We know who our father is, but who is your father? Cleans from self, claims from your worries and fears. Forget all things which are behind. Everything that's been done to you, there's no use to remember.
Just remember everything that is true. What's where the things are honest? What's where the things are just? What's where the things are pure?
Yes, my children forget those things which are behind. Let the Holy Ghost wash out all the hurts. Wash away. Now let the mind of Christ resurrect within you the mind that is God.
Beel up gushing, energy that life force that illumination that water like. Emission that's moving through your mind, cleansing it, cleansing up the cobwebs. In the name of Jesus, just send that same power that's now in your ascended down to every trouble organ. Send it to the heart and say, heart.
We're going to beat more soundly. Just visualize a good heart. See rich red blood, rich red tissues, great pumping organ and say, I'm blessing you heart. God has come through it.
He's comporting your people. You feel richer and you'll take the pain away from your body. Just put your hands on your hands and argue with God's presence. Just put your hands on your body and say, in the name of Jesus, I heal my body.
In the name of Jesus. You're listening to Transmissions from Jonestown. This is episode 16, MK United. In 1965, as temple members followed Jim Jones to California, they had no idea that thousands of disaffected youths all over the United States would soon be making the same pilgrimage in search of the summer of love.
As Indiana faded into their rearview mirrors, so did the mushroom cloud prophesied by their leader. As the caravan made its way to Ukiah, winding its way through giant redwood forests, visions of paradise, just as Father had promised, with lush vineyards and sprawling ranches, no longer only existed through stories and postcards. Not unlike the counterculture revolutionaries drawn to California, the temple envisioned a land of opportunity with plenty of room to grow. California was progressive, diverse, and its cultural soil, unspoiled by the monotonous drudgery of the industrialized world.
For Jim Jones, California would be an opportunity to reinvent himself, with possibilities of limitless expansion. All the ideals he aspired to uphold would soon be swept up in a national movement. The once underground whispers fighting for progress and change would soon echo all over the United States until the din of revolution was impossible to ignore. California would serve as a safe haven on Mecca during this time of American identity crisis and cultural revolution.
If Jim Jones wanted to be a Christ-like revolutionary, this was the perfect time and place. Our father is calling his children. They come from the north south, the east and the west. And with Bishop Jim Jones, and Bishop, people's temple has always been human service oriented in terms of reaching out to people's material as well as spiritual needs, many religious leaders feel that the role of assisting people in a material way ought to be left up to social service agencies and not to the church, which they feel should be left to concentrate on saving souls.
What was it that convinced you that religion must be making practical? The church's inception on the day of Pentecost, to have very little to do with just the esoteric, the metaphysical. Certainly the new birth was beginning, but after the inception of the Christ within, we saw a manifestation in every phase of human life, a total restructuring of apostolic society, people selling their possessions and having all things common, going about from house to house, sharing, enjoying a humanistic relationship of a higher dimension and higher order. A chance meeting at Ukiya's Palace Hotel restaurant would alter the fate of the temple and change the very fabric of Jones' doctrine.
While Jones dined with Jack Beame and Temple member Joe Phillips, they overheard a table nearby discussing church matters. Several members of the board for Christ Church of the Golden Rule, an organization that had somewhat recently broken away from their own cult leader, had no idea a young socialist preacher with radical plans was eavesdropping, hanging on their every word and hatching a plan. Christ Church of the Golden Rule, based in Willitz, California near Redwood Valley, lived communally on a beautiful several thousand acre ranch. Their leader had disappeared several years earlier.
Jim Jones recognized an opportunity. The Church of the Golden Rule is with a new religion based in Willitz, California, and when Jones and other temple members moved from Indianapolis to Redwood Valley, they encountered members of this church which really shared a number of values and beliefs, for example, living communally, sharing one's income with others, running kind of communally owned businesses, and so on. I think in the back of his mind Jones thought he could actually take over an existing group, which he does again when he tries to take over the peace mission in Philadelphia, because they did share these beliefs in kind of cooperative economies and communal living. At first glance it seemed like that might have been a good partnership.
Jim always started himself as a smartest guy in the room and a lot of times he was right. You know, I'm sure he always had a mind if I can participate in an organization, maybe I can dominate it. You know, if I dominate it, you know, it'll add to my power and influence. Jim Jones introduced himself to the Golden Rule and after some friendly conversation was invited to tour their ranch.
