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.”
SkyPilot gives his/her statement of faith, which is non-Biblical. SkyPilot rejects charity or good works as having anything to do with salvation. I submit that faith without works where the very statement of faith leads to a false idea of God is the downfall of the Christian Church. It is a path that points away from salvation.
Of course those calling every denomination but their own a cult are often in cults themselves and do not have much regard for the neighbor.
A person who leads a good life according to their religion has a place in heaven.
It just shows you don’t listen!
You would like this to be true for your own selfish readsons!
LOL, True.
Not only is it heretical (to most denominations), it is simply incorrect. I think it is safe to say that MOST people are niether Hebrew nor Arabic in ancestry, thus are likely NOT descended from anyone who commited “plural marriage”. I know that MY ancestry is purely Scottish, and Celts did not practice polygamy. Most cultures do not and never have.
Cops Peacefully Enter Polygamist Temple
Eldorado (pronounced el-dor-AY'-do) is a two-stoplight town of fewer than 2,000 people and located nearly 200 miles northwest of San Antonio. It consists of a cluster of government buildings, a couple churches and a few blocks of houses surrounded by dusty, wind-swept land where sheep are raised and mohair is produced.
I don't think there was a convenient parking lot of "Government Buses" in this town.
“It just shows you don’t listen!”
Does this thread have sound???
I can and do read and study. Your statement is
heresy.
Wait until you run into the mormon who has HIS lineage traced all the way back to Adam...of course, that means Jesus is in the mix SOMEWHERE in one of the “branches”. ;)
http://www.sltrib.com/polygamy
Mormons sure devote a lot of attention to polygamy. Check out that link.
This thread is not in the Religion Forum.
I wonder if that person draws that screwed up belief from the fact that Jesus was descended from Abraham (through Mary of course, not Joseph) who DID have multiple wives.
But in any event, that does not make Jesus the product of a plural marriage, since I know of nothing in scriptures which states Joseph had multiple wives. Further, even if Joseph DID have multiple wives, Jesus was not the result of ANYTHING Joseph did in that respect, since Jesus was from a virgin birth. Jesus was the product of Mary and God.
True enough. Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church identify themselves as Baptist, and claim to be following Primitive Baptist and Calvinist principles, though mainstream Primitive Baptists condemn Westboro Baptist Church and Phelps.
Given the above, it makes as much sense to add "Huckabee" and "Baptist" to the keywords of articles about Phelps and his rogue "church" as it does that "Romney", "Mormon", and "Romneytruthfile" have been added to the keywords of this thread. In either case, I'd consider it keyword abuse, but I guess it's not.
IIRC, you, like myself, aren't LDS. Just wanted to let you know that I think you're a real mensch for wading into the midst of threads like this one.
Picked up the wrong pill bottle. What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
Oh yeah I know. I dated a mormon girl once, and attended their church for about a year, until I fully learned what they believe.
Basically, they see themselves as God’s Chosen people (rather than those we call Hebrews), and they also believe that as “gentiles” the rest of us are going to Hell.
You are welcome to continue down your hateful road and should you go beyond no return it matters not...
And people are welcome to follow heretical paths too. It is called Free Will. You can choose Truth or not.
“Eldorado (pronounced el-dor-AY’-do) is a two-stoplight town of fewer than 2,000 people and located nearly 200 miles northwest of San Antonio. It consists of a cluster of government buildings, a couple churches and a few blocks of houses surrounded by dusty, wind-swept land where sheep are raised and mohair is produced.
I don’t think there was a convenient parking lot of “Government Buses” in this town.”
Thanks for posting that, I pretty much figured it, but was too lazy to get to looking for it.
You know a lot about Mormons, does this seem like an odd infatuation with polygamy for a people that should be embarrassed by the subject?
http://www.sltrib.com/polygamy
It almost seems like a topic that they desire to cover and keep people informed on, as far as to how none Mormons respond.
Proof me wrong?
Folks who attempt to use the Old Testament to justify polygamy, should be asked to explain the 7th Commandment...
“You Shall Not Commit Adultery”
specializes in that in what?
She has an 8 month old baby and turned 16 this year.
She was raped at 14.
Maybe it should be?
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