Dave Pack Explains How To Know When You Have Escaped

Now I said last week that there’s another great question we needed to answer, and before I go back into more about the Man of Sin, I’d like to take you to that question. How will we know we escaped? You’ve arrived at a destination…Blessed, or happy, is he that waits and comes to the 1,335. (Dan. 12:12). To come to it, you’d have to know you did. I use the analogy of driving to Los Angeles from New York. You can’t head out to L.A. without a map. Without any picture of Los Angeles, you have no idea where it is or what it is…what it looks like when you get there. So you just sort of takeoff. Somebody says, “You know what? Go west.” Well, you could wind up in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, San Diego, or you could wind up at any city in the West that’s short of Los Angeles. You know, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver or Salt Lake City. You just don’t get there. Because you don’t know what Los Angeles looks like, you won’t know if you’re there.

And you’re with other people in the car…“Does anybody know if we’re in Los Angeles?”—“No?”—“Well, no, somebody said this is Des Moines, Iowa.”—“Okay, well…I don’t know where that is either, but I guess…” How would you plan a trip to Los Angeles without knowing whether you arrived? You’d have to know what Los Angeles looked like, where it was, what it meant…how to know your journey was over, and that’d be no matter where you started from, you see? You could take the analogy as, no matter where you lived in the world, not just if you’re starting from Los Angeles, because God’s people are all over the world. How do we know we got to L.A., if L.A. is “escape” at the 1,335?

Let’s imagine we get to the 1,335, but we don’t know that we did…And maybe somebody has a hunch we did…and we’re all sitting in a circle. “Well, it said we’d be happy…Everybody feel happy? Everybody feel happy? Anybody not? Nobody’s not happy, are they? Oh, they’re all happy. Okay…Well, who feels like an escapee? Does anybody feel like an escapee? Who feels like we waited long enough? Anybody feel…Raise your hands, we waited long enough…” Does anybody think it could be like that? Where you wouldn’t absolutely know. You’re watching and praying always to escape, but you can’t really know if you did.

Dave Pack: When We Escape We Will Be Given Hats So That The World Knows We Are Escaping

Now I would suggest there’s the possibility…Along with something else I’m going to show you…there may actually be different clothing we wear. One of two things that suggests we’re different people…“Keep your hands off of them.” Because if you escaped, you escaped. There has to be some knowledge to others you escaped. Cain was marked so that people wouldn’t kill him. I mean, we can say he deserved to die; shouldn’t have escaped. But God didn’t want him to die, so God marked him in a way that people would leave him alone. What might He do with us?

One possible thing, to just speculate and think about, since this is not the pure white garments of salvation and linen, it’s just a change. It’s saying that the way God views this man’s life and his record—the same with you—is it’s gone from him. Remember, if you’re deemed entirely deserving—all of you—then you escape at that point, not at the time of salvation. So that’s what the change of garments has to mean, and he puts on a mitre. He doesn’t put on a crown or a tiara. A mitre—a turban. It signifies something has changed. It’s sort of like an interim step between the way we are now, and the way we will be when we receive salvation—which is another interim step before resplendence.

“And set a fair mitre on his head…[“Clean” is what it means—just clean; clean and pure. It doesn’t say white, just clean and pure.]…So they set a fair mitre on his head…[Who’s “they?” It’s angels there.]…and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the LORD stood by. And [that angel] the angel of the LORD protested unto Joshua, saying…[Now, I’ve explained that this does not mean “protested.” It can mean that, but essentially, it’s most likely meaning, and there…You can go study the word; it’s fascinating…it’s more like an announcement, or a pronouncement; not protesting to him.]…The angel the LORD [announced] unto Joshua saying...