David Pack of the Restored Church of God assures us that we can have utopia forever if only…
Herbert Armstrong sold Our Greatest Delusion. In the end, he fell victim to the inevitable conclusion. In the end, he contributed nothing worthwhile of lasting value as his legacy. All he did is created a particular style of the World’s greatest delusion to be used for his henchmen hirelings in the wake of his extinction.
David Pack assures us that we can have utopia forever, if only… we sacrifice everything that we have and everything that we are and give it all to him. He is selling the same recycled delusion offered by Herbert Armstrong.
There’s more to it than that, though. Things have not been going particularly well for David Pack. He’s made predictions which have failed spectacularly. He seems to have overcommitted himself in building his little compound in Wadsworth.
At first glance, NO2HWA is having a field day over at Banned! mocking Davie: NO2HWA has submitted blog article after blog article showing the folly of the Wadsworth profit / guru / [and insert various titles derived from Old Testament figures here].
Here is a sample of the articles:
Dave Pack Cannot Understand Why Splinter Groups Will Not Subordinate Themselves To Him
Dave Pack: Church members will be second class “eternal” beings
Dave Pack: As Soon As You Become God You Will Receive “Awesome” Knowledge!
Dave Pack: You Will Forget About Your Spouses, Children and Relatives
Dave Pack: “Wow! This is Great!” You will be “judges” and “pastors”
Dave Pack: Atheists Will Be Long Gone When We Get To My Zion
Dave Pack: Was Ambassador College a blueprint for education in the kingdom?
Dave Pack on Language, City Sizes, Food, Distribution and Agriculture in His Kingdom to Come
Dave Pack: RCG Members Will Throw Grenades and Blow Up Everything At Start of Kingdom
Dave Pack: RCG Members Don’t Have to Listen To The Opinions of Angels
Pack’s Rants: Going Along to Get Along?
Dave Pack: Jesus Is Returning Multiple Times
Dave Pack: Jesus Will Return the First of Many Times Hiding His Kingdom in the Little RCG Flock
Dave Pack: My Words Are Precious Knowledge
Dave Pack: Do You Want To Be Immortal or Eternal?
Anonymous said…
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For several days now, all I see is one item after another about Dave Pack. What’s going on? Has he suddenly stolen the spotlight from all the other COG leaders? To my knowledge, I never laid eyes on the guy and consider that no loss. Of course, I was out by ’75. That’s really when things started to fall apart. Some of us had the presence of mind to sit back and analyze exactly what we’d gotten ourselves into. We didn’t like the obvious answers.
- NO2HWA said…
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Anon @1:36
Dave considered himself as God’s sole representative on the earth, No man or church has ever been as miraculous and astounding as he is or the restored Church of God is. Since the creation of man no human church leader has ever understood the bible as Dave has. No one has ever written more books, had the best web site ever created on the internet, has healed as many people as he has, cast out as many demons as he has, or who imagines himself trained at the feet of Herbert Armstrong. Nothing is true coming from the mouth of this blowhard.
He has ripped apart countless families due to his vile role of government in his cult. He has predicted the imminent deaths of three COG leaders for the last 4 years now. He has prophesied that tens of thousands of COG members would jump ship to join the most amazing work of God ever to exist. No ministers have been struck down by his god and no one has joined from the splinter groups. Those few the have are quickly drummed out or leave on their own. Dave has been releasing, in print form, the most astounding series of sermons ever preached. No one has ever understood the Bible until this point in time. His entire goal is to get those thousands of church members to join him on the dark side.
We are witnessing first hand the mental break down of a narcissistic megalomaniac that puts Gerald Flurry to shame. Pack has the potential to lead people into mass casualties.
Dr. Derek Muller, Veritasium — Physicist, Australian-Canadian science communicator, filmmaker and television presenter. 
Am I crazy? Dave’s headquarters. It looks like the Official World Federation of tic-tac-toe and hollywood squares!
Dave’s compound is going to be purchased by Del Webb as a old folks facility as soon as his bankruptcy is completed .
I have often wondered that if there is sentient life out there in our local part of the galaxy, and it lives on a Dune-type world like in that sci-fi movie. Would they consider Earth heaven and a utopia of divergent life and ecosystems. Even if the planet goes nutty from time to time and attacks itself. Maybe they would just put up warning beacons out there and around us to warn others “It’s not ready yet, come back later.”
I would suppose that if there is sentient life out there, they are wise enough to avoid earth.
He appears to crave: 1) Major attention for and belief of his message. 2) Acknowledgment of and recognition for being the exclusive end time human leader of God’s work. 3) The allegiance and support of all surviving Armstrongites.
