Is “That Prophet” Alive Today?
July 11, 2022 | by Marc Cebrian
Ever since “The Greatest Story Never Told! (Part 8)” given on December 26, 2015, David C. Pack has made it a doctrine of The Restored Church of God that “That Prophet” of Deuteronomy 18:18 and Acts 3:23 is Elijah the Prophet, not Jesus Christ as taught by Herbert W. Armstrong of The Worldwide Church of God. That had been a “bedrock” understanding about Jesus Christ for decades.
Being that David C. Pack had declared himself to be Elijah the Prophet eleven months earlier made this new teaching all the more convenient for him to be greater in importance to God than ever before. He was in the Bible more than he previously thought. It was the beginning of the floodgates opening.
Part 8 @ 06:49 Who is That Prophet of Deuteronomy 18? Two great questions immediately come up. Is he Christ or is he a man? And when is his commission carried out? Is he God or man? And when does he do what he’s supposed to do? Big question. Well, let’s go read in Acts 3, what it says. I’m gonna answer it in a way that is impossible to misunderstand.
And yet, Dave misunderstood it for the remaining 1 hour and 50 minutes. Then has continued to misunderstand for the next 6 years and 8 months…plus.
That logic never made sense to me because Jesus Christ was a man. If Dave was denying He was a man, then he is denying that God came in the flesh. Dave never went “all the way” there, but when he would dip his toes into that pool, I got incredibly uncomfortable.
It would have been such a simple question at the time, “Mr. Pack, isn’t Jesus Christ a man?” I guess either no minister at Headquarters asked him or he just “explained it away” without considering fully what he was saying.
This is a clip later in the message where he stated flatly that Elijah was That Prophet.
rcg.org - July 2015
This “new doctrine” took a sledgehammer to my spiritual foundation and rocked where I was as a Christian and what The Restored Church of God was doing as the place I had been “giving all” to. His “Ah shucks, it had to be someone” comments did not soften the cut I felt when I first heard this teaching.
This was the sermon that kept me tossing and turning three nights in a row. I had never been so spiritually disturbed. That teaching was wrong and not of God. I knew that.
But on the other hand, I was in God’s one true church. Mr. Pack was the one God chose to lead the Work of God until Jesus Christ returns.
I wondered:
How is it possible that Mr. Pack could be so utterly wrong about something so utterly important? It’s all throughout our literature. It’s in The World to Come broadcasts. Mr. Pack wrote an entire book about it to prove that Gerald Flurry of The Philadelphia Church of God was a false prophet. It is a title only for Jesus Christ. Acts 3 makes it so clear. And yet…
It was a surreal time. I did not hear anyone else make a comment about it. All the ministers were acting like “business as usual.” Co-workers did not seem to be in a haze of shock.
I must be the only one at Headquarters that has a problem with this. Maybe I’m not as close to God as I thought. Maybe I am not of the wise because “the wicked shall not understand.” Maybe I’m a tare. Maybe I don’t have enough faith. Maybe I don’t have God’s Spirit after all. Maybe the devil is tricking me. I better counsel with the ministry.
On that Wednesday morning, I counseled with the Headquarters Pastor at the time who was training another man I liked very much. They spent the next 90 minutes showing me from the Bible how Mr. Pack was correct in his teachings and I was just not looking at it the right way, but that is okay because it is a minister’s job to help guide the brethren.
I was a sheep and the two shepherds were going to help keep me from wandering off.
I came with my Bible, but also with Mr. Pack’s own literature. I only had the heart to read a few “mild” quotes from it. “That book is old understanding,” the minister said. I have to stay current with what God is revealing to His apostle now. It is part of a Christian’s journey. This is why Christianity is hard.
By the end of the session, they got me to see it their way. I hugged both of them, feeling relieved. But the moment I started walking down the hallway, the “wait a minute” questions started to pop in my head. “What about…” and “What about…” all the way to my truck in the parking lot. By the time I opened the door, I was already back to, “No. That’s not right. No way. Jesus Christ is That Prophet.” I could not shake it.
At this point, I was determined to do a deep study in my Bible when I got home. This was against the advice of the minister. He told me to “trust God’s government” and “do not study this any more.”
But, I knew I had to “Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.” That was a foundational verse for my entire Christian journey. I spent weeks going through my Bible and the RCG literature (before it was removed from every nook and cranny at Headquarters). I was driven to prove what was true. My intent was not to prove Mr. Pack wrong. But that did become the ultimate conclusion.
After much study, I proved it all the more powerfully that Jesus Christ is That Prophet. I still have those notes. At this point, I just had to “endure” the stab in my gut whenever Mr. Pack would bring it up. I began to listen to him more carefully than in the past and really hear what he is saying and how he is saying it.
If he is so wildly wrong about this teaching, what else is he wrong about?
The seed was planted. I became a David C. Pack skeptic. I never believed he was an apostle anyhow, I just “accepted” everyone said it. But this new way of thinking grew. I was deeply interested in critical thinking, prosecuting the truth, proving all things, and letting the Bible prove the Bible.
