Monday, February 20, 2023

Dave Pack: Reality Disconnect - Psychosis. Denial. Gaslighting. Cognitive dissonance.

 



Reality Disconnect

 

There is a terrible reality disconnect occurring inside The Restored Church of God.

 

Since this blog began, some have offered their assessments of which mental illness David C. Pack suffers from. I am not a trained clinician with a psychology degree, so I have not ventured to speculate, even though proofs of indications are presented.

 

malignant narcissist is the “most severe subtype” of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) that has traits associated with antisocial personality disorder (APD). Aggression toward others and paranoia are present, but this is “very hard to differentiate” from severe NPD.

 

Antisocial personality disorder (ADP) is "a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others harshly or with callous indifference. They show no guilt or remorse for their behavior.”

 

Sociopath: “People with the condition might seem charming and charismatic at first, at least on the surface, but they generally find it difficult to understand other people’s feelings. They often: break rules or laws, behave aggressively or impulsively, feel little guilt for harm they cause others, use manipulation, deceit, and controlling behavior.”

 

Psychosis “is a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.”

 

Former employees and family members have much to say about this, especially those closest to David C. Pack. The more time people spent with him in close quarters, the more trauma they had to work through afterward.

 

This is not a personal attack or rumor-mongering, but stating facts based on reality.

 

His ministerial career in and out of The Restored Church of God has left a wake of damaged people in his path. This is his pattern. In all my years in and out of RCG, one person told me one positive story about David C. Pack. One. The rest are not conversation topics to bring up with him standing at the urinal.

 

David C. Pack has hurt a lot of people. Those nearest to him. Those he never met. He is a destructive force leading The Restored Church of God, and the hirelings at Headquarters grant their passive approval.

 

 

As the Pastor General of The Restored Church of God, he self-anointed himself as an apostle in 2005, Joshua the High Priest in 2009, and in 2015, as Elijah the Prophet and That Prophet.

 

He got away with this because of the brethren's acceptance. I include myself since I attended and worked at Headquarters from 2012 to March 2021, even though I believed none of those.

 

David C. Pack does not and cannot rule on his own. His power does not operate in a vacuum. He requires the buy-in from the Headquarters ministry in Wadsworth, Ohio. On the corporate level, he could be voted out by the RCG Board of Directors and legally removed from the business side.

 

His self-appointed biblical titles laid the groundwork for the next phase of escalation in 2023.

 

David C. Pack has been preaching the near-arrival of the "Kingdom to Israel," where the Father will raise Elijah the Prophet to rule as a type of invisible John the Baptist to herald to the world the coming Kingdom of God that Jesus Christ will bring later.

 

David C. Pack comes first. Then, Jesus Christ. Humanity is not waiting for the arrival of Jesus Christ to bring the Christian wake-up call to the world. They are waiting for Elijah to boom his voice at sunrise. Elijah the Prophet is and has been David C. Pack.

 

The Father rules the Third Kingdom, so it is The Father’s Kingdom.

Jesus Christ rules the Second Kingdom, so it is Christ’s Kingdom.

Elijah rules the First Kingdom, so it is Elijah’s Kingdom.

David C. Pack is Elijah, so it is David C. Pack’s Kingdom.

 

I call this First Kingdom "The Kingdom of Dave" because that is what he says without saying it.

 

The purpose of this blog is to connect the dots. David C. Pack puts all the points on the paper, and I connect them when he will not. The man does not realize the consequences of his words and holds no responsibility for what comes out of his mouth.

 

He can only think in the present. He disregards and/or forgets the past. He ignores the implications for the future. Out of his own mouth falls his greatest folly.

 

 

This was a busy week in The Restored Church of God with “The Greatest Untold Story!” Series.

 

Part 419 on February 14 – 1:57:50

Part 420 on February 17 – 1:45:00

Part 421 on February 18 – 1:35:28

Part 422 on February 18 – 0:37:38

 

The brethren are not the only ones having a hard time keeping up.

 

Beginning with the Kingdom of Dave in Part 419, these four parts demonstrate how David C. Pack is deteriorating in front of the whole church. He is difficult to understand. At other times, his words are completely incoherent, and he draws illogical conclusions that defy facts.

 

On the flip side, David C. Pack exhibits moments of biblical brilliance. Some verses he presents sing together and reveal sound doctrine that makes perfect sense. For a few moments, he is the vintage Mr. Pack again. But, like an awakening, the fog of corruption and chaos returns to cloud his thinking, and the preaching returns to prophetic madness.

