Warren Jeffs, Described As A Prophet And Self ...

Warren Jeffs, described as a Prophet and self proclaimed Prophet at that is head of a renegade Mormon splinter group called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He is accused of arranging marriages between underage girls and older men. He is charged with child sexual abuse in Arizona and being an accomplice to statutory rape in Utah. He is also on the FBI’s most wanted list.

Jeffs assumed leadership in 2002 after the death of his 98-year-old father, Rulon Jeffs, who had 65 children by several women. Jeffs took nearly all of his father’s widows as his own wives. He is said to have at least 40 wives and nearly 60 children.

The sect has long practiced the custom of arranged marriages, but dissidents say young girls were rarely married off until Jeffs came to power.

Jeffs exercises extraordinary control over 10,000 or so followers who live mostly in the side-by-side towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. Church dissidents say that during Jeffs’ four-year rule, the number of underage marriages — some to girls as young as 13 — escalated into the hundreds. Families have been fractured in the process.

According to those expelled from the community, young men are sent away so as not to compete for brides; older men are cast out for alleged disobedience, and their wives and children are reassigned by Jeffs to new husbands and fathers.

Jeffs has prophesied that the world was about to come to an end and that the second coming of Jesus Christ was at hand, only to blame church members for their lack of faith when the events failed to occur, according to excommunicated members.

"He’s convinced followers that he’s the mouthpiece of God," said Colorado City historian and author Ben Bistline. "We heard a rumor that he’s claiming to be Jesus Christ."

Jeffs has demanded church members add $1,000 monthly to the tithe, or 10 percent more than they already pay, leaving many families living in squalor, while his own family lived well in a block-long walled compound of mansions in Hildale.

He has also ordered followers to pull their kids out of the public schools and teach them at home; banned athletics, television and all books except Scripture; and enforced a long-standing dress code that requires women to wear long pioneer-style dresses and men to button their shirt collars

(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195723,00.html)

People like this, even though called a prophet, are far from what a true Israelite and Christian prophets are.