Dave Pack the Addict: When Prophecy Becomes A Drug

 

My Heroin

                 

With so many balls juggling in the air, it is difficult to keep track of all the wild claims and screaming failures that drop at the feet of David C. Pack.

 

The people of The Restored Church of God experienced two prophetic disappointments this week: Tuesday, February 7, and Friday, February 10. This is by no means close to a record, but it is still notable.

 

Three and a half days of punishment did not begin on Tuesday, culminating with the return of Jesus Christ and the start of the Kingdom of God at sunset Friday night.

 

Interestingly, David C. Pack never addressed the 40-day count to Abib 1 dissolving, the absence of Elijah rising on the world stage, or the Kingdom of God Sabbath no-show. It was as if he had never said it.

 

“The Greatest Unending Story! (Part 418)” Thursday proved the Bible translators know how to take a beating. They were resurrected so Dave could sucker punch them again and toss them back into their graves until the next time. There will be a next time.

 

They are not the only ones Ragin’ Dave tends to get violent with.

 

Logic has bruises on her arms and neck while the Truth is buried in the backyard under the wood pile. Accountability is locked in the closet with an empty water bowl and a leg chain. Reason is sealed in a box in the attic with only a tiny breathing hole. Mushrooms grow on the corpse of Integrity in the basement corner. Meanwhile, the brethren pay Dave to vomit nonsense on them while they sit motionless and quiet.

 

The filthiness going on inside The Restored Church of God is graphic.

 

Logic, truth, accountability, reason, and integrity are the innocent victims of David C. Pack.

 

The real tragedy is that the brethren can take action but choose not to. Instead, they endure while waiting to see what God will do. Just like the Sabbath-keepers still attending Grace Communion International. They take it and wait.

 

 

The skimmers will enjoy the highlights of Part 418:

 

·      Everything is still on track.

·      Words are Dave’s heroin.

·      After years of “rushing,” he is now supposed to “stretch out” the Series.

·      He never understood what “nourish” meant.

·      Daniel's three and a half days are not the same as in Revelation.

·      There is a new date, but he refuses to say it.

·      Part 419 is next week.

 

The first seven minutes of Part 418 encapsulate everything wrong with David C. Pack and The Restored Church of God.

 

Part 418 – February 9, 2023

@ 00:03 Well, I told you last time there was nothing else to cover, no other message. And now, you know, God can surprise all of us with a whole message.

 

Wow. His first sentence tells you that trusting him is a fool’s errand. David C. Pack is not a man of his word. He admitted that immediately when he opened his mouth.

 

His second sentence drapes the cloak of biblical fraud over God’s shoulders. And he does it without fear.

 

Listen to the man and hear his words, brethren of God.

 

In his first sentence of Part 418, David C. Pack tells you not to believe him.

 

In his second sentence of Part 418, David C. Pack tells you not to believe his god.

 

Soak that in. The first two sentences. Do not trust him. Do not trust his god. Hear him.

 

 

Over the years, David C. Pack has invoked God's name to spin a later proven false yarn. The True God does not inspire lies and deception. The Spirit of Error is all about that.

 

This is Dave’s god, not mine.

 

Part 413 – January 4, 2023

@ 37:31 I was haunted, we'll say, by God's Spirit guiding me. Now, haunted is a bad word, but troubled. Just uncomfortable. Unsettled…

 

Did you mean vexed like King Saul?

 

Part 414 – January 14, 2023

@ 00:25 We’ve seen God slowly draw us forward. He’s constantly laying out more track.

 

His god loves to string the brethren along, teasing them with the carrot on the stick tied to their belt so they will never get closer.

 

Part 414 – January 14, 2023

@ 1:39:30 These dates are set, and I will say before God they can only change if the Bible can change. You cannot argue with “midst of the years.” You cannot argue with the Day of the Lord. And you cannot argue with the sheer massive proof I’m gonna lay on you next time that Elijah rises before February 10^th.

 

The Bible must have changed. Elijah did not rise before last night, and Dave never finished his list of proofs because he realized mid-jump he was full of malarkey. He never recanted this, either. He just kind of stopped talking about it. Like a politician would do.

 

Part 415 – January 17, 2023

@ 32:04 God, in His mercy, gave us Abib 1 and 40 days in front of it.

 

This is about the 40 days that failed to start last night. The only logical conclusion is that God did not give this. But Dave cannot see that. He refuses to see that. Why do the brethren also refuse?

 

Part 417 – February 2, 2023

@ 43:01 I’ve had an opportunity just to let God show me these final things that I need to see.

