Some Final Thoughts on August 2013 From a Restored State of Mind
I would like to take a moment to refine David C.
Pack's view on "Why would God command the rebuilding of the House (i.e. The
Temple of the 500's BCE) and not mean NOW?" which to him means during the month of August 2013 and culminating the last Sabbath of that month.
I think we can see that in the course of his
meanderings over his role in religion and the role of the Restored Church of God
in Ecclesiastical History, Dave has had to make the leap from the ACTUAL meaning
of Haggai and the ACTUAL people it was written to THEN, to making it mean what
it did not mean THEN to what it must mean NOW. Review his Screeds 1-25 if you wish to see how this miracle occurred.
Following is key argument and belief on why God MUST mean THIS August (Elul) and why it all MUST mean it as some vast
2500 year old ultimate fulfillment and meaning of what Haggai could never have
understood. After the huge leap of logic from Haggai's actual time in history to
Dave's perceived analogy of the real meaning of it all, you can make Haggai
easily mean what it never meant by analogy to many churches, ministers and
theological needs of today. Dave simply has woven his own tale and I suppose
actually believes it or he would not risk what is about to come upon his
credibility as "one who knows."
I will plainly state that Dave Pack is terribly
wrong in how he has looked at Haggai's message to the literal remnant
back then. By his own reasonings of how it must apply to him,
his Restored Church of God and the WCG experience in the Wild World of Religion,
the very book of Haggai must apply then and not today unless you just wish to
make it one big analogy. I don't think Dave is dealing with analogies. But no
matter. The entire Book, including the seeming "Wonderful World Tomorrow"
verses which any good COG type would take as Second Coming and Christian Jesus
predictive has NOTHING to do with the Church of God views or what thousands of
years later became Christianity which had a very bad habit of mining the Old
Testament to explain what they wished to express and needed to define in the New Testament.
Please get this.
The reason many Old Testament
scriptures seem to be so amazingly accurate and predictive of Jesus, his life
and death is because the New Testament stories of Jesus and the many proofs of
who he was to Christians are mined out of the Old Testament scriptures for the
very purpose of telling a story that no one actually or literally knew what or when happened. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.(Occam's Razor) They are not mystical predictions of the distant future. They were written for the people then, addressing the problems in their culture and lives then and not today. **
For
example:
The birth narratives of Jesus were written using
the Old Testament to tell the story of Jesus birth which no one actually knew
how it came about much less when or where. They were written to address the "then" problem and accusation that Jesus was a bastard and born of fornication. There are four "loose women" in one geneology, Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba and Ruth to send the message that if God could use those women, get off Mary's back. John 6 thru 8 is a reflection of this rancorous issue. One would think Sarah, Rebeccah, Leah, Rachel or Deborah might have gotten a bit more press.
Matthew never read Luke's story and Luke never read Matthew's. They cannot be the same story. "Matthew" is the master of this in
his birth story where he quotes and OT passage as proof of his NT story when in
fact he used the OT passage to write the NT in the first place.. Not only that but he
misquotes and misinterprets (by our standards) the OT to tell that story. In short, like Dave,
"Matthew" (the names were added to anonymous Gospels a hundred years later)
makes scripture mean what it never meant. That may be acceptable to some, but it
is not to myself and today we would call it fudging the facts and making up
tales. Dave is fudging the facts big time and making up tales. While Matthew did it, he knew he was doing it. Dave is not in the "I know it is just an analogy and a form of Midrashic writing." I am sure he does not know what Midrashic Writing is.
On the other end of Jesus life story, Psalm 22 is
not predictive of what Jesus would say when he was dying, (It's not talking
about Jesus to begin with) but rather was used to tell the story of what the NT
authors imagined Jesus would have said dying. It was a common practice and is
also the reason you have great orations in the NT that no one could possibly
have written down at the time or at least anywhere near accurately. "John's"
Gospel has Jesus making great speeches from John 13-17 because that is what he
imagined Jesus would say doctrinally. Obviously no other Gospel writer or Paul
ever hear of these words of Jesus.
Ever wonder, with all the disciples sleeping and
Jesus alone and a distance away pouring out his private prayer to God over his
impending death, exactly who and how someone found out exactly what Jesus said
in his mind to God? It is what a writer imagined Jesus would have said in such
a time as that. It was ok to write stories this way then. Today, not so much
without at least telling the reader what you have done. If you don't, you end
up on Oprah apologizing.
