RCG June 7 Update

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June 7, 2000 Greetings Brethren, The following fairly lengthy Update is entirely excerpted from our regular Member/Subscriber letter written yesterday. While I do not normally post this information on our website in an Update for everyone to view, I felt the material included here was a clear exception to this general policy. I hope everyone will read what is included here very carefully. Hopefully, you have already read the brief Update posted earlier this week dated June 5, 2000 (posted Monday night). New Booklet With this letter you will find my newest booklet entitled Should You Join The Restored Church of God? (Delays on my book There Came a Falling Away grew to be so many, since the writing of this book was completed, that I have actually fully finished two new booklets that you have now received before the bigger book has even gone to press.) This new booklet is being sent to everyone on our mailing list at the same time. I hope that everyone who receives it will read it very carefully. Anyone who comes with us in the future will be asked to read this booklet carefully as they make their final decision regarding whether or not to come with RCG. You will notice that it is a fairly thorough checklist of all of the kinds of issues that people making this decision might be concerned with most. I have often said that we want everyone who comes with us to understand exactly what they are committing to in their decision to do this. It is my hope that even all of those who are already members of RCG will carefully read this booklet (perhaps twice) and be able to clearly reaffirm their previous decision to come with us. There Came A Falling Away I have lost count of how many times that this book was just about to "go to the printer" or it would "soon be on its way to you," etc. As mentioned above, seemingly endless delays have kept us from getting it to the printer on time. Mr. Jim Leighty is working extremely hard to finish the book so that it can go to the printer, perhaps, as soon as tomorrow or the next day. There is no question that Satan does not want this book to be released, and I suppose that all I can say, once again, is I can hardly wait. [I have just been handed the fully formatted version of There Came A Falling Away. It may now, in fact, go to the printer by tomorrow or Thursday just as suggested earlier in this letter! The printing process is expected to take up to three weeks.] "CDs, Compromise, Conflict & Conscience" Sermonette Of course, by now all of you have heard this Sermonette. As I said in the cover letter, I could have said a great deal more about why sending these CDs out would have been a terrible mistake. Not one member has raised objections and I am very encouraged about that. You are all aware that a CD of Mr. Armstrongs books, booklets and reprint articles in circulation at the time of his death is already under way. While this is a very special project, it is also an extremely large one as well and will take a significant amount of time and effort to be able to do it properly. If we do it correctly, it will be a very special treasure for all that wish to receive it. Im sure that you all agree. I suppose its possible that some who came with us primarily "signed on" because of the "CD project." This number would certainly be very few but it is another clear reason why I felt it so very necessary to write the booklet included with this letter. We have had people come with us for a variety of wrong reasons. While neither we nor people themselves can ever know their own heart 100%, this booklet is our sincerest attempt to help them know why they wish to walk with us. It is at this point that you may wish to stop and read the website announcement dated June 5, 2000. Website Difficulties & Changeover Some of you must have by now noticed that our website still occasionally (erroneously) displays a reference for those who may still wish to order the "HWA CDs." Clicking on this location sends you to where you may order them. We have

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had two different computer experts come assist our office, at considerable expense, to try to untangle why our computer Close does this, seemingly spontaneously, in such a way that when we delete it in one place it pops up in another. It is almost as though our website has a hidden virus that causes this problem to reappear by some strange means. We hope to soon have Help this completely under control. It is in this regard that there are several problems that must be explained to you at this time. At the time the man on retainer resigned from our employ, we were in the middle of switching our website from his control in Chicago to our control here in Akron with another company we had obtained to host it for us. Upon finding tremendous resistance to this changeover, (for reasons I cannot, at this time, explain to you) we had to forcefully seize control of our website from his control. This caused us great problems, time and expense too numerous to tell you about in this letter. I can tell you that Gods Church is now paying $30 per month for our service instead of $250 per month for the same service which we have been told was paying for some and maybe all of the other websites this man who was recently with us was hosting at the same place outside Chicago. I am very thankful to be able to tell you that we are no longer paying more than eight times as much for this service. Everyone knows that "Mr. Pack doesnt know a computer from a wristwatch" and I guess I am rather easily taken advantage of in the technical area. I am sorry that a lot of you have had difficulty finding our website over the last almost two weeks or so, but we trust that the problems that we have been experiencing have now been resolved.

