Posted on 04/06/2008 5:27:22 AM PDT by SkyPilot
Local and state officials entered the temple of a secretive polygamist sect late Saturday, said lawmen blockading the road to the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado.
The action comes hours after local prosecutors said officials were preparing for the worst because a group of FLDS members were resisting efforts to search the structure.
The Texas Department of Public Safety trooper and Schleicher County sheriff’s deputy confirmed that officials have entered the temple but said they had no word on whether anything occurred in the effort.
The incursion into the temple caps the three-day saga of the state’s Child Protective Services agency removing at least 183 women and children from the YFZ Ranch since Friday afternoon. Eighteen girls have been placed in state custody since a 16-year-old told authorities she was married to a 50-year-old man and had given birth to his child.
Saturday evening, ambulances were brought in, said Allison Palmer, who as first assistant 51st District attorney, would prosecute any felony crimes uncovered as part of the investigation inside the compound.
“In preparing for entry to the temple, law enforcement is preparing for the worst,” Palmer said Saturday evening. They want to have “medical personnel on hand in case this were to go in a way that no one wants.”
Apparently as a result of action Saturday night at the ranch, about 10:15 p.m. Saturday, a Schleicher County school bus unloaded another group of at least a dozen more women and children from the compound.
Although members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, have provided varying degrees of cooperation to the sheriff’s deputies and Texas Rangers searching the compound, all cooperation stopped once authorities tried to search the gleaming white temple that towers over the West Texas scrub, Palmer said.
“There may be those who would oppose (entry) by placing themselves between law enforcement and the place of worship,” Palmer said Saturday afternoon. “If an agreement cannot be reached … law enforcement will have to — as gently and peaceably as possible — make entry into that place.”
Sect members consider the temple, dedicated by then-leader of the sect Warren Jeffs in January 2005 and finished many months later, off-limits to those who are not FLDS members, said Palmer, who prosecutes felony cases in Schleicher County.
Palmer said she didn’t know the size or makeup of the group inside the temple.
The earlier refusal to provide access was even more disconcerting because CPS investigators have yet to identify the 16-year-old girl or her roughly 8-month-old baby among the dozens removed from the compound, Palmer said.
“Anytime someone says, ‘Don’t look here,’” she said, “it makes you concerned that’s exactly where you need to look.”
The girl told authorities in two separate phone calls a day apart that she was married to a 50-year-old man, Dale Barlow, who had fathered her child, Palmer said.
The joint raid included the Texas Rangers, CPS, Schleicher County and Tom Green County sheriff’s deputies and game wardens from the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife.
Although CPS and Department of Public Safety officials have described the compound’s residents as cooperative, Palmer disagreed.
“Things have been a little tense, a little volatile,” she said.
Authorities removed 52 children Friday afternoon and 131 women and children overnight Friday. About 40 of the children are boys, said CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner.
No further children have been taken into state custody since Friday, when 18 girls were judged to have been abused or be at imminent risk for abuse. CPS has found foster homes for the girls, Meisner said, and will place them after concluding its investigation.
Meisner declined to comment on the fate of the 119 other children and said authorities were still searching the ranch for others Saturday evening.
“They’re in the process of looking,” she said. “They’re literally about halfway through.”
Where the Urim and Thummim that Ezra used, Noah's Ark, or the Ark of the Covenant, and the tablets that Moses received from the Lord?
Trying to hold two opposing stances as if both are valid is a typical cultish trick: on the one hand, the mormonism apologists try to infer Joe Smith married many women other than Emma but did not have ‘sexual congress’ with them because these apologists know that is wrong, while on the other hand they are doing all they can to defend the polygamy of these sleazy fLDS people because they know hoiw close to their church history this modern perversion is. A careful reading of the Torah (commandments against adultery and coveting another man’s wife, etc.) and the Tanach (tradition of bringing the widows and orphans into your household to provide for them but not as fodder for ‘sexual congress’) explodes this Mormon fallacious defense of polygamy into smithereens.
It has always seemed peculiar to me that he would “misplace” the gold plates and magic decoder.
It is also my understanding that the Book of Mormon has been “edited” since its original publication. Now, as we all know, the Bible exists in several translations from the original manuscripts (and a full extant manuscript from the first centuries does not exist) and we know that there are various disagreements between Catholics and Protestants over the Apocrypha, but these are all a result of attempts to modernize from antiquity and the debate over the Apocrypha is about whether it belongs in Canon, not what it says. However, changes in the Book of Mormon have been very significant, the language and style of the Book of Mormon has not changed (there have been some spelling and grammatical changes that the decoder missed), unlike the Bible, the Book of Mormon has had substantive doctrinal changes. Unless they found new plates and decoders, they should not have been able to do this.
Have your disagreements but there is no need to rearrange my words so you can undermind or mock!
I copied your EXACT posts, restornu.