He immediately recognized similarities between his church and what he hoped to accomplish in Upaya and the Golden Rule. They were a tight-knit group of Christian scientists who emphasized their spiritual existence over the physical world and were open to manifestations of faith, such as healings and discernments. They believe that God can physically heal the sick through prayer. They also believe that if God doesn't heal you, it's because of your lack of faith.
You're the temple of the Holy Ghost, you're the body of God. The Holy Ghost is God's Spirit. So I'm just manifesting what you've been talking about. Oh, what's where everything's I do are true and they're beautiful and honest and lovely and they're good and important.
They're pure. Why don't you speak, God? Why don't you speak, God? My symbolizing would disturb you, some because of the nature of my spirit, much more quiet in ordinary terms.
People gather around my animal children's work and say, you're such a quiet person. That's the office. Speaking now, the office of authority. One must have authority over mortality.
Our mortality will eat us up like a terrible swamp. I have to deal with it with authority. I've got to speak and cry loud and spare an hour. But I'm really a gentle, very meat-mild, mannered person.
So please don't be deterred by what you've seen in just the sermonizing side. I am indeed a liar and are many facets to my personality. If you want a friend, I'll be a friend to the friendly. If you want a home, you've got a home.
Anybody here that will try at all has got a home. I feed the hungry, I clothe the naked. Upstairs is a little puppy because of the spirit it can be. I place these animals in every meeting.
I've got nine or some dogs or something like that. And thirty-some cats. All kinds of roosters. All beef.
All goats. And nothing's ever been killed. In all this holy mountain in River Valley. Nothing has been killed because he said in the last days nothing would be destroyed in all of this holy mountain.
I have found the key. I found some preventatives that if you use at least as our chloration, no one that has used those things. Have everybody built cancer. I have to raise the dead here.
Go off with it. One woman I raised just a few days ago. She was 350, she was a pound. Nobody but got to raise that woman up.
Either keep these things. Count on down. In the Ministry of Life constituting 20 witnesses a day. You ever try?
Why don't you try? Why don't you suffer me? Drink in my fountain. Touch me.
Keep my words. And see if I won't come through with every promise that I have made of you. The Church of the Golden Rule was founded on the idea due unto others as is done unto you. Their members donated all their possessions and property.
They lived communally, ran profitable businesses, and had strict rules about attending other churches or fraternizing with outsiders. Jim Jones expressed his desire to merge his church with that of the Golden Rule. He offered to join and bring with him his followers from Indiana and Ohio. The board members considered Jim Jones request.
Their membership was dwindling and new members could replenish their congregation. But something about this charismatic, raven-haired preacher caused the board to handle any merger with people's temple with caution. The people's temple would be allowed to hold separate services on the ranch every Sunday, but on a trial basis. I prayed these up for this Christ-speaking Golden Rule.
My heart ate for something that whole. Nineteen with him because of the disciples. I have nothing more than I can do except if I was open up some of those recent places. In the heart of our set against the Golden God extended the Christ-speaking Golden Rule to people's church.
We might fulfill our destiny. My God, my God, I hear the cry again. There is some belief of how else I would have gathered you under my wing. As I had enough better to brood, out of the old-father of those, we can lead people to water, but we cannot make them drink.
Many years before the Golden Rule met Jim Jones, they had been part of a far larger sect called Mankind United, founded by the mysterious Arthur Bell. Mike Wood remembers the Golden Rule and the stories about Arthur Bell. Guy by the name of Arthur Bell comes out of nowhere sometime in the Depression, somewhere in California, and during the Depression, a bunch of cults got started in the Depression. People couldn't understand how one day everybody's fine and driving new cars and everybody's got a job and is an American wonderful woman next day.
A ship 25% of population is unemployed, so it's just well-fertilized soil for any conspiracy you want to hatch. So Bell comes up with this idea of Mankind United and he writes this book and the book details all the shit that the hidden rulers for thousands of years have done to keep human beings enslaved. I don't know how they help these guys get their jobs, but rulers seem like a good job, maybe. What do you send your application?
But anyway, apparently they all know each other and they figure out how to transfer power down the generations. And because of their connections and well, then devotion to their particular master's cause, they're able to enslave the world and all the events that you see happening around you are not simply happening independently on their own. They're all part of this grand conspiracy and he figured out how to explain it and how to deal with it. And his idea that there were these guys, we called them the masters, but we called them something else.