I feel bad for the previous church this man was with because they did not own the domain name of their church and therefore could not legally seize control of their site when this same man departed from them and came to us. They tell me that he now controls what was the website that they thought they controlled and, I must tell you, I never fully understood that at all. (I have never been to that website a single time.) They did not know he controlled it until he was gone. This is what they have plainly said to me. They had to actually establish a new website that included a similar but different name from the one that they had operated under for quite some time. I feel terrible that I and the Restored Church of God were totally unaware that this is how he was operating while he was with us and that another church was hurt as a result. I have deeply apologized to them and they have most graciously accepted our apology. Herbert W. Armstrong Trust Fund This leads me to a somewhat parallel problem that we just learned of yesterday. When this same man came with us, all of you are aware that we had plans (announced September 15, 1999) to start a Herbert W. Armstrong Trust Fund that would be operated and controlled by (but funds kept separate from) the Restored Church of God. The Trust Fund was opened and a post office box was secured. This man told me we needed to have a separate post office box, and so I told him to go and get one for us. I thought this new post office box (sitting right beside the box with the number assigned to the Restored Church of God - - #23295 - - here in Wadsworth) was registered in the name of the Restored Church of God. I learned yesterday that it never was. We asked him to open this box shortly after he got here. He then registered it in his own name. No one was ever told this. We trusted him. Herein lies the problem. Just as when he left the previous church also retaining control of the post office box that they had entrusted to him, the post office informed us that he has complete control, and apparently always has, of all of the funds arriving there. I learned that I, as CEO and leader of the Restored Church of God, only thought that we in RCG controlled it. Boy, was I fooled. I did think it strange that absolutely no money, whatsoever (not one dime), came into the Trust Fund since late April even though we had notified 8,000 households of its existence three weeks earlier (via his e-mail list). I didnt even really question the fact that the income to the fund dropped to zero until a month later and the resignation of the man who governed (and we now realize completely controlled and accessed it) the contents of the box, had already occurred. So, would all those of you who were sending checks to the Herbert W. Armstrong Trust Fund who are members of the Restored Church of God please stop sending them to Box 23283!! THE HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG TRUST FUND ( THAT THE RESTORED CHURCH OF GOD THOUGHT IT GOVERNED) NO LONGER EXISTS! WE DO NOT INTEND TO EVER RESURRECT IT. The Restored Church of God will pay for all printing projects of any kind that we undertake! In this light, it is interesting to note that the old Trust Fund was overdrawn by approximately $3,500, an amount that might now be difficult to recoup. Just before he resigned he told me he had overspent the fund. Of course, I am not privy to the amount that came in during the month of May that we might never know about. I am certain that we will have more to

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say about this in time to come. For now, I merely wanted to alert you to what has happened.

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I have carefully gone over a whole variety of quotes from my recent booklet "Should Accusers Be Answered?" just to encourage myself in light of the current onslaught planned against us (which was threatened to be launched yesterday at noon). I was going to refer you to key sections of the booklet to remind you of exactly what I predicted would happen whenever people leave us for other groups. The die is cast. Ferocious attacks will continue against us - - probably growing ever greater each time that they occur. The attackers now know that I will not answer my accusers. Yet I am left with the need to always try to inoculate people (whenever possible) against new attacks that we may suspect or even know are coming. Such is the case now. I strongly urge you to read this booklet once again, slowly and carefully. Now lets talk about a remarkable phenomenon occurring in the church that we have never discussed in this way before. Have you ever asked yourself WHY Christ prophesied "offense, betrayal, hatred and lawlessness" would abound among His people at the end time? Do you see this kind of attitude going on in the churches of this world? Do you see it occurring in the WCG? No, we do not! There is but a fraction of this sort of thing occurring in the churches of this world in this same way. It is even likely that various ecumenical movements in the churches of this world will draw them even closer together as time passes and prophecy advances in Europe. This is already happening. But now lets consider something quite important! What are the people in the Worldwide Church of God currently feeling? Also, are the kinds of attitudes being experienced among the splinter groups evident in the WCG? Absolutely not - - but why? The answer lies in the following. Ask yourself, how do they feel and how do they view their leaders? They feel enlightened. They feel liberated by new "truth." They feel thankful that they have grown out of previous "errors" that were taught to them by Mr. Armstrong. Correspondingly, they also feel quite thankful to the leaders there who have taken them in the direction that they have gone. This feeling even generally includes those former brethren who have left the WCG and headed for Protestant churches. They are filled with joy and even exuberance. Their future looks bright. The world now looks cozy and warm as they "discover" over one billion new "fellow Christians." The love they feel for their "new Christ" feels overflowing, at times. Oh, they may still have a bit of resentment hiding deep inside toward Mr. Armstrong (but this may even be overshadowed by sympathy for him or a feeling that he would have "come to see these things for himself given time"). However, generally they feel wonderful about the bright new path into new "truths" that they have embarked upon. The devil is also satisfied with where their journey has ended. For now, they have his "blessing," so to speak. Now lets turn the coin over and examine the people who have stood up (in full or in part) for the truth. We see an entirely different world! How do they feel? How do they also feel toward their former leaders? They feel betrayed. They feel lied to. They feel sold out. Sometimes they have been victims of this process several times. They are suspicious. They are mistrustful. They feel a need to "watch-dog" everybody. Amidst this already unstable picture we must add that there are tares, flatterers, false brethren, and even those who would "kill and think they do God service." Of those who are converted, we now know that the great majority are lukewarm. Let me tell you, we have just described what Christ understood 2,000 years ago would create a climate that is ripe for and rife with "offense, betrayal, hatred and lawlessness." All of this is the natural by-product of apostate leaders completely defecting from the truth and departing from God. Do you understand this? Now add the influence of Satan in a very different way from that described above. He comes armed with all of his "devices" as the "accuser of the brethren" and as a "roaring lion" toward all of the converted people in any of the splinter groups and he does not have an interest in "blessing" any of them. Do any of us doubt this? Prophecy tells us plainly that this will not change in any way other than growing steadily worse as time passes (II Tim. 3:13). I hope now that you can understand why I say that the group that is most fully holding fast to the entire Truth of God also lies most squarely in harms way and that the "die is cast" for all of us in terms of the attacks we can expect the future to hold. Only you know how you will handle these attacks as they intensify. This is yet another reason for my having written the booklet included in this mailing. The man who resigned openly bragged to another employee (just before resigning) of his training in "campaign tactics." He explained that he was "trained to be skilled in the ability to take anything he does or any situation that he is involved in and spin it in whatever direction necessary for his benefit and so that he will come out on top." He said he was "skilled in deflecting blame from himself and pinning it on others." I guess we should all "stay tuned" on

