COG's Now Turning Pentecost Into Weekend Fun Times, But Still Cannot Figure Out What Day To Keep It On

Several of the Churches of God over the last 15 years or so have tried their best to rope members into spending money on "Weekends" tied into various holy days.  These fun weekends are supposed to unite the true body of believers. The next one coming up is Pentecost, which for normal Christians falls on May 20th.  But, the Church of God has to be different, so it has to have it on another day or two.  The Church of God can't figure out which one is actually right.  And, this does not even include the crazy dates James Malm and Bob Thiel claim is right!

This is just indicative of the sad state of affairs that the COG is now in.  For a church that claims to be restored first century Christianity and that it is the one and only TRUE church, it demonstrates that it is anything but.

The Pentecost Festival Weekend in 2018 will be held over 3 different weekends (owing to calendar differences): May 19-20, May 26-27, June 23-24.

On the weekend of May 18-20:

The Church of God International in Ontario, Canada, would like to welcome you to its first ever Pentecost Super Sabbath Weekend.

Everyone is invited to attend Pentecost Weekend with the Intercontinental Church of God at its usual site: Kentucky Dam Village State Resort Park, Land Between the Lakes.

The United Church of God has a new venue for 2018: “the beautiful Potawatomi Inn Resort in Pokagon State Park on Lake James, which is right off of I-69 in northeast Indiana. This resort is larger than the state park facilities in Brown County and McCormick’s Creek, with a full restaurant and a café and community gathering rooms for fellowship.”  Church of God News

Dave Pack Battles The Demonic Cult Within The Church

More tales from the dark side with Dave Pack to prove to RCG members he can work with demons.  Of course, he claims these people lied when told HQ that he "too judgmental and harsh" when they denied such a thing happening.  As usual, Dave took no responsibility and blamed it all on the "liberals."

Secret Cult—Inside the Church

The Packs stayed with a local family for 10 days until they found a home. Almost immediately, since no other ministers had yet arrived in the area, Mr. Pack received a call from a local member, who told him that her husband was involved with a thing called “personality demons.” The young elder was at first hesitant, but it was soon obvious that what she described was not a hoax, and the problem had been widespread.

After some investigating, it became clear that one of the three previous ministers transferred from the area had taught and deceived a great many into accepting a ridiculous and bizarre belief: that every human being is born possessed by a demon!—and that conversion is in fact a lifelong process of self-exorcism!

This was happening in God’s Church!

A large, but secret, group of people in the two congregations were literally on a first name basis with demons. All members of this inside-the-Church-cult believed that they each had their own “personality demon,” referred to in code as their “PD.” Individuals were taught to daily “call forth” a “good spirit” that God was said to have assigned to them from birth. This “good angel” then supposedly “helped” the person get rid of his or her “bad angel,” or “evil spirit.” These terribly misled people were actually talking to twodemon spirits, with one masquerading as an angel.

The apostle Paul warned the ancient Corinthians—and all Bible students today—that “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (II Cor. 11:14). This was certainly true of the “good angel,” said to be working with each member.

Every day, the members involved would “call forth” their “bad angels” to talk and reason with them. These masquerading spirits would claim, for example, “I’m your good angel. I’m here to help”—or “I’m your bad angel. You need to get rid of me.”

The misguided people then wrote down the chilling messages and instructions from these spirits in endless notebooks as a futile attempt to “exorcise” themselves. Those thought to be members of God’s Church were actually inviting demons into their lives, thinking they were “pushing them out”!

Because the previous associate pastor had been so influential and well-liked in the congregation, he was able to persuade many to accept these demonic beliefs—and possibly lead them to what could in fact become the very possession they thought they were escaping. This minister was actually trying to cast a spirit out of his own infant son!

“Somewhere in my basement I still have a pile of full notebooks of many who were involved in this terrible activity. That such a perverse practice could enter God’s Church, and in a relatively large way, was hard to believe. For me, it was a sobering example of how determined the devil is in his desire to infiltrate the Church and cause confusion and destruction among God’s people. And the pastor knew nothing of it.

“I later found myself counseling a young man in the group, while at my house, with my wife present, who began to speak to me in seven different voices, each spirit only too happy to give me its name. I cast all of the demons out, right there in my den, and found myself very thankful for training I had received just months earlier.

“This was more training of an extraordinary nature, something one could not imagine, never mind expect to be part of his field experience. It would take its place among the many unique elements of my training that I could only later understand for their collective value.”

Experimentation with Spirit World Downplayed

Once Mr. Pack had gathered sufficient information on the “PD” cult, he contacted his area coordinator, still living at Headquarters. The man planned to immediately come to investigate.

When he arrived, Mr. Pack had been on a scheduled vacation to Milwaukee. The offending minister came with him and downplayed Mr. Pack’s report. He carefully covered up the situation and his followers did the same. The investigating area coordinator believed that the matter had been terribly exaggerated. Mr. Pack was not there to challenge the investigation with the facts.

The men left almost as quickly as they had arrived. The area coordinator later phoned Mr. Pack and suggested that the matter had been overblown.

Mr. Pack could not believe his ears—a representative from Headquarters, his future boss, believed the discovery of a large secret cult operating within God’s Church was “overblown”?!