They came and they would call them, you know, anyway, they were like the good guys. They were the good trustees of society. And as soon as Arthur Bell sold a certain number of books or some certain number of things happened, as certain people came to believe in them, then they would reveal their plan and, you know, a month or two. Guess what?
There will be this wonderful place again. So, and he was the representative of his super, again, it's kind of a competing group with the bad guys, kind of a mirror image of that, I guess, but sort of retrans, Jim retranslated that. But anyway, so what they did, they selected him to be the chief administrator of something, you know, he had a nice title, whatever it was. He is an organization that was devoted to selling his book and trying to teach people the truth of his particular vision.
Jim Jones had adamantly spoken out against a conspiracy of institutional racism in America and warned the public of secret societies like the Klan. He said there were enemies pulling the strings of politics and controlling law enforcement, becoming unimaginably wealthy, while the average Americans struggled to make ends meet, or remain disenfranchised. Forever locked in a cycle of poverty, he had witnessed torture and inhumanity in a third world country as it was taken over by fascists, backed by foreign interests and the CIA. The conspiracy laid out by Arthur Bell struck a cord that resonated with Jim Jones worldview and galvanized his paranoia.
The Klansman in Indiana, the Hunta in Brazil, the rich old white lady who sneered down at the orphans, were now a part of a grand collective, whose sole purpose was the destruction of mankind. This deep realization that all things are connected was an experience shared by millions in the 60s. For many, it was a psychedelic dream, but for Jim Jones, it was a nightmare of snakes, mushroom clouds, and the evil shadow forces who run the world. And I think that some of these people that are teaching us hate are paid provocateurs.
I think they're paid agents. I think there's reactionary elements in this country that want to take over. They want to be a de jure, fascism. They've got to be fact-dofacism.
They want an actual tyrannical military state, and they've got groups acting like their liberationists, whipping up hate, doing it in the name of revolution, right on, waving a red flag, talking socialism, communism, but they're being paid by rich, shouldn't rulers. I had to tell you this is not my procedure. I've often wondered is there any school or cult leaders because they all do the same thing. I think you're dealing with narcissistic individuals who are finding, because of the way the human mind is constructed, kind of clouds the same ground on.
Coincidence plays a much greater role in our lives than people want to believe. And think about the necessity of believing in a bad certainty. Think about it in the context of our evolutionary history. If, for example, you're sitting around the campfire one night and you hear rustling in the bushes, you're going to imagine that it's a bear or a lion or a tiger, and you're going to get up and run your ass off to get away from it.
Now, if you're wrong and it's just a rabbit, you're going to be embarrassed. But guess what? You're going to still be alive to be embarrassed. On the other hand, if you're sitting around the campfire one night and you're rushing in the bushes and you think, oh, it's only a rabbit, and it turns out to be a bear, guess what?
You're going to be dead, and your genes are not going to carry over into the next generation. People have a need for certainty, and they have the need to make that certainty look a particular way just for survival purposes, and that has stayed with us as a basis of white conspiracy theories are so popular. And why people just can't accept the idea of coincidence. It reminds me of the scientific method.
The only reason scientific method works is not the science method, but it's the fact that there's structured peer review and criticism that has to be observed whether we like it or not. And that's why science is such a good thing, because it helps us deal with the fact that our belief systems are really fucked up. But it is the fact that let's face it, all these cult leaders succeed because of their ability to weave conspiracy theories in a compelling manner to an audience, and pursue their own goals for wealth and power. Arthur Bell claimed that a group called the sponsors contacted him and brought him into their international legion of vigilantes.
The sponsors were a group of wealthy people, who in 1875 made contact with a superhuman race, who lives in the center of the planet. The sponsors were warned that a grand conspiracy of hidden rulers were responsible for all the war, injustice and poverty in the world, and that their sole aim was to enslave mankind. The sponsors determined that the world's problems could be solved, and the hidden rulers defeated through the use of secret technology. Arthur Bell claimed that all the sponsors required to release the technology and save the world was two million followers willing to give all their property and worldly possessions to Arthur Bell and his sect, Mankind United.
Arthur Bell promised that once they had sold enough copies of his book and had enough followers, the sponsors could guarantee a four-hour workday and universal income. Freeed from our oppressive middle-class lives, Arthur promised that all homes would come equipped with radios, televisions and machines that can record video with the swipe of a finger. He claimed to have a Ray machine, strong enough to knock out the eye sockets of people thousands of miles away, or raise the dead, who died millions of years ago on other planets. Marx said it.
He said, Man, he was capable of perfection. Christians say that you must be perfect like all of you. That's what he said. But when you start practicing perfection, the Christians say, Whoa, Warren, they got to go to heaven, to be perfect.
And that's the biggest cop out in the world. If you die of devil, as a tree falls, so shall you lie. If you've been a dollar grubbing miserly, creep here, you'll be a creep, and you make a hell out of any hell you went to. But the church tells you you can't be good till you get to heaven.
So what they tell you, anything else in your brain, squarm, those dreamers, dreamy eye socialists. Well, I'll tell you, we're going to have to dreamy eye together, and we're going to get blown up together. We're going to live together, and we're going to die together. And me that I made you somewhat uncertain about your heaven, you better forget about doing what Jesus told you to do, build a heaven here.
He said, Die Kingdom come, die will be done in earth. Said the word is nigh you, the kingdom of heaven is within you. Here's where heaven's going to have to be made. We'll make a heaven out of this place, part of me a hell.
And if we don't make a heaven out of this place, nobody in the universe is going to trust us to go to another planet or another heaven, whichever you choose. And no planet's going to know heaven, we're going to take a bunch of people that were too creepy, that they were so lousy, they wouldn't do anything to make this a better world. Now you better see this, you're sweet. Arthur Bell claimed to have learned all he knew from a 15 year educational course taught by the sponsors that he now offered to his followers at discount rates.
He kept his people busy with training programs and recruitment. Arthur said he was so busy, he had to have seven body doubles, supplied to him by the sponsors so he could be many places at once. His role in the Legion of Ijellantes necessitated that he spy on the hidden rulers, espionage, and the supposed doubles made for a convenient excuse to cover his elaborate and frequent outings where he drank and mingled with the rich and famous. In reality, Arthur was spending all of the money he took from his followers on fancy cars, apartments, mansions, and lavish vacations.
During World War II, Arthur Bell was arrested for wartime's edition. He preached against the war and exploited people in one of the nation's darkest hours. He was convicted. But despite this, Arthur Bell went on to create Christ Church of the Golden Rule, a legitimate church with tax exemptions.
Followers of the Golden Rule were required to give up their possessions, and Arthur Bell now owned several hotels and restaurants, a beach club, and even a cheese factory. Arthur continued to live his seven double lives, spending his followers money and flaunting his extravagance. The Attorney General of California received complaints from followers who had left the church and wanted their property back. Arthur Bell suddenly announced that the sponsors had contacted him one last time to tell him that the mission had failed.
Humans did not deserve utopia. Arthur was exposed as a scam artist and his fortune exhausted by court cases. In 1951, Arthur said goodbye to mankind united and the Golden Rule, he promised the few followers he had left, that in the moment just before their death, they would transcend to another planet. And just like that, Arthur Bell disappeared into the ether, leaving behind the remnants of one of the most fascinating cults to ever roam the hills of Northern California.
I don't know, sometime probably, I don't know, during World War II or just after before, he created Church of the Golden Rule in order to establish a charitable organization, to attack the British Protection purposes. But it was a charitable organization, it was a charitable organization, and then the Church of the Golden Rule bought Ridgewood Ranch. Ridgewood Ranch had been owned by the Howard family. Now Frank Howard was famous in the 1930s because he bought the Race Force to see this.
Now, that may not mean anything to you or even me now, but in the mid-30s, of course racing was really, really, really popular in this country. You know, baseball was the national game, and course racing was right behind it. NFL was really kind of junely stuck. And there was no NBA.
So, first racing was a big freaking deal. Seabus kind of comes out of nowhere as this course to be. And Frank Howard was a great marketer. And, you know, he was able to get a lot of, in fact, he got so much press support in 1938 that Seabus got it was referenced more times in the newspapers around the country than Frank when Roosevelt was the president of that.
You know, after Seabus got retired, he moved up to Seabus because of the rest of his life. And at Ridgewood Ranch, he was buried there someplace. Nobody knows where, but the stable is still there. And, you know, it's a big, beautiful, brick-and-ranchen.
So, Arthur Bell buys it for the Church, the Golden Rule Church. Right? So, I think sometime around 1950, California, tax authorities got wise to them, and they weren't cults weren't so popular then. So, they basically, you know, they sued his ass.
And one of the stipulations that you made with him, I think, at the point of the point of the prison time was that he would leave the organization period. He just basically upstakes and took off and bated into the mists of history, still leaving the Church of the Golden Rule in ownership of Ridgewood Ranch. We come along in 1965. So, we had this little church on Henry Street in Henry and Bush in Ukaya, and there were at that point, when I got there in October, 65, I must have been 25 members, that was much.
And then, very soon after that, Jim made arrangements with the people in Ridgewood Ranch to rent one of their, one of their buildings was their schoolhouse. It was really nice for our meetings on Sunday. So, we rented it for the whole day, and they gave us access to too many places we wanted to go on the ranch. Sometimes, a member of a lot of members would rent for a bunch of grants for college, and go to an hour service, and some of them even joined, like for example, Carol Stahl.
We were there every Sunday. In fact, I even worked on the ranch after I graduated from high school in the Palette mill, just before I went to college, and a couple other guys, Jack Beam and Jim Pew worked up there as well, started my dad, and he stole it, worked there, and I were best friends. And we, you know, we were there in summertime, making palettes, and everyone up to the center of the college. It must be a billion dollar ranch, I can't tell you're not.
It was hard to tell you, you had to come down, you said to turn left on one on one, when you're going north, which is not an easy thing to do, but in fact, it was a freeway. But to turn left, you went down this road, just zigzag zigzag zigzag, down the hill to the valley, and that's where all the buildings were. At the top on one on one, there was called Ridgewood something. Anyway, that was like a little, it was a little rest, not an official rest here, but it's a gas station, at the hotel, and just a little sundry shop, that kind of thing.
Maybe there was an apartment there or something, but just, you know, kind of a mini mall, basically, and you could get gas there and all that. And the church owned that, so that was part of their operation. There was a big, kind of rustic gateway down the road to Ridgewood Ranch, and the road was a private road, they didn't really invest much money on it, so it wasn't a very good road. But it was, you know, we got down there and got back up, and I'm sure you remember the story of my slide down the hill behind Jim, while we were coming home from Ridgewood Ranch that night.
You know, we were very close connected to Ridgewood Ranch, I was just a kid, I was just a senior high school and first year in college, so I wasn't involved in church operations, but I kept hearing I heard of him, Jim, in late 67. We were trying to make a move on the Golden Church of the Golden Rule, just like Jim, I had a chance to make a move later on, on Father's Revines, and a little peace mission. And basically, they kicked our asses out, you know, they figured out what's going on, and Jim said, he didn't say we got our asses kicked out, he just said, well, you know, they wouldn't respond to principle the way I wanted, so I didn't see any relationship with him. I mean, it's like an old story about, you know, my boss decided to stop paying me, and I agreed not to go to work anymore.
That's when we started meeting in the garage at the Parsonage, and earlier that summer, Jim had built a pool in the vineyard. There was like a five-acre vineyard from the Parsonage up to East Road, and he built this swimming pool in that, which I think we'd do. And then we built the church around the swimming pool. So that's how we got to the Redwood Valley Church built.
I think that was finished by the end of 1968. I can't find mention of Arthur Bell or mankind united on the tapes. Were people's temple meetings at the Golden Rule influenced by mankind united's mythology? Oh, absolutely.
That's a very good question. The answer is yes. And he changed the verbiage and changed the notion of the sponsors. He began calling the masters, and this were not simply earthly beings.
They were people who had transcended the physical plane and were now sort of running the universe, or the galaxy, or the solar system, or, you know, some bigger operation than the Earth could handle. And they included all the great minds of the past that you might think of, funny, they were all men. They were like, gondae and Einstein and Jesus and Buddha and all that else he was. And so, you know, Jim was their messenger here, whatever they called.
She'll be very quietly. As I met him, Jesus, we're never back in the middle. They were called masters, and Jim was called the messenger. And then after a while he got kind of confused, and Jim was one of them, and then after a further time, he revealed to us that in fact he was the boss, which was not a spider development.
That's how we incorporated some of their language. I think you can actually find Arthur Bell's book online. You'll find that Jim would use some of the language to think about hidden rulers, for example, and how this grand conspiracy was operating to hurt people, how we had to fight it in only way that we could down the way. And that, you know, the people in the Christ Church had their literature, they had their literature, but he was really the best interpreter of that literature.
So that's kind of how he folded it in. Now, the Church Services then were really close and affairs. They weren't at all like the leader services where everybody stood up and they were chest and they were kind of changing. And then we'd all have lunch together, and since I was one of the kids, we'd go out and get some swimming pool, be the right courses, it was really terrific.
I really enjoyed it. You had this community that lived there, and then around it was these beautiful, natural surroundings that River ran through it, and it was just, it was nice. And I was very disappointed when we left. Jim Jones didn't leave the Golden Rule empty-handed.
A former member who joined People's Temple, Carol Stahl, wrote that she remembered Arthur Bell, and mankind United had been targeted by the government and accused of being communist because of their communal living and socialist doctrines. Not only did Jim Jones' apostolic socialism appeal to her already held ideals, she had fallen in love with a People's Temple member, and the Golden Rule board would not allow her to attend both churches. She wrote that as People's Temple became more influential in Yukaya and Redwood Valley, they began to have harassing phone calls. The substance of these phone calls was always the same.
Black people are not welcome here. Jim Jones claimed that before the Temple came to Redwood Valley, it had been a sundown town. Carol wrote that animals owned by the Temple were poisoned. The Church had been shot at, and People's lives were threatened.
Life around Jim Jones caused you to think. You had to make a decision about what side of the race debate you were on. You could be risking your life. You could not remain complacent.
The entire country mirrored Carol's thoughts after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. MLK had inspired generations of Black and white people to march for equality together. After he died, many religious leaders in the country were inspiring Black and white people to worship together. The growths really occurred very shortly after we finished the Church.
I helped build that damn thing, so I know something about it. It was pretty cool. It was a nice building. I was really proud of it.
It was really beautifully designed. There was West House, there was East House, West House, East House, there was the Temple, and then there was the Parsonage Wren right next to Jim Botts. Basically, this home and I don't know where five acres of grapes. So what do you do with it?
Traditionally they had a ranch with Parsonage. So part of it was actually going to buy the grapes. So our job when I first got there, the very first year I got there, I took a great harvest season. So how we go to our first grapes?
Every great kind of spent the whole night doing grapes with each other. So that went on for two or three years and then they scraped it off and built the Temple. Martin Luther King was murdered in I think February, not mistaken, in 68. And that's when we went down to Massage County Baptist Church.
Some of their members back up and we met in the fairgrounds and did that a couple of times. So the church was beginning to grow even then because we rented the Benjamin Franklin Jr. High School, which is just up at the very boulevard from the church. We finished building the church and then we bought the buses around that time too.
And then we started to see a big influx of people. Because we were going more places, we were going to Los Angeles, we went to Vancouver, British Columbia once and we had meetings at Fresno, in Oakland, again in Los Angeles and San Francisco. So we had three principal churches there by 1971. The Red River Valley kind of fell into a hole that became the least important of all three.
People's Temple during this period of expansion was finally seeing the fruition of their social programs and community outreach events that had helped Jim Jones achieve the influence and reputation he had enjoyed in Indianapolis. Temple members were passionate about caring for children and seniors, confronting institutionalized prejudice against people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community. The Temple moved its headquarters to San Francisco. To Redwood Valley and then expansion down to San Francisco and Los Angeles, I think all of those things that were kind of in nation form in Indianapolis really floured.
And so, especially in San Francisco, where there were programs for senior citizens, we look at the notes and records that Temple members took of their activities in San Francisco. They're getting together, people to attend court appearances for someone who's being sentenced on a drug charge. So in addition to the family member, all sorts of other members are going to kind of put up a show of support for this individual. And obviously there were healthcare screenings and food, things like that.
So on the one hand, they're talking about trying to establish a world of apostolic socialism and to live it, not just kind of preach it or hear about it on Sunday, but actually to live and implement this in their day-to-day lives. Concentration camps I'm talking about. All they need is still gonna pay them 24 hours. It's all can't happen here.
You might not know the Japanese. Don't you tell me you silly people that it can't happen to us. We don't have anything. Preachers got it all.
We've got far money. They've got some big big church. They robbed us blind. We make some Uncle Tom rich.
We build fine churches in our homes. We don't have anything. We owe our soul to the company store trying to keep up with whitey. We have the biggest color TV, biggest Cadillac.
We think that's gonna make us free. That makes us more in prison. That's why I don't own a car. I don't own any new furniture.
I never buy any new clothes. I never bought a new pair of shoes in my life. And that's why I am free because I don't have to have anything. That's why I can speak my piece because I don't own any bills.
I'm not afraid of losing my job because I know I can go home and eat some greens on our church property. I'm free. You're not free with your Cadillac. You're doing just exactly what the man wants you to do.
Buy his goods so you'll never have any real economic freedom. You want you to buy everything he advertises on TