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.”
Nobody made fun of the description you cut and pasted of critical thinking, in fact if you decided to cut and paste ALL of your responses from other sources it would probably make things much easier.
We have copies of scriptures from thousands of years of ago.
That is not actually correct. The Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus both date from the 4th Century and even they are incomplete. However, they were written on papyrus (which deteriorates) and would not have been considered "one of a kind" documents when they were inscribed.
The question is where are the gold plates and decoders from less than two hundred years ago?
What we don’t have is a kind of D&C when, why, and how those revelations or scripture was given.
I haven't got the slightest clue what you are talking about. We know EXACTLY who received revelation in the Bible.
This is so yucky!
A man becomes a god, so that he can have sexual relations with his multitudes of wives on his planet, to get them pregnant with spirit children, who then get to enter the portal of another planet, by sexual union of two spirit offspring of that god -or is it sexual union between that god, on that other planet, with one of his own spirit offspring who has a flesh body, then”? -How’d she or they get that or those body or bodies of flesh to have sex in,anyway? in which to to bring their brothers and sisters into that planet by sexual union of the flesh, as their portal into it?
by that god and one of his spirit offspring??? -inquiring minds do want to know, indeed!
[does he make the planet for them to go get into, in flesh bodies, or is it ready made?], and they enter that planet through the door of sexual union between two of his spirit by two of his spirit children on that planet who are then in flesh bodies and have sexual union, as a door for the entrance of their brothers from their father’s planet to enter into their planet so that they all can get to be gods and continue the propagation of spirit to men to god persons bgy sexual union forever???
.
Is the planet made for him or by him? -to have sexual relations on, with his many wives, to populate it with the spirit children that have to wait for entering another planet [of his making???] through the portal of sexual union of two of his spirit children who got to that planet [how do they get there”] [and he must never sleep, to sexually create all those ‘spirit’ children by his many sexual relations with his many celestial wives
Yep, it’s fascinating how Mormon “revelation” coincides with American laws.
http://historytogo.utah.gov/salt_lake_tribune/centennial_celebration/101595.html
The Mormon Church was all but bankrupt as it entered the decade of the 1890s. Drastic action was necessary to save what was left. Woodruff, since his succession to the church presidency, was also on the run and in hiding to avoid prosecution for polygamy. But on September 25, 1890, he took the only option open, and published in the Deseret News his manifesto—or “Official Declaration” against new polygamy. Woodruff’s statement, in essence, explained that: “Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriage, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the church over which I preside to have them do likewise.
And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.”
Revelation from God revoking polygamy? :)
we must have been thinking along the same lines! see my post above.
Especially given this quote from FAIR.lds. Of course, the plates were "taken back". Seems a little strange to me that God wouldn't know in advance that His "Restored Gospel" would be better presented with the aid of those plates.
Joseph's money-digging youth is certainly no secret. When asked if he was a money digger, Joseph said, "Yes, but it was never a very profitable job...only got fourteen dollars a month for it."83 His mother, Lucy Mack Smith, explained the prevalent money digging story as originating from Joseph's employment as a hired silver mine digger for Josiah Stowell. Lucy said that Joseph "endeavored to divert [Stowell] from his vain pursuit,"84 however, he ultimately succumbed, as Richard Bushman concludes, to "pressure from neighbors, from the enthusiastic and well-off Josiah Stowell, from his own father, and from cruel, unrelenting poverty."
I didn’t edit the post, sorry for that. I had deleted the latter part, I thought, but it was out of sight on the screen...
The first portion of it is my thought, stated the way I wanted...ignore the confusion after, please.
Okay, I really don’t want to know the answers to the confusing doctrines, which I stated, and LDS don’t have the answers, anyway. I already discovered that years ago, when I tried to find out those answers from some of them whom I know, and they do not have answers, and even will not think about the obvious implications of such doctrines as they have.
No. 12 on “the list”.
I do not thiink there is a record of Abram going in to Hagar but once...at any rate, they certainly had no more children together, so that blows the LDS defense of polygamy!
Science fiction writers do a better job than that.
Did you see that video Lying for God that was posted here yesterday? It explains a whole lot!
I appreciate your feedback, P, but I think you’re operating with 2 strikes against you: First, you’re allowing more contemporary cultural examples to cloud your off-the-cuff assessment—and that’s exactly what it is—off-the cuff (you say, “I would venture to say…” ). If we have a specific pattern of Scriptural insight, why do we need to “venture” out upon contemporary living arrangements (your example of common-law marriages) as the basis of our understanding?
Secondly, perhaps your own LDS background colors your view. (Many ex-LDS have polygamists in their family tree, and of course we think the best of them & color our vantage point accordingly).
As for the specific pattern of Scriptural insight, we have two leads:
(1) What distinctions, if any, does the broader Old Testament make between “marriage” and ”concubinage”?
(2) What distinctions, if any, were present during with Abraham's family? (Genesis 11 thru Gen. 30).
Broader Old Testament distinctions
Example 1: Solomon 700 wives & 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). If this was simply some “worthless distinction,” why didn’t the writer simply use the nice round number of 1,000 wives? (He didn’t; there must have been a reason).
Example 2: Saul Wife Ahinoam (1 Sam. 14:50); Rizpah concubine (2 Sam. 3:7). Why the distinction?
Example 3: Manasseh He had (at least) two women in his life; Aramitess is clearly identified as a “concubine” (1 Chron. 7:14). Why?
Example 4: Caleb Caleb His first “wife”Azubah died (1 Chron 2:18-19). He took a second wife—Ephrata (1 Chron. 2:18-19). Ephah & Maachah were clearly id’d as Caleb’s ”concubines” (1 Chron. 2:46, 48). Why?
