On a Friday in the summer of 2013, Marc Cebrian put on a nice white shirt and a clean pair of slacks for his shift working campus security at the Restored Church of God in Wadsworth.
This wasn’t any typical shift, however. David Pack, the church’s founder and pastor general, had told his flock that Jesus Christ himself would be returning that evening—not just to Earth and not just to Wadsworth, Ohio, but this church. Like thousands of members around the world that night, Cebrian was waiting, waiting for the “fiery chariot of angels” he was told would wrangle everyone together at one location. And that location was 1000 Ambassador Drive.
For Cebrian, a videographer in his forties who’d been hired by the Restored Church of God to help produce an ongoing series of videos to publicize church doctrine, the evening was one of elation and anxiety. Unmarried, Cebrian had sold his home in Oakland, California, and liquidated his retirement fund to help spread the “one and true gospel” on David Pack’s campus. He was thrilled…