Is he building a refuge from legal troubles, or preparing the most faithful for the fiery apocalypse he has long predicted? The church's lawyer, Rod Parker of Salt Lake City, says the group hasn't offered a reason for moving into Texas (there is also a second new enclave near Mancos, Colo.). Jeffs never gives interviews, leaving others to speculate. They were chosen by the prophet - Jeffs - from the enclave on the Arizona-Utah border and likely also from Bountiful, where believers have contributed truckloads of lumber and prefabricated buildings to the cause. There may be 50 fundamentalists in there, says the local sheriff or 200, says the local newspaper editor. ![]() A long lane undulates over rocky rangeland, past stunted mesquite and juniper trees and ubiquitous prickly pear cactus. The polygamous enclave of the YFZ (Yearning for Zion) Ranch is marked by nothing more than a "No Trespassing" sign on a locked gate off a country road. Since the arrival late last winter of the "marrying people," as one of Eldorado's more eccentric citizens calls them, there's plenty to talk about in this tiny west Texas town, if not much to see. fundamentalists, says, "There is a very real potential for violence, and not on our part." Those under Jeffs's sway, he told Maclean's, "could do anything, and would do anything - and I mean anything - they thought they were supposed to do." Blackmore, meanwhile, who also claims the loyalty of a growing number of disaffected U.S. ![]() His increasingly erratic message is laced with blatant racism and apocalyptic visions - all the more disturbing since he now runs Bountiful's provincially funded school. Jeffs exerts godlike control over his followers. Insiders say Warren used his father's weakened state to position himself as leader by deposing a popular potential rival: Winston Blackmore, 48, a millionaire businessman who was bishop of Bountiful. Warren Jeffs, 49, claimed the "prophesy" of the FLDS in 2002 after the death of his father and former leader, Rulon Jeffs, who had been debilitated by a stroke. And Bountiful is also torn by a battle for spiritual and economic control between two powerful men, each claiming the loyalty of about half of the commune's members. border have triggered investigations in B.C. Allegations of child abuse, forced marriages of underage girls, and of trafficking "wives" across the Canada-U.S. But the fundamentalists also inhabit a world of legal trouble. Still, the Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), to which all of Bountiful's estimated 1,000 fundamentalists once belonged, has grown into a multi-million-dollar corporation, with about 10,000 members in the church-controlled twin cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., and mysterious new enclaves under construction in Texas and Colorado. Polygamy also violates laws in both Canada and the U.S. It estranged them and thousands more in the United States from the mainstream MORMON CHURCH, which ended the practice in 1890. The belief that men must accumulate "plural wives" to achieve salvation is a central tenet of their faith. The commune's founders moved almost 60 years ago from Alberta, seeking the splendid isolation of the Kootenay Mountains to live "the Principle" - the practice of polygamy. ![]() TROUBLE BREWS in Bountiful, a community of fundamentalist Mormons scattered about the rolling valley lands south of Creston, B.C., a town best known for its popular Kokanee beer. Mormon Sect's Power Struggle Splits BC Town
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