Dave Pack the Home-breaker: You Will Have to Lose Your Wife or Husband in the Restored Church of God

Adult Sabbath School: From Pastor to Bastard-A Personal Journey and Why It Seems to Annoy the Faithful

It has been a interesting journey personally from the Universe/Dinosaur/Geology loving naïve 14 year old gobbling up Plain Truth to a personal view that if you can't really show it then you can't really know it. Over time I have come to believe that my former perspectives were simply pious convictions based on marginal information. In hindsight I repressed my natural curiosities about the world and origins of everything from where did humans really come from to where did the Universe itself come from or more accurately how did it come about, for my own restrictive religious faith beliefs.  

It's also been an informative and interesting experience writing on Banned over the years now finding a few friends but mostly learning that I have no right to quote the Bible because I question it  and that I'd think differently when thrown into the Lake of Fire. I guess I'll wait and see. 

As a WCG Pastor getting shuffled around over 28 years to 14 different congregations in 5 states and programming myself and family for difficulties down the road and going through the near daily stress of WCG drama and trauma, it's no wonder I am still here. 

While it is of no value to anyone else, I have come to recognize that in personality and perspectives I have most of the characteristics of an Empath and a HSP or Highly Sensitive Person. It's probably the traits that drew me to ministry in the first place and while one did not go to Ambassador to "become a minister,"  I did or I would not have gone. I chose Ambassador over Robert's Wesleyan College in NY, which was a Methodist Seminary. Naïve to think that Ambassador was a seminary but the college prospectus I read never having no real background in WCG seemed legit and normal for a seminary, I thought. (It was not true however)

I pastored between 1972 and 1998  and those years were nothing but one WCG conflict and disaster after the next. Not exactly what I signed up for.  It was made up of:

Sent to Minneapolis under Keith Thomas. I was told it was the premier assignment for me being top of my class etc and "Dennis for you, the sky is the limit" which struck me as an odd thing to say because I had read "he that is 'greatest' among you, let him be your servant" even when a Presbyterian kid. 

Garner Ted booted by HWA from the Church 1972

GTA returning in 1972 '73

"East Coast Rebellion" 1974  I was in the thick of it working for the Regional Director in Chicago

Fired by association

Rehired by request

(Blew my chance to move on when still young)

Move to Findlay Ohio, (Replaced by Ron Weinland)  Kentucky, New York, South Carolina (Followed Gerald Weston) 

1979 Church Goes into Receivership

Bunch of Church Bullshit

HWA Dies and the Tkach years begin

Bunch of Bullshit

Depression and Anxiety increase,

Greenville SC as last Church I pastored proved to be the most divisive group I ever got stuck with. I replaced Gerald Weston. I think when I refused to go to what I considered the Happy Slappy Promise Keepers Million Man Cult Expo and all the elders did as per Tkach suggestions , that was the beginning of the back stabbing, and experience I was not used to. I also let most of the people Gerald Weston bounced out of WCG because they wanted to come back and that went over like a lead balloon with his loyalists who were in touch with him constantly. 

Depression and Anxiety increase and I spent a week in a Charter Hospital getting my head together. In hindsight I was depressed as function of repressed anger that I felt was either something I had no right to express or the price for doing so would be too high at the time.  Told by Victor Kubik when he got in to see me and not on my list to see me, "We think you are just hiding here."

Borderline and somewhat accidental DUI and spent night in a SC jail which scared the Hell into me being an HSP etc. A depression and anxiety thing no doubt. 

(Whew...felt good to get that one out there! Never told Church Administration. lol)

Terminated because my church had been reduced by the Tkach's adventure in wheel reinvention from 450 to 95 and then shortly after, 16.  Every congregation I ever built in sincerity no longer exists now of course.

Found a kindred spirit to share my thoughts, beliefs and fears with

Bunch of stuff and divorce

(My fault not hers)

Therapeutic Massage School which was one of the best decisions I had made in the previous 28 years. 

Bunch of relationship stuff

Moved to Oregon hating South Carolina for a few dozen reasons 

Entering year 70 content to just be myself , enjoy my successful practice in the Willamette Valley  not missing the irony of that.

And an atheist....

"As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population."

 Sam Harris

Secularphobia-Why Americans Hate Atheists

Last week, the Pew Research Center released the results of a new survey concerning who Americans would want – or rather, wouldn’t want – for an in-law. While about 10 percent of Americans said they’d be unhappy if a family member married someone of a different political persuasion, and about 30 percent of Americans said they’d be unhappy if a family member married a gun owner, nearly 50 percent of Americans said that they’d be unhappy if a family member married an atheist.

