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NEWS SUMMARY, May 21, 1979
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the State of California, and the attitude and approach needed to meet the
challenges which lay ahead. The entire lecture was transcripted and filled
18 pages in the May 14th Pastor's Report. Following are excerpts from this
special lecture for the interest of our brethren around the world.
Mr. Rader: Captitalizing On Church/State Crisis In Doing God's Work
Now we're going into a period where, to a certain extent (as Mr. Armstrong
said yesterday) it /the court case7 is going to be a little bit on the back
burner, so to speak� The problem-is still there. The fight still goes on.
But the state has been stopped. It has been thwarted. It has been frus
trated. Any other plaintiff would have left the field. They would have
dismissed, and hoped that they were dismissed wit'1out being responsible for
damages.
The state came to us /in early Apri!7 and they wa,1ted to settle out of court
if they could, but they didn't want to be "emasculated." That was their
own expression. We can't let them lift themselves up by their bootstraps.
And this is a war. It's a war between God and the :·�rk of the Living God
on the one hand and (if you want to couch it in those terms) the anti
Christ on the other. And it's a war we can't lose; we can't afford to
lose it. That's not why we've been called. We haven't been called to lose
this battle. We will win it.
And it /the legal battle/ is not what I would consider as a distraction
or a preoccupation. It now makes everything that we're doing relevant.
Mr. Armstrong's latest copy for his latest ads have very powerful headlines
--ARE WE LOSING OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES? (I think he says) and JUST WHAT IS
THE WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD? /The latter ad is reproduced on page 37.�And
now he's beginning to preach the Gospel in the ads. In other words� he's
building. He has the public's attention. Not only about the case but
about us, and now he's getting the Gospel message right into it. So it's
not a preoccupation. It is not a distraction. It's THE THING--it's all
part of getting the Work done....
But we will capitalize (as Mr. Armstrong said just yesterday to me) on the
publicity that we've had because it has catapulted us to the front pages
around the world. You can't go anywhere in this world now without people
knowing the Worldwide Church of God. And people begin to ask who are we,
what we are doing. And they're not concerned any more. If you can "steal"
$45 million and the business is still here--the Church is still here-
/they realize/ it's got to have something going for it. How do you get
$45 million or $70 million out of an operation that is still here? We're
bigger than Oral Roberts and Billy Graham combined. People are wondering
about us now, so we'll capitalize on it....
Now we have peoples' attention at long last. Everything we say out there
has some relevance to some people. So the job is now getting done as
never before. The costs of the litigation are another way of getting out
the Gospel. We've paid millions of dollars every year for broadcasts that
very few people were heeding, relatively few people were listening. Now
we have their attention. And if we follow those programs up with more
effort in the field, you are going to see the Work start to grow in a
vertical curve again.
Mr. Helge: Why the Church Must Resist
There are certain questions that constantly keep coming across my desk.
One is "Why don't we just let the receiver in, let the state in, and give
them evervthinq?"