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.”
Why, yes! I certainly have!
I found nothing there, however, to explain your inability
to form a coherent sentence or to write proper English.
Maybe if I had a magic Joe Smith seeing-stone and some magic underpants I would grasp your brilliance.
Here's the part where she says, "Get a Book of Mormon, Get a Bible. Read both, pray about both, ask God to testify of Jesus and ask God to reveal errors for what they are, and truth for what it is and listen for God's response. The response should contain a testimony of Jesus, or it may not be from God.
What is NOT stated in this "challenge" is, "The response should contain a testimony of Jesus that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and Joseph Smith was His true prophet, or it may not be from God."
[All: In case you don't realize it, Swedenborgian/New Church is essentially New Age Occultic Lutheranism. First of all, it's "interesting" that DaveMSmith commented that "A person who leads a good life according to their religion has a place in heaven"--at the same time DaveMSmith neglected to tell us that Swedenborg didn't even believe that heaven (or hell) was an external reality--rather that heaven & hell are simply "within us..." Likewise, the Bible as the external Word of God was another thing "internalized" by Swedenborg, who taught it to be simply a "symbolic parable of our inner life..." Hence, Swedenborg took scissors to the Bible & cut out books like Job, Esther, Proverbs, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles and all the NT epistles.]
Like Joseph Smith & Muhammed, Swedenborg, too, claimed to have all these discussions with angels--in Swedenborg's case, both good & evil angels. He said he engaged in astral travel & has been labeled a medium.
As far as the bus, I can understand Mormons might feel uncomfortable. The solution was to offer their own services though.
The state believed kids were in danger. When your house is on fire are you going to expect the city to send firemen of your own color, gender or faith ? Of course not. After this is all over, if kids were being abused I believe the LDS should thank all who helped, including those dreaded Baptists:')
“” And just because some people of their faith once practiced polygamy, just like some folks in the good old “Biblical” days did, “”
“So just who told them to stop; God or Bob Hope? And what does Bob Hope have to do with this discussion?”
I notice that sometimes Mormons like to pretend that things that have happened recently here in the good o’l US of America, are just like things from thousands of years ago, in the Old Testament.
A woman died yesterday that was born about 4 years after God told the Mormons to quit marrying so many women at once.
“Kaku Yamanaka, Japan’s oldest citizen, died of natural causes in Yatomi, Aichi Prefecture on Saturday, nursing-care facility officials said.”
“Yamaka, born on Dec. 11, 1894, became Japan’s oldest person in February at the age of 113 years and 2 months at the death of Tsuneyo Toyonaga, who was then the oldest at the age 113 years and 9 months.”
This ridiculous comment is what started it all. Now, if you would just tell me how this ignorant comment is my problem? Other than me trying to convince you it's totally absurd I'd say the problem is yours for believing such rubbish.
Mormons don't run church buses. They expect their people to provide their own transportation. The church can't afford the expense. ;)
Maybe we could start instead with the concept of intellectual integrity.
First, you bring up "heaven" without bothering to tell us that the occultic New Age group you belong to adheres to the belief that heaven is only an inner reality; now you use terms like "person" to describe God when your boy, Swedenborg, did everything he could after visiting with evil angels to DEpersonalize God. Swedenborg taught pantheism; His "Trinity" is abstract Love, Wisdom, & Actitivity or Energy. The Father = originating power; Son = human embodiment of the divine soul; Holy Spirit = activity. (This all is typical New Age drivel; the only difference was that Swedenborg was Lutheran & tried to be eclectic in some of his thoughts)
Rest the separation of church and state thing was meant to protect us, allowing us to worship.
Cindy you asked a question I tried to answer that part of it!
Some misguided people have flipped it to keep God out which was not what our forefathers intended.
I already know this but that is not how the law functions today.
As far as the bus, I can understand Mormons might feel uncomfortable. The solution was to offer their own services though.
what Mormons? FLDS were never LDS they are rogue organization who tried to do their things and use another church name for cover.
The state believed kids were in danger. When your house is on fire are you going to expect the city to send firemen of your own color, gender or faith? Of course not.
After this is all over, if kids were being abused I believe the LDS should thank all who helped, including those dreaded Baptists:’)
Oh for petesakes, this has nothing to do with the LDS!
Have they found the 16 year old girl that made the calls. Sorry if it’s been posted already but this is a long thread. Not hiding anything here does she exist?
Did that outlandish smear make you feel better as a Christian? I hadn't heard this one -- it's certainly not from wikipedia. Care to attribute it so I can contact them?
At any rate, I stand by my beliefs and also subscribe heavily to 'Do unto others ...'
greyfoxx39 the perpetual distortor of truth and confusion continues...
Does the BATF have its flamethrowers ready?
The women look lost..
“A person who leads a good life according to their religion has a place in heaven.”
In other words, you do not agree with what Jesus said below, is that correct?
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
What this warns against.
2 Peter 2:1
You either have to claim them or walk away then. If they aren’t on the fringe of LDS then whatever bus they are on should mean nothing to you. Would you be this upset if it had been ah...who do I risk riling ...ok.. if it had been a fringe Methodist cult , you would not have cared that they left on a Baptist bus. You can’t have it both ways.
I was trying to answer this person question but why bother it all gets more tangled...
I really thought this person knew me..
but I guess ya all need to stick to gather It so much fun using this story to smear the LDS and not the ungody organization who used every one...
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