 

David C. Pack is an angel of light. He is not always wrong. And therein lies the danger.

 

 

With examples throughout Parts 419 to 422, one incident in the last message shook me to seriously wonder about David C. Pack's mental state, not as an attack or condemnation but as acknowledging a spectacular display of cognitive dissonance blended with disassociation.

 

David C. Pack presents this to the brethren of The Restored Church of God through gaslighting.

 

Cognitive dissonance is "the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it."

 

Disassociation is “a break in how your mind handles information. You may feel disconnected from your thoughts, feelings, memories, and surroundings.”

 

Gaslighting is “an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves.”

 

The video clip from Part 422 was posted on February 19. His statements ring louder for those attending The Restored Church of God during the Elul 24/August 2013 prophetic failure.

 

It should be equally insulting to anyone attending since March of 2022. When I first heard this, I was beside myself. Dave can still shock me.




After strengthening the certainty of The Day of the Lord and the return of Jesus Christ on March 22, 2023, by teaching Adar 1 on February 22, 2023, would usher in the Kingdom of Dave, he opens the message with a series of hypothetical questions. These questions are designed to validate the imminent timing of biblical events as he has been teaching.

 

Part 422 – February 18, 2023

01:13 What if we learned the 1335 and that Adar begins the Kingdom to Israel and that Abib 1 begins the Kingdom of God years ago? What if we’d learned years ago? We would have surely expected Christ too soon, with much more to learn after that.

 

“The 1335 Days of the Son of Man” was initially taught in RCG in 2011. The 1335 of Daniel 12 started and stopped a few times since. They were all “invisible” comings with “invisible” goings.

 

Part 387 – August 15, 2022

@ 04:29 You’re blessed if you got to a day, not a coming. We’ve talked about that. It’s called the 1335…You’re settled. And that was over four days ago.

 

Part 391 – September 3, 2022

@ 1:10:56 Now, one of the things that bothered me, “We're blessed when we hit the 1335." I would ask myself, and I ask other people, "You feel blessed? We been blessed for two or three weeks now?...And the answer is, brethren, let me say it clearly, no! Because blessed is attached to salvation.

 

Part 396 – October 1, 2022

@ 1:48:04 We are not seeking the 1335. A hundred billion people will be. So, I wanted that to be clear.

 

Part 402 – October 25, 2022

@ 1:27:01 God’s will has been done. You made it to the 1335. The pledge is made on (dare I say?) the correct 1335.

 

It was not the correct 1335. According to Dave, it started about a month ago.

 

The Kingdom to/of Israel came back onto the scene in 2022.

 

Part 367 – May 14, 2022

@ 1:31:20 I am telling God’s people I believe the Kingdom of Israel and eternal life comes tomorrow night. If I’m wrong…I’m wrong by a whole year because I know the day it happens.

 

Every Hebrew month of the year has been declared by David C. Pack as "the day" something would happen. Adar 1 and Abib 1 are not new to RCG members.

 

The “we would have known too soon” rationale has been repeated countless times. That human-centric thinking is always an excuse, never a reason.

 

Part 422 – February 18, 2023

@ 01:35 They’re a package deal. Those three things: The 1335, Adar, and Abib 1. (There is coming a twist.)

 

The “twist” will be covered in another article. It is more accurate to call it a tease, cop-out, and prophetic bait-and-switch than a twist. He reverses much of what he said during Parts 420 and 421 regarding the certainty of Adar 1 and Abib 1 being exact dates. He pulls off a cheap and dirty trick.

 

 

Now begins the descent into madness. David C. Pack strings together a sequence of hypothetical questions designed to illustrate how solid his new teachings are.

 

The logic from which they are posed proves a disconnect from reality, a disassociation from previous declarations, and a denial of history.

 

@ 01:44 But imagine we had to wait another 27 days (again) next year. Almost a month. Believing we were blessed.

 

No one in The Restored Church of God needs to "imagine" waiting or any of what follows. His questions accurately depict what the brethren are currently living through. They believed they were blessed during the Feast of Tabernacles but came home to realize they were not.

 

This has been a repeated pattern for many years.

 

@ 01:57 How could you believe next year? How could you believe it’s certain if this year failed? Or any future year?

 

They cannot believe next year, and no one should. They should not believe him now.