Example 5: David Based upon 2 Sam. 12:8, David’s the only Biblical support for a “mix and match” understanding of concubinage = marriage. These same women are id’d as “concubines” in 2 Sam. 16:21-22. But the word used for these women in 2 Sam. 12 is issah, which can simply mean “woman” as well as wife. The book of Judges uses “issah” once for “concubine”. And if Bathsheba was simply an “add-on” to David’s harem (we’re not sure when his wife Michal died), why is Bathsheba id’d as his ”wife” (2 Sam. 11:27)? Why didn’t Scripture simply identify her as yet another “concubine”?
Abraham's Family (Gen. 11-30)
I think the strongest arguments against “concubine” being used interchangeably with “wife” comes from Abraham himself & his family--namely his brother and his grandson.
Example 6: Abraham’s brother, Nahor Nahor’s wife was Milcah (Gen. 11:29), who bore him 8. Reumah is clearly id’d as a “concubine” who bore him 4 children (Gen. 22:20-24). If Nahor simply had two wives, why bother making this distinction?
You say: The fact of the matter is that there were no legal marriage rules at the time.
Saying there “were no legal marriage rules” assumes two things…(a) that God did not leave a traditional custom passed down through Adam and Eve…and (b) that marriage is at it’s foundation a “legal” entity (your use of the words, “legal” and “rules”).
P, marriage is ultimately a “God thing”—not a “legal thing.” It’s tied to creation, not to social legal theory: “For this reason [the creation account of Eve in Gen. 2:21-23] a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” (Gen. 2:24-25)
P, ya wanna explain why “father and mother” are mentioned in Gen. 2:24 when Adam & Eve had no mother? (The belly button issue). Obviously Gen. 2:24 is God’s policy for mankind beyond just Adam & Eve, and it says “wife”—not “wives.”
You say: While the Marriage to Sarah was recognized as valid, the marriage to Hagar has not been widely accepted as valid.
But why was his marriage to Sarah “recognized” as “valid?” Could it perhaps, just perhaps be because Scripture says they were actually “married?”
Example 7: Abraham himself P, even though you mention Abram’s marriage, you imply that his household arrangements were categorized based upon social recognition. It’s almost like you imply Abram and Sarai were simply “shacking up” as common-law husband & wife. But what does Scripture say? “Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah…” (Gen. 11:29) [So much for a theory of a free-wheeling, open-ended early concept of living arrangements]
I’ve already put up a couple of posts that clearly shows that Hagar was never referenced as anything other than a “servant girl” and mother. [Abraham outlived Sarah, 175-127…therefore he took another wife, Ketura after her death (Gen. 25:1).]
Example 8: Abraham’s grandson, Jacob Jacob never chose to be married to two wives. It was deception that brought Leah into the picture. (And God is NOT a deceiver). If “concubine” was simply a term for an “add-on wife,” then why is Rachel id’d as a “wife?”
It wasn’t Jacob’s idea, either to sleep with his wives’ servant girls. (That was their idea). Those girls are never id’d as anything other than that: note, for example, that Leah was given a "bridal week" even after the deception in Gen. 29. So the question would be for Rachel's maidservant: If “shacking up” is the same as “marriage,” where was her "bridal week" between Gen. 30:3 (Rachel's idea) and Gen. 30:4 (sexual liaison carried out with maidservant)? No mention, there, of a new "bridal week" or "bridal day"...no assumption, therefore, that this was "polygamy" in terms of additional "wives." (In fact, it doesn’t even sound like Jacob regularly slept with these servant girls…and why would he? He had two wives).
Maybe he melted to gold plates for the money.
“Did you see that video Lying for God that was posted here yesterday? It explains a whole lot!”
Is it this one? Can some one tell me how when you post a link, that you can use a title in place of the actual URL stuff.
http://exposeromney.com/pages/Video_LDS.html#A_Millet_Milk
That’s the one. Amazing, isn’t it?
No. Where?
oops, thought I was replying to prayforpeace.
Was going to ping you and ask you to post the link again.
Thanks!
I guess once you start repeating this lie long enough, you can't help but keep it as part of your Mormon heritage package, eh, DU?
First of all the timetables of Moses' 2 wives (of when they lived & died) is not id'd in Scripture...so your accusation of polygamy is based upon assumption. Secondly, Abraham is never identified in the Bible as being in an ongoing intimate relationship with Hagar...and in fact, Hagar in the Bible is never id'd as a wife or anything other than a servant girl. (But we understand, DU, that D&C 132 colors your viewpoint of the Bible...and that D&C 132 was written by a cohort of Smith's so that he could take it in to Emma to convince her of Smith adding on to his harem).
As for Jacob, he never iniatiated a double-wife family. It was deception that brought Leah into the picture. (And God is NOT a deceiver nor the author of deception). But now we know, DU, that you accuse God of being the author of deception. Repent, for it is blasphemy to accuse God of being such an author!
(Oh, and BTW, virtually all of the hallowed names of the OT were NOT polygamous...another lie of yours! Adam? Noah? Abraham? (sleeping with a slave girl once or a few times does not = polygamy) Moses? Aaron? Joshua? Samuel? Nehemiah? Ezra? Isaac? How about most of the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel? Isaiah? Jeremiah? Daniel? Are you that misread of the Old Testament that you can't even describe their family relationships correctly? Are you simply mistating these things because you are mistaken, or are you attempting to deceive others?)
and now you want to tell me it's not biblical, well, show me a scripture that condemns Polygamy...
I already quoted it to you in an earlier post on this thread: Deut. 17:17: He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. Sure enough, what happened in Solomon's life despite this direct warning? ...his sives led him astray...his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God..." (1 Kings 11:3-4)[Even the Book of Mormon...Jacob 2:24,27...condemns polygamy, yet you continually defend it!!!]
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