While the Mormon Church claims to denounce the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, their doctrine encourages this sort of defiance against the Federal Government, who is always met with suspicion by the LDS Cult. Mormons are huge proponents of States Rights.

The Book of Mormon, not the musical, is a curious book of scripture, largely borrowed from existing Christian doctrine with a healthy side of manufactured fairy tales. One thing about this book is it was intended to assert the dominance and superiority of White ('and Delightsome") Mormons. I suppose the most succinct way to expose their “superior ego” is to go right to their scriptures. Their “Book of Abraham” claims that the following happened in a “pre-mortal” existence before the world was even created —which Mormons interpret to mean THEM:

22. Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones;

23. And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.
(Book of Abraham 3:22-23)

Ammon Bundy comes from a long line of devout Mormons, with strong anti-federal feelings. He praises his father’s actions against the federal government, and once accused the Bureau of Land Management as using the Endangered Species Act as a type of eminent domain.

At least openly, the Mormon Church is distancing themselves from the Bundy Bunch 2.0. But that's just a facade. Mormon Doctrine is steeped in the idea of Manifest Destiny, and the idea of 'federally owned land' is antithetical to their eminent domain mindset.

There are “scriptures” about comparable situations. To see the parallel, one simply needs to remember how and why the Mormons ran into such a fierce resistance in Missouri that they were eventually expelled from the state and fled to Illinois.

You see, as more and more Mormon converts arrived in Missouri, the local residents became concerned about the newcomers’ ability to sway elections, control and boycott commerce, exercise their majority “dominion” in the towns and counties. Part of those reactions were because many of the Mormons had emigrated from northern states, and didn’t condone slavery. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was that they went around asserting that god had given all that land to them as his “chosen people,” to build up “Zion,” a New Jerusalem, where Jesus himself would return in the Second Coming.

Read the first verses from this section of the Doctrine and Covenents to get a feel for the kind of attitude the Mormons had that irked the resident Missourians.

The Church formed a political alliance with the American Independent Party in 1993. Cliven Bundy himself left the Republican Party and switched his party affiliation to the AIP. The AIP has roots in Utah and according to their website, they were founded out of a commitment to the right-wing political principles of the late Mormon leader Ezra Taft Benson. Here is how they describe their founding:

Utah wanted a “truly” conservative party, and citizens formed the Utah AIP. The founders were inspired by a speech given by Ezra T. Benson, former Secretary of Agriculture, entitled “The Proper Role of Government”.

Ezra Taft Benson was President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1985 until his death in 1994. He was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1943 to 1995. While an Apostle of the LDS Church, Benson served as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture during both terms of President Dwight Eisenhower. His appointment to the Cabinet was a gesture of reconciliation with the conservative wing of the GOP.

After his time in the Eisenhower administration, Benson was an outspoken right-wing voice in American politics. He blasted everything from social welfare programs, civil rights, and the United Nations as being part of a Communist conspiracy to take over the United States and the world. While he was not a member of the John Birch Society, he was a vocal supporter.

The fact that there's another standoff on Federal Land is no coincidence. This is all part of the plan, and the GOP will use the Mormon Church and its zealots to further their goals. There's a more insidious element at play here, and this is perhaps why these jerks haven't been raided and kicked out: They are doing the bidding of the Republican Party most notably in U.S. Western States.

Sheriff Richard Mack gives his opinion about the stand off in this video here. No surprise that Independent American Party member and buddy of Sheriff Arpaio, Sheriff Richard Mack was at first, all for the occupation. Mack

was born into a conservative Mormon family on Dec. 27, 1952, he dreamed of becoming an FBI agent, like his father. He became an Eagle Scout, played football, baseball and basketball, and says he never smoked or drank. Despite his clean living, he was unable to gain admittance to the FBI following his 1978 graduation from Brigham Young University with a bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies. (He later attended the FBI National Academy and graduated in 1992.)

It was in Provo that Mack met the man who appears to have shaped his ideology more than any other — a fellow Mormon named W. Cleon Skousen.

If you recall, Willard Romney was also a disciple of Skousen who espoused some seriously White Supremacist ideas.

This is all about their desire to privatize Federally Protected Land so that their oil, gas and mining buddies can exploit and profit off all the natural resources they can get their greedy little mitts on. GOP-LDS reps like Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Raul Labrador (R-ID) have voting records to prove they are for privatizing federal land.

Chaffetz proposed the Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2011, which ultimately died. The Act - Directs the Secretary of the Interior to offer for disposal by competitive sale certain federal lands in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, previously identified as suitable for disposal in the report submitted to Congress on May 27, 1997, pursuant to the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996.

Labrador even wrote in support of Bundy Bunch 2.0.

Some liberals have demonized the protesters, calling them “domestic terrorists,” “Y’all Qaeda,” “YokelHaram” and “Vanilla ISIS.” Sadly, such demeaning talk makes it easy for the elite media and liberals to ignore the wrongs underlying the protests.

Two of the most important initiatives I’ve worked on in Congress could right these wrongs.

The first is shifting control of management of federal lands. I expect momentum to build for my bill to allow local officials to manage up to 2 percent of U.S. Forest Service lands as pilot projects, as well as other reforms to restore public lands to health and productivity.

Second, the Hammond case highlights the need for broad criminal sentencing reform. I am proud to have introduced legislation to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders and have worked closely with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle on legislation to further reform criminal sentencing requirements.

They are all trying to get rid of everything Theodore Roosevelt tried to do with his conservation and national parks plans. Take a look at the article entitled: How Refuge Occupation Could Fuel Land Privatization Movement, and you'll see that the push for privatization of this protected Federal Land can become a tremendous problem. There's so much money to be made, you can practically see the dollar signs in their eyes.

“There’s more than $150 trillion dollars in minerals locked up in the Western states,” Utah Republican state Rep. Ken Ivory told KNPR in Las Vegas, during the Bundy standoff. “There’s more recoverable oil than the rest of the world combined locked up in federally controlled lands … it’s the only solution to fund education, better care for the environment, and grow the economy locally and nationally.”

What better way to make way for massive profit with a rancher/spokesman who thinks he's a prophet? They are recruiting others to mine, log, and graze livestock there. They promise food and a place to sleep, and ask their recruits just to bring guns. The reason we've not seen these guys rightfully expelled from the area is that there are many people who want them right where they are. All these calls for donations are a ruse, a cover. They are amply well-funded, I suspect.

h/t to my friend Mark for the help with the scriptures