We are just hours now from the awesome yearly "Fruits Report" from Apostle Dave Pack. "By their fruits you shall know them" is probably one of the overused cliche in COGdom. The Church and Grand Master with the biggest fruits basket wins. Of course the Third Reich had incredible "Fruits" as well in the years leading up to the rot and I think we all are wise enough to know that looking at "fruits" of any institution (good word for RCG etc) or company is a slippery slope of relativity. The military can boast amazing progress as can the porn industry. Cigar companies can prove their worth by their statistics and sales. Drug dealers can claim awesome fruits from selling. I mean man...look at my stuff!
Fruit can be deceiving
It is really easy to spend the hard earned monies of others on one's own view of themselves, their importance and "visionary thinking." It's easy, when one claims some kind of weird financial authority over others to buy yourself The Cup of Elijah Steuben Crystal for your office and think somehow that is the fruit of your labor or you even need the damn thing. Having others, who probably already have given more than they should work on pet projects whether it be a "Church Home" or a brand spanking new redo of an old failed college, volunteer their skill to save money is not "fruit." It's forced labor with consequences in subtle and not so subtle forms should one say no.
God raises up Ambassador # 3 ?
Students help rebuild "God's College" ?
Using the Bible to command unreasonable giving to unreasonable men is unreasonable. Anyone without a conscience can pepper people with Bible quotes about "giving" and tithing and claim the all powerful and all motivating "God says..." to get it done well. It's a very old conscious or unconscious way of getting what some want from the brethren. Few realize no God said that. Priests say that and write it and enforce it. Gods don't really need money. God needs no college, no basketball teams, no nice lawns or jets. God certainly needs no Steuben or mahogany trim. Men need that. It's only when the man thinks he speaks for God that he can get away with having it. A God with Good News doesn't even need middlemen if they would just show up themselves and inform humanity of His/Her plan and rewards, but alas, we're stuck with salesmen who all have different forms of the product to sell. Each of course being the true product with all the necessary and true attachments . "It's not religion. It's the TRUTH," is all too often like saying, "It's not a vacuum cleaner! It's a cleaning system." Uh huh....and it costs how much?
I had a brother in law whose family was a very long time WCG family experience the WCG Treasurer walk past him while he was on the gardening crew and say..."Just think, if it wasn't for me, you'd not have a job." The student said nothing but "And just think...if it wasn't for my parents, you'd not have yours" came my mind. God was gracious to that treasurer by picking the wrong student to be stupid to. He could have said the same thing in spades because of all the sacrifice his family had made over decades to WCG.
Make no mistake. The Flurrys, Packs, Weinlands and all others who make merchandise of people are not spending "God's money" to dazzle you with the fruits of "God's work" under their leadership. They are spending your money and unearned at that. Being told to send it in, cough it up, give til it hurts, and all the utter foolishness and hubris we have seen and heard from an Apostle Dave Pack, for example, is ludicrous.
Please recall how David C Pack gets paid for his hard work. Hardly the stuff of "God loves a cheerful giver." Dave reads that "threatened", "badgered", "guilted and shamed", "non-thinking" giver.
"Yeah, I know, one or two can leave and say, 'Hey, you stopped preaching and started meddling, now you're messing with my goods here on earth' "
"First Timothy 6 verse 17...'Charge them that are rich in this world'...If you were born in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, then you're rich"
"If you hold those riches, I'm telling you, you trust in them"
No...I went to the ant and learned to save
"Go get a big chunk out of your home. And put your money where your mouth is and send it here. And I'm not talking about one, two, three thousand either. How about ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, or one hundred thousand dollars? Go do it."
"Wives, you can be independent in this. You have 1/2 the worth of whatever you have in your house.
I'm officially telling you this...Wives, legally you have the 1/2 the funds. What are you going to do about it?...Husbands...'well, my wife is not in the church'...tell her...'you don't have a voice woman' "
So, a RCG woman has 1/2 the assets to send Dave. A non-RCG woman just needs to be told to shut up...
"Go get those assets and get them here"
"Don't sit on vast resources that we can use now"
"I" can use them now
"We are not a splinter"
Correct. You are a sliver with a big mouth
"I do not covet your silver or gold...the gold and silver is God's and He will get it someway"
Is that a threat? He will get it someway? Is your God trying to figure this out and can't?
"We do not have the funds...plans...bookstores...We need to redesign our website...We need many hundreds of thousands of dollars to arrive at God's headquarters soon...the timing is now"
Oh that timing thing again! But the giving is "on" right?
"This is different...ask Him for the faith to liquidate certain assets and give it to the work"
"I'll say it again, we are talking about liquidating existing assets...it all belongs to God and the brethren"
Well I am a brethren so I'll just keep my part in the bank.