The young minister was unsure of how to handle a matter this serious. It was another trial on top of the original trial of discovering the cult.

First, Mr. Pack was determined to get more information in preparation for his supervisor’s arrival, so he asked more questions of the brethren involved who were willing to talk. Finally, one man’s wife turned over her husband’s “personality demon” notebook.

Relying on chain of command for the solution, he called his superior back.

“I told him, ‘You are about to inherit a serious problem when you settle in the area. This whole thing was swept under the rug. I have looked into this much more, and gathered many additional facts. A truly unbelievable situation is developing in this pastorate!’”

When the area supervisor arrived, he examined the writings—irrefutable evidence that a demon-influenced cult of about 110 people had been secretly thriving among Christ’s flock! The associate pastor was immediately removed from the ministry.

Incredibly, certain brethren involved pointed to Mr. Pack as the root of the problem, saying that he was “too judgmental and harsh”! Some actually believed the young minister should have been “more understanding” of the local brethren’s “difficulties”—in other words, they thought he should toleratedemons and a form of angel worship among God’s people!

Mr. Pack recalls that the situation revealed how many who attended the Church could not possibly have been part of the Body of Christ.

“I was aware that certain opposing views and rebellious attitudes had entered the Church during the 1974 rebellion. But now, over two years later, I saw that even though thousands of brethren and scores of ministers had left, there were still men in the ministry who privately held to a host of different kinds of ideas, many of them truly bizarre.

“Starting in the 1970s, the term ‘liberal’ was used in the Worldwide Church of God. The phrase really doesn’t refer to a specific behavior or attitude, but rather encompasses a variety of different attitudes and unacceptable conduct that had entered the Church, which all had the same beginning.

“Before the liberal years, nobody ever questioned Mr. Armstrong’s authority and expected to remain in the Church. Everyone recognized that he alone was the leader of the Church. Publicly disagreeing meant openly acknowledging a decision to leave the Church. This changed in the 1970s as people began to feel more comfortable expressing their disagreement in a variety of areas.

“In the Church, the word ‘liberal’ has always been synonymous with permissive, overly tolerant, lax views toward accepted Church doctrine and members’ behavior. Unlike churches of the world that view conduct and beliefs in shades of gray, the Church of God understood that God’s Law is black and white.

“It was simply unbelievable that these kinds of things could happen in the Church of God. It was only years after that I could really understand I was seeing things that were preparing me for a role that would come much later. It was as though each new assignment was adding important training that would not normally be experienced in the ‘average pastorate’ or ‘average ministry.’”

Dave Pack the Exorcist

Dave story of the time he was in the Cincinnati WCG that was to prepare him for future encounters with demonic forces:

The Spirit World

Mr. Pack experienced in Cincinnati the first installment of what would be another unique training opportunity that most young ministers seldom faced: confronting the frightening reality of the spirit world and demonic possession.

One day while visiting with Mr. Reyer, the pastor was leading a counseling session with a married woman, whose four young daughters were playing quietly in a nearby room.

At a certain moment in the visit, Mr. Reyer saw something strange in the look on her face. His assistant, inexperienced in such matters, listened intently, not discerning anything out of the ordinary.

Suddenly, the pastor looked the woman in the eyes and declared, “You’re a spirit, aren’t you? You are a foul, unclean spirit!”

Her demeanor changed instantly—she snarled at the men like a wild dog bearing its fangs, her 10 fingernails literally raised and pointing toward Mr. Reyer.

He said, “We have to leave right now. We need to go home and fast about this.”

Mr. Pack left the house in disbelief.

The pastor called Mr. Frank McCrady, the minister from Chicago who had trained him years earlier. This man was generally recognized among the ministry as the one with the most years of experience and most discernment with people troubled by demons. From these two trained and experienced men, Mr. Pack learned firsthand about dealing with the spirit world, lessons and experience that would be important training for his later ministry.

Several days after their encounter, Mr. Reyer and Mr. Pack met with the troubled husband and wife in the living room of the Packs’ home on the north side of Cincinnati. Just before Mr. Reyer commanded the spirit to stop troubling the woman, she began a high-pitched shriek that Mr. Pack described as “a screaming hawk diving on prey.”

Moments later, she shot up from her chair and seized her husband, locking her fingers around his throat in a death grip while taking him to the floor. Mr. Reyer grabbed one of her arms and Mr. Pack the other. At 6’3,” the pastor was a powerful man. Both he and the younger minister were in top physical condition—yet they struggled with the small woman.

While pulling the woman off her husband, Mr. Reyer had commanded, “In the name of Jesus Christ, come out!”

The evil spirit obeyed Christ’s authority immediately, and departed from the woman—and only then were these two strong men able to now easily lift her fingers from her husband’s throat.

She immediately dropped to the carpet as if dead. The men stared as she slowly started to move. As Mr. Reyer lifted her up, she said, “Oh, thank you so much.”

“How long has that spirit been in you?” he asked.

“Since I was seven years old.”

Mr. Pack stood amazed at the event he had just witnessed. This was a ministry-changing experience. The reality of the power and evil of the spirit world was forever seared into his mind. This training would be needed in the future.