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	Apocalypse Now? Warren Jeffs" New Years Deadline Approaches By Ben Winslow Fox 13 January 1, 2012 http://www.fox13now.com/news/kstu-flds-apocalypse-now-warren-jeffs-new-years-deadline-approaches-20111231,0,3765956.story A deadline set by Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs for his members to reaffirm their commitment to the faith is prompting some people to walk away from the polygamous church on the Utah-Arizona border. Other FLDS members are simply vanishing once they are re-committed to the faith, ex-members and observers told FOX 13. Get It Now: FOX 13 News E-mail Newsletters and Text Message Alerts | Mobile Web Site and Smartphone Apps | Twitter and Facebook Jeffs, who is imprisoned in Texas for child sex assault related to underage marriages, has ordered his followers to be questioned by FLDS leaders. They've had to fill out questionnaires, confess their sins and be re-baptized into the faith, only after church elders deem them worthy, ex-members said. Jeffs has reportedly set down new restrictions, including demanding his followers give up any forms of entertainment; children have been told to give up toys and bicycles, and husbands and their wives have been forbidden to have sexual relationships unless it is for procreation (and only then with the approval of Jeffs), ex-members have said. "They've been going into the meetings, the big meetings every single day since Saturday," said ex-FLDS member James Barlow. Outside the FLDS Church's meeting hall and at a local school, the parking lots are packed. FLDS faithful were photographed scurrying in and out of the buildings. If members don't recommit to the church, they will be excommunicated, Barlow said. He walked away from the church last month. "A lot of them I know are going into repentance," he said. "They're going off to wherever, and working and trying to go back to it." In recent weeks, Jeffs has sent out numerous "revelations" prophesying the apocalypse and destruction for the unfaithful if he is not set free. "Thus shall all soon feel my wrath, as you continue with the sins of immorality, murder of unborn children in every nation now inhabiting my world; to now be of the full knowing that I have spoken, and I fulfill all my will and revelations given through him appointed as my Mouthpiece on earth, even my servant Warren Jeffs," one revelation reads. "Now heed my world. You cannot be of these gross crimes and survive my soon to be on earth greater cleansing and preparing judgments of an Eternal God; who is soon to appear to all peoples in glory and majesty Celestial; bringing with me the powers of heaven to rule over all peoples for the thousand years of peace." Observers believe that Jeffs' New Years deadline will come and go without any incident. Indeed, ex-members told FOX 13 that church leaders hadn't even interviewed all of the estimated 10,000 members by the deadline. But groups that work with those in Utah's polygamous communities said some of those who have been re-baptized into the faith have simply vanished. "Parents that have dropped off their girls for interviews, they go to pick them up and the girls have been sent off to a 'safe place of refuge' is what they're being told," said Tonia Tewell, the executive director of the group Holding Out Help. "And the families haven't been deemed worthy or unworthy yet. But they have no idea where their children are disappearing to." The exodus, amid increasing restrictions in the church, has prompted more calls for help for those who may leave the FLDS Church with nothing but the clothes on their backs. "We have people questioning what their options are," Tewell said. While some are leaving Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., others are deciding to stay in their homes, even if they're kicked out of the FLDS Church. The land the homes sit on is part of a united order, which was taken over in 2005 amid allegations that Jeffs and other FLDS leaders mismanaged it. It is now under court control. Holding Out Help and other groups are working to get resources to those who choose to stay, once they are cut off from the church's resources. They were gathering food, clothing and other necessities. "We need beds, we need cots, we need blow-up mattresses," Tewell said. "A lot of basic stuff." Tewell was also trying to find family law attorneys who could deal with pending custody battles, if families were split apart by FLDS leadership. In addition, Holding Out Help and the Safety Net Committee (a coalition of government agencies, social service providers and representatives of Utah's many polygamous communities) were seeking people willing to volunteer their homes to host people kicked out. [More information on how to help those in the polygamous communities can be found at holdingouthelp.org and the Family Support Center, which runs the Safety Net here]
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