Authors: Gerald Flurry
We then referred him to the church’s articles of association, which state that the “Church Authority” has control over the “ecclesiastical” and “temporal” affairs of the church. And what did it mean by “Church Authority”? Article 2.1 says it means the “power and authority
vested in Herbert W. Armstrong
and his duly authorized delegates,” which included the Advisory Council of Elders. Later, in article 5.2, it says, “The authority and power of Herbert W. Armstrong to unilaterally exercise all the powers of the Church over the ecclesiastical and temporal affairs of the church shall be absolute and unqualified.”
16
That we were trying to convince Mr. Armstrong’s own legal adviser that the
WCG
’s government structure was hierarchical seemed absurd.
Everyone
in the
WCG
knew that! After reading the church’s articles of association during his deposition, Mr. Helge said, “I don’t think it’s proper to look at it and interpret it that he ran things like a despot.”
17
Of course, that’s the
exact opposite
of what we were trying to say. Mr. Armstrong governed the church like a loving father—always seeking a multitude of counsel. But he did have final say—and since some of his last instructions to the church had to do with distributing
Mystery of the Ages
widely, his authority in the church was of special significance.
Ironically, Joseph Tkach Jr., Mr. Helge’s own boss at the time of his deposition, is the one who interpreted the church’s governance doctrine to mean that Mr. Armstrong was a despot. In his book, Tkach Jr. said Mr. Armstrong “was most definitely and absolutely in charge of our church”—so much so, he had earned the reputation from critics outside the church as being a “theological despot.”
18
It is even more ironic that the “absolute authority” Tkach Jr. freely condemns in his book is the very means by which Tkach Sr. landed in the office of pastor general in 1986, not to mention Tkach Jr. in 1995. (The all-powerful “board” had no say in either appointment.) It’s also the means by which the Tkaches excommunicated
thousands
of
WCG
members who simply desired to adhere to the same teachings they had always been taught by Mr. Armstrong.
Early on in the court case, Ralph Helge portrayed Mr. Armstrong as just another church employee—hired or fired by
THE BOARD
. It then followed, that the church—or
THE BOARD
—had final say on this legal matter regarding
Mystery of the Ages
.
Outside of court, however, Tkach Jr. portrayed Mr. Armstrong as a corrupt, theological despot who wielded absolute power within the
WCG
.
Witnessing this duplicity up close in the early stages of the court case brought back painful memories of how the Tkaches forced their changes on the church back in the late 1980s. It didn’t take long before we realized we were going to have to live through much of that late 1980s history all over again.
Forum Shopping
In their discovery request, the
WCG
asked us for an accurate count of how many books had been distributed as well as the amount of donations the
PCG
received as a result of distribution. We wanted to complete this initial exchange of discovery by the end of the day on Monday, February 24, 1997, so we could meet our February 27 deadline for filing our opposition to their complaint.
The following week, on Tuesday, we had not yet received any documents from the other side. Mark again contacted them to remind them that our opposition was due in only a couple days. Scheibe said the
WCG
was having problems gathering the documents because much of it was tucked away in storage.
On Wednesday, the day before our opposition was due, we still hadn’t received documents from the
WCG
. Mr. Scheibe said they needed more time to locate the documents and asked if we would be amenable to delaying the briefing and hearing by one week, assuming it was fine with the judge. We agreed and later the judge pushed the hearing back to March 17, which also gave us another week to prepare our opposition brief. Scheibe said he would have discovery responses to us by the end of the week.
Two days later, toward the end of the day on Friday, Scheibe left Mark a voice mail that knocked our socks off. He said the
WCG
had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Just
18 days
into the litigation, they had already given up! And we hadn’t even received
any
items of discovery—nor had we filed one single opposition brief in court.
The next day, at our weekly church service,
PCG
members applauded the news.
The following Monday, March 3, Mark Helm called the
WCG
’s attorney to make sure he understood Friday’s voice mail correctly. Scheibe confirmed that the California action had indeed been dismissed.
Later that day, at our headquarters offices in Edmond, Oklahoma, we were served papers by courier. The
WCG
filed a new complaint in
Oklahoma
. It was a stunning blow—although we weren’t necessarily shocked that the
WCG
would resort to manipulating the system.
In its new complaint, the
WCG
said it dismissed the action in California because it learned that the Philadelphia Church intended to contest the case on the basis that it should not have been filed there—a blatant fabrication. In actuality, at the February 18 hearing, Mark Helm only reserved
the right
to dispute personal jurisdiction. He had only been hired the day before, remember, and he hadn’t yet assembled all the facts of the case.
The
WCG
turned our reservation of rights into an attempt on our part to challenge jurisdiction.
But after the hearing, once Mark pressed Scheibe for discovery
on the merits,
it was abundantly clear that we intended to move forward and fight the action in California. Scheibe himself is the one who suggested we delay the brief filing by one week so that both sides might have more time to collect discovery. As it turned out, that one-week delay prevented us from ever filing our opposition on the merits of the case. That delay, brought on by Scheibe, gave the
WCG
another week to think about stuff they could make up.
The real reason they dismissed the action in California on February 28 and filed one in Oklahoma the next business day is because they were shopping for a judge who would support their position.
The Ad Campaign
Shifting venues enabled the
WCG
to beef up its argument since Judge Letts had made it clear that their case was weak. In the California filing, they said nothing about the
WCG
’s repudiation of Mr. Armstrong’s teachings. Their main thrust was that they owned the copyright and
that,
in itself, should prevent us from printing and distributing the book.