Unwittingly, Dave Pack is doing the same thing.
The difference is that Dave actually sees the Bible and the Book of Haggai
speaking of him and it was written to speak of him. He does not believe he is
any analogy nor his position analogous to Joshua the High Priest. He believes
he is the true intended meaning of the old shallow meaning of the original
Haggai back then. The NT writers KNEW they were mining the OT writings to
explain their NT Jesus, doctrine and experience. It's what they did when they
did not literally know Jesus birth, life or death circumstances. It's why there
are so may contradictions in the Gospel accounts and copying of each other's
writings. Matthew is 94% copied from Mark and Luke copies almost half of Mark
for his Gospel. Copying is not eyewitness accounting. It is not identical
experiences. It is copying. No Gospel writer ever actually saw anything he was writing about. No writer says, "And then Jesus and I went to Galilee," or "And then as Jesus and I were talking, the Romans showed up really angry and demanding to know which of us was Jesus."
Dave Pack is also mining the OT to explain his
view of himself and RCG but to Dave, IT IS NOT KNOWN TO HIM THAT HE IS DOING
THIS. HE REALLY BELIEVES THE OT HAGGAI LITERALLY POINTED TO HWA AND NOW POINTS
TO HIM. This is empty headed theology. This is insane. The Book of Haggai does not and
never could point to a Dave Pack of Haggai's future. It was meant for THEN by
Dave's own arguments. Why would God speak so plainly THEN to THOSE folk of 500
BCE if God did not mean THEN. Dave's argument for Haggai today is bogus,
concocted and addle headed by his own arguments. As I noted, he can make any
analogy he wants, but he is not making an analogy from all that I can tell.
Notice his core reasonings on
this:
2) Directly related, why (or how) would God
command the remnant to “Go…build the House!” (
Hag. 1:8)—
but not mean NOW? How could He mean some undetermined future
year? Why would God tell them (twice) to “consider their
ways”—but not mean that
they should do this
now? Try to imagine God saying, “Consider your ways, but take
your time. There’s no hurry. In fact, take years to think it over—even though
you have been out of My Church
for 20 years! You
don’t have to DO anything now.”
3) Also related, if God waited 2,500 years to reveal the prophecy’s meaning
(3,000 years when various related much older Psalms are considered), is not His waiting done? Does His revealing it not signal that He
has reached the time to fulfill it rather than having reached a point one, two
or three years out?
17) Recall Haggai 1:13: “Then spoke Haggai the Lord’s messenger in the Lord’s message unto the people…” Haggai is the
messenger to God’s people, with what is an all-important message from
God. Would not God make clear in such a unique message He describes as “the Lord’s message
unto His people” the correct date for action? What kind of message would it be
if people did not know WHEN TO CARRY IT OUT?"
But now notice that the actual book of Haggai
from start to finish is speaking to them THEN. So by Dave's proof texting and
reasonings, it really did only mean then because why would God tell those folk
all that and mean it was all for later, years down the road and not really for
them ultimately. There is NO connecting between the THEN of Haggai and the NOW
of Dave Pack. Analogy maybe. Knock yourself out. But any whacked out Baptist
minister who saw his church falling apart or the Baptist Convention straying
from the faith once delivered could also make this a great sermon ANALOGY. He'd
be scorned out of existence if he meant that he was literally the fulfillment of
Haggai. I suppose they don't call it an anal-logy for nothing. It simply
means and literally so, "a study of the anus"
A few obvious reads of Haggai meaning THEM
not the current WCG/COG debacle and the original Zerubbabel and Joshua and not
HWA and Dave Pack.
Haggai 1:
This is what the Lord Almighty
says: “These people
say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’”
3 Then
the word of the Lord came through the prophet
Haggai:
4 “Is it a
time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled
houses,
while this house remains a ruin?”
5 Now
this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful
thought
to your ways...
12... Then Zerubbabel
son of Shealtiel, Joshua son of
Jozadak, the high priest, and the whole remnant
of the people obeyed
the voice of the Lord their God and the message of the
prophet Haggai, because the Lord their God had sent him. And the
people feared
the Lord.
13 Then Haggai,
the Lord’s
messenger,
gave this message of the Lord to the
people: “I am with
you,” declares the Lord. 14 So the Lord stirred up
the spirit of Zerubbabel
son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua son of
Jozadak,
the high priest, and the spirit of the whole remnant
of the people. They came and began to work on the house of the Lord Almighty, their
God, 15 on the twenty-fourth day of
the sixth month.
