner and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Bolshevik Revolution was controlled by Jews. Of the 384 members of the first communist parliament, there were only 15 Russians. Most of the rest were Jews.
The Red Terror killed 20 to 66 million people. It was run by Jews. The media focus on the Holocaust by never mention that the biggest killers in all History were Jews.
The neocon movement was started by Trotskyite Jews who have more in common with Obama's lefties than traditional American Conservatism.
In Armstrongism, the punishment for making the wrong life decisions is eternal death. What kind of punishment is that? After a few moments of intense pain, assuming that the offender is to be thrown in while he/she is alive, it is as if that person never existed.
What do people in the ACOGs assume about how their lives will change when Jesus does return? As the theory goes, He pats their little cult on the head, validates them as the true church, and sets their particular leader up as His administrative assistant. They then get to rule and govern the world as kings and priests using the philosophy of government which they have been taught. In other words, they get to spend all eternity under a "third in charge" type teacher who is making their current physical life depressing, confusing, and miserable. And they get to share in teaching this to others so they can share in the misery. For all eternity!
That is not a reward, that is being condemned! It makes the Lake of Fire appear as an opportunity to opt out of the program. That being so, you have to wonder why at least the members of the most intrusive and oppressive splinter groups don't do a little risk taking in an effort to get a better picture going. Take a temporary risk on incurring what is really a laughable non-punishment (TLoF), get out of the oppressive, enslaved lifestyle, and restudy everything from square one to see if just maybe, in addition to being wrong about the real obvious things such as British Israelism, and interpretations of prophecy, ACOG leaders aren't also wrong about a whole bunch of other teachings.
Most people who ever came into the ACOGs did not make any sort of what we would call a comparative study or analysis. Proving all things involved simply reading and agreeing with a series of carefully crafted "proof texts" assembled by HWA, or plagiarized from the Seventh Day Adventists, GG Rupert, the Mormons, or Dugger and Dodd. The fact that a falsely prophesied imminent apocalypse obscured any sense of objectivity which prospective members might normally have utilized in their study should also be very insightful. Back 'em into a corner using "logic" while applying duress to insure "the right" decision.
The facts are that there are excellent and very credible refutations to all of the HWA doctrines. And, that the apocalypses and events preached by these people did not occur. In other words, while God could have validated them as His own, proving that it was He who inspired their prophesies, He did not. I read a quotation once, supposedly from Dave Pack, that God backs him even when he is wrong. Obviously not.
BB
"Proving all things involved simply reading and agreeing with a series of carefully crafted "proof texts" assembled by HWA, or plagiarized from the Seventh Day Adventists, GG Rupert, the Mormons, or Dugger and Dodd. The fact that a falsely prophesied imminent apocalypse obscured any sense of objectivity which prospective members might normally have utilized in their study should also be very insightful.
In carpentry, the rule is "Neasure twice, cut once."
In Armstrongism, the rule is "Measure once, in like Flynn. Measure twice, cut off from among his people."
Mr. Diehl, you have my vote for the Most Helpful Evaluator award!
If Mr. Pack accepts your advice he will be the Most Improved Speaker.
If he renounces Armstrong and convinces his flock to quit he can then be the Most Effective Speaker.
Now, if someone had buzzed him down at precisely 6:30 of each sermon, none of this would have happened.
I blame the timer.
Anonymous 11:34 has presented a number of unsupportable statements. (I think this is our holocaust denier, making yet another unwanted appearance).
If anyone is concerned by these grossly and patently false statements in any way, I would suggest they start by reading the Wikipedia article entitled "Jewish Bolshevism". You will learn about the plight of Jews in czarist Russia, Jewish participation in the Russian civil war or revolution, and the Hitlerian origins of the conspiracy theory that Jews had been the architects of communism. There are also statistics regarding actual Jewish membership in the Bolshevik party.
Anonymous 11:34 is quoting the "facts" popularized by one anti-Semitic conspiritorial movement, which curiously seems to use the exact type of deficient methodology embraced by Armstrongism. Shame!
BB
Hey look! I found Pack mentioned in the scriptures. "the dumb ass speaking with man's voice". II Pet. 2:16. This has probably been used before to refer to Flurry. If the shoe fits....
BB, do you ever read any real history books or do you get your "information" from politically correct junk sources like Wikipedia?
Shame on you! You should have learned by now not to be so one-sided.
Anybody who cares to can check it out and see that my information is fully supported even by world statesman like Putin and Churchill and nobel prize winners like Solzhenitsyn.
Sounds like BB is still an Armstronite at heart -- he still believes the lies they told about Germans and that we should all become Jews!
The following is an article by Winston Churchill. Churchill was not a "skinhead" a "holocaust denier" a "Nazi" or even anti-Semetic (as far as I know).
By the way, those are all ad hominem attacks.
He refers to a "world-wide [primarily Jewish] CONSPIRACY for the OVERTHROW OF CIVILIZATION and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence..." and other similar remarks.
He makes it clear that Jews were the key players behind communism.
This was once widely known, but since WWII has been intentionally erased from our memories.
I had to remove about 3/4 of it because of the limit of 4096 characters on this site.
--- Start of Article ---
Zionism versus Bolshevism.
A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People
By the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill.
SOME people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.
...
And it may well be that this same astounding race [Jews] may at the present time be in the actual process of producing another system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which, if not arrested, would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible. It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of Antichrist were destined to originate among the same people; and that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical.
'National' Jews
... At the present fateful period there are three main lines of political conception among the Jews. two of which are helpful and hopeful in a very high degree to humanity, and the third [communism] absolutely destructive.
...
International Jews
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, ...
... It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
More from Churchill's article.
Terrorist Jews
There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism [basically Jewish ommunists] and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews.
In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.
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