In the Oklahoma action, however, they were much more forthright about their turn away from Mr. Armstrong’s teachings. They admitted the church had “intentionally not reprinted the book” due to a modification in doctrine, but felt obligated to “protect” its copyright. They said that while the
PCG
is free to believe the book’s teachings, we could not go so far as to publish it. To do that, we would have to come up with our “own original expression of the ideas.”
19
Furthermore, the Oklahoma complaint said,
Because of this change in belief, Worldwide Church suffers irreparable injury by Philadelphia Church’s unlawful reproduction and distribution of
Mystery of the Ages
because it does so with the purpose of perpetuating beliefs no longer followed by Worldwide Church.
20
Ah yes! The real truth emerges. They told Judge Letts they suffered “irreparable damage” because we had “profited” from distributing the work (the donation “profit” was actually
theirs,
in other words) and because they had been “forced to incur attorneys’ fees.”
21
Now their suffering stemmed from the fact that we were perpetuating beliefs and teachings
they no longer agreed with!
It was the closest they ever got in court to saying they wanted to suppress Mr. Armstrong’s teachings.
Taking that as our cue, we quickly went to work producing newspaper ads while our attorneys began working with an Oklahoma lawyer to answer the
WCG
’s latest complaint. On March 5, in a meeting with Dennis Leap and me, my father said he wanted us to look upon this second attack from the
WCG
as a “tremendous opportunity.” We have to regain the advantage by taking the offensive, he said. He explained that he felt the
WCG
’s biggest weakness was being exposed before the general public. It was before that audience that the
WCG
had bragged about the “unprecedented” transformation their church had undergone since Mr. Armstrong’s death. Our job, my dad said, was to show how this was actually one of the biggest
betrayals
in the history of religion. He felt like newspaper ads would be the easiest and quickest way to get the true story out there. He advised us to come up with a provocative sounding headline—something like, “Why are they desperately trying to keep
you
from reading
Mystery of the Ages
?”
My dad put pen to paper and worked up a rough draft of the copy while I started working on the ad design. Mr. Leap and I helped with some of the research for the ad. After we polished it off, we consulted our attorneys about the wording. It had to be just right.
Then, on Tuesday, March 18, our first newspaper ad appeared on page 14 of the front section of the
Los Angeles Times
under the headline, “Worldwide Church of God says: You can’t read this book!”
22
Next to the headline was a picture of
Mystery of the Ages
. In the days that followed, the ad also appeared in several smaller papers in Southern California, as well as the
Washington Post
and
Denver Post
.
Using less than 1,000 words, we summarized the history of Tkach’s rejection of Mr. Armstrong’s teachings and how more than half of the
WCG
membership had been driven out of that church—many of them excommunicated. We also discussed the most significant details of the lawsuit. “Although Mr. Armstrong’s successors have seized his church and betrayed his ideals,” the ad read, “they should not be allowed to silence his voice.” It continued,
If the Worldwide Church of God no longer has any use for
Mystery of the Ages
,
it should not be allowed to keep the book from those who do.
The Philadelphia Church and the Worldwide Church are in a battle over religious beliefs. Rather than try to persuade potential believers to adopt one of two competing approaches, the Worldwide Church wants to conceal one of them altogether. This can only be because it recognizes the power and clarity of Mr. Armstrong’s vision, and lacks confidence in the appeal of its own muddled and compromised approach.
23
We wanted to expose their religious censorship in public, within their own community, and plug Mr. Armstrong’s wonderful book at the same time. As my dad told Mr. Leap and me in February, “An ad campaign will help us achieve our goal.”
And did it ever
. Several thousand people responded to our campaign by requesting
Mystery of the Ages
. In the weeks that followed, we produced two follow-up ads. Together, all three ads appeared in over a dozen newspapers.
But much more important than that, at least with respect to the litigation, is how the
WCG
reacted
to the campaign. Our ads got right under their skin and put them on the defensive, as my father predicted they would. Mr. Helge contacted the newspapers we used in the Los Angeles basin, demanding retractions and even threatening litigation.
Their Christian Duty
At about the time our first ad appeared in the
Los Angeles Times,
Joe Tkach Jr. was putting the finishing touches on his new book,
Transformed by Truth,
to be released later that summer. Our March 18 ad prompted him to add this footnote on page 203 of his book:
In February 1997 we filed suit against the Philadelphia Church of God—one of our splinter groups headquartered in Edmund [sic], Oklahoma—to block the republication of
Mystery of the Ages
. The Worldwide Church of God still holds the copyright to this book, and we contend that no one else has the right to publish it. W
E FEEL IT IS OUR
C
HRISTIAN DUTY TO KEEP THIS BOOK OUT OF PRINT
, not because we recognize “the power and clarity of Mr. Armstrong’s vision” or because our church “lacks confidence in the appeal of its own muddled and compromised approach,”
as an advertisement for the Philadelphia church claims,
but because we believe Mr. Armstrong’s doctrinal errors are better left out of circulation.
24
That one footnote was perhaps the
WCG
’s biggest blunder during the six-year lawsuit. In the Oklahoma complaint, remember, they said we caused them irreparable injury for perpetuating beliefs they no longer followed. Now we had a much stronger statement,
and direct from their own pastor general,
saying they had a “C
HRISTIAN DUTY
” to suppress Mr. Armstrong’s written works! Our
Los Angeles Times
ad was just too nettlesome for Tkach Jr. to ignore.
The “Christian duty” statement put the
WCG
in a nearly indefensible position from the outset. How would they convince any judge or jury that they weren’t really using their copyright to suppress Mr. Armstrong’s writings when, in fact, their own leader said it was his “Christian duty” to keep the works out of print?