MilitiasLeader of anti-government Oregon group says God told him to act

Members of assembled extremist militia group assembled // Source: georgetown.edu

Ammon Bundy, the leader of a group of anti-government militia which seized a government building in a remote wildlife refuge in Oregon to protest federal land policies, said he took his action after God told him to do so.

The New York Post reports that Bundy comes from a Nevada Mormon family which has been challenging federal land policies for decades, most recently in 2014.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) claims the Bundy family owes the government $1.1 million in fees for using public and, and in penalties for non-payment.

In a YouTube video, Bundy states that God was unhappy with the way the federal government has treated the Oregon rancher family of Steven and Dwight Hammond. The Hammonds are now in jail for for setting fire to federal land in 2001 and 2006.

Bundy said God instructed him how to write a letter to rally support for his protest.

“During that letter I began to understand how the Lord felt about the Hammonds,” he said. “I clearly understood that the Lord was not pleased with what was happening to the Hammonds, and that what was happening to them, if not corrected, would be a […] and a shadow of what would happen to the rest of the people across this country.”

Bundy said he felt a “desire and an urge” to go to Burns, Oregon, where he met and talked with Steven Hammond.

“I could tell he loved the Lord and he loved people,” said Bundy.

The Bundy family is affiliated with a segment of the Mormon church, but the church has distanced itself from the Bundy family and issued a statement to say it “strongly condemned” the armed seizure of the refuge and was “deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they are doing so based on scriptural principles.”