 

Tuesday failed. Friday night failed. Not at all final. More dropped balls at David C. Pack's feet, but God is credited with being the One who tossed them into his hands.

 

That addresses the first two sentences of Part 418.

 

 

Part 418 – February 9, 2023

@ 00:18 But we're still fine, brethren. Everything is still on track. I love to open saying that, knowing that it's true, but with more time than we thought.

 

That is not true. The insults begin early. Each time Dave faces an obvious failure, he looks in the mirror and repeats that it is still fine. Because repeating something makes it true.

 

He "loves" saying that? The fact he repeats "still on track" should be a red flag for those paying attention. 

 

Nothing burned me more while sitting in the Main Hall than hearing Dave smile about how “on track” everything was when it was clearly not true. That is gaslighting. That is denial. That is a lie.

 

He preaches the Kingdom of God will come. Then it does not. He reassures everyone how on track they still are. Rinse and repeat.

 

Part 414 – January 14, 2023

@ 08:13 We're still on time. Believe me, more than you could ever know. Everything's still fine. Absolutely. Absolutely. More than I could have ever believed, God could tell us in this most-exciting sermon conclusion.

 

How is any part of that even remotely true? That is a trick question. None of it was true. NONE of it.

 

 

Part 418 – February 9, 2023

@ 00:28 Some new things can be explained, and some old ones can be clarified.

 

“Clarified” is code for glossing over mistakes. Folks in RCG are well-versed in what “clarify” really means.

 

@ 00:52 But recall from my last message that my hope and prayer, and I think yours, was answered. You now know the days [of punishment] are less.

 

This is a lie. No prayer was answered.

 

Whether every human being on the earth prayed or every human being on the earth did not pray, the result was always going to be the same: NOTHING.

 

This is a veiled "God gave us more time" lie by David C. Pack. The collective RCG "prayer" was that the time of punishment would be shorter. Not for the dates to fail.

 

And fail, they did. But hey, that is not Dave’s fault. No, God answered a prayer and changed the timing on everyone. The man is such a coward.

 

This is putting a deceitful, positive spin on prophetic error. Dave again throws his blunder into God's hands as if he correctly taught the dates, but God changed His mind and altered His plan at the last second.

 

Who is Dave fooling? Maybe himself more than those listening to this nonsense.

 

Thus far, we are only inside the first minute of Part 418 with 91 more to go. There are serious problems inside The Restored Church of God.

 

@ 01:05 So, thirteen and a half days plus a month was wrong, as I had thought.

 

Hold on. Was it an answered prayer, or was he just wrong? How can it be both?

 

This was the very next sentence. Were the brethren of The Restored Church of God and David C. Pack actually praying that David C. Pack was wrong? And he was wrong, so therefore, their prayers were answered?

 

That sounds insane. And yet, that seems to be what he is saying. The war in his mind from one sentence to the next is astonishing to witness.

 

No one needs to pray for David C. Pack to be wrong. He just is by default.

 

 

I would never be able to get away with making this kind of thing up.

@ 01:34 As you've learned, this has been a word study. Words matter. And I'm the son of a wordsmith, so I love words. I can't get enough of them. Some people like heroin. I don't. I've never tried it and don't intend, but I love words. They are, I guess, my heroin.

 

What an odd, goofy, and bizarre thing for a minister to say at the lectern to a church. Maybe he was advised not to say, “Words are my porn.” Heroin was a less-awkward parallel.

 

The “David C. Pack: Heroin User” analogies write themselves.

 

He may love words, but he sure does not understand them. He is so doped up he cannot comprehend what he reads. He opens his mouth, and gibberish comes out. He is so high that he sees things in the Bible that are not there, like that he is Elijah.

 

Rather than words, David C. Pack is addicted to prophecy. He is a junkie in that respect. He ignores reality to satisfy his habit. He needs his fix so bad he makes others give up their retirement accounts and inheritances just so he can keep riding that wave.

 

I look forward to reading the comments you creative folks will make about David C. Pack being a drug addict.

 

I never dreamed I would be able to make this statement: There is more than Reefer Madness going on at The Restored Church of God. We have barely scratched the surface of Part 418.

Marc Cebrian

See: My Heroin

The Annealing Flame of Salvation: Notes on the Holy Spirit and Armstrongism

 

The Holy Spirit is never depicted in human form in mainstream Christianity.

