UNITED STATES
The Salt Lake Tribune
By Peg McEntee
Tribune Columnist
Another year, another apocalypse in Short Creek.
From his Texas prison cell, Warren Jeffs has punished about 1,500 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints by forbidding them from attending a main meetinghouse in Colorado City, Ariz.
It’s the latest such move from a man who, according to his “revelations,” considers himself the voice of Jesus Christ.
This time, those being punished are not necessarily banished from their settlement on the Utah-Arizona border. Some families have been split up, but according to former FLDS members, others have been told to renew their covenants with God and thus enable Jeffs to be released from a Texas prison.
He’s in that prison because he was convicted of sexually assaulting two girls he took as polygamous wives. Now his phone privileges have been revoked while prison officials investigate whether he used the phone to broadcast a Christmas sermon telling followers they had until New Year’s Day to be chosen to stay or be expelled.
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