Dave has this to say about his time in the Rockford IL church area.
“A lot of brethren in the Rockford congregation lived along the big, wide Rock River, which ran through Rockford, and then southwest for at least 100 miles until it emptied into the Mississippi River. It was a long, beautiful drive, and I looked forward to every time I could do it.
“Early one morning I took off to visit, heading down Highway 2. There were stretches of road where on the right side was a steep embankment, and on the left side was a long, sharp drop-off down to the river’s edge, and a guardrail. The traffic would often back up in this area because it was a two-lane highway—and there were really no shoulders in this stretch of the road.
“A young man’s negligence and impatience almost got him killed. I pulled out to pass from behind a truck that was blocking my view, and realized immediately that I could not clear the truck and return to my lane in time. I had not seen a pick-up truck barreling toward me. I tried to slow back into the spot just vacated, but a Cadillac had filled in behind me.
“There was absolutely nothing I could do—I could not go left or right. No time remaining, the truck would now hit me head on—except nothing happened. As it reached me, both of us going about 60 mph, it simply passed right through my vehicle. One moment it was in front of my hood, the next it was in my rearview mirror.
“My life had been spared by divine intervention! I have never doubted what happened that day in 1974. I only wonder if anyone else involved was aware as I was of what had occurred.
“Coupled with other interventions to spare my life, I am living proof that God heals and delivers, sometimes even when it is partly to protect us from ourselves.”
11 comments:
Dixon Cartwright, Publisher of the now-defunct "The Journal - News of the Churches of God" once ran a series about 8 years ago on divine angelic intervention. He ran stories of people who believed they had had angelic experiences because no other explanation could be made of events that occurred.
I had a similar experience as what Dave Pack describes. I was walking across a street in my hometown neighborhood after looking both ways to ensure it was safe to cross. Halfway across the street comes a car turning and speeding right at me. My last sight and consciousness was the car about to hit my legs to run me over. Then, mysteriously, my next sight and consciousness was the car on the other side of me and a woman driver who kept saying to me, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry". What I remember in my mind I can only liken to taking a film or video and splicing a second or two out of it creating a gap between images on film. That was the experience for me. I wrote Dixon a letter to the editor describing my "Angelic" experience which he published in the Journal.
For those of us who do believe in a spirit world, miracles can and do happen - even to a Dave Pack although it would be reasonable in his case to ask, "Why?"
Richard
My WWCG minister in the 1980s made a similar claim from the pulpit. He sounded sincere. But Dave is a pathological liar, so everything he says is suspect.
We have all these Herb ministers approaching the end of their natural lives, yet instead of displaying good qualities they should have acquired, such as being rich in kindness and consideration towards others, we witness the exact opposite.
Well, this one touched a chord. When pastoring London, Somerset and Middlesboro Kentucky congregations I was returning home one winter evening with family from basketball in Middlesboro and coming through Cumberland Gap. In a second I was face to face and head light to headlight with a car. I had time to see the pattern in the headlight glass of that car and to utter what I know know would be my last words. "Oh shit!" My last thought was "it has happened to us...we are dead in a head on." I closed my eyes for impact. There was none. In the next instant I was sitting on the side of the road in the car next to the rock cliff. We were all fine. I looked around expecting to see the other car somewhere, perhaps crashed or at least leaving the scene. Nothing. Just quiet and dark nothing on the road in Cumberland Gap. It felt like that car simply had to pass through us and there no way I could have missed it. That's all I know. We weirdly survived what to me seemed like instant death.
I lost my wallet at the scene, evidently when I got out of the car. A year later I was visiting in Cumberland Gap and heard on the radio..."We have a wallet here at the station belonging to a Dennis Diehl" If you hear this come to the station and retrieve your wallet. Everything was in it but the 30 bucks . A strange experience for sure.
I have learned that God was sparing me so I could get out of the ministry intact and have a really cool therapeutic massage practice in Portland :)
Everything was in it but the 30 bucks. So much for southern hospitality...
For those who have never participated in the glorious sport of street racing, I can tell you from personal experience that when a life threatening event is imminent, God’s gift of adrenalin kicks your brain into overtime. It slows your perception of the event way down to one frame at a time, creating plenty of time and space for you to react and avoid catastrophe, and uh, death.
BB
The unavoidable truck passing through the car has been one of Dave's favorite miracle schticks; he used it repeatedly in his sermons some years ago. The last one I remember hearing was when the truck passed through the car of two old ladies driving along, who then apparently reported it to a policeman (I don't remember why he was investigating a non-accident) who said he wouldn't put that in his report because no one would believe it.
Lake of Fire: While I don't doubt unexplainable things can happen to people. I have had enough strange things happen in my life that shouldn't have. The problem I have with Dave's story is that as much as Dave has lied about other things, why should we believe him on this?
This has been a common miracle for a few in the church. A group of us carpooling to Spokesman Club experienced the same event - a vehicle disappearing just prior to impact and reappearing on the other side. Each and every detail is remembered even with the event being over 30 years past. Others that I have known have recounted similar miracles.
The lesson for me is; there will be no excuses in the day of judgment and Hebrews 6:4-6 applies. In case some have forgot, it reads: For it is impossible for those once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and THE POWERS of THE WORLD TO COME, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to open shame.
Dennis Diehl,
This comes short of "confession" by stating that God had calculated you being 30 dollars short of tithing......
I have family currently boasting occurences with cars escaping trucks on facebook with hundreds of evangelicals shouting hallelujah and liking the postings making me sick. But perhaps I should reconsider and cut him some slack with even no2hwa admitting that "strange things do happen".
nck
Strange things of this nature do indeed happen. I have seen them time and time again during the bird hunting seasons. A bird flushes from cover or flies over within range. I swing the gun and fire at it a cluster of pellets traveling 1200 feet per second--818 miles per hour. No bird could possibly dodge our outrun that cloud of destruction. It can't even see it coming. Yet more than half the time, the bird flies off unscathed!
The only explanation I can think of is that each of those birds has been blessed with divine protection. An angel intervenes and allows the pellets and the bird to pass miraculously through each other without physical contact.
So Dave Pack's fleshly, temporal salvation seems only natural. If, as the song says, "His eye is on the sparrow" (or the woodcock, the grouse, the pheasant, the duck) then surely He would allow death to pass over a member of his own flock, especially one whose very name means "Passover."
Maybe God wanted to save the other person, not Dave?
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