 

The Annealing Flame of Salvation

Notes on the Holy Spirit and Armstrongism

By Redermann

 

 “… the Bible reveals that the Holy Spirit is the power and energy of the God Family, as well as the very nature, life and mind of God — not another spiritual entity!” Richard H Sedliacik (Good News, April 1985)

“God tells Christ what to do … Jesus then speaks as the workman, and the Holy Spirit is the power that responds and does what Jesus commands.”  Herbert W. Armstrong (Mystery of the Ages, First Edition, 

p. 44. 

 

“The Holy Spirit from Christ is like a current of electricity flowing through a light bulb. We are that bulb.”   Herman Hoeh, (Plain Truth Magazine, June 1956)

“Man is put here on earth to learn to develop tools for limited creative work — to train himself for the ETERNAL GOAL — becoming part of the God-family, which means control of the creative Spirit of God.”   Herman Hoeh (Plain Truth Magazine, June 1956)

The nature of the Holy Spirit is a topic that has been fraught with controversy for centuries.  The Bible describes the Holy Spirit with much different analogies than what are used for the Father and the Son.  But, in general, the Christian church has come to understand the Holy Spirit to a sufficient degree to form a reasonable and scriptural doctrine.   An exception to this mainstream doctrine is the view that is found in Armstrongism and other similar denominations originating in the Restoration Movement.   The quotations above briefly illustrate the inclination of the Armstrongist view.    That view is that the Holy Spirit is an energy or force used by God to project his power.  The Holy Spirit is not a person and, therefore, it is an impersonal force.  This essay addresses the deficiency of that view.   I will not use the traditional approach to supporting the mainstream doctrine of the Holy Spirit which involves careful exegesis but rather some non-traditional arguments.  Theology gains clarity by going first to the Doctrine of God and I will begin at that point. 

God is absolute.  He created everything and sustains everything.  Deism is false.  Yet, there are Deistic tendencies in many denominational theologies.  Deism is the idea that God has created the Cosmos as an external object, like a great machine, and the machine can run without divine intervention.  It is as if you made a lawn mower in your garage and then gave it to someone else so you really no longer have anything to do with it.   In contrast, the NT says this about all created things:

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:3)

Jesus not only created all things (in the Cosmos and in the transcendent realm), but he sustains these things across time – moment to moment.  So far, I think we can all agree with these statements. Now I am going to write something that will require some careful, non-dogmatic thought.   God does not need an energy or force to carry out the action of his will.  God is absolute and controls all things at the most fundamental level of reality.  There may be a division of responsibility among the Divine Persons but God does not need an impersonal force to project his power.  He is sovereign over everything by profound creational intimacy.  

The idea that the Holy Spirit is an energy that God uses to project his will is derived from the anthropomorphic language of the Bible.   Anthropomorphism is analogical language that illuminates events where principle rather than the details of the ontology of God are the focus.  This language is based on ideas with which we are familiar in our human realm.  Men use energy to accomplish work whether it be human strength or electricity or fire or the tapping of the nucleus of an atom.  This human model is then used by the Bible authors to depict God.  And it has a vividness that other depictions that truly reflect God’s ontology might not have for some minds.   But the model is from physics – created physics.  But if God is absolute, and he is, the physics model is not fully apt.  It is just literature but literature to good purpose. 

Armstrongists depict the Holy Spirit as an attribute of God.  It is true that God says “my Spirit,” as if the Spirit were an attribute but he also says “my Son.”   This language does not relegate both the Spirit and the Son to attributes.  Christians depict the Holy Spirit as a divine person that is both separate and in unity with God.  Throughout the OT there are references to the Spirit.  An example is, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Sprit saith the Lord.”  The question is why is the Spirit given a separate and significant presence, frequently incorporated in the statements of God, when the Spirit is just an attribute of God as Armstrongists believe?   If the Spirit is just an attribute of God could it not be easily left out of the picture – just assumed?   Couldn’t God just simply say, “I did this,” instead of “the Spirit did this” when the Spirit as an attribute simply refers to God.  If the Spirit is only an attribute, it is like you and I always saying “my hand took the pencil” instead of just saying “I took the pencil.”  The fact is in OT syntax the Spirit is accorded a separate status.  When the Spirit is mentioned, the language refers to the action and participation of the Holy Spirit as a separate divine person.  