Eventually, I resigned from The Restored Church of God in March of 2021. And now I have a website. That has been an odd journey.
Due to all the whoppers Dave laid out in Part 381 this past Sabbath, something huge escaped my attention, which is probably fine since that article was more than long enough.
There is a new big question on the table: Who is That Prophet now?
Follow the logic:
Jesus Christ was That Prophet —> Dave Pack becomes Elijah the Prophet —>
That Prophet is actually Elijah the Prophet —> Dave Pack is then Elijah That Prophet —>
Dave Pack now is NOT Elijah the Prophet —> Dave Pack cannot be That Prophet —>
Ancient Elijah is still dead and cannot be That Prophet —> Who is That Prophet now? —>
Dave throws a dart on his open Bible
Based on what was just declared on July 9, David C. Pack HAS to also do a major reversal on who That Prophet is. If Dave is not Elijah the Prophet, then he cannot be That Prophet. Since the ancient Elijah the Prophet is now one of the Two Witnesses who will need to be resurrected before he can start his commission, he cannot be That Prophet either. Can he?
Dave may squint and turn his head sideways at Deuteronomy 18 to make that also be about the Two Witnesses of Revelation, but since the word there is prophet—singular, he will really need to pull off some world-class Biblical Twister to sell that, even to Brad.
Here’s an idea. I have already declared I am a non-prophet/non-psychic, but allow me for a moment to channel Dave’s warped thinking into my brain. THUNK. Do not try this is at home. It is for demonstration purposes only.
Deuteronomy 18:18-19 - I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.
If I were Desperate Dave running on the hamster wheel in the third floor Executive Imaginarium with The Coffee Kid and Pepper Boy manning the projector, here is how I would do it:
First, look up each and every word in Strong’s Concordance. Then, remove all the words that those awful, incompetent translators added in to “cloud” what God was really saying. Read all the various other translations. Then examine what is being said and who it is being said to.
Eureka! I have the answer.
God was talking to Moses. God is telling him He is going to resurrect another prophet like him. That other prophet is Elijah. God was telling Moses that he was going to get a partner named Elijah. Since Elijah and Moses will be the Two Witnesses, they are like each other. Plus, Elijah was a great speaker and Moses was not, so logically, Elijah would be “the chief” of the two. Elijah is a type of Aaron going before Pharaoh, so of course what HE says will carry consequences to those who do not heed.
It makes perfect sense that God hid this in His word until the very end, right there in the Old Testament and we never saw it because it wasn’t time yet. No minister I ever talked to or even heard about ever read that verse and said That Prophet of Acts 3 was going to be working with Moses and that the Two Witnesses are right there in Deuteronomy 18. It’s impossible to misunderstand. Once you see it for what it is. This is the most electrifying knowledge I have ever been privileged to teach in my fifty-some-odd years of preaching. And you are the very first who get to hear it. Because you held on, brethren.
Yikes. I just wrote that. That is not a Dave quote, just in case you were wondering.
The long-standing Acts 3 distortion would still be in play regarding Elijah. Forget the fact Peter keeps bringing up Jesus Christ from beginning to the end of that chapter. Peter was just a fisherman, so what did he know? Dave has no problem repeating, “Peter got it wrong” anyhow.
Seriously, if Dave uses this angle to teach it to the church, that would be incredible. And he would owe me sixty bucks.
Could you imagine? God’s Apostle, who is also here “in the spirit and power of Elijah” draws the same conclusion as an antichrist? Except, I got here first. For the record, I found this answer inside 30 seconds just before noon on Monday, July 11, 2022.
If God reveals to Dave the same information I just found sitting with my laptop on my couch, what would that say about me from a biblical perspective? That is not a question for you or for me. That would be a question for Dave. We’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it.
Or…and I hope this is truly the case, Dave goes the other way and he announces that Jesus Christ really really really is That Prophet of Deuteronomy 18 and Acts 3 after all. They can take all that literature out of the trash bin and put it back onto the shelf.
I would feel very comfortable with that because it would be true.
But if he does this, it will yet be another reversal of a foundational teaching of The Restored Church of God that has been held on to for almost seven years. Talk about shaking the tree again with that one.
He surely will not spend 1 hour and 57 minutes explaining how he is NOT That Prophet and that Jesus Christ is. I’m curious to see how much energy he actually devotes to dismantling his own erroneous teaching.
If Dave went this route and returned to “Jesus Christ is That Prophet” just as I asserted back in 2015, then I could imagine the counseling that Bradford G. Schleifer would give as I sat in his office.
“Well Marc, you didn’t exercise enough patience. You answered the matter before you heard it. See, God sorted it out just like Mr. Armstrong always used to say. You didn’t trust God’s government, His Church, His ministers, or me. You didn’t believe Mr. Pack was God’s apostle and this is the result. If only you had held on just a little longer…”
I feel a little bit like Thanos taking his seat.
Now…we wait.