This finding comes as no surprise. Social science has long revealed high rates of secularphobia – the irrational dislike, distrust, fear, or hatred of nonreligious people – within American society. For example, a study by Penny Edgell of the University of Minnesota, from back in 2006, found that atheists come in last place when Americans are asked to rank members of certain racial, ethnic, or religious groups as potential spouses for their kids. And a Gallup poll from 2012 found that 43 pecent of Americans said that they would not vote for an atheist for president, putting atheists in last/worst place, behind Muslims (40 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t vote for a Muslim for president), homosexuals (30 percent wouldn’t), Mormons (18 percent wouldn’t), Latinos (7 percent wouldn’t), Jews (6 percent wouldn’t), Catholics (5 percent wouldn’t), women (5 percent wouldn’t) and African Americans (4 percent wouldn’t).

Additionally, psychology professor Adrian Furnham found that people give lower priority to patients with atheist or agnostic views than to Christian patients when asked to rank them on a waiting list to receive a kidney, and legal scholar Eugene Volokh has documented the degree to which atheist parents have been denied custody rights in the wake of a divorce.

Consider further evidence of secularphobia in America: It is illegal for an atheist to hold public office in seven states; atheists aren’t allowed in the Boy Scouts, the American Legion, or the Veterans of Foreign Wars; Humanist chaplains are barred from serving in our nation’s military; charities regularly reject donations that are offered by secularist organizations. And while secular Americans have never faced the kind of prejudice, hostility, and violence experienced by Native Americans, African Americans, Latino/a Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, or homosexuals, there is still no question that atheists, agnostics, secularists, and others who eschew religion are widely disliked.

 What gives?

There is no single, universal cause of secularphobia, and the dislike of non-religious people has varying sources in different societies and at different times in history; what caused people to hate the secular in Jerusalem in 300 B.C.E. or in Tegucigalpa in 1799 is certainly different from what causes people to dislike the secular in Rhode Island today.

That said, we can account for the current level of secularphobia in the US by considering these four factors:

1. Americans equate a lack of religiosity in general – or atheism specifically – with immorality.

2. Americans equate a lack of religiosity in general – or atheism specifically – with being un-American and/or unpatriotic.

3. There is no stigma concerning the expressed dislike of the non-religious. While there is a stigma (to varying degrees, depending on one’s social milieu) attached to being racist, or anti-Semitic, or Islamophobic, or homophobic – there has never existed a social or cultural backlash against people who openly express disdain for secular folks. So people simply feel much more comfortable expressing their dislike for atheists than, say, Latinas/os or women.

4. Insecurity on the part of the religious. Faith – believing claims without sufficient evidence, or claiming to know things that you don’t or can’t know – is an increasingly shaky endeavor. And in order for religious faith to survive, it requires a lot of social support: the more people who share it, the easier it is to maintain and reproduce. Thus, anyone who rejects the tenets of your faith, or calls them in to question, is a threat. Atheists lack a faith in God, and thus theists are particularly threatened by the growing presence of such humans, as they call into question the very thing that is ever so shaky to begin with: religious faith.

United Church of God Elder Stephen Allwine: “For reasons that are too personal and would give away my identity, I need this bitch dead.”

 has a new article up about Stephen Allwine's despicable behind the scenes maneuvers to hire hit men to kill his wife.  It details Allwine's time at Ambassador, meeting Amy, becoming a United Church of God Elder.  It is probably one of the better researched articles to be published on the murder ofAmy Allwine.

‘IF YOU WANT TO KILL SOMEONE, 

WE ARE THE RIGHT GUYS’

MARA HVISTENDAHL SECURITY 04.25.19

ON A BRISK day in March 2016, Stephen Allwine walked into a Wendy's in Minneapolis. The smell of old fryer grease hung in the air as he searched for a man wearing dark jeans and a blue jacket. Allwine, who worked as an IT support technician, was lean and nerdy, with wire-rim glasses. He was carrying $6,000 in cash, money he'd collected by pawning silver bars and coins to avoid suspicious deductions from his bank account. He found the man he was looking for sitting in a booth.

THEY HAD CONNECTED on LocalBitcoins, a sort of Craigslist for people who want to buy cryptocurrency near where they live. Allwine opened the app Bitcoin Wallet on his phone and handed over the cash, and the man scanned a QR code displayed on the phone to transfer the bitcoin. The transaction went seamlessly. Then Allwine returned to his car to discover that he had locked his keys inside.

It was his birthday. He was 43. And he was supposed to join a woman named Michelle Woodard for lunch.