 

These questions encapsulate ten years of The Restored Church of God. When Elul 24, 2013 failed, a perpetual sense of doubt was set in motion in anything David C. Pack teaches. He was wrong then. He is wrong ten years later. And will continue to be wrong into the vanishing point.

 

Deuteronomy 18 speaks to the validity of David C. Pack as a prophet or “inspired” messenger of God. He failed once and is forever invalidated, so says the Bible.

 

The brethren will never be able to trust him. Yet they stay and listen.

 

David C. Pack displays astonishing blindness with his questions. 2022 failed. 2021 failed. 2020 failed. 2019 failed. 2018 failed. A legitimately mentally ill person would ask such a question in the face of facts that have become history.

 

Our reality is not his reality.

 

The brethren need not “imagine” not believing “next year” because Part 422 is a living reminder of his failures throughout last year.

 

 

@ 1:58 How could you believe it if you’d been through it once? You’re waiting almost a month, “I wonder if it’s true this year?”

 

Psychosis. Denial. Gaslighting. Cognitive dissonance.

 

The brethren of The Restored Church of God have not experienced waiting and disappointment ONCE. Since June 2022, they have experienced this 43 times.

 

Members of RCG have been through this 43 times since June 2022.

 

What a callous insult to all the brethren.

 

David C. Pack has lost his mind, but even putting it that way is an oversimplification of the catastrophic darkness that has hijacked his thinking.

 

@ 02:15 The 1335, truly, can only apply in the first year you learned its powerful meaning.

 

For this logic to be accurate, the 1335 of Daniel 12 needed to begin in 2011.

 

The "first-year” application proof has been repeated before. The “why are we learning this now” reasoning rings more hollow each time Dave uses it.

 

Part 177 – June 6, 2019

@ 1:29:38 Wow, we’re just learning this right now. What are the odds we’re learning it right in front of Pentecost…?

 

Dave often uses that as "it has to be this year," and the people of RCG know that. The brethren who stay accept falling for it again as some virtue of “holding fast” by the power of faith. Even they are enabling Dave’s descent further into lunacy.

 

 

This was the topper for me. I was shaking when I first heard it.

 

Part 422 – February 18, 2023

@ 02:25 Imagine yourself waiting another year and another year and another year and another and another.

 

This is disturbing, insulting, tone-deaf, blind, ignorant, foolish, horrific, and staggering all at once.

 

The RCG brethren do not need to imagine…

they live this.

 

What is wrong with David C. Pack? What combination of mental illnesses compounded with dark spiritual influences has captured his mind to cause him to say things like this?

 

The brethren of RCG have been living this since 2013.

 

But David C. Pack does not get that. That is a severe problem. That screams the man is suffering a deep mental breakdown. There is a complex psychosis happening at Headquarters in The Restored Church of God.

 

Or maybe I am being Chicken Little about it. To call this out as simply "insane" underrepresents the harsh reality of his distorted and twisted thinking.

 

The most positive and optimistic view would be that David C. Pack suffers from Alzheimer's or Dementia. Those would be the best-case scenarios under the circumstances.

 

 

@ 02:30 Twenty-seven days blessed works once. Faith becomes hope ever after. And “surely come" goes away ever after.

 

It already has. Faith already turned into hope back in 2013. And in 2018. 2019. 2020. 2021. 2022. Past tense. History. Fact. This is our reality, but not his.

 

David C. Pack has already handled God's word deceitfully, and "surely come" lost meaning long ago. He adds to and takes away from the Bible. Words are malleable. Numbers are fickle. The math always disappoints. The proofs evaporate. The metrics dissolve.

 

David C. Pack has built his entire world on vanity, imagination, and mental illness. Nothing else makes sense, and nothing else explains the path he has taken RCG in.

 

@ 02:51 The picture is set in stone. It is inarguable.

 

As is every other artificial construct that crumbles as time passes. His rock-solid cases are made of dry ice. Some teachings do not endure 24 hours. Excuses are not in short supply at Headquarters.

 

@ 02:54 I put it up there with believing the Sabbath or tithing or baptism by immersion, or any other element of the truth that you know of.

 

He forgets what he already said. He forgets what he has already taught. And he desperately needs you to forget so that he can maintain his appearance of legitimacy.

 

Part 379 – June 25, 2022

@ 18:34 I believe [Tammuz 1] no less certainly than I believe the seventh day is the Sabbath.

