What Can We Learn From The Jim Jones Cult?

[sheep wrecked]

From another forum - used with permission:

Quote:As I read through so much information about Jim Jones, the thing that struck me is the similarities of churches, pastors, denominational leaders and national Christian leaders to Jim Jones. Anyone of them are capable of herding the sheep into a pigpen with a big trough. I believe firmly that many people are already there. "Cult" is culling a new definition, imo, especially with the internet and the superior attitude that "we have the truth and you don't".

If you are not familiar with Jim Jones and the People's Temple, Jones began a ministry back in the 1950s which quickly drew many members. Over the next 25 years, Jones eventually led 1,200 of his members to Guyana in Brazil to "escape" US interference [Jones was paranoid to the extreme] all in the name of socialism.

There, under much duress, hardship, exclusion, abuse, and mind control, Jones convinced over 900 of his followers to commit "revolutionary suicide" for the sake of his brand of utopia, by drinking flavor aid laced with cyanide, Nov 18, 1978.

any thoughts?

[Liberated by Faith]

One thing I have learned from the Jim Jones Cult story, and I feel it is a very important thing...

If your pastor teaches you that he is right and all other religions are wrong and offers you Kool-Aid, don't drink it.

[sheep wrecked]

Another question I have is if we are warned in the NT of great deception within the church and many false teachers will merchandise the saints, then how is this any different than what Jim Jones did? Is spiritual death by way of deceiving doctrines and theologies any less horrific than Jonestown?

[sheep wrecked]

I found an interesting interview done with Tim Reiterman who wrote the most significant book on the Jones cult that I have read. Here is a Time interview - only two questions were in print. You can listen to the whole interview on audio if you choose as an option.

Tim's book: Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People

There are also options to see photos and short write-ups on other suicidal cults in the last 30 years.

Quote:No one knows more about the Jonestown massacre than journalist Tim Reiterman. He began investigating Reverend Jim Jones, the twisted leader of the Peoples Temple cult, for the San Francisco Chronicle 18 months before Jones burst on the world's stage 30 years ago. Reiterman's articles caught the attention of Congressman Leo Ryan, who was concerned about constituents who had joined the group. Reiterman was one of a handful of journalists who accompanied the Congressman on a fact-finding mission to Jonestown, Guyana. On November 18, 1978, after meeting with Jones and his followers, their small party was ambushed by Peoples Temple gunmen as they were leaving. Ryan and four others were killed; Reiterman himself was wounded. The shootings were just the beginning of the carnage. Later that day more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple died in a mass suicide ceremony, most after they lined up to drink poisoned Flavor Aid.

After recovering from his injuries, Reiterman spent the next four years researching and writing a comprehensive book about the tragedy, "Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People," which has just been reissued by Tarcher/Penguin. The 624-page book is an extraordinary act of scholarship, the definitive account of an event that continues to fascinate and mystify. TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs spoke to Reiterman from San Francisco, where he is now the news editor for the Associated Press in northern California.

TIME: Was Jim Jones a bad person from the beginning, or did he grow into one?

Tim Reiterman: Good and evil coexisted in Jim Jones throughout his life. I really do believe, having gone back to his birthplace in Indiana and tracing his life, that the seeds of the madness that the world saw in November 1978 were there from his earliest years. He was somewhat neglected as a child. He was part of an unconventional family where his mother was the breadwinner and his father was a brooding man whose work life was cut short by mustard gas scarring from World War I on his lungs. Jones sought out acceptance and a sense of family through churches, but at the same time he had a tremendous need for power and control. He would conduct little church services up in the loft of a barn and lock his playmates in there; later he used a firearm to try to control his best friend. These early incidents, as well as some cruelty to animals, were harbingers for the sickness that grew in him over the years.

TIME: But throughout his whole life, Jones found followers. How?

