Sunday, June 18, 2017

Dave Pack and the Stork Women



Beware the Stork Women!

But we need to appreciate, once you understand where the land of Shinar is, all of a sudden you understand the ephah is shooting from the Vatican to Jerusalem—not from some unknown place to the Vatican. You have to clarify that. Then all of a sudden…Ahhh, his resemblance through all the earth…I get it. This is “Christ” coming on the Mount the Mount of Olives. The whole world has to see it, or obvious scriptures in the gospels are just slaughtered. And he has to sail through the air, meaning, he comes down on the Mount in a visible way that…Ahh, that, and it happens fast—the wind is in their wings. Tuesday, the world is a normal place. Wednesday—BOOM—we escape, fire explodes into the cab and drops on the whole world, and this guy drops in on Jerusalem…to put it mildly. So there’s a lot here, and it’s a grander story as to why, of course, this temple will be built for another man and then ultimately destroyed.
So, the stork-women, if you will, are first seen flying at high speed before lifting up the ephah to bear it. Now that’s interesting. They may be visible in some way, to those of us watching, before they start on this high-speed move to Jerusalem. We’ll have to see. Or that may be over reading it. If you are there in Zechariah, you can clearly see that they just come forth. In verse 9
“Then [I lifted] up my eyes, and looked, and behold, there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings…they had wings like the wings…and they lifted up the ephah” (Zech. 5:9). Now, if it’s literally the way it’s written there, then maybe we see them, or we know of them, a little bit before we know who this man is. But it’s not in any way that ruptures, or fights the principle of…of the snare, because it still has to snare the whole world in a single day.
The devil has the ability…Let me just throw in an interesting thing here…has an extraordinary capability, has the ability to cast apparitions and do all kinds of trickery and gimmicks and devices. His wiles and his depths are just almost unlimited. It’s no trick for the devil to be able to pull off a trick. It’s barely a trick to him…Let me put it that way…for the whole world to see this happen. He comes with all of his power—all of this deceptive and destructive capability—and his ability to purport fraud on people who are eager to be frauded.

All Foods Are Clean - Debunking Samuel Bacchiocchi



When I first came to Pasadena, the college bookstore was selling Samuel Bacchiocchi's, Sabbath to Sunday book.  Certain ministers in Pasadena were enthralled by the book, a book by a man who was part of a crazy cult that placed Ellen G White into the same position that COG members had placed HWA - God's only true messenger of the end times and one step below God.  The WCG also loved this book because Bacchiocchi had been granted permission to study at the Pontifical Gregorian University at the Vatican where he claimed to have "proven" that the Sabbath had been changed by the Catholics.  This sent certain leaders of the Worldwide Church of God into ecstasy to have "proof" those evil Catholics had changed the Sabbath and therefore HWA was right, never mind the fact that the SDA's are just as theologically bankrupt as the WCG was.

Later as the WCG started its devolution into debunking the requirement for keeping Sabbath on a specific day of the week, those still tied into HWA's  teachings latched back on to Bacchiocchi's books and actively sought him out to put a dent in the WCG changes.  Books and articles flew around Pasadena trying to stop people from accepting the changes.  He also came out at the time with a book telling women in the SDA church they should not be wearing jewelry, wedding rings or dressing fashionably.  Certain legalists in the WCG jumped on that bandwagon too.

Many critics over the years have debunked Bacchiocchi's writings, and now a new book has taken Bacchiocchi's SDA tainted research on the Sabbath to task and the issue of food laws for New Covenant Christians.

This is an excellent work on the age-old issue of Sabbath observance by Christians. The writer, a young scholar in the making, ably challenges the Seventh-day Adventist church’s position on and arguments for weekly Sabbath observance as a requirement for Christians today. Through careful exegesis of primary scriptural texts bearing on the Sabbath question, as well as explicit considerations and applications of the principles of biblical hermeneutics, the writer presents a thorough and convincing case against mandatory observance of the weekly Sabbath, establishing that for Christians, Old Testament feast days and festivals (which included the weekly Sabbath), as shadows pointing to Christ, met their consummation in Jesus Christ, and consequently have no claims on Christians who are children of the New Covenant presented in the New Testament. 
While the work extensively interrogates long held scholarly arguments in support of weekly Sabbath observance, and explores in detail the peculiar family of doctrinal teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist church on the Sabbath, both the scholar and the lay individual will find the work refreshing, insightful, and provocative. The work is heavily referenced and the writer evinces a comprehensive grasp of the material on both sides of the argument. Every Sabbath keeper (and every Adventist in particular) should read this book and critically assess its evidential worth. Of course, any Christian who so chooses, may without condemnation, observe the weekly Sabbath; but in doing this, the individual should know that he/she has no special mission from God to evangelize other Christians to keep the Sabbath. Importantly all Sabbath keepers must realize that keeping the weekly Sabbath does not make them especial in God’s eyes, nor does it secure for them God’s unmerited grace, through which He has reconciled us unto Himself. The interested student should eventually come to appreciate that the believer’s true rest does not consist in the ceremonial observance of special days, but is instead found in the glorious Person of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who Himself gives us life more abundantly. 
In respect of the issue of dietary proscriptions for the Christian, the writer sets forth a very strong case for liberty in dietary choices based on the clear teachings of New Testament Scripture. Thus for the Christian, there is no food which is essentially unclean, and those believers who embrace vegetarianism, do so against any injunction expressed in Sacred Scripture. It is therefore potentially spiritually dangerous for any church or Christian leader to marry diet to the experience and final realization of salvation, as Ellen G. White, SDA prophetess, has done in her doctrinal and prophetic pronouncements.”—Andre R. Hill (Ed. D, M.S., M.C.C.Psy., PGD Psy., M.Th. (Prospective), BA.).