 

Part 378 – June 15, 2022

@ 37:30 I won’t be telling you we’re gonna wait a month. That’s impossible. You could throw my own words back up against me…

 

Part 386 – August 2, 2022

@ 1:37:28 I promise you that’s the picture. You have the picture. It's inarguable. You have the picture. It will not change. It cannot change if we wait a hundred years.

 

Part 401- October 22, 2022

@ 34:11 We will never change One Month. And I will never change Cheshvan.

 

Believe the words of David C. Pack at your own peril. He is not a man of his word. His words mean nothing to him and should mean nothing to you. He lies to himself, and he lies to The Restored Church of God.

 

Is that observation a wicked attack from the devil or a statement of fact?

 

 

Part 422 – February 18, 2023

@ 03:30 The Series ends, and we know we’re close. Nothing could change that.

 

Nothing can change it except for the passage of time. The Series is not over.

 

Only a mentally ill person would say such things believing them to be true when they have said it all before, and every single time, reality proves the words to be false.

 

Gaslighting. Disassociation. Cognitive dissonance. Psychosis. Sociopathy. Malignant narcissism. Antisocial personality disorder. Prophecy addiction. Jerusalem syndrome. Pathological lying. Demonic influence.

 

Figuring out which ailment is afflicting David C. Pack of The Restored Church of God is moot because the end result is the same: God is not guiding him, and he will never be right about prophecy.

 

To think otherwise would be a total reality disconnect.


Marc Cebrain

See: Reality Disconnect

18 comments:

DW said...

Please, please someone help me understand why these people stay? Why do the members stay? And why does the board NOT vote him out? They will have nothing left to run if he is taken out involuntarily, so why do they allow him to continue?

The Feds have RCG (and many other COGs, to be fair) on a watch list. If they have to act, the assets will be frozen for years, with attorneys taking the lions share of whatever liquid assets RCG may hold. So, is the mental illness shared by board members as well? None of this nightmare makes any sense. None of it. Doctrinally, Dave is on another planet..but, IMO all the COGs are. So that just leaves the big fat WHY looming out there for the board and the members to answer. Why are you not getting rid of him and why do you stay and listen to this babbling fool?

Absolutely none of this makes sense.

Anonymous said...


....strong delusion...2Thess 2:11?? Greek for "strong" is defined below by Thayer:

◄ 1753. energeia ►
Thayer's Greek Lexicon
STRONGS NT 1753: ἐνέργεια

ἐνέργεια, ἐνεργείας, ἡ (ἐνεργής, which see), working, efficiency; in the N. T. used only of superhuman power, whether of God or of the devil....

Hmmmmm......

Anonymous said...

I'd like some follow-up on these quotes Marc.

"On the flip side, David C. Pack exhibits moments of biblical brilliance. Some verses he presents sing together and reveal sound doctrine that makes perfect sense. For a few moments, he is the vintage Mr. Pack again. But, like an awakening, the fog of corruption and chaos returns to cloud his thinking, and the preaching returns to prophetic madness."

"David C. Pack is an angel of light. He is not always wrong. And therein lies the danger."

Are you sure you actually left the cult Marc?

This man has always been a liar. The truth not only is not in him it is nowhere near him. Sane David Pack never existed. It's always been varying degrees of lunacy. Dennis knew this and grew up with this weirdo. When has he been right about anything?

For the love of God don't venerate some past version of him as if that one wasn't crazy too.

Also, HWA was a con-man and a grifter and a rotten root to start. Has anything not rotten grown out of the COG? Its message will fade into irrelevance.

Anonymous said...

Psychosis “is a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.”

The disconnect from reality begins with reading Jewish fables about Noah's Ark and a man who walked on water. That is the root of Pack's problems.

Anonymous said...

Why do they stay with Pack? Because they are brainwashed. They do not have the spirit of a sound mind. They do not have the holy spirit. Understand that, and it becomes obvious.

Ronco said...

"This man has always been a liar. The truth not only is not in him it is nowhere near him. Sane David Pack never existed. It's always been varying degrees of lunacy. Dennis knew this and grew up with this weirdo. When has he been right about anything?"

Amen and Amen!!!

Anonymous said...

8:51 Dennis knew this and grew up with this weirdo

Also Ambassador Report detailed his past brutal authoritarianism.
What's changed now is he's gone indie, hung out his own ACoG shingle and has hauled in massive funding to pursue his mission.

