Thursday, August 22, 2019

Dreams In The Church



I'm going to talk a little bit more about dreams today in this post. 

Last night I had a dream. It was a very vivid dream - very detailed, very weird, very imaginative. It was about David Pack. Let me stop here and now before I begin and preface this by stating it was only a dream, for those whom should need this to hear. 

In this dream, I had to attend a service of David Pack's. It was set in a large, semi-circular auditorium laden with brown and gold overtones with a central podium and risers with warm-toned lighting. Why I had to go there, I really do not know. I was not alone - I was with someone - a tall, blond-haired gentleman who told me when I was there that I had to stay there. 

As the service began, well, just before the service actually began, a youth member way back somewhere (presumably a kitchen, or someplace) accidentally dropped and broke some dishes. Pack, in this dream, immediately got up to the podium and blasted out condescending and hurtful rebukes about how horrible it was that this young person broke dishes in the house of God. 

It seemed that Pack went on for a while, and I was getting absolutely disgusted. But no one else was. The entire congregation approved of how shameful the youth was, and in a rare vocal agreement agreed completely with Pack. No one left - or could. To the chagrin of the tall, blonde gentleman by my side, I decided I was going to leave. 

So, I tried to leave. I exited the tunnel that led to the concourse (seemed like an arena type exit) and I was met by someone who claimed to be an appointed Judge of the Church that I could not leave. I challenged him and said yes, I could - and he suddenly held some sort of a strange puzzle. The implication was if I could put the puzzle together, I could go. I wondered - who are you to tell me what to do and how I can or cannot go? At that point, I decided to run, as fast as I could, out of there, and ended up down a street. 

Other people on the street - I don't know who they were - suddenly realized I had left Pack's service by some sort of telekinetic or telepathic instruction (think the Borg), and attempted to stop me as well. However, it did not work. It was at this point that the dream ended. 

Thank God. 

Yes, Dreams happen. Some are extremely vivid. Some don't make any sense. Some make a lot of sense. Rarely do they mean anything at all. In this dream Pack was a jack-ass - which is fairly accurate -  but I can count on one hand the amount of dreams I have had throughout my entire life that I can tell you were proven to be either "prophetic" or inspired because of their accuracy and future-telling ability that actually came true. (I told only one person about them!) This? This was just a crazy, strange dream about David Pack that I probably had because I had just eaten a good bowl of raisin bran. So I'll tell you. 

In the COG Universe, so-called prophets put emphasis on dreams because they are already self-obsessed with their own grandiose ideas of their importance. They will assume that God is telling them something, but the only thing speaking to them is an astounding amount of carbs and protein from leftover pizza or lasagna! Their dreams are self-centered, self-absorbed, and usually absolutely senseless and complete nonsense. 

Now, about that Pack Dream. 

If it had happened to someone, say, like Thiel, or Malm, I can pretty much bet you they would probably get up, write it down, think it was from God, and run with it into some sort of strange interpretation. God forbid if it actually happened to Pack! He'd probably write a 356 part sermon about it, divided into twenty-four subsections and sixteen overtime segments. If Waterhouse was alive, could you imagine how he would run with such a dream? It would be one of the most rambling messages you could probably ever hear! The point is - this was just what it was - a dream. Exactly as the other dreams I've had I've told you about previously - such as the dream of Herbert In a Box some time ago that I shared. They. Are. Just. Dreams. 

People have got to stop attributing such grandiose callings to COG "ministers" like Thiel and others - including Thiel and others - with the idea that somehow God is talking to them alone with information that only they are privy to. This can become extremely dangerous, and downright delusional - especially if they are already entrapped in ideas, doctrine, and other complete crap ideologies that belong in the bottom of the sewer. Why is it that these people think so highly of themselves that they can't simply accept that they, too, are human, and dream like the rest of us? 

Now, I, too, have a real dream. 

I have a dream that Bob Thiel would somehow learn how to preach. It's obvious he is batting way out of his league. If he had just stuck with vitamin pills, instead of getting his nose into people's spiritual lives as the world's biggest know-it-all, he might have earned some legitimate respect. 

I have a dream people like Jon Brisby would stop dreaming up fantasies that some sort of Christ reappeared - apparently, in the form of a man named Herb who came and went years ago. 

I have a dream that David Pack would realize the immense harm that he is causing people based on absolute delusion and self-fulfillment, bringing people to the poor house for more than "two trees" in his precious little mini-me "campus". 

I have a dream that Ronald Weinland would take the hint and just stop already. He's already the most embarrassing COG personality around. 

I have a dream that Gerald Weston would realize he isn't the big cheese in the minds of many he thinks he is, and sorely lacks respect from many of his own "flock". 

I have a dream that James Malm would stop idolizing and worshipping the Law, bringing people further into bondage with his legalistic long-obsolete crazy ideas. 

I have a dream that Gerald Flurry would stop focusing on the physical, and sit on that little Herbert Rock he loves so much and wake up to the harm he is causing within his own church by allowing, enabling, or enacting wickedness - and ask himself, was this all worth it? 

I have a dream that Armstrongism itself will completely shrivel into an even lower form than it is now, for all of its folly and shame with seventy plus years of nonsense proven as nonsense through the chambers of time. 

At least these dreams make sense. Now, maybe I will remember what I ate last night so I don't have another silly dream about that tall weirdo out there in Wadsworth who really thinks he is all that. Who is, after all, the biggest narcissist? Is it Pack? Or Flurry? or Thiel? or Malm? Or Weston? Or Brisby? Or Weinland? Or................

It would be a miracle if any one of them would focus more on Jesus then themselves and realize for once in their lives the infection of narcissism enabled by the teachings of a splinter Church from the Church of Christ back in the 1800s. 

Submitted by SHT

14 comments:

nck said...

The latest science on dreams is that they serve us to prepare or cope with real events in our lives.

So I would not disagree with the "prophetic" nature of your dreams.

The brain has noticed everything that happened and we just use 0.001 percent of what the brain experienced today by your daily dealings.

Nck

Tonto said...

Sing A Long Time-- Sing to the Tune "Hotel California" The Eagles 1977
(Verse 3)
Follow Along Online:
https://youtu.be/uqSKl7sdUa8?t=208

Pack goes on a squealing ...
He's never ever nice...

We all just say: "We are all just prisoners here
Of our own device"...

And at the master's compound
We gathered for the feast...

We stab it with our spirit knives...
But we just can't kill the beast

What I wish would happen...
Running for the door...

With no passage back...
To the place I was before

"Repent," said the Pack Man
You are programmed to receive...

You can check out any time you like...
But you can never leave!"

Anonymous said...

Tonto has picked up adapting popular songs to the church experiences where missing in action Connie left off! Now I gotta go look up the tune.

What About The Truth said...

SHT you dreamed my reality. It was was me who broke the dishes and endured the verbal wrath. I wasn't allowed to leave either because the importance of the puzzle was paramount. On a regular basis Four and a half hours of puzzle explanation followed by after services group puzzle learning were required to gain a precise understanding of the puzzle. The judge, the blonde man, they are all there and everyone approved of how I was treated not caring why I broke the dishes.

I didn't write the above to be a parody. Your dream actually was a close rendition of my experience.

The reality is many are in situations close to what you dreamed about. And those same many are not strong enough in mind to escape regardless of the dangerous situation they are in. Their reality does not end in a moment.

Acting as your therapist for a moment (pro bono of course), I would say some where deep in your subconcious was triggered by the real ongoing reality of what is happening in some of the COGs which in many ways strikes a resemblance of what you experienced in your youth. That you cared about the young man in your dream tells me you have a heart for the oppressed. And maybe you then became that young man of your dream and looked for the escape.

I have found there are three categories of dreams. The first category seems to be silly not making any sense. The second category is vivid. The third category is extraordinary real to the point of consternation (you can't shake it). The role of the person in the latter two types of dreams tend to always stay true to themselves within the dream. So if a man dreams that his point on a graph ascends while the other point on the graph depicting his boss plummets and the first man interprets that as having everything to do about himself then that person is all about ones self in real life.

Dreams, realities and nightmares in the religious sphere have come to be not good for many in what should be a simple way of life.

Anonymous said...

I dreamed I ate a five pound marshmallow, and when I woke up my pillow was gone....

Anonymous said...

Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
When I want you in my church
When I want you and all your merch
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream

When I feel blue in the night
And I need you to tithe me right
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam

I'll make you a dork, keep your lips from pork
All the time, night and day
Only trouble is, Ghastly!
I'm dreamin' my life away

I need you so that you will cry
I love power and that is why
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam

I'll make you a dork, keep your lips from pork
All the time, night and day
Only trouble is, Ghastly!
I'm dreamin' my life away

Byker Bob said...

I've had different dreams for a number of years now. Today I picked up season 1 of Mayans MC, Kurt Sutter's next series in the Sons of Anarchy franchise. When AC sold the press to W.A.Krueger Co., back in 1975, we had an influx of all manner of new hires. Those of us who made the transition to W.A.K. had an opportunity to make new friendships amongst young people from the real world. There was plenty of common ground for me as a car and motorcycle enthusiast, and a member of the Mongols MC became a very good friend of mine. We'd drink beer after work at my place, or go down to his place in Montebello. I never rode with them, but I do have many great recollections from that era. The Mongols are Kurt Sutter's acknowledged model for the Mayans.

By the way, being a patch holder has never appealed to me. In my line of thinking, riding an motorcycle is all about freedom. In a sense, being a gang biker would be just like being part of Armstrongism, cut from a slightly different fabric. They'd own you, and control you, and your total identity would be tied to the club. Far be it from me to make a similar mistake twice!

