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PASTOR'S REPORT, May 14, 1979
Gospel. We've paid millions of dollars every
very few people were heeding, very few people
have their attention. And if we follow those
effort in the field, you are going to see the
vertical curve again.
Page 22
year for broadcasts that
were listening. Now we
programs up with more
Work start to grow in a
Mr. Armstrong said, "We will capitalize on this." I've never doubted it
from the beginning, nor has he. I admit I wouldn't have been able to
sit down and write this scenario.
It would have been much too dangerous
because the timing was very exquisite. God simply provided that certain
things would happen in a miraculous way. If
I
had been in my office
that day it all started, it would have been much worse. But
I
played
tennis for the first time in four or five months, and
I
was about to
leave from the house.
I
played tennis from seven to eight. By the
time
I
got back and showered and prepared, Virginia called me. So I
wasn't trapped in my office. She was a hostage.
Mr. Helge was out of his office, and he was corning back from Tucson.
We were able together to start marshalling the forces from the outside.
Every hour on the hour. Mr. LaRavia--we sent a lawyer right out to him,
and he fought and Virginia fought, and every hour we gave the same advice,
"Don't let them in.
Throw them out, don't let them in," while we were
marshalling our forces.
Many of us slept in a hotel several nights so we could be close to the
lawyers and work around the clock. Church brethren came in Lto the law
offices/ to do their share. But the fact that
I
wasn't there /in my
office/ that day helped. It helped a great deal. It freed me up to be
able to get all the people working. The fact that Mr. Helge was as free
was helpful. And Mr. LaRavia was on tap. Even that I could get Mr.
Gettler /an attorney7 out there in 45 minutes without notice. Judge
Weisman Is still wondering where he came from. He wasn't on the list.
Everybody else fought it, came out and fired Virginia, took care of
Mr. LaRavia a couple of days later, but they didn't know who Gettler
was. Weisman kept asking, "Who do you represent?" He didn't know where
he came from, they'd never seen him before, never heard his name. All
of a sudden he was right there at Mr. LaRavia's side. I think at one time
he /Mr. Gettler7 said, If anyone goes to jail, he would go to jail,
didn't he? "Don't you worry, I'll go to jail. What you're doing is
right."
So January 3rd is just a couple of days after New Years; why, the people
could have been out of town. Even our lawyers could have been unavail
able.
I �ean, the fact that we were able to get to Mr. /Allan/ Browne
/our attorney/ as quickly as we did is very important because-he knew
about us �lready. He had a file on us. He had been working with Mr.
Helge for some considerable period of time on another piece of litigation.
Suppose we had to go to a strange lawyer? You'd spend a whole day telling
him who you are. They'd spend another day before deciding whether they
wanted to do business with you. Do you follow? And these law·,:ers are
busy, and they're often out of town. That was a crucial time of year.
So there are certain aspects of it that I think were too providential to
just be purely chance.
They were available and they dropped everything for us. They turned their