That's what is really dangerous, when delusional fanatics like Hitler & Herbert get unlimited funding. Both Hitler & Herbert were uneducated, unable to assess/refute seductive conspiracy theories.

Marc Cebrian said...

Anon 8:51PM, I wonder if your question was rhetorical.

I will make two assumptions: 1) You were never in RCG, 2) You never listened to a DCP sermon. And yet, your conclusions appear as though you weighed all the evidence.

The man is an angel of light because he can be right...sometimes. He knows how to put scriptures together to have them make sense. Sometimes He is not 100% wrong 100% of the time just as a liar does not lie 100% of the time.

To say "the truth is nowhere near him" is false and naive. If it were only that simple, Mr. or Mrs. Anon 8:51 PM.

I give credit to where credit is due. DCP can make a compelling argument from time to time because the Bible allows that. That's why there are still bodies in the seats.

I noted my experience with DCP while I was attending. I never would have joined a cult (no one would) knowingly. He taught what agreed with the Bible when I first attended, but drifted away from that. Far away from that. Folks who experienced RCG would understand.

If you want more detail than that, write me exrcgwebsite@gmail.com.

Marc

Anonymous said...

Up until Monterrey Park several weeks back, a case could have been made that people Pack's age do not do mass shootings. Still, it's unlikely that Dave would take that course.

Only in the realm of religion are Bernie Madoff types sheltered and allowed to enslave and abuse people financially with impunity. The way our system works, situations such as this are treated like controlled burns in forestry. They just have to burn themselves out. The State of California tried its hardest to correct the financial abuses of Herbert W. Armstrong. Despite their efforts, and their position of being morally and ethically right, he still died with the most toys and won.

The most likely outcome to the Dave Pack problem will be that deprived and impoverished people ten years from now will be discussing on social media how they were fooled and ripped off, and will be contemplating group or collective lawsuits which have not a ghost of a chance of succeeding, because they all gave willingly. Plus, there will be no entity left to pay out reparations because some fortunate one or ones will get everything the man has built for pennies on the dollar.

Bad news, kiddie-kiddies, is that there is nothing you can do about this. It may be prudent for you to stem your losses by leaving now and putting your lives back together sooner rather than when your personal damages become insurmountable. It's going to sting a little to extricate yourself no matter what. The sooner you leave, the less the sting.

Anonymous said...

Marc:
What are insider spies saying about trend in HQ church attendance?
This would be a good indicator of [fading] membership/manpower dynamic.

Anonymous said...

Listening to Dave Pack is the same as listening to Satan. The more noise you listen to, the more chances that Dave and Satan get to fool you with endless clever arguments that wear you out. You should simply reject Dave as you should reject Satan.

Try it.

Get thee hence, Satan.

Get thee hence, Dave.

Ronco said...

DCP never had the truth because HWA never had the truth, period.

As for DCP's sermons, he proved to all the world what a lake loon he is when he delivered his 4.5 hr Twenty-First Century Apostle rubbish back around 05. The blathering sermon is still available to all on the RCG website.

Anonymous said...

I like to see us get our acronyms right!

HWA was O.G. (original gaslighter)

So RCG is the Restored Church of Gaslighting.

Decades ago, the question amongst "brethren" who were meeting one another for the first time used to be "How did you find out about the truth?" That was new rhetoric at that time, freshly coined by the brainwashers. Even if the package had been the truth, the most important aspect to truth is how you use it. It was weaponized by HWA's church, turning it into a tool of abuse, manipulation, and exploitation. That defeats the entire purpose of having truth in the first place. The truth is supposed to set you free. It still does the absolute opposite amongst the heirs of HWA's theology today.

Anonymous said...

I'd luv to know what the roll-up is at RCG HQ Congregation vs a year ago.
Anyone game to sneak in and take a peek?
Caution:
you may get busted and marched off the glorious First Kingdom campus

Anonymous said...

I've heard 60-75 poor souls left at the HQ Congregation.

Anonymous said...

The ones who attend/have moved to HQ are the hard core groupies!

Anonymous said...

What was the HQ congregation headcount like 5 yrs back?

Anonymous said...

There is no light in DCP. He was a fraud from start. Greed. Adulterer. Thief. Liar. Double minded in all his ways.

Isa 8:20
To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Luk 11:36
If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.