(final emphasis added)Louis Midgley wrote:Allen: I cannot now remember why I did this, but yesterday I spent an hour trying hard to actually locate where the Reverend Kurt Van Gorden currently lives. Now I was previously aware the he lived on Buggy Whip Lane in Victorville, California.
Why would I know such a thing? Well, prior to the to my second mission to New Zealand, the Reverend Van Gordon brought a lawsuit against the First Presidency, the Twelve, Daniel C. Peterson, me, and a host of other people more or less involved with what was then known as the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (a.k.a. FARMS) for millions of dollars.
My wife and I went to New Zealand for two years (1999-2000). And this lawsuit was not settled until months after we returned from our mission.
Kurt Van Gordon claimed that we had conspired to rob him from the royalties he hoped to earn from a thirty page manuscript that he had written. I am not making this up. Van Gordon had sent a copy of his manuscript to someone at FARMS, and someone in California. He claimed that we--all of us--had conspired to Xerox more copies and circulate them, thereby robbing him of income if and when he published his manuscript.
Even though FARMS had at that time perhaps four printers , Van Gordon claimed that "we" had actually gone to a print shop in Provo to reproduce and then distribute his manuscript. His proof was faked. He was the one who had made copies of his manuscript at that print shop.
Van Gordon at first represented himself at the Discovery in Los Angelos. Then he added a freshly minted evangelical attorney who had no actual experience. This fellow a couple of times actually objected to his client's answers to questions in the Discovery.
The transcript of this Discovery fills an apple box, and it now preserved in the BYU Special Collections. At the end of Discovery Van Gordon was begging to be allowed to drop his lawsuit, when our attorney suddenly said he was going to seek and would get money damages for this nuisance lawsuit.
The second law firm in Los Angeles dealt with those who like me who had not been properly served notice of the lawsuit. Van Gordon actually located a very Christian fellow who worked for the New Zealand Post Office to make sure that I had actually accepted and opened a package he hoped would actually serve me. I horrified my wife by telling her that I had received a package and had opened it. However, I got this fellows name, address, and the Post Office in which he worked. He was an utter fool. I brought all of this to the attention of the New Zealand postal authorities, and this fellow was then fired on the spot.
Whoa! He actually hunted this poor (Christian) guy down in order to get him fired? Just look at the way that Midgley is exulting in this! The Proprietor doesn't have much to say about it, though:
Celebrating death = not okay, but celebrating getting somebody fired = okay in the Mopologists' book? In any case, Midgley isn't finished yet:DCP wrote:One of the weirdest experiences of my life.
"I never once mention the squabbles into which I have been drawn." Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that he "inserted himself" into these "squabbles"?Louis Midgley wrote:I should also report that despite the fact that the day after Hank Hanegraaff immediately took over Walter Martin's operation the day of his funeral, the next day he put all of Martin's papers, correspondence, manuscripts--everything--in a dumpster. The fact is that Jill Martin Rische has done an amazing job of documenting her father's life, and assembling his papers.
It is clear that I was not aware of much of what she assembled when I wrote about his very seriously flawed opinions about the faith of Latter-day Saints. However, I have no interest in now going back and fleshing out how "Dr." Martin got to be what he became.
However, just yesterday I also discovered that one of "Dr." Martin's early friends was responsible for the Reverend Wesley P. Walters becoming a Christian--that is, a Presbyterian. My discovering where the 100 cubic feet of the Reverend Walters papers are located than somehow led me back through the Walter Martin miasma, and to Kurt Van Gordon.
I have, at my age, been asked to give an account of my life three or four times. Those who have or will soon, I suspect, be able to read one of my own account of who and what I am, will notice that I never once mention the squabbles into which I have been drawn. I am simply not defined by President Wilkinson's stupid spy ring, or by Van Gordon's lawsuit or the rubbish I have been told is being assembled by those who are certain that I am a Monster.
In any case, it seems clear that Midgley has been something of a "scourge" in New Zealand: misrepresenting Maori views, and treating the indigenous people in a "colonialist" fashion; stalking Gina Colvin; and now this latest tidbit about working to get a postal worker fired. Quite shameful, in my opinion.