Allwine had met Woodard online a few months earlier. The relationship had progressed quickly, and for a while they exchanged dozens of messages a day. Their passion had since faded, but they still slept together from time to time. While he waited for the locksmith to arrive, he texted her that he'd stopped to buy bitcoin and was running late. Once the door was jimmied open, he met up with Woodard at a burger joint called the Blue Door Pub, determined to enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

---------

Yura promised that customers' money was held by an escrow service and paid out only after a job was completed. But Allwine worried that when he deposited money it would simply end up in someone's bitcoin wallet. He wanted Yura's claims to be true, though, so against his better instincts he transferred the bitcoin. “They say that Besa means trust, so please do not break that,” he wrote Yura. “For reasons that are too personal and would give away my identity, I need this bitch dead.”

“This bitch” was Amy Allwine, his wife.

--------------

The day after Stephen bought the bitcoin, he uploaded a photo of Amy to Allwine.net. The picture had been taken on a family vacation to Hawaii, and it showed Amy wearing a teal shirt, with a broad smile on her tan and freckled face. About 25 minutes after he posted the image, Stephen logged in to his dogdaygod email account and sent Yura the link. “She is about 5'6", she looks about 200lbs,” he wrote. The best time to kill her, he continued, would be on an upcoming trip to Moline, Illinois. If the hit man could make her death look like an accident—by, say, ramming her Toyota Sienna minivan on the driver's side—he would throw in a few more bitcoin. 

Click on the link in the title of the article above to read the rest of this chilling story!

The Medicine Man vs COG Leaders and Self-appointed Church Prophets

Can you imagine a Church of God leader ever being this humble?  

Have you ever seen a COG leader among his people, working and getting his hands dirty?

Have you ever seen a COG leader live a "low key" life?

Have you ever seen a COG leader ever be quiet instead of trumpeting their own horn trying to PROVE they are legitimate?

PCG: Where is the True Church Today?

For decades now we have seen hundreds and hundreds of articles, sermons and telecasts on the so-called "true church."  It is now 2019 and the various Armstrong Churches of God are STILL trying to prove they are the only true ones. We've seen the self-appointed liars like Thiel, Malm, Pack, Wienland and others claim they were God's most highly favored sons and the rightful teachers of the "word".

The Philadelphia Church of God, in its attempt to retain members, is trying to get its members to fall for the deception that Gerald Flurry's church is the "one and only".

Wik Heerama of the PCG has an article up on their website titled, "Where Is God’s True Church Today?"  In it he says this:

“Throughout the Church’s history, though many fell away, Christ always led the faithful few. … There has never been a time that God’s Church did not exist after Christ built it. Its work may have been hidden, slowed down or nearly stopped. But the true Church always survived and revived!” (Philadelphia Trumpet, November 1996).

Not only did Christ found the Church, the Bible also reveals that He is its living Head(Colossians 1:18; Ephesians 5:23). That means He actively guides it.

Does it make sense that the Church Christ founded would be divided into many different sects and denominations? That Christ would be Head of many different organizations, each teaching different doctrines? God is not the author of confusion; He does things “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:33, 40; the word “churches” in verse 33 merely refers to various congregations of the one true Church, as we shall see later). Teachings that contradict one another cannot all be true, and could not be inspired by Christ!

Does it make any sense that the Armstrong Churches of God, which claims to be founded by Christ, are currently split into hundreds and hundreds of silly little groups?  Hardly a year goes by anymore without some self-appointed turd claiming he is the new heir apparent.  Do these idiots truly believe their "christ" is impressed by all of the divisions and organizations out there? Is that "christ" impressed by the blithering idiots that self-appoint themselves as Chief Overseer's or official Zealots?Is that "christ" impressed by the outright lies of Ron Weinland, Dave Pack and Gerald Flurry?

In fact, God inspired the Apostle Paul to write, “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10). That is a deep level of unity! And we should expect to see that unity within the Christ-led Body of believers. There must be no division in what is believed, taught or preached (Ephesians 4:13).

With over 400 some Armstrong Churches of God today, we have 400 some different interpretations of "truth". None of them speak the "same thing." They cannot agree on doctrine, prophecy, or even being followers of the "jesus" they claim to follow.  They most certainly are NOT joined together in same mind and in same judgment!

Do the many differing and opposing churches of Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism “all speak the same thing”? Why is Christianity divided into many different churches, denominations and sects? Why do these different Christian groups believe such vastly different doctrines?

The Philadelphia Church of God and the Armstrong Churches of God are in no position to criticize the various Christian denominations of Christianity.  The questions Wik should have asked is:

Why is the Church of God divided into so many different splinter groups?

Why do these Churches of God believe such vastly different things?