Haggai 2:
6 “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while
I will once more shake the heavens and the earth,
the sea and the dry land. 7 I will shake all nations, and what is desired
by all nations will come, and I will fill this house
with glory,’
says the Lord
Almighty. 8 ‘The silver is mine and the gold
is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty. 9 ‘The glory
of this present house
will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘And in
this place I will grant peace,’
declares the Lord
Almighty.”
I know we get so used to seeing the
NT in the OT and I have explained why. I know it is so easy to take OT Messianic
hopes in the Jewish mode as Second Coming , Jesus hopes in the NT. It is near
impossible for a Church goer today of denomination to understand that Isaiah 53
is not about Jesus. It is a THEN analogy about Israel and may actually be
Isaiah writing about his own impressions of himself trying to get to the Israel
of then and his not so warm welcome in doing so. Too much information I know.
So to the point. Dave Pack arguing
that all these things MUST mean HIM and MUST mean NOW because why would God
reveal all these things to HIM NOW and not do them NOW, this year, this August,
this next week because this date is in the book of Haggai, are MISGUIDED,
MISUNDERSTOOD, MISINTERPRETED and MISTAKEN.
One final example. When the Book of Revelation says, "To show unto his servants what must soon take place," and "behold I come quickly," those were the intent of the author for those folk then under that which they were going through then. We read those words today as if they were written three days ago instead of to others two thousand years ago for reasons and in circumstances that are not ours today. It is very easy to read the NT that way and we do it all the time. It may be a mistake and the reason others have had to add concepts to the scripture and reexplain what "soon" and "shortly" must mean for us today. The apologetic was "for a day with the lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day." People way back in the day were noticing (not scoffing..that's the authors definition) that things are not working out as advertised. The author of II Peter accused them of accusing God of slackness concerning promises. The answer was typical of nice hopes gone south for the time being. "God does not see as you see." "There is a way that seems right unto a man but the way thereof ends in death." "The wisdom of man is foolishness with God." and "My ways are not your ways saith the Eternal." It's a very common and oft used way of saying "oops, seems not to be unfolding as we had taught."
The next question will be just how
will he handle this? Will be God be "giving us more time!" Will there have
been wiggle room for "I never said it was me," or "Then it must be next year?"
Dave has reasoned way too much for this year to ever get away with that. Will
it be swept under the rug of proof texting gone haywire? Will it become
"Spiiiiiiritual" as Ron Weinland blamed the folk for misunderstanding? Will it
revert to "I meant it as an analogy!" Who knows... But I do know, I really
do, and believe with all my unbelieving heart that nothing of what Dave Pack has
written about this topic will come to pass as Dave demands that it must. Dave
Pack is not really an Apostle anymore than Bob Thiel is a Prophet or James Malm
a Theologian. These men are unqualified by any standard to tell the who, what,
where, when, why and how of theology and all things Bible. These are men who
read nothing outside their own views for consideration and members who consider
mere booklets on topics to be the be all and end all of understanding the
Bible. It is sad to me and dangerous for those so inclined.
That wraps up my views of Dave Pack
as spoken of through the Prophet Haggai. Time is short and it remains that
those who are entranced and mesmerized by this kind of Church and theological
and spiritual leadership wake up and take charge of their own minds in these
matters. The individual life experience and journey is not meant to be one
where you give yourself over to see the world and all things it can present to
you through the five senses of another. You don't need to filter your religious
world through the eyes of anyone else who you think has more insight and more
understanding than you could ever have.
I have nothing against Dave Pack personally. Another time, another circumstance and we might be able to actually "reason together," but Dave's reasoning really means agreeing with him which I never could. I wish the RCG/COG "lurkers" here
the very best on this whacky journey your are being lead on. I/We care about
you because we have learned to care about ourselves first again after our own
experiences. Time now is short...for Dave Pack and the Restored Church of God.
We are seeing what Ron Weinland's Church and people are doing in response to
Ron's personal machinations. Shortly we shall see what the people of the Pack's
reactions will be to his. I am sorry for the theological lesson the members of RCG are about to learn as if it could not have been learned from others like Ron Weinland, but Earth School is like that...
**Please understand I realize fully that this view of scripture is my own based on my own years of study and considerations of past views. It is not my intent to offend or confuse anyone on this topic.
Contact Dennis at DennisCDiehl@aol.com
