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...

United Church of God Statement On Rod Meredith's Death

United Church of God released a statement on Roderick C Meredith's death and many LCG members are noting how the UCG statement is far more meaningful than Gerald Weston's own statement about Meredith's death.

Death of Long-Time Minister Roderick C. Meredith

Statement concerning the death of long-time minister Roderick C. Meredith, presiding evangelist of the Living Church of God. 

[MAY 19, 2017—CINCINNATI, OHIO] As president of the United Church of God, an International Association (UCG), I offer the collective sympathy and condolences of our fellowship to members of Roderick C. Meredith’s family and also to the ministers and members of the Living Church of God (LCG). Dr. Meredith, a long-time minister and LCG presiding evangelist, died in the late evening of May 18. He was 86 and is survived by six children, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Gerald Weston has succeeded him as the presiding evangelist of LCG.

Many ministers and members in UCG who attended one of the Ambassador College campuses in years past, took one or more classes taught by Dr. Meredith. Like many others in our fellowship, I had deep respect for Dr. Meredith. In the course of our current fellowships we personally met together on two occasions (shortly after the death of Dibar Apartian, another long-time minister, and later following the death of Dr. Meredith’s wife, Sheryl) at the Living Church of God’s facility in Charlotte, North Carolina. We also conversed on occasion by phone and e-mail. The first Charlotte meeting was led by Dennis Luker, a former colleague of Dr. Meredith, who later died in 2013 while serving as president of UCG. Peter Eddington, our operation manager of Media and Communications Services, also took part in that meeting.

Through the years, Dr. Meredith demonstrated a powerful influence and a singular commitment to applying what he understood, including the role of the Church in proclaiming the gospel and announcing the coming Kingdom of God. He served in numerous administrative, ministerial and faculty positions in our prior fellowship of the Worldwide Church of God. He wrote multiple dozens of articles for The Plain Truth and other church publications before leaving that fellowship and subsequently founding LCG in 1998.

Dr. Meredith certainly led a full life of service in the ministry, and many in the fellowship of the United Church of God remember well the years of dedicated service that Dr. Meredith provided while part of the Worldwide Church of God and later as the leader of LCG. I encourage our members to please remember Dr. Meredith and his family—as well as ministers, members and families within the Living Church of God. He now rests and awaits the hope of us all—eternal life in the service of God the Father and Jesus Christ in the coming Kingdom of God.

Richard Ames, LCG evangelist and brother-in-law to Dr. Meredith, will conduct Dr. Meredith’s funeral, which is scheduled for Sunday, May 28. Details are pending.

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  Victor Kubik

  United Church of God President

  Active in the ministry of Jesus Christ for more than four decades, Victor Kubik is a long-time pastor and Christian writer who, together with his wife Beverly, has served in pastoral and administrative roles in churches and regions in the American Midwest, Europe, Asia and Africa. In addition to his broad speaking role, he regularly contributes to church publications and writes a blog for the Beyond Today and UCG web sites. He was named president of the United Church of God in 2013 by the Church’s 12-man Council of Elders.