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.”
OH...maybe they load buses up with kids to take them to the temples so they can take part in those mysterious rituals for the dead?
Jesus Christ is God of the universe. Some are granted to know this sooner rather than later; sometimes not until the next life.
Of course I am interested in striving better for the will of the Lord. But I do not believe that you, who appear quite judgemental and self-righteous, are the one to lead me to that, unless it is by serving as a good example of what NOT to do.
“Do you really think he would give us commandments if we could not keep them?”
If we could keep them perfectly, Jesus would be superflous. BTW, what day do YOU recognize as the Sabbath day? One of those commandments is to remember the Sabbath day and keep IT holy... not some other day. No need to answer. Since you are a mormon, I know what day you recognize as the Sabbath.
You really are gone!
Next time I try to tell you that the Baptist were not being picked on!
It was this other guy who made the remark
Gee no thanks needed!
Try it yourself. The information you are spreading is dishonest and false. Cite your source
What? You're a follower of Swedenborg & you haven't studied who he is or his spiritual accounts?
OK, let me break this down for you:
Lutheranism: Swedenborg never did leave the Lutheran church, did he?
New Age: Did not Swedenborg proclaim that 1757 was the end of the old Christian Age in favor of a "New Christian Age?" (Wanna tell us what was so esoterically special about 1757?) Source: From The New Age and the Ages that Came Before it: "...the fullest and earliest revival of the Five Age concept, and especially of the New Age is to be found in the theological writings of Swedenborg. He integrates the Classical Ages of the Greeks and Romans with the Biblical pattern, and then claims that the New Age has begun."
Occultic First of all, Swedenborg taught that all physical phenomena of the world has a spiritual correspondence...it was upon this viewpoint that he interpreted Scripture in order to find its "hidden meaning." ("Occult" is Latin for the word "hidden"). Secondly, Swedenborg's followers tend to interpret the Bible thru the esoteric lens of Swedenborg...therefore his occultic lens becomes the authority--wresting it away from Scripture. Thirdly it was the "astral traveler" Swedenborg himself who said he visited with good & evil angels & had all sorts of supposed conversations with dead humans (Augustine, Calvin, Paul, Luther, etc.)...now if that's not occultic, I don't know what is.
So. Ya wanna tell us how you could be a follower of Swedenborg minus classifying him as a New Age Occultic Lutheran?
Nobody's gonna' win, and somebody's gonna' end up dead.
(rolling eyes)I know you and I like you but we disagree. Shrug. Why the surprise?. It’s not like we haven’t been debating this for years now. LOL. All I care about is that people know Jesus. Peace Rest.
“Jesus Christ is God of the universe. Some are granted to know this sooner rather than later; sometimes not until the next life.”
Could you give me the book, chapter and verse where this can be found?
The LDS church that you belonged to practiced the same thing until the 1890 "Great Accommodation."
In fact, the FLDS church correctly states they practice what your founder Joseph Smith practiced and therefore refer to themselves "Original Mormons" - which is completely accurate in that they follow the original practice of your prophet.
Nothing I have said above is in dispute.
And, there are a lot of them.
How is your cat doing? I have a new one ..a stray. I haven’t figured out her denomination yet but I’m leaning towards a backsliding Baptist.:’)
Perhaps there is another outcome you did not contemplate. Someone will hear Christ's truth and end up saved.
My sheep give ear to my voice, and I have knowledge of them, and they come after me.
John 10:27
That are they shoot the horses and both have to walk.
Tell yall what. When Kansas raids the Woodsboro place, charter a bus and let the Mormons pick them up and we’ll call it even, ok?
Sadly, you need look no further than this thread for the answer.
N0 you just wait I answer a question which someone else start you turn around and thank me, by accusing and trying to joint the others saying this was my Church when it wasn’t. I am on this thread because they were dragging my faith into this conversation, but bigots are all alike they just can’t resist!
Disagree is one thing crossing the line and smearing makes it more than that.
Some how you think you are the only ones who have a right to Jesus!
Even though Jesus has his own Church, he did NOT disown any of you others out there that attends to another Church to worship him!
The last I read Jesus said
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Jesus did NOT say we had to Trinity togather that is you guy’s dogma!
You’d still have to know the secret handshake to get through the curtain.
Yeah, those dicators I mentioned would have loved you. You may prefer to be content with letting LEO operate in a vacuum but that isn’t the way this nation was started and operated for well over 200+ years. I for one won’t stand for it even though you seem to be perfectly happy and content with it. It’s thinking like yours that worries me the most.
You are such bad stuff if only you knew...
your behavior towards those who don’t act like you reveals you have a long ways to go yet to have the Love of the God in you heart...
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