BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: Authorities enter Eldorado-area temple (Fundamentalist LDS cult)

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.

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.”

I Said: so Abraham was polygamous, God specifically approved of him and blessed him for his righteousness while he was polygamous, thus polygamy is not a sin or God could not have done that.

U Said: That is a complete distortion of the episode.

That is your opinion, not a fact.

U Said: Clearly God did not approve of the relationship between Abram and Hagar.

Clearly you believe that, however, The scriptures disagree with you.

U Said: While Abram did not necessarily sin by simply entering into a polygamous relationship with another woman,

My point exactly!

U Said: he did sin by failing to believe God.

Which is always a sin.

U Said: God had promised that Abram would be the father of a nation through Sarai, and neither Sarai nor Abram had faith in God at that point. Instead of believing God that Abram would father a nation through her, she took it upon herself to give Hagar to Abram. It was an act of FAITHLESSNESS and hence it was a SIN!

Faithlessness is a sin, polygamy is not, you said it earlier, and I agree with you on that.

U Said: The act of faith for which Abraham was counted righteous was in believing that God would raise a great nation through Issac, even if Issac were sacrificed to God. It was at that point that Abram believed God and it was counted unto him as righteousness.

The act of Faith was that Abraham while himself having been almost offered as a sacrifice by his father, believed God enough to go and be prepared to sacrifice his son in an act that had to be absolutely abhorrent to him he was willing to do it with no delay, no equivocation, no faltering, just faith. And God approved him and his actions while he was still married to two women at once. God didn't bless Abraham because of his polygamy, or in spite of it, it was not a factor because it didn't matter to God, it was not a sin.

(The story of Abraham's youth is in the Book of Abraham and in the Dead sea scrolls BTW)

U Said: If you think that God approved of the incident with Hagar, then you don't understand the passage.

If you think God did not approve of Abraham's marriage to Hagar, then you don't understand Abraham, or the passage in the scriptures.

U Said: The Bible NEVER condones polygamy.

That is simply not true, it does in several places, but I guess there truly are none so blind as those who will not see.

U Said: The Bible simply reports that it was a practice.

A practice kept by men of God who were blessed by him with children (from more than one wife) a practice which was so unremarkable that not one of these men of God was asked not to do it, not one was rebuked by Go and when Moses was rebuked by his sister, God turned her into a leper for it. You my FRiend are letting your personal prejudices dictate what you see in the Bible, not the Bible dictate your prejudices.

U Said: Jesus actually made it a sin, wherein he proclaimed that if any man were to look upon a woman (other than his wife) with lust, that he would be committing adultery in his heart.

Jesus never made polygamy a sin, so it's OK for an unmarried man to look upon a woman with lust? Wake up and smell what you are shoveling here.

U Said: Now explain to me how a married man could find himself getting married to another woman (other than his first wife) and not "lust in his heart"?

That is easy, most marriages in that day and age were arranged, the groom may not have even seen the bride before the wedding ceremony that would certainly qualify.

Are you honestly telling me you did not look upon your wife to lust after her before you got married? Does that mean a pure and chaste love, or was it a dirty thing like some slimy guy in a strip joint? I submit to you that this passage does not make a sin of two people falling in love and getting married, but it does refer to the practice of ogling women which has been had down through the ages. A man may (I'm not saying will, but may) take a second wife without ogling her.

U Said: It is that lust which triggers a man wanting to be with another woman which is the foundation of polygamy.

In some cases that may be true, So Moses was lustful? He's the one who wrote the first five books of Moses, Genesis, remember Genesis Adam and Eve and one flesh Moses wrote that WHILE HE WAS LIVING IN A POLYGAMOUS MARRIAGE and he saw no contradiction, he was the law giver not the law breaker. I am truly profoundly sorry that your perceptions are not in touch with reality here, but I will not back done on a logical foundation that is solid just because it's unpopular with you. I'll be sorry about it, but I wont back down. If you want me to back down, simple give me arguments based in truth, not supposition, or find me scripture, I've looked and all the scriptures I can find or have even been quoted here, do not make polygamy a sin, but Divorce (which seems to be accepted here on FR) a sin.

U Said: The New Testament makes it clear that polygamy is not to be tolerated in the Church and no man who was married to more than one woman was allowed to hold any official office in the church.

The at least one interpreted as one, go look it up, it's a famous disagreement And it's been happening outside of the "preferences" sphere for a long time.

U Said: In Utah, every one of the leaders of the LDS Church in the 1800's was, by virtue of their status as polygamists, scripturally prohibited from holding the offices that they claimed.

By your interpretation of them, yes, by God's interpretation of what he himself said no. guess who I am going with? (at least one...)

U Said: Delphi it is good to see you defending polygamy on these threads.

I thought you'd never say that, it is good that somebody stands up for truth on a conservative forum, it's just too bad so many demagogue without thinking or reading.

U Said: It exposes Mormonism for the fraud and the evil that underpins the whole theology of the LDS Church.

