O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

 

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