There is a bit of sleight of hand in the Armstrongist beliefs about the Holy Spirit.  This is illustrated in the quotation from Richard H. Sedliacik at the beginning of this essay.  Sedliacik maintains that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal energy or power but it bears with it somehow God’s nature, life and mind.  The idea that the Holy Spirit bears God’s mind stands on the brink of admitting that the Holy Spirit is a separate being.   But maybe Armstrongists believe that the “mind of God” in this case is just a kind of information package carried by the Holy Spirit but not really an active mind.  In this way the Holy Spirit can bear the mind of God but still be an impersonal non-being energy.  This sleight of hand is really present so all the scriptures that indicate that the Holy Spirit is a being can be accommodated within the theory of an impersonal energy (Romans 8:27).   That does not really work.  From the context of Romans 8:27, we know that the usage of the term “mind” is not metaphor or symbol or literary personification but actual.   We have the Holy Spirit in that same verse making intercession for the saints.  Making intercession requires mind, free will, independent action, awareness, communication, the ability to analyze empirical data and so on.  

Some of the arguments against the idea of the Holy Spirit being a divine person are curious.  One argument is that by some unusual mathematics, three is a closed number and two is an open number. And the false “Trinity teaching,” so claimed, limits God to three persons.  This is coupled with the unsupportable idea that man will become “God as God is God” so there will need to be many more places at the God table.  No doubt people who believe in the Trinity do not believe the radically liberal idea that more full status Gods will be added to the God category.  But that limitation is not derived from the inherent nature of the number three. The idea that the integer three is closed is facetious.   Another argument against the Holy Spirit as a Person was made by Garner Ted Armstrong (GTA).  At one time I was quite impressed with this sophomoric argument.  GTA asserted that if Jesus was conceived by the action of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is a being, then God was not the Father of Jesus but maybe an uncle or some other relation.  GTA’s solution to this problem was to assert that the Holy Spirit is not a being but an energy.  The problem with this is that it is a violation of Occam’s Razor – that the simplest answer is the best answer and the only supportable answer.   GTA radically redefined the ontology of the Holy Spirit when the only immediate conclusion you can draw from this data is simply that God and the Holy Spirit are the same – which then leads to the Trinity.  The second quotation at the top, from Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA), is also informative.  HWA saw God as a hierarchy.  He did not see the co-equal relationship that John referred to (John 5:18) or is evinced by the Three-fold Formula.  Unsurprisingly, the model of a single leader ruling over a hierarchy seemed to dominate HWA's thinking and was the backbone of church government and an Ambassador College education.  This has an Arianist flavor which was held by some in the Church of God Seventh Day.  

Speaking of metaphor, there is a way the Bible uses metaphor that bears on this topic.  Most metaphors in the Bible are “downward metaphors.”  I am coining that term.  This refers to comparing a higher being or object to a lesser being or object.   We might find a scripture that states that the Holy Spirit was “poured out.”  If the Holy Spirit is really a person, this is a downward metaphor.  It makes an intelligent being seem like liquid in order to vividly emphasize a trait – in this case scope or availability.  This is found often in the Bible.  “Upward metaphors” are seldom found in the Bible, if at all.  (Let me know if you find one.)  This is comparing a lesser being or object to a higher being or object.  This is like saying, “the ocean decided to fight against us.”  My guess is that this is seldom used because it has pagan implications.  Pagans may see various forces, energies, flora and fauna in nature as animistic beings.  This leads to a probabilistic rather than categorical conclusion.  It is very unlikely that an upward metaphor that attributes mind to an impersonal energy would be used by an NT writer.  It is more likely that when Paul in Romans 8:27 refers to the “mind of the spirit” he means just that.  The Holy Spirit is a divine person with a mind. 

Finally, the most appalling idea that devolves from the belief that the Holy Spirit is an energy is expressed in Herman Hoeh’s statement in the final quotation in the list of quotations at the top. This is the idea that when Armstronngists become “God as God is God” they will have dominion over the Holy Spirit.  While this view is held out of misunderstanding, it is nevertheless explosively shocking to someone who understands that the Holy Spirit is a divine person in the Trinity.  One mentally recoils and hopes that such believers in this idea will come to enlightenment and not be consigned to perdition. 

In the debate over the Holy Spirit, those who favor the Spirit as energy will claim that the scriptures that make the Spirit sound like a being are metaphorical.  And it is the reverse for those who believe the Holy Spirit is a divine person.  So, we have a kind of deadlock.  Although the debate is lopsided in terms of the number of supporters and type of supporters.   The Holy Spirit as energy is supported by few who are cultic and believe many off-the-wall ideas.  The believers in the Holy Spirit as a divine person are many and are orthodox.  Perhaps, some of the non-traditional arguments I have made in this essay will break the deadlock for a few.