Cult leader Warren Jeffs, in a Texas prison awaiting trial on child sexual assault and bigamy charges, continues to see himself as a prophet of God.
In that capacity the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), recently addressed a ‘petition’ to President Obama.
The petition is titled, “A Warning to the Nation,” and purports to be a “Revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Peoples of the Nation of the United States of America and to the Peoples of the Earth Through My Servant Warren Jeffs”
The bizarre proclamation landed on the desks of at least 600 heads of state two Fridays ago. It’s titled “A Warning to the Nation” and in it, Jeffs, a self-proclaimed prophet, challenges the U.S. government. He says God has planned a holocaust of judgment for America worse than any WMD. “Let my people go,” he threatens … or else. He also wants to be let out of jail so that he can plan for the end of the world.
The letter, which weighs three pounds, was signed by thousands of church members, including children as young as 8 years old. In it, Jeffs promises God will destroy the “wicked” with a devastating earthquake — a “shaking of the earth in a place in thy land not known as a usual place of violent shaking unto the loss of many lives.” That place? President Obama’s home state of Illinois. When? Soon. To add intrigue, Jeffs, who claims he prophesied Hurricane Katrina, says that if the earthquake doesn’t work, God will send “a great storm to thy land crippling thy nation again.”
Jeffs may think he has superpowers, but the Texas justice system is his kryptonite. This summer, he goes on trial on charges of sexual assault on a child and bigamy. He’s told his followers that if he’s convicted the jail walls will crumble. But for now, Jeffs spends much of his time on a pay phone nailed to his solitary cell, using calling cards bought in the prison commissary.
The petition is written and numbered in biblical chapter-and-verse style. Many of the reported 13,500 signatures attached to the document are of children.
The San Angelo Standard-Times says:
Officers of the Jeffs-led FLDS church based in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., sign the copyrighted document as witnesses to the word of the Lord delivered through Jeffs. Most of the nine pages are written in first person, purportedly by the Lord, though sometimes it appears the messages are authored in first person by Jeffs.
The document indicates that the Lord wants Jeffs released from jail. The Lord also demands that government-confiscated property be returned to FLDS members in Utah and Arizona.
The Lord demands that persecution of FLDS members and their plural marriage lifestyle come to a halt. Failure to do so will bring loss of life through earthquakes and storms, the document states. […]
The document ends with the signatures of Lyle Jeffs (Warren Jeffs’ brother) and Vaughan Taylor, as FLDS officers and witnesses of the word of the Lord received through his servant on Earth, Warren Jeffs.
Jeffs recently retook his post as president of the FLDS, and promptly ousted a number of leaders from the cult.