BB

Stoned Stephen Society said...

I generally don't put much stock into dreams but I think occasionally, they are worthwhile to analyse. Sometimes, I think our minds try to share intuitive or subconscious information it possesses with our consciousness through dreams. I came among the fractured church in the 90's. Already dead, HWA's writings are what brought me in. I thought highly of him since I had no WCG background and the internet was not what it is today. After personally "experiencing" Dave Pack for several years, I saw him for the really bad man he was and removed him from my life. Over the years, I occasionally have dreams with him in them; usually similar to the nightmares I have of a boss I had as a younger man. But I did have one dream after several years removed from Dave where in it, Dave and Herb were standing together and talking. They were very happy and chummy , like best friends. That dream has stuck with me all these years and I have just recently (about 4 years ago) began to wonder if I subconsciously knew all those years ago that Dave and Herb were "the same guy." Did I already know Dave was and was going to continue to mirror his mentor? And did I know this before I learned years later (thanks to the internet) who and what kind of a man Herb was? If our minds are unable to actually tap into"information" that is "out there" then I suppose another consciousness would have shared that information. How many dreams do we dream in a lifetime that reach our consciousness? How many dreams were drempt where Herb killed Dave? Who knows...who knows.

Anonymous said...

I've had 2 dreams in my life that were life altering. The first one dealt with a guy I was beginning to date in the church when my kids were small. After the dream, I quickly put an end to the "dating aspect" of the relationship, never told him why. The second one also had to do with a relationship, I ended up marrying someone I never expected to meet. Some dreams are meant to be paid attention to, they tell us something we need to know.

Anonymous said...

I had a dream that David Pack fell on his own sword.

Anonymous said...

I have had life changing dreams several times. To me, most dreams are just mirrors of the mind, and some dreams are much more than that. Those should be paid attention to.

Byker Bob said...

Dreams are tools which can be used to decypher what is really us. They can be very reassuring, in that they often reveal to us aspects of our true nature from our deep subconscious. Even the occasional nightmare can expose something below the surface, of which we are deeply terrified during our waking hours. They tell us about our approach to relationships, our comfort level with problem-solving, our basic core concept of self, and our hopes and aspirations. We can know from our dreams whether we visualize ourselves as pawns of life, observers, players, or some of the control units. Solutions to long-term, nagging problems have come to some in their dreams. Songs have been known to come to musicians, songs that struck a common chord to the extent that they became chart-busters.

In the case of Armstrongism, our dreams play out for us if and how we have been abused, and our core attitudes as to whether this is something that is right and good, or very bad and wrong. Apparently to some, the dreams portray the dreamer as a leader of Armstrongism, not simply a helpless pawn. While folks like Bob Thiel, draw inspiration from this, another very possible explanation is that in all bad event scenarios, studies indicate that a certain percentage of victims actually turn and become predators, inflicting the ways in which they themselves were victimized on others. So, dreams can predict how we will react, recover, or not recover. Very revealing.

I'm sure that as part of the human condition, most of us have experienced periods of pain and pressure, segments in which our lives have been so miserable that we do not know how we could possibly endure. Pressures from work, ethical conflicts, a bad marriage, problems with wayward children, health issues, or temporary lack of financial viability, are but a few situations that accelerate the misery quotient of our lives. I confess that there have been a handful of such periods in my own life, and that during them, I found solace and solution by eating weird combinations of food, sleeping a lot, and reversing the norms by living primarily in my dreams rather than real life. It is not unlike using iTunes to restore your operating system on an Apple device. Very valuable tools, those dreams!

BB

Anonymous said...

As a disfellowshipped longtime member, I had a similar dream of where I too was in a church setting, settling for a place in the partitioned anteroom in the back, where the Lord appeared to me.

Your dream might be interpreted as follows: The tall man is the angel of the Lord who accompanies you into the church. Pack is the foolish minister who gets distracted by the broken dishes, meaning he isn't focussed on the gospel. The gullible members represent those members who always side with the minister even when he is wrong. Meanwhile your attempt to leave the church on your own doesn't leave you guiltless because you failed to solve the angel's puzzle at the exit, that is you didn't leave over a point of truth but over a triviality for which you must answer to Jesus Christ, the "appointed Judge of the church", as you wrote. Disagreeing with Him proves your disobedience to the law. Thus your attempt to run from judgment for your sins will dog you the rest of your life until you repent, along with the rest of your rebellious unbelieving, blaspheming, double-minded, mocking and malicious posters and filthy communicators. That is why your dream ends with you still running. As for those who were trying to stop you, those are the witnesses (friends, relatives, members, angels) who will testify against you for leaving the truth.

Anonymous said...

"Dreams In The Church"

The sermons I spent dreaming in the church were the best sermons of them all! XD