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.”
If you are going to continue call me names though I don't want to discuss this with you anymore. Be glad to discuss other stuff though.
all I said was that they are either your people or they aren’t. If they are then yeah I could see a Baptist bus being uncomfortable for you. If they aren’t though then why do you care?
after all I posted Lady how can you even go there!
I can’t believe you are still trying to do this rope a dope on me!
Ephesians 4:25
OK, nobody follows the bible the proper way and everyone is apparently going to hell. Now that we have that settled...what is the fate of the blasphemers in the article?
OK, nobody follows the bible the proper way and everyone is apparently going to hell. Now that we have that settled...what is the profane fate of the blasphemers in the article?
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.
Sorry that it came off that way it is the enviorment of this thread!
If we could keep them perfectly, Jesus would be superflous.
I did not say perfect I strive to do than you are doing now!
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.
Huh?
You are still nothing but a baby Chirstian with a tommy guy!
Meaning you never grew beyond being a zealot!
Tommy gun! typo
“Huh?”
What part do you not understand? As far as I am aware, mormons DO still believe in the ten commandments, one of which is about remembering which day IS the Sabbath, and it says nothing about substituting another day in it’s stead.
If you are still at a loss, I suggest that you might want to give consideration to what day was the Sabbath in the day of Abraham and Moses. Nothing has changed, except peoples knowledge. So before you preach to ME about following the Commandments more closely, I suggest you remove the log from your own eye.
Still confused? Then I am sorry, but I am not going to follow that further in this thread, as it is WAAAAY off topic. Read the Gospel, and engage your brain.
Resty, if simply quoting Ephesians 4:25 and 2 Peter 2:1 is too much for you to take, it is you yourself who need to look inward.
You sell Amway too, dontcha.
You do your calling a disservice, though you’ll never, ever realize it. Keep kicking. More important to beat that dead Baptist, or evangelical horse than step back and take a good look. You need to go have a big warm bowl of funeral potatoes and take a nap.
Mormon Scripture, adhered to by BOTH the fLDS and the LDS alike, proclaim the following: Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith--History 1:19 says that in response to which church should Joseph join, he was told by Son of Mormon: "I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight, that those professors were all corrupt....
None...all...all...all...pretty all-encompassing it sounds like to me...wow! With one flick of a pen and one paragraph, one man could, bowling-ball style, knock down every Christian doctrine held unto then [remember, Joseph didn't say that some of their creeds were an abomination--or most--he said all.
In fact, Joseph Smith and his angel entity judged every professor in Christ as corrupt.
You can't get much worse than they they're an "abomination in his sight" and "that their professors were ALL corrupt" and having powerless godliness & then have that ensued by most LDS leaders labeling the rest of us as "apostates."
Definition of a cult leader: Someone who is not divine yet whom claims to have a monopoly on all truth while all others are wrong in the eyes of God.
Ya know.. most everyone here eventually managed to grasp the concept that it is not WHOSE denomination the buses were from which I take issue with... that what I take issue with is the reality that such a move could compromise criminal charges and allow criminals to go free. I guess you just reflect a different end of the bell-curve. Discussing it with you further is a waste of time... you are incapable of grasping it.
Good definition... but I think that you would agree that it also defines a cult FOLLOWER as well... as demonstrated by at least one person in this thread. ;)
You are much too smart and important of a person to be posting to me but thanks for slumming and honoring me with your wisdom.
i dispised Amway
The way you phrase that question I was wondering if you thought I was Seven Day Adventist
So before you preach to ME about following the Commandments more closely, I suggest you remove the log from your own eye.
You really do not have a sincere desire to change when you react this volatile, which would be too much for you to give up
“Was Jesus not a descendant of David and Solomon?”
He was not born as a result of a plural marriage, as Resty
falsely claimed. He was born in an intact marriage and
Joseph had one wife, Mary.
Best,
ampu
Wow, turning “descendant” into “born as a result” is a real stretch. I haven’t been following this thread from the beginning, but I got that, it’s pretty evident what she meant.
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