Dave Pack Carries His Bible In His Head While Admitting He Can Be A Sadist To His Masochistic Lap Poodle Ministers

Did anyone ever tell us that Dave has mental health issues?

Dave Pack said the following in his recent sermon (from an anonymous source):

(Context: HWA's vision was getting so bad that he couldn't see his Bible during sermons, so just used what was in his head. DCP states that people aren't accustomed to that.)

"Because we're not going to pull out our Bibles much today, I'm going to…. We will later in the sermon, but not right away. But brethren listened in services in the synagogues when Paul would go. They didn't have a Bible they could take with them for centuries upon centuries and more after that. They sat there, and they listened. And they learned, as the word was preached to them.

Now, how many scrolls could Paul or Peter or others take to the synagogue or into a Sabbath service? You know, you walk up to a pulpit and I take this, what did they carry with them? They may have carried some things, maybe written out on a parchment, but they probably carried an awful lot in their head. I carry the Bible in my head in many ways that probably, uh, the average person who's newer in the faith and doesn't deal with it as much as I do maybe couldn't understand. Um, but uh, the Bible actually slows me down. I can explode through long strings of scriptures in my mind and put things together without the Bible, so, um, I hope you'll understand that.

And if you're older in the faith, you probably do that to some degree yourself. The two men I work with are the same, um. And, uh, I feel sometimes like a sadist when I'm working with them, 'cause we have to work so fast. And fortunately, God rewarded me with two assistants who are masochists, and, uh, so it works very well, works very well, but it is a quite a dynamic. You know, what's that old joke? What did the, what did the uh, the, the masochist say to the sadist when he met him? The masochist said, “Hit me, hit me!” And the sadist said, “No.” That was a way to be sadistic don't give ‘em what they want. Anyway, I thought that was a good joke when I heard it – I was ten years old and, and I've been telling it ever since. Obviously you can see that.

 

 

Gerald Weston: LCG Members Forgetting They Will Soon Be God's Ruling In The Kingdom of God

 

It's another week in the Living Church of God and its members have screwed up once more. This time they are taking for granted that they have been called to send in money  to "do a work". After all, the fields are ripe for harvest" and LCG needs to swoop in and collect them before they go to Bob Thiel or some other COG group gets them.

Weston has been so well trained in the spinning of scriptures to fit Herbert's teachings about the kingdom of God that he failed to see that most Christians also know about it. Herb liked to tell us that Christians were only concerned about getting to heaven and not about this earth. However, a large percentage of Christians know full well what the kingdom of God is and most believe that it is their job as the church to bring that Kingdom of God to earth in this present age, to give people foretaste of that heavenly kingdom, one person at a time. They are all about bringing peace and grace to others, while COG leaders and ministers sit and cluck on about how great they are, how many people watch their programs and read their magazines, and how special they are in God's sight and yet do NOTHING for those around them.

Weston, like all COG leaders, love to spout numbers as if that is pleasing to God. Numbers can be and are manipulated to mean anything they want. It does not make any difference if 3,000, 4,500, 5,000. or 6,000 people "watched" one of their broadcasts or even responded. Weston wants you to believe that at least 18,000 new people have responded to their programs. Where are the numbers of those tens of thousands of people over the year that have actually become LCG members?  What are the numbers that became "co-workers"? What are the numbers of newly baptized people have they taken in who never had any contact with an Armstrongite theology? Those numbers could be counted on two hands.

Greetings from Charlotte, 

This week’s telecast is by Mr. Wallace Smith, “Just What Is the Kingdom of God?” It is so easy to take for granted this wonderful truth God has opened our minds to understand, whether we are new in the Body of Christ or whether we have been around for many years. I remember that when I first came to this knowledge, I saw it as simply changing the location of our eventual reward from heaven to earth. But the difference between the concept the world has of going to heaven and the world-ruling Family of God into which we may be born as sons and daughters of God—what we call the Kingdom of God—is as great as east is far from west. However, the longer we are the Church the easier it is for us to take this wonderful truth for granted. It is also easy to take for granted that we have been called now to do a Work, yet it has been exciting to see the progress in the Work over this turbulent year. Even this month, Mr. Cristian Orrego and Mr. Peter Nathan report that new groups are coming with us in Mexico and Africa. Last Sunday we learned that income is up in Jamaica, one more of many of our offices around the world where we see this trend. At the beginning of 2020, a good week saw over 3,000 responses to the telecast. Today, a good week is over 4,500 responses, and some programs have drawn more than 5,000 and one over 6,000. We have much to thank God for and much not to take for granted.—Gerald Weston

 

Dave Pack, the Church of God and Willful Ignorance

 

Banned by HWA recently posted some commentary on a video produced by Dave Pack which purports to definitively answer the question: Does God Exist? In fact, Mr. Pack's video is only one of many offerings from the ACOG's on this topic - The founder of the movement, Herbert W Armstrong was the first of this tribe to discourse on the subject.

The problem with these offerings is that they almost always rely on false science - bits and pieces of real science which ignore anything that might contradict the point they are trying to make. This is often called confirmation bias in the real world. What is confirmation bias? According to Psychology Today, "Once we have formed a view, we embrace information that confirms that view while ignoring, or rejecting, information that casts doubt on it. Confirmation bias suggests that we don’t perceive circumstances objectively. We pick out those bits of data that make us feel good because they confirm our prejudices. Thus, we may become prisoners of our assumptions."

This phenomenon is closely related to the concept of willful ignorance. In defining the term, Urban Dictionary tells us: "The practice or act of intentional and blatant avoidance, disregard or disagreement with facts, empirical evidence and well-founded arguments because they oppose or contradict your own existing personal beliefs. This practice is most commonly found in the political or religious ideologies of 'conservative' Americans. Many times it is practiced due to laziness--people not wanting to have to do the work to rethink their opinions, the fear of the unknown, the fear of being wrong, or sometimes simply close-mindedness." In this connection, it is interesting to note that the author of the Second Epistle of Peter denigrated those who are "willingly" ignorant (see II Peter 3:5).

However, this kind of ignorance is not the exclusive property of Armstrongites or Christians in general. Unfortunately, it also very often afflicts the atheists and intellectuals who are fond of pointing out the cognitive dissonance and outright hypocrisy of their religious counterparts! Very often, these folks ridicule or dismiss the concept of FAITH (which should be the real basis of the true Christian's belief in things Divine).

And most students of the Bible know that the best definition of faith is found in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. As with many things biblical, however, the flowery old King James English sometimes gets in the way of comprehending the real import of what is being said. Please allow me to paraphrase those critical first three verses of the chapter: "Faith demonstrates the reality which underscores our hope - it is our EVIDENCE for the things that we cannot perceive or evaluate by the exercising of our human senses. Our forbearers shined through the expression of their faith (and we should not devalue their contributions to our understanding of these things). Faith is our tool for understanding that God created everything out of things which are also not readily perceived through our five human senses - it allows us to conclude that God is the source of all things without having all of the physical evidence at our disposal to reach that conclusion based entirely on our own observations." (see Hebrews 11:1-3)

It makes me sad when folks attempt to negate or dismiss things which they don't understand (and don't demonstrate any inclination/desire/willingness to understand). Unfortunately, most of us reach conclusions about things based on varying degrees of research and consideration (often little to none), and then we are finished with it. We have proven our belief(s) to our satisfaction, and everyone else be damned! The problem with this should be obvious to everyone. When we are no longer willing to explore and learn, when we close ourselves off to the possibility that others may be right (and we may be wrong), we have taken the path of willful ignorance. Is it really so terrifying to admit that we don't know something? Is God finite or infinite? Is God contained? Is God finished? What is the origin of our ability to learn? Can God learn? Can God grow? Is ignorance bliss? What do you think?

Lonnie Hendrix/Miller Jones