Try coming up with PROOF when you make your nasty accusations against me.
Bingo.
while on the other hand they are doing all they can to defend the polygamy of these sleazy fLDS people because they know hoiw close to their church history this modern perversion is.
***
You are a fabricator but I will not fret because the Lord is watching all this discussions.
And know those who have sincere concerns, via those who have an agenda to malign!
I assume you meant to say "where are" these things.
Urim and Thummim of Ezra was several thousand years ago and there is no Biblical mention of what happened. Noah was NEVER instructed to keep track of the Ark's location. The Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments are mentioned many times, the Bible is silent about where they are now (they may be hidden beneath Temple Mount).
However, we're not talking about several thousand years ago, we are talking about less than two hundred years ago. One would think that Smith and his followers would want to hold onto them.
No you didn’t you left out the part about why and I explained it more in post #1610 but that most likely will go over your head!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1997522/posts?page=1610#1610
This is not the 700 Club. This is not primarily a forum for trying to convert souls for Christ.
Although converting souls for Christ may be the most important activity that one can engage in, even the most ardent evangelist takes time out to shower, shave, eat, and engage in normal commerce and non-religious discussions.
When you are being checked out at the grocery store, do you always make a point and ask the cashier whether or not they are born again?
When you go to the polling place to vote, do you ask each of the poll watchers whether or not they are justified by faith alone?
I have never read a single post where a person has said "Aha! Now you have convinced me. I will turn my life over to Christ".
I have seen numerous posts, however, where someone has come around to the other side of the immigration issue, or an economic issue, or something related to education.
This is not a particularly good forum for proselytizing.
It does seem lateley, however, to be a great forum for self-righteousness and sectarianism.
“However, we’re not talking about several thousand years ago, we are talking about less than two hundred years ago. One would think that Smith and his followers would want to hold onto them. “
Heck, people keep their family bibles longer than that.
I still use tools from the 1800s because I got them cheap from garage sales and they are so common.
I think my meat cleaver is from the 1830s, and it is in my kitchen right now.
I still own and read books that predate those holiest of artifacts from this American cult that was created about 65 years before that Japanese woman that died last Saturday, was born.
And there are those that say that Christianity was started by a bored middle-class carpenter who spent a little too much time in the company of men.
We have copies of scriptures from thousands of years of ago.
What we don’t have is a kind of D&C when, why, and how those revelations or scripture was given.
Many here don’t like to go back connect the dots and see their are many dots missing.
Many like to mock the messenger or message like when I said not many here do Critical Thinking and gave a definition which all made fun of me, because I did not give the source which I thought it would be obvious it is from some form of dictionary or wiki.
After all that raking me over the coals the main point was Critical Thinking was dismissed from this forum for it would mean being responsible for our words!
You think that gives you a pass because something was thousand of years ago well it does not!
I agree.
As I stated in a former post to a defender of the religion who posted what his religion “now” says about Jesus [but they still miss the message/doctrine that the rulers in Israel missed, as so stated by YHWH in Isaiah 28:12, and so were given blindness of understanding, in Isaiah 29:14], their religion evolves and one cannot hold what they believe in the hand no more than one can hold smoke in the hand.
That is the reason I will not debate what they believe, for it can change with the next -so called- living prophet’s establishment. The younger generations have no idea of the true history of the founding doctrines and of the continuing changes in that doctrine and of the re-writing of their books and the deletions and additions to them.They do not even care, in the main, for if they cared, they would not keep silence and comply with the cover-ups.
Watching one video on ABC internet linked to from here, of the women in that compound and their attitude to the media [and so to the world], by their swearing and cursing at the cameras, I realized that brainwashed adults will not be swayed but by a miracle of their own hearts’ wanting truth, and seeking truth. Jesus promised that He who seeks, finds.
It's not up to me to try to pull you out of the hole you dug for yourself by proclaiming "I have said many times that plural marriage in many ways was a beautiful things." I posted your exact posts.
1610 states: "It is through this portal that the souls of the Lord enter the earth this is why I say it is a beautiful thing because of the caliber souls that come to earth under this Celestial law."
My family has a few family Bibles that predate 1830 and, unlike the fabled gold plates, there was nothing special or unique about these Bibles when my ancestors first purchased them. We’re talking about golden plates that God told you how to find and translate, one would think that this is something you would keep track of.
There, fixed it for you.
There’s no record of Abraham marrying Hagar. It was clear that he was wrong and used her slave. Having sex with some one is not a marriage ceremony and Hagar was never referred to as his wife.
Getting remarried after the death of a spouse is not polygamy. It’s perfectly legal and even God does not condemn it.
It’s not how many total, it’s how many at a time only due to death. Anything else is adultery.
“And there are those that say that Christianity was started by a bored middle-class carpenter who spent a little too much time in the company of men.”
I would like to see that historical source, do you have a link for the bored guy.
I personally doubt that Christ was ever bored.
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