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this one and thats all that I can tell you at this time. This might be a good time to focus on I Cor. 3:18-20 where it Close says, "Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that Help he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He takes the wise in their own craftiness (quoted from Job 5:13). And again, The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain (quoted from Psa. 94:11)." Do not be afraid to believe that God may dramatically intervene to protect His Church from enemies who threaten to attack it! Internet Speed vs. Patience People who are determined to cause mayhem, confusion and destruction can do it as quickly as they can get to their computer and send it at the speed of electricity around the world. Not only has knowledge been increased (as Daniel wrote of the end time) but access to it has become instantaneous. It makes no difference whether that knowledge is good or bad. It is accessible immediately. This allows people who bend with every wind of rumor and attack to instantly go to pieces, get mad, demand answers and even quit well before the machinery of our office complex could ever react to such instantaneous attacks even if we were determined to try to do so. I cannot help but wonder if this is what Christ meant when He said in Luke 21:19 that, "in your patience possess you your lives." In a world filled with instantaneous knowledge carrying the potential for tremendous upheaval, etc., it is clear that only the patient know to wait for the real facts to come forth and correctly define what is happening. There is no doubt that the future holds many uncertainties that will strike us like "thieves in the night" when they arrive. Christs return will not be the only event that occurs "like a thief in the night." Other events - - many of them very bad - - will occur in the same way. There will be two common responses. One, to "in your patience possess you your life" or, two, go to pieces and just "lose it" often to ones own destruction. You alone must determine now how you are going to handle an endless sea of these kinds of "thief in the night" events that will strike all of us from now all the way through the time which Daniel calls "when many will be tried, purified and made white." No man can insulate you from this process planned thousands of years ago for the church at the end of the age (see Daniel 11:33 through 12:13). Certainly I cannot, and neither can any other man. I can warn you while at the same time recognizing that you have to survive these tests sent from God. Only you control the outcome that you will bring forth at the "end of the day" in this process. Building A Truly Loyal Staff Some will find it difficult to believe that we now have a truly wonderful staff. We really do. It took a year to reach this point but I think that we are there - - yet no one can ever truly be sure. Look at the size of the group that you meet with on the Sabbath if you are with RCG. It is probably very small compared to what you were used to. Do you now understand just how hard it is to find even a very small but complete staff of these same very rare people who will compromise nothing? Then they have to be strong enough to handle the stress of doing the Work of God at the very end of the age. The task of finding such people is seemingly impossible, but I do now believe that God has done it. There is no question that I didnt do it because almost the entire staff I selected last summer is now gone. The original staff was nearly all local. I thought I knew them. I trusted them and I reached for them, so to speak. Perhaps I was self-willed in some way. Far more people came with us immediately than I ever dreamed. I was almost immediately completely overwhelmed with work, and hiring decisions had to be made very rapidly. I chose those close at hand and familiar to me. Thank you all for your prayers and concerns and your many, many letters of support. I want to always tell you that they sustain me more than you can know. As I have said before, I read every single one of them - - and some of them twice.

In Christs service, David C. Pack

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