Even as a kid, he was a really engaging speaker and character. He would go out and play minister. He would entertain people. He had a way of spinning words and a power to his voice. He drew people who were basically religious for the most part in the early years. They were hard-working people, and they were drawn initially to a rare thing in the Midwest, an integrated Christian congregation. When Jones brought his group to California, he started attracting a broader base of people, too. Not just people from the churches, especially the black churches, but also young, idealistic, many of them college-educated people, who wanted to belong to an organization that practiced what it preached and had a social and political component. He also built through the communal organizations that he set up within the Temple a sense of family. At the same time, however, he was breaking down the individual family units within the Temple, and he was getting a tighter and tighter grip on his followers, just as he locked up his playmates in a barn in Indiana. He found ways to take control of and isolate his members from their families and from the outside. One of the things that he did was press them to give up their belongings, sign over their houses in some cases, sign over custody of their children. One of the cruelest things, I thought, was that he had them sign false confessions that they had sexually molested their children—which, of course, left those members vulnerable and bound them in a perverse way to the church.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,...03,00.html

My question: What similarities in how Jones drew people in, compared to how people are drawn into false religious movements, and even into some "christian" churches and other cults - do you observe?

[Strefanash]

What can we learn from the Jim Jones affair? There but for the grace of God go I. I am not being pious, i KNOW that at heart I am still something of a cultist. I was just lucky I was not deceived in that manner. I was deceived in another manner, and being despertate I rejected my own bible knowledge to fit in with this group which saw to it that my own rational and Biblilcal thinking would be rejected by me, so the fact is that Bible knowledge wil not save us from deception. So, for all my theology, there but for the grace of God go I

[sheep wrecked]

(05-28-2009 04:54 AM)Strefanash Wrote:  What can we learn from the Jim Jones affair? There but for the grace of God go I. I am not being pious, i KNOW that at heart I am still something of a cultist. I was just lucky I was not deceived in that manner. I was deceived in another manner, and being despertate I rejected my own bible knowledge to fit in with this group which saw to it that my own rational and Biblilcal thinking would be rejected by me, so the fact is that Bible knowledge wil not save us from deception. So, for all my theology, there but for the grace of God go I

So what are the "mechanics" of being drawn into a cult? How does Jones and other cult leaders persuade people that they have the truth?

[Strefanash]

need, and guilt. LOTS of it. If you are needy and riddled with guilt just a bible verse or two, out of context of course, will be enough to persuade you that YOU ARE WRONG and they are therefore (though it does not follow but one is too fugged with guilt to see this) right

[sheep wrecked]

(05-28-2009 04:20 PM)Strefanash Wrote:  need, and guilt. LOTS of it. If you are needy and riddled with guilt just a bible verse or two, out of context of course, will be enough to persuade you that YOU ARE WRONG and they are therefore (though it does not follow but one is too fugged with guilt to see this) right

I always thought people were searching for what they perceive to be the truth. In Jim Jones case, people came to his temple for altruistic reasons aka a better society. In other words, they were searching for something that they perceived to be the highest goal both spiritually and socially.

Paul even speaks of deception as itching ears.

2Ti 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
2Ti 4:4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned to fables.

[Strefanash]

I was not speaking to all those deluded by Jone's outfit, but my own experience

I was a great truth searcher, until i really found out what it was.

naturally, being carnal minded. when i found the real thing, I thought, and still do to some extent (the debate and the repentances continue) that it was nonsernse.

just as the Bible said the carnal person would.

that, too, my much vaunted heroic search for truth, was largely a sham

[sheep wrecked]

(05-28-2009 04:39 PM)Strefanash Wrote:  I was not speaking to all those deluded by Jone's outfit, but my own experience

I was a great truth searcher, until i really found out what it was.

naturally, being carnal minded. when i found the real thing, I thought, and still do to some extent (the debate and the repentances continue) that it was nonsernse.

just as the Bible said the carnal person would.

that, too, my much vaunted heroic search for truth, was largely a sham

If one is a true believer, dependent on God, walking in the Spirit - are they carnal minded?