Mike Menning Interview Part 2

Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, but I have with me today Mike Menning. Mike Menning works with Great Commission Utah. He has spent many years ministering among those that are a part of what they call here in Utah fundamentalist Mormons.

Those are people who do believe in polygamy. They tend to hold to a view of Mormonism that more closely reflects what Mormonism was like in the 19th century when Brigham Young and John Taylor were the leaders of the church. Now, to recap what we talked about yesterday, he works with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, trying to get people out of this organization into a saving relationship with Jesus. Mike met a man years ago by the name of Andrew Chatwin, and Andrew Chatwin and two others had a lawsuit against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over a dispute that took place with some of their law enforcement officials, what you call the God Squad, and these are people that definitely take orders from the leadership in the FLDS. But Andrew and these two other men were working on a fence, and the marshal was called out, and the marshal goes out to meet them with these members of the law enforcement with the FLDS group.

And what happens? The trust, and the trust was set up as a part of the FLDS. After Warren Jeffs, before that, before he was actually taken off to prison, the trust broke off from the FLDS. What happens is Andrew leases one piece of land from the trust, the other two guys lease another piece of land, and there's a fence between them, and the three have gathered just to fix the fence or mend the gate or whatever it was. The equivalent of city police come over there, and behind them is the God Squad, what we call God Squad, and that's what they call it, too.

That's another arm of the FLDS, their private law enforcement. And so they start asking Andrew what right they have there. The guys say, we have this land officially leased from the trust.

FLDS says, we don't recognize the trust. It's our land. And so the city policemen, and that's the marshals, they rough up these guys a little bit and start pushing them around. They put the cuffs on them, and they said, you're trespassing on our property. They put them in the back squad car, take them down to the county jail, and they book them. The next day, their attorneys get them out.

Day or two later, all three of them, they go back and they're going to fix their fence, which they have to do. And here come the city marshals again, and the FLDS God Squad. They handcuff these guys, and they sent them off to the county jail again. And they were wrongfully arrested. Andrew and his friends take the FLDS to court, and the city was involved in it. They take them to court, and it's proven in the courts that the city police takes their orders from the FLDS. And so the jury or judge, what it was, they give these guys quite a sum of money.

But the FLDS refuses to pay, and so that's how it all came about. The one that we're discussing today was in a town called Pringle. And Pringle is a, really, there's not much there. You come to this intersection, and there's these bicycles, this bicycle ornament monument. I don't know what it is, but I remember passing it and talking to my wife when we were on vacation up there. I go, what is that all about? It's just a bunch of bicycles all welded together, big, huge pile.

In fact, I think if you Google Pringle, South Dakota, a picture of that comes up. The FLDS continues to refuse to pay, so the properties are put up for auction. And as we were discussing yesterday, this property was valued at $8 million. So Andrew and his two partners, they end up bidding on this, and they purchase this $8 million piece of property for $750,000.

But they don't know what's on it, because in a sheriff's auction, you're not allowed to go see the property and inspect it. You mentioned yesterday, though, when I asked you, why didn't any developers show any interest in this? 140 acres with buildings on it would certainly be something you would think they would be interested in. And you were told what? Well, I was told that rumors in that whole region is developers wouldn't touch it because there's a curse on the land.

Well, you can imagine what kind of demonic forces would be working among a group like the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because Warren Gist was certainly not a pleasant person, and he deserves to be in prison. At the end of yesterday's show, Mike, you were talking about when Andrew went back to the property after they have purchased it to look at the buildings that were on it. And he goes into one of the buildings, and he ends up spending the night, and he's noticing this place is fully stocked. The people that were living there must have just, and I used the expression yesterday, packed up and left, but they didn't pack up.

You understood they took some computers, but just about everything else was left, as if they had just gone out for the day. What did they have in some of these buildings? You mentioned a bishop's storehouse. Explain that.

What does that mean? The bishop's storehouse is the commissary when you have a large group of people there with all their supplies. And so it looked like that facility could easily house 300 to 400 people.

And it looked like the FLDS were about to bring in a large group of their people. Anyway, they went to the bishop's storehouse, and they found pretty much a fully supplied grocery store. There were six walk-in coolers. There were several walk-in freezers, very large. Their supplies, Andrew said, was equivalent to a pretty much fully equipped hardware store.

There were building materials of all kinds, like a lumber company would carry. They went on to the meeting house. It's like their worship center, but it's really not. It's a meeting house. Very large.

