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who it was, I was going to offer a defense, till that person could get
to Mr. Armstrong with the facts.
So all of this was going on. In the meantime, in October right after
the Feast of Tabernacles, I told Mr. Armstrong that I felt that it
would still be in the best interests of the Work if within a reasonable
period of time, sometime perhaps in January, I could pick up my duties
that I had before May, and serve him more adequately in a role that I
was more comfortable with. And that letter I wrote with a little pique
I was a little bit annoyed. I had heard somebody had told Mr. Armstrong
that I was running the Work and that he was beginning to believe it.
And so I was a little annoyed. I did not care if everyone thought that
I was running the Work. He knew it was not true. And I knew it was
not true, but on this occasion somebody said that he thought it was true.
Well, of course, he knew it was not. He cooled me off and we let it reste
In November, I think it was about November 16th, about a week or so
before Thanksgiving and again before our departure for the Middle East,
I wrote Mr. Armstrong again and then he wrote the Pastors, and I think
we published one of the comments in the Pastor's Report and in the
Worldwide News, that I was beginning to kind of have it up to here with
the prQblems<:)f trying to be a day-by-day administrator which I did
not like, a nd also people setting me up as a possible alternative to
him in the event something happened to him if God, for some reason or
other, were not to allow him to complete the Work that had been delegated
to him as Christ's apostle. And again, Mr. Armstrong and I talked it
over and we thought that it was a bit premature.
And then, shortly before the first of the year, we had another
discussion on the telephone. It was kind of an interesting dis
cussion because on a particular Thursday, just prior to New Year's
day, Mr. C. Wayne Cole had gone down to Mr. Armstrong, and in writing
and under a lot of pressure had told him a couple of very interesting
things. One, that he was absolutely certain that a lawsuit was going
to be filed immediately after New Years and gave him a letter which
concerned me, the essence of which.I will read to you, because Mr.
Armstrong excerpted certain paragraphs in a letter he wrote back to me
dated January 1.
And the sum and substance of' the pressure, you see, was to find a way
before the lawsuit began for me to step down as Treasurer, because if
that were possible, if I were off someplace in Japan on a trip, and
the events of this past week occurred, the battle would be over, because
as a news report on CBS television said (and we have the tape, and they
will show it.) I am"a fighter." And I am going to fight for Mr. Herbert
Armstrong. And we found out in the last 72 hours we have a lot of
fighters, because I could not have done it alone. Mr. Helge and I
could not have done it together without the people who worked with us
for almost 72 consecutive hours.
We were locked out of our offices. We were blocked from our files,
but our lawyers turned over their offices to us, and their manpower,
and their secretaries and when it got too late for them to continue,
they left the building and just left us in control of their entire
office and we were making calls all over the world for information and
they were not worried about who was going to pay the bill for the long
distance calls and what have you.