First of all let me say I tried. I really tried. After 1 hour and fifty eight minutes I concluded that if there is a God who is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth and if he is using Dave Pack to clearly explain his plan, then that God is a nutcase and incapable of communicating.
I won't pretend to be able to repeat Dave's ever changing understanding. It gave me a headache. I imagine if you asked the average RCG member to explain what the hell Dave just said, they would be unable to do so. Not sure his ministry would fare much better. They also would know they believe it no matter.
First of all, Dave is putting a lot of eggs into this one basket of this feast. Christ may come at the end of this feast, which would be today I believe. If not, then "we have another year" because Dave has concluded it has to be one way now and not the other he used to think. I suspect shortly Dave will conclude "God is giving us more time" and "We" never saw this when I first came to understand this but now, "I" do. Dave always blames the group for what they didn't understand but takes the credit for what he comes to understand and explain.
Dave reminds the congregation that these are "fascinating things, no one ever understood". Dave says this a lot and has through the years of not understanding it himself. "I doubt you have ever heard anything along that line" is another favorite.
With Dave, it's always spectacular and never before understood until he utters it. It is also more to backtrack on somewhere down the road because "we", not "he" didn't see something clearly but now of course, "I do". In this sermon, Dave notes that "I only recently began to put this together."
Got news for you Dave. Wandering all over the Old Testament and jumping around in the New is not "putting this all together." It was a grand exercise in making the prophets mean what they never meant as well as the Gospels, the Epistles and the Church letters. And let's not forget making the failed prophecy of the Book of Revelation mean what it never meant. He's great at that! Actually without the Book of Revelation, the Churches of God would have no hook with which to catch their fish.
One of the first things he comes up with is that there is a precedence in the Old Testament for keeping the Feast an extra seven days and there is. My first thought is that he is going to declare this a double feast if his Jesus does not come on the last day of this normal single eight day cycle. We'll see.
" "They kept a double feast...there is a precedence in a time of great joy....let's just double this up".
I can almost feel the audience squirming.
"But if you want to go to, under certain circumstances.......God can want that." (speaking of longer feast)
Honestly, the rest of this dirge is theological bullshit. He spends most of the sermon on never before understood that the House that God is building is not literal and is not just the church. It includes everyone on Earth. (If I understood it and I'm not sure I had the patience to try).
Then he shows how "The Man of Sin" operates in "HIS Season" which implies that there is a group just before this that are not a part of "His Season" but their own season, which of course is the Feast Season and specifically, maybe this one. If the Man of Sin had a season then there had to be one before "His" and that would be "Ours". All very stupid and mental gymnastics worthy only of the mentally ill. I have sat in mental hospitals with people wanting to tell me all about the Bible and what they have seen that no one else does. This is Dave in spades.
Dave notes as well that "this should be real clear". Clear as mud, as they say.
Dave at one points notes that he is going to "inoculate you" but I would say it is more of an indoctrination than an inoculation. A virus does not inoculate you from itself. It can infect, infest and overwhelm you, however. Then you get sick.
Then to wrap it up (this is day four of the FOT), he weaves the fallen away ministers into the mix. Evil bastards all. He wonders if the three he lost at the beginning of the Feast Days this year aren't , in some way, a type of the Three Shepherds that will ....oh I forget what they do or do, but it is all something to "think about brethren."
Years ago someone told me that Dave pack was incredibly intelligent. I replied that he is not if you listen to what he believes, but rather that he seems clever. But alas, Dave is not even clever. He is God-Haunted, delusional and piously convicted but short on an actual and real theological education. Dave is master at making the Bible mean what it never meant, never could mean and won't ever mean.
RCG is doomed to both implode and explode. His campus will eventually be sold to either an addiction and crisis center or be plowed back under and returned to growing corn, which if you look at this kind of theology is not far from corn to begin with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Corn
Check out the "Plot"
I see analogies :)