"We have a lot of plans so big going on in this office it would cause just this room to to rock and gyrate if you knew what was going on. We just need a lot of money and we need it post haste...I would give more if I had it"
So would I, but I don't, so end of story...
"Herbert Armstrong wrote an article...'Prepare to greatly reduce your standard of living'...What he wrote by far, is more for us now than it was then... its all going to be taken away from us anyway brethren"
"There will be follow-up sermons. Time to bring in related points"
Oh I am sure.
"Let us know how much you plan to send and when you plan to send it...You must be willing to communicate... If you do need to counsel, please do that...If you are not ready to distribute what you have...you don't believe the flow of prophecy"
That flow of prophecy kinda screwed you up in 2013 didn't it?
"This is announcing the last blast, the clarion call as it were, to finish the work...Whether it is 4,5,7, 9 years to go, God knows...This is liquidating assets...I have the authority to tell you to do it... I have the moral and spiritual, and ecclesiastical authority to tell you to do what I have also done"
The hell you do...
"Get it now when it requires faith... when you are dead you don't need it... if you named us in your wills, it can take us months or years to get it"
Correct, and I am not dead yet so I need it....what stupid kind of reasoning is this? Sounds Haggai-esque
"The wives in the faith will say give everything you can...We don't have the luxury of waiting years...today, leaving everything in your will simply doesn't work"
Great! I won't do it then.
"Now you just have a second mortgage... and frankly we flee before most of it ever becomes due"
"...some may think that they want to tap their 401k--maybe you want to let us know that... why would you want to tell us? We are starting to prepare a budget now, the needs are now...it would be nice to know now"
Call your bank and ask if this is ok.....
"Think big...Pull big triggers"
"There is only two positions you can take regarding all that I have mentioned, only two, there is no middle ground. You're either going to yield, to submit and to follow, the clarion call that the time is now or you're not. And postponing a decision is deciding not to do it...It's saying I'm going to wait until it gets closer because it is not there yet...Don't say that I'm going to wait until it gets closer, when I can see...The decision is that my treasure stays on earth or I goes to heaven. Period. I will not lay up for times to come or I will. And this is the real test of Laodicea... either hold on to your assets... or give it...God is in this decision, no question. Testing the church's faith"
"We live in the most materialistic age in the history of the world. People trust in physical things. They trust in bank accounts...If you have excess and don't need it, those verses mean you...That's the Laodicean attitude...Put your money where your mouth is...Empty your assets"
Getting kinda rude there aren't you Dave?
"There is only one place He works...Where the...work is...that's where God is working...one elder commented here at headquarters, if people can't be motivated by a clarion call to finish the work such as this, why will those same people somehow believe the internal signal given to the church of the 1335? Why would they believe it?"
"This is the Laodicean age...Be careful that you don't tell us how to spend your assets... It belongs to God.. You don't tell God or His servants how to spend it"
You be careful Dave....That kind of talk is going to arouse the Attorney General of Ohio
"Your faith is being tested. Think about that"
"We will all fast on November 17th...I have to...ask you for a very special financial sacrifice for God's work"
"The purposes of the fast...(a). To fast for God's intervention...(b).Fast for personal faith and courage to follow what I am asking you to do...(c). Fast for personal strength...(d)...Fast for faith and courage in others with more than you to give...Go get a big chunk out of your house...their assets, IRAs, and pension funds...(e). Ask God to move specific properties...that they have told us they want to sell. Pray that these properties move...that is part of what this fast is about"
The Clarion Call
David C Pack
Truly in the history of the Churches of God there has never been a more obscene sermon given. Why it did not make the Wadsworth Whatever or the Akron Beacon Journal is beyond me. It's not funny. It's not interesting thinking. It's not what the Bible says. It's not a man earning his keep and reaping the fruits of his labor. It's stealing and lying. It's motivation by shame, fear and guilt which is the Holy Trinity of religion that has less than your best interest in mind. True spirituality costs nothing because it is an inside job. It flows from inside the person outward. Religion is what others pour into your head. It is "Organized" and has "goals" that must be met. It has corporate fruits to produce to prove its worth. It tells you what to believe , when to show up to believe it and how much to give to keep the show on the road. And it is insane.
Custom Built Gyration Chairs for Restored Church of God Headquarters
(paid for by the generous donations of its membership worldwide)
So hold on to your seats. Tomorrow we all will be gyrating in them and in absolute awe over the awesome fruits of brought forth by Dave Pack who thinks, mistakenly, a little more highly of himself as he ought to think and does it spending the money of others that has been extorted from them by threat, false claims and a very skewed view of what the Bible, it's history and politic actually say. Making something mean what it never meant and demanding to be paid for it is stealing and a mockery of true spirituality and religion whatever one's views might be personally on such topics in life.
The Third Reich had awesome fruits too...until it didn't. So did Herbert W Armstrong for a time and we all know how that worked out.