I don't know how many it would hold. My guess is maybe in the main auditorium there, it would hold maybe six or seven hundred people. Then there was a very large second story, and that second story was their school. Now, in the past, they really weren't much into educating. They didn't want their people educated. All the teaching materials were there.

They were ready to go. And the interesting thing in that school, what they discovered, is there was a lot of material to teach both children and adults the Russian language. And they had a lot of material on Russian culture. And that alone is not only weird, it's a little scary, you know, where they were headed with that. And I'm not sure. Yeah, I was about to ask you, why do you think Russia, of all the languages and cultures, why would that be one that they would study? That's fascinating. Yeah, it is.

And I have no idea. Off that main part of the school, there's the main music area, music room. And in that music room, the sheet music was all ready to go. There were six pianos in there. There were piano rooms, you know, where people practiced rooms. There was a grand piano in there. There was a harp in there.

There was all types of musical instruments. When you look at those buildings, plus the six enormous houses, and then the very large, large, large dormitory type building, every one of those buildings is backed up by enormous diesel generators. They were pretty much self-sufficient there. You had mentioned that when you were up there, you were invited by the sheriff for lunch. You not only had the opportunity to share the Lord with him and one of his deputies, but he informed you that under South Dakota redemption law, the FLDS have a certain amount of time to pay off the $750,000 that Andrew and his partners were able to purchase it for, and they could redeem the property. Do you think that's gonna happen?

I don't think it's gonna happen. From what I've understood about South Dakota law, they have a year, I think, to redeem the property. However, you have to understand that when redemption comes, then they have to pay the original price, what the property sold for, but they also have to pay all the legal fees. They have to pay any amount of money that the three have already spent in that area cleaning it up, even pay them for their time for selling. Remember, the sheriff's sale was on the real property, what you call real estate property, the land. But now these guys have to disperse everything that's in there, the hardware store, the grocery store, clean up the property. They have to do all that, and of course, that's under direction of their attorney. If they're gonna redeem it, they would have an enormous bill to pay of the money they're spending on it. And what I'm not sure on under redemption, I think these guys have a right to parcel off the property.

I'm not sure how that would work. We really don't know what they plan to do with the property at this time. They've told me a few things.

They didn't tell me everything. I'm pretty close to Andrew, but they're certainly not making it public what they're going to do with it. But at this point, you know, Bill, we just praise God. I've had a chance to witness to the other two guys who haven't found the Lord yet, and I'm there to support Andrew. It's been a great testimony.

The whole region is excited, and I shared with the region of how God works, often totally different than what we ever expect. You know, we have seen women and children so hurt, so scarred, that have been through that place. I mean, the FLDS would take women and children from Colorado City and take them all the way to Custer, South Dakota, and they would haul them down there in a semi-trailer.

The trip, my guess is, the trip is about 12, 14 hours if they just keep moving. And so, but once they got there, again, they were severely abused. I've worked with one woman. She gave birth to two children while she was on the property. And of course, those children were never allowed to have birth certificates. And so just in this one case alone of trying to, in the past years of trying to get birth certificates for her children, which they have to have, they have to have birth certificates.

It took us three attorneys, took us two years and numerous court hearings. And so we see what these people have gone through. And so we praise God that the FLDS is out of South Dakota.

And of course, now they're breaking up even further. Yeah, and I think we need to continue to pray for the people that are still involved in these movements. I don't think a lot of people understand just how many of these quote-unquote fundamentalists are. We see them occasionally here in Utah, quite often really. It's something that you normally don't see anywhere else. I remember seeing someone that looked like they were part of the FLDS when I was in Fort Worth, Texas, visiting some friends. They were in a Costco. I've got a picture of them. They dressed just like it.

I'm sure that was probably connected in some way. Their people have scattered all over the United States. Just this week, in fact Monday, I got notice from holding out help that they got notice from a social service agency in L.A. that there's a family in L.A. with the FLDS, and two daughters, 124, 126, and the one daughter, they're now preparing for marriage. They have run, and so we were able to help them find homes for those two girls. And preparing for marriage, I mean, man, that's not a sit down and learn some things about marriage.

That's when the guys can take advantage of those girls and prepare them for marriage. And so that's the way they operate. I don't think a lot of people realize just how evil. Never underestimate the power of a cult, a demonic cult. We praise God that they're no longer there in Pringle, South Dakota. We pray for the quick demise of the entire fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that its people will find a saving relationship with the Jesus Christ of the Bible. Thank you, Mike, for sharing your story. .