“I want to make a statement about…me…now, if I became deceived, I will never tell you what I’m going to tell you now…I am telling you if I go off into strange ideas, misconduct, rebellion, you name it, don’t follow me. I want to tell you that now, because if I start doing that I’m gonna try to get you to follow me! I’m gonna come to you and tell you it doesn’t apply, it doesn’t mean me, no, no, no, no, no, no, it’s OK to follow me because ABCD and XY and Z. Do you understand what I’m saying? Listen to me now, when I tell you don’t follow me if I go off into weird ideas, or if I get off into other things that are total absolutely unscriptural conduct, because if I do I’m gonna paint it with a different face and try to get you to follow me. Do you understand what I’m saying brethren? Please remember that, because I promise you that if I become deceived, I’ll forget it, and I’ll want you to forget it…And I hope you’ll remember it well enough to quote it right back to me…But I’ll tell you what, I’m not going anywhere.”
-David C Pack
December 12, 1998
The Clarion Call of Apostle David C. Pack
Video and audio files can be found here and on Rumble
What no one will ever admit — won’t even look at — is the fact that in spite of how benign and polished the Armstrongists may look to the outside, with the ministers and facilities being a facade of all that is good and pure, the members actually don’t match that image at all. Some few might be or have been upper middle class (with a millionaire or two) highly successful businessmen or engineers working at such places as Boeing. They were a minority. It was often the poor and uneducated that dominated the congregations.
And then there is the weird. The very very extremely weird. And not a few of them. It doesn’t matter if it’s one of the ‘better’ ACoGs like United or some minor league niche cult within the ranks. There were people with really sketchy personalities and those that have severe mental disorders which no one actually dealt with. Some of the congregations were rated as being around 20% alcoholics by the ministers themselves (while the reality is a much higher percentage, including the ministers themselves). What went on inside of church congregations often defies imagination.
Was this incident just a one off? In the scheme of things, not so much. There is still today an undercurrent of deeply twisted personalities which run from inconveniently odd to downright dangerous.
Unfortunately, the few people who might be nominally sane and normal are never going to really admit how bad these venues really are. It’s often horrifying behind the scenes, so horrifying, in fact, that everything is swept under the carpet, so to speak, while everyone smiles for the camera and sings for the videos.
I’m going to try to be a bit dispassionate here.
Some good points I pull from the story, which I was vaguely knowledgeable of before:
Post-1986 WCG Split elder endorsing bearing arms, and apparently involvement in law-enforcement – i.e., Civic duty. Step in the right direction.
As for the criminality and such, every population has its criminal element. Every denomination of any size of any religion will have this sort of thing happen occasionally. So as much as I like to blame Herbert Armstrong for everything up to, and almost including the McKinley assassination, this seems far less a case of The corruption of Armstrongism, And more just a case of people being in a “fallen” condition. (I found it interesting they would find somebody to comment that way. Religious, but definitely not Armstrongist. And in that vein, the kid using the term “remarry” probably couldn’t be MORE Armstrongist. Anyone else would say, “get a new mommy,” or such.)