Frauds like: Martin Luther

"I confess that I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict the Scripture. If a man wishes to marry more than one wife he should be asked whether he is satisfied in his conscience that he may do so in accordance with the word of God. In such a case the civil authority has nothing to do in the matter." (De Wette II, 459, ibid., pp. 329-330.) Or Tertullian
"As I think, moreover, each pronouncement and arrangement is (the act) of one and the same God; who did then indeed, in the beginning, send forth a sowing of the race by an indulgent laxity granted to the reins of connubial alliances, until the world should be replenished, until the material of the new discipline should attain to forwardness: now, however, at the extreme boundaries of the times, has checked (the command) which He had sent out, and recalled the indulgence which He had granted; not without a reasonable ground for the extension (of that indulgence) in the beginning, and the limitation of it in the end.
OR Justin Martyr
"And this one fall of David, in the matter of Uriah's wife, proves, sirs," I said, "that the patriarchs had many wives, not to commit fornication, but that a certain dispensation and all mysteries might be accomplished by them; since, if it were allowable to take any wife, or as many wives as one chooses, and how he chooses, which the men of your nation do over all the earth, wherever they sojourn, or wherever they have been sent, taking women under the name of marriage, much more would David have been permitted to do this."
OR Augustine
"Again, Jacob the son of Isaac is charged with having committed a great crime because he had four wives. But here there is no ground for a criminal accusation: for a plurality of wives was no crime when it was the custom; and it is a crime now, because it is no longer the custom. There are sins against nature, and sins against custom, and sins against the laws. In which, then, of these senses did Jacob sin in having a plurality of wives? As regards nature, he used the women not for sensual gratification, but for the procreation of children. For custom, this was the common practice at that time in those countries. And for the laws, no prohibition existed. The only reason of its being a crime now to do this, is because custom and the [secular] laws forbid it."
I am in agreement with Augistine on this and for this "Christian" belief, I am being abused on this forum, Oh well I feel at home among my Brethren who are seekers after truth. U Said: You believe in Polygamy. You;re heart's desire is to have 78 or more virgins to be given to you to service you forever in eternity. You desire to be God.

I believe that telling a freeper what he believes is not allowed on FR, and in this case at least your mind reading is as accurate as your scripture interpreting, for I have no desire to participate in a moral polygamous marriage, it would be Illegal, against the instructions of my preferences and most of all unwelcome in that I am happy with my current and only wife, thanks, but you are wrong about me.

I also happen to believe in the right to defend yourself to the point of killing an attacker, that does not mean I desire to murder.

U Said: That is the ultimate goal of every LDS man. It is why you pay tithes. It is why you go on your Mission. It is why you do your "Duty" to the church. It is so that you can someday be a polygamist God (Like YOUR Heavenly Father) over a world where people will refer to YOU as THEIR HEAVENLY FATHER.

You speak in absolutes, thus your point is easy to disprove, I am an LDS man, I do not desire to have more than one wife (your first premise falls here) I pay my tithes, and even offerings because the Lord has commanded it. (your second premise falls here) My duty to the preferences is my love and devotion to Jesus Christ, and I served my mission because he (Jesus preferences) asked me to. (your third and fourth premises fall here). I have no desire to be a polygamist God. (your fifth premise falls here) and I have no desire to rule over "a world" where God's children will worship me as God indeed, I do not believe such a thing to be possible, according to the Gospel I have learned. (your last premise falls here) I do hope to gain salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, and by being a doer of the word and not just a hearer only, and in that salvation I hope to inherit all that the Father hath becoming a Co-inheritor with Jesus by his grace and mercy.

U Said: It is, in a word........ SICK!

One of us is sick, one of us insists on focusing on the prurient, One of us is in denial one of us...

Have a nice day.

Sex for Salvation: Mormonism’s Greatest Saving Doctrine
(from another site)

Of all the gospel doctrines Joseph Smith established, none received this much attention from God. For God sent an angel to Joseph Smith over a dozen times to make sure he taught and practiced it.

This doctrine had the most saving power over any ordinance, because it guaranteed the salvation of an entire family for only one person’s obedience to it.

That’s right - Joseph Smith taught that only one person in a family needed to obey this doctrine in order to save their entire family. But if they rejected the doctrine, they and their family would be damned.

That’s exactly the offer the Prophet Joseph Smith gave to fourteen year-old Helen Mar Kimball.

Helen wrote:

“Having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet, Joseph, he (my father) offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet’s own mouth.”

“My father had but one Ewe Lamb, but willingly laid her upon the altar: how cruel this seemed to my mother whose heartstrings were already stretched until they were ready to snap asunder, for she had already taken Sarah Noon to wife and she thought she had made sufficient sacrifice but the Lord required more.”
- Helen Mar Whitney Journal, Helen Mar Autobiography, Womans Exponent, 1880 and recently reprinted in A Woman’s view.

In fact, Joseph Smith gave Helen only 24 hours to decide on whether or not to marry him. Of this, Helen wrote:

“[my father] left me to reflect upon it for the next twenty four hours. ... I was skeptical - one minute believed, then doubted. I thought of the love and tenderness that he felt for his only daughter, and I knew that he would not cast me off, and this was the only convincing proof That I had of its being right.”

The next morning, 37 year-old Joseph Smith finally appeared himself to explain the “law of Celestial Marriage” and claim his teen bride.

In her memoir, Helen wrote:

“After which he said to me, ‘if you take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation and that of your father’s household and all of your kindred.’ This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward.”

Helen also writes about her mother’s reaction to all of this:

“None but God and his angels could see my mother’s bleeding heart - when Joseph asked her if she was willing, she replied ‘If Helen is willing I have nothing more to say.”

“She had witnessed the sufferings of others, who were older and who better understood the step they were taking, and to see her child, who had yet seen her fifteenth summer, following the same thorny path, in her mind she saw the misery which was as sure to come as the sun was to rise and set; but it was hidden from me.”

Helen thought her marriage to Joseph Smith was only dynastic. But to her surprise, it was more. Helen confided to a close friend in Nauvoo:

“I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it.”

What would Mormons do today if the Church still practiced this doctrine? What if a Bishop or Stake President could extend salvation to an entire family by taking one of their teen daughters?

Why can’t Mormons today recognize the moral depravity in Joseph Smith’s actions towards his early followers?

Did angels really force Joseph Smith into behaving like this?

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