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you see the stupidity in their saying it's worth 30 million? But
they're not saying that we're selling it to a friend of ours. They're
not saying that we got an "in" with it, that we got part of the business.
Do you see the silly allegations?
So I saw the importance, and pretty soon this conspiracy began to kind
of take hold. If the dissidents could get hold of the records, they
would disappear. We'd probably never see them again. And how are we
going to defend without records and proof? You see, just like this
property value now. We have an appraisal. The appraisal shows it was
worth less than what we got it for. But, you see, that file is in
somebody else's possession now. What would happen if that appraisal
disappears? How are we going to show that we did the right thing?
So you see how dangerous that was.
So, you see, don't misunderstand this battle. One thing I want to do
is get clear in your mind the issues. We are not trying to hide the
records. There is nothing to hide. The only fact there is, we are not
about to sit back and let a man come here and say, "Mr. Armstrong, you
are out." You should have seen the dedication of the large nurnner of
people that came down to court to attest to that. You should see the
dedication of the people that were down at the law office where we were
working till five o'clock in the morning! People came from all over
this Work to help out.
I'll tell you, there's one thing this has done--it has brought this
Church, I feel, together so much stronger than it's ever been before.
It's given a renewed faith because now we do have persecution for the
first time. People used to tell me they had persecution because they
did something wrong on the job and they were fired. I said, "That's
not persecution. You earned it." But this is persecution here.
Don't let somebody tell you we're trying to hide the records. We, of
all people, want to protect those records.
We are willing to show
them to responsible individuals. IRS has consistently been here
looking at them. You've got to understand that. So don't let people
dupe you.
The battle was to protect the records, and most of all, the battle was
to keep Mr. Herbert Armstrong the head of God's Church. If God wants
him out, God will remove him. And nobody from the State is going to
do it, at least not as long as God gives me power. And, of course,
with the help of everybody else. I'll tell you, this wasn't a one-man
job. Fortunately we could pull together a lot of �ople from the
Church. They had to help to get the thing accomplished.
So the conspiracy became very clear. I've got a letter here. I'm
not going to bother reading all these things. It contains another piece
that falls together today.
We were at Mr. Armstrong's place. Mrs. Armstrong said, "I just
happened to get a letter in here. Do you want it? I haven't even
read it." I said, "Yes, let me read it here." And, boy, there it is!
This poor lamb, an innocent member out in the field, he can't understand
what fiis local minister is doing. He can't understand the rumors
that his local minister is passing out about a conspiracy,