He has relentlessly done everything that he knows how to do to make these three things happen. They have not. There are not even any encouraging signs, no positive encouragement. If anything, they are in retreat. It’s probably safe to say that so long as he believes that they will happen, while they continue not to happen, a condition of cognitive dissonance exists in his mind. This condition must either be resolved, or it will eventually cause insanity.
Is it wise to be in the presence of and beholden to someone during a psychotic break? This is one guy who probably won’t just shut down his prophecy website and apologize, or tearfully play heavy metal riffs on his guitar on youtube!
BB
As one who has been through the experience of being there while several people have gone through a psychotic break, I can tell you positively that you do NOT want to be around or be a part of anyone going through one.
It is still the case that most normal people have never seen or experienced someone going through a psychotic break and when they encounter one, they are usually very confused — people going through a psychotic break are not at all rational and it sort of goes downhill from there.
The worst of all worlds is to become the object of obsession for the one having the psychotic break: It is a very unpleasant experience and beyond weird.
It’s truly unfortunate that people simply will not take this seriously and if David Pack does go through a psychotic break, people will be shocked and confused. Many will go along with some of the most whacky things to placate someone like Pack and it can only end very badly.
How quickly we forget 2005 when an LCG member went postal in church and killed the minister and several other people before committing suicide. That should dispel any foolish idea that ‘it can’t happen here’: It already has.
Unfortunately for the other ACoGs, such an occurrence could prompt the Justice Department to take a closer look and all Armstrongist churches, particularly the ones with kook leaders which we have discussed over and over as part of the alphabetic acronyms we use to identify them. While it may be unlikely, there could also be a domino effect which will affect more than RCG members, if we consider the worst case scenario.
Douglas Becker says:”I would suppose that if there is sentient life out there, they are wise enough to avoid earth.”
****THEY’RE MADE OUT OF MEAT****
**A ONE ACT PLAY by Terry Bisson**
[The set is a deep space galactic panorama projected on a screen–the Universe. Two lights moving like fireflies among the stars on the screen represent the the TWO VOICES.]
(As a radio play, there are just the TWO VOICES, with a slight echo added for strangeness.)
Voice One: “They’re made out of meat.”
Voice Two: “Meat?”
Voice One: “Meat. They’re made out of meat.”
Voice Two: “Meat?”
Voice One: “There’s no doubt about it. We took several aboard our recon vessels from different parts of the planet and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”
Voice Two: “That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”
Voice One: “They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”
Voice Two: “So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”
Voice One: “They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”
Voice Two: “That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.”
Voice One: “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they’re made out of meat.”
Voice Two: “Maybe they’re like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.”
Voice One: “Nope. They’re born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn’t take long. Do you have any idea what’s the life span of meat?”
Voice Two: “Spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.”
Voice One: “Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them all the way through.”
Voice Two: “No brain?”
Voice One: “Oh, there’s a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of meat! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Voice Two: “So … what does the thinking?”
Voice One: “You’re not getting it, are you? You’re refusing to deal with what I’m telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat.”
Voice Two: “Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”
Voice One: “Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?”
Voice Two: “Omigod. You’re serious then. They’re made out of meat.”
Voice One: “Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they’ve been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years.”
Voice Two: “Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?”
Voice One: “First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, communicate, swap ideas and information. The usual.”
Voice Two: “We’re supposed to talk to meat.”
Voice One: “That’s the idea. That’s the message they’re sending out by radio. ‘Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.’ That sort of thing.”
Voice Two: “They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?”
Voice One: “Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat.”
Voice Two: “I thought you just told me they used radio.”
Voice One: “They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.”
Voice Two: “Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?”
Voice One: “Officially or unofficially?”
Voice Two: “Both.”
Voice One: “Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, we advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing.”
Voice Two: “I was hoping you would say that.”
Voice One: “It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?”
Voice Two: “I agree one hundred percent. What’s there to say? ‘Hello, meat. How’s it going?’ But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?”
Voice One: “Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can’t live on them. And being meat, they are limited to the speed of light, which makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact.”
Voice Two: “So we just pretend there’s no one home in the Universe.”
Voice One: “That’s it.”
Voice Two: “Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? But the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You’re sure they won’t remember?”
Voice One: “They’ll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we’re just a dream to them.”
Voice Two: “A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat’s dream.”
Voice One: “And we marked the entire sector unoccupied.”
Voice Two: “Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?”
Voice One: “Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again.”
Voice Two: “They always come around.”
Voice One: “And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone …”
This is the only movie of the above story that I found bearable.
“David Pack could gather his congregation together to leave for the Place of Safety and be induced to commit suicide with him?”
I would hope that some sane minds in the RCG would make a bold move against Pack if that was to occur. Keep in mind that the FBI monitors some groups for a Jim Jones event. After Waco they take these groups seriously.