Raising the Ruins (35 page)

Ralph Helge threatened my sister with jail time in 1989 because she retrieved a partial list of
WCG
ministers from a garbage can. No authoritative threats there! The night Joe Jr. fired
Gerald Flurry
on the spot, my father pleaded with Tkach to at least discuss the items in question with a group of 15 ministers or so who were also dissatisfied with the church’s direction. He wouldn’t even consider the request.

And my father wasn’t the only minister who was mistreated. As David Hulme wrote in his resignation letter to Tkach Sr., “Upwards of 170 ministers are alienated, some terminated
under questionable circumstances.”
¹⁸

Feazell continued in the preface, “Based on Armstrong’s interpretation of biblical passages,
WCG
members were taught that use of prescription drugs and most forms of surgery constituted a lack of faith in God’s power to heal.”
¹⁹
Yet another classic example of doublespeak. Notice what Tkach Jr. wrote to a member who was leaving the
WCG
in 1990: “Actually, if you carefully read the latter portion of his [Mr. Armstrong’s] own booklet on healing, it will become clear that he was acknowledging that there is much good that doctors can do.”
²⁰
Indeed, Mr. Armstrong wrote, “[I]t is true that today most doctors prescribe medicines that are not poisons but rather are designed to help nature do its own healing.”
²¹

Today, of course, their story portrays Mr. Armstrong’s teaching as dangerous and fanatical.

The preface concluded with this statement: “The material below is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any form without this entire preface and without written permission from the Worldwide Church of God.”
²²

Thus, as Matthew Morgan said in his rejection letter, due to the “additional benefit” of the
WCG
’s e-publishing offer to help fulfill
PCG
’s “alleged”
spiritual
needs, we could now direct prospective members, who might know nothing about Herbert Armstrong, to download a copy of
Mystery of the Ages
(at a cost of $25) with a 1,500-word preface denouncing the author as a self-absorbed, racially bigoted, religiously biased, uneducated hack who taught heretical doctrines and bizarre prophecies while wielding dictatorial control over the Worldwide Church of God.

“
The way we look at it, this preface gives us much greater opportunities in the upcoming depositions and trial. I believe this is the only way we can win.”

— Gerald Flurry

Letter to legal team, June 11, 2002

Like Tkach Jr.’s “Christian duty” footnote in
Transformed by Truth,
Feazell’s preface backfired. For one, it showed how phony the e-publishing scheme really was. They weren’t about to produce Mr. Armstrong’s literature unless it was introduced by Feazell’s remarks. And there is no way we would have ever directed prospective members to download that filth. Though we knew it all along, the preface fully revealed just how interested they were in “helping” fulfill our spiritual needs. The whole e-publishing sham, as it turns out, was just another way for them to trash Mr. Armstrong’s legacy.

But the preface’s impact on our legal arguments was minor compared to the way it impacted
us
. I won’t say it surprised us—not after witnessing Tkachism’s destructive assault on the church the previous 16 years. But it did serve as a jolting reminder of what we were fighting against: people who
HATE
everything
Herbert W. Armstrong stood for. We couldn’t reason with them. We couldn’t deal with them—all we could do was fight.

So from that point forward, everything in the lawsuit would turn on Feazell’s preface—at least, as far as we were concerned. My father wrote to our legal team on June 11, 2002,

The preface to the
WCG
e-publishing sham is the opportunity we have been waiting for. Ever since Judge Letts was involved, I feel like we haven’t been able to thoroughly get across what really happened in our church.

This preface has opened up a tremendous opportunity to do that again. I feel like we can now go on the offensive as never before with an even bigger goal in mind (
RFRA
, writing a book, etc.). I strongly believe that our answer to the preface is going to make them feel the heat. …

Perhaps we lost the appellate court decision because the
WCG
made a few comments labeling us a cult. … The preface allows us to answer the
cult
attack. But it gives us a greater opportunity. We can now expose them for what they really are—a cult and much worse. At the same time, I believe we can help the judge and jury to understand the
PCG
’s true motives.

They say a battle is 50 percent won when you go on the offensive. The way we look at it, this preface gives us much greater opportunities in the upcoming depositions and trial. I believe this is the only way we can win.
¹

Over the next two months, our attorneys probably heard the word “preface” so often, they might have thought we were a broken record. Of course, they still had to accumulate evidence to support all of our legal arguments, insofar as copyright law is concerned. But since the
WCG
now wanted to insert Armstrong-bashing into the case, we insisted on telling the behind-the-scenes story, whether during a deposition, before a judge or jury, or within court documents. In fact, as you can see from the letter above, the preface is what prompted the whole idea for this book. The case had now gotten much bigger than just fighting for the right to distribute Mr. Armstrong’s literature. Now we had to obtain the literature—and
EXPOSE THEM
in the process.

Turning Point

Even though we were technically going into the damages trial as the “loser” (with respect to
Mystery of the Ages
), my father believed something dramatic would happen, whether in court or out, that would eventually turn the tide in our favor. “If God is with us,” he said, “we will win this. If He’s been with us, He still is with us—that is, if we keep the faith.”

Judge Snyder was hoping for a mid-October 2002 trial, which meant discovery and depositions needed to be completed by the end of the summer. As we geared up for a busy summer, my dad instructed his entire staff at Edmond to make the court case their top priority. More than a dozen people involved themselves in gathering information and helping to prepare for the depositions of the
WCG
’s key witnesses—Joseph Tkach, Michael Feazell, Ron Kelly, Ralph Helge and Bernard Schnippert, as well as a few others. My father relieved Dennis Leap and me from some of our youth camp obligations that summer so we could devote more time to researching for depositions. P
CG
ministers Gary Rethford and Tim Thompson were also instrumental in digging up information for our lawyers.

This was a real turning point. In 1998, the bulk of deposition preparation was left to our attorneys, although Dennis and his wife made sure they were supplied with church documents and literature. We also offered a lot of feedback during conferences we had before depositions. But, for the most part, the lawyers were responsible for doing most of the research and drawing up the questions.

In 2002, the lawyers still did all that,
it’s just that we did too
—only coming at it from the
preface
angle. If Tkach’s fellows wanted to talk about Mr. Armstrong’s heavy-handed approach to governance, then Tkach Jr. and Feazell were going to be asked about the legacy of Tkachism—how it forced people to go along or else
FORCED THEM OUT OF THE CHURCH
. If they wanted to bring up how Mr. Armstrong supposedly “hooked” people into his system of beliefs, then they would have to testify about all the lies Tkachism told in order to lull unsuspecting members to sleep so they wouldn’t lose their tithes. If they wanted to bring up Mr. Armstrong’s lack of “study” and “seminary training,” then we were going to ask them about Tkach Sr.’s academic and theological credentials. It they wanted to talk about how burdensome it was in the church under Mr. Armstrong, then they were sure to hear about Tkachism’s heavy legacy. And if they wanted to bring up Mr. Armstrong’s “extravagant” lifestyle, then we would ask,
Well what did Tkachism do with its billions?

So as we got ready for the 2002 depositions, our attorneys prepared
their
questions and documents and
we prepared ours
. Then, in a status conference before the depositions, we worked to blend the two together.

Joseph Tkach Jr.

In the Tkach Jr. deposition on Friday, August 23, 2002, Mark Helm wasted little time in setting off explosives. Fifteen minutes into the deposition, Allan Browne instructed Tkach not to answer on account of Mark’s “harassing and oppressive” questioning. Thirty minutes after that, he threatened to leave unless Mark lowered his voice!

Mark began by reviewing the December 4, 1998, Advisory Council of Elders minutes—where the
WCG
officially explained its position on discontinued literature and how it had plans to use the material again. In the case of
Mystery
being discarded, the
WCG
minutes explain, “As a consequence, an ecclesiastical determination was made that
MOA
and other such works be retired from circulation and not be distributed
until appropriate revisions could be effectuated,
compatible with the Bible.”
²

Now that the
WCG
intended to e-publish these works, Mark wondered if the preface counted as an “appropriate revision.” After Tkach said “no,” Mark then asked if the ecclesiastical determination had changed. Tkach indicated that they hadn’t changed their decision, but that they felt comfortable enough e-publishing the literature as long as it had a preface to provide background. Since the
WCG
had made statements throughout the lawsuit that they would have considered licensing the works, Mark was trying to pin Tkach down to see if the terms for the hypothetical licensing meant the literature had to be prefaced by derogatory remarks about Mr. Armstrong. He also exposed the degree to which the
WCG
wanted to control the literature if a licensing agreement ever happened.

Later, he got Mr. Tkach to talk about
Gerald Flurry
. Tkach said he thought my father was mentally unbalanced, that he taught heresy, approved of lying and was engaged in unethical conduct. Mark then asked if Tkach’s personal views toward Mr. Flurry might factor into any decision considering the
PCG
as a possible licensee.
It was brilliant.
Tkach answered, “I think the key here is that in developing a license agreement, we would be in a position to police or control that by the terms we dictated in the license agreement.”
³
That’s exactly the point. Assuming Tkach ever licensed the literature to a mentally deranged, heretical liar, he would only do so if the
WCG
maintained “control” and was able to “police” our actions. In that scenario, what would prevent him from then pulling the plug on the license agreement after litigation ended?

Later in his deposition, Tkach Jr. complained that we had misrepresented his “authorial intent” in saying he had a “Christian duty” to keep
Mystery of the Ages
out of print.
⁴
When asked what he meant by “out of print,” Tkach said he was “expressing a feeling, but not a course of action.”
⁵
Of course, with that kind of reasoning, you can back away from practically any hard-and-fast position. But the facts prove that their whole reason for filing suit in the first place was to prevent us from distributing
Mystery of the Ages
—to
ACT
on their Christian duty. In his book, Tkach Jr. also made this statement about another one of Mr. Armstrong’s works: “… don’t bother writing for a copy of
The United States and Britain in Prophecy
. You won’t get it from us.”
⁶
Was that just a feeling or do the fruits prove that they acted on that conviction? Tkach wrote, “Today we reject what is well known as ‘Armstrongism,’ that is, adherence to the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong… .”
⁷
Feeling or action?

Both Sides of His Mouth

Four times during his deposition, Tkach Jr. accused Mr. Armstrong of speaking out of “both sides of his mouth”—particularly with respect to his role as an
apostle
. At times, Tkach explained, Mr. Armstrong seemed to think he was right up there, on par with the apostles of the first century. Yet on other occasions, he apparently made statements relegating his apostleship to something less than first-century-like. But as we have already seen in this volume, it is Joseph Tkach Jr.—not Mr. Armstrong—who spoke from both sides of his mouth.

In his 1997 book, Tkach Jr. wrote, “Over two or three decades he claimed rank on a par with the first-century apostles”
⁸
—a very definitive commentary on Mr. Armstrong’s views.
Two or three decades!
But on March 16, 1992, in a letter the
WCG
turned over in discovery, Tkach Jr. wrote, “It is good to remember, however, that Mr. Armstrong’s role was not synonymous with the original 12 apostles.” Later, he wrote, “Mr. Armstrong
never
claimed his writings were equivalent to Scripture.”
⁹

We reminded Tkach Jr. about what his father said two days after Mr. Armstrong died—that he was “confident that the same policies, doctrines and everything else which [Mr. Armstrong] taught would be preserved and carried out.”
¹⁰
We asked if this comment contradicted what his father said about the “deathbed repentance”—that Mr. Armstrong commissioned Tkach Sr. to make the very changes in doctrine that had been made between 1986 and 1991 (a list of changes so extensive, you will recall, that he wanted a tape recorder so he could remember all of them). Tkach Jr. responded, under oath, by saying “no”—there is no contradiction.
¹¹

We asked him about this statement from his book: “It is said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Mr. Armstrong may have never wielded absolute power in our church, but by that same token, there weren’t many who would challenge him on an issue.”
¹²
Tkach defended the statement this way: “The audience for this book was not only church members .… They were counter-cult ministries who viewed Mr. Armstrong in this way. And I’m explaining for the historical record that that was inaccurate for them to view him that way.”
¹³
So the comment was actually intended to
defend
the manner in which Mr. Armstrong led the church!

Earlier in the deposition, Tkach described the manner in which Mr. Armstrong would sometimes deal with subordinates. “When he would correct people at times, he would ask,
Do you believe I’m an apostle? Do you believe I’m an apostle just like Peter and Paul are apostles?
And the person would be generally trembling and responding in the affirmative.”
¹⁴
He then described an incident where Mr. Armstrong called Tkach Sr. about a Bible study given in Pasadena. According to Tkach Jr., Mr. Armstrong “was very angry and yelled at my dad for about 40 minutes.”
¹⁵
Yet at the same time, what he wrote in
Transformed by Truth
about Mr. Armstrong’s governing style was supposedly a
defense
of the church’s founder.

We reminded Tkach about the changes in government he promised in his 1997 book and got him to admit that nothing had changed in the five years since the book was released. He still retained all the absolute powers he is quick to condemn Mr. Armstrong for.

When asked about his description of the
PCG
in his book—that we are a “militant church of God”—he explained that we would “confront” their members and tell them if they didn’t accept
Malachi’s Message,
“they were going to burn in hell .…”
¹⁶
He said that “numerous people were confronted that way in restaurants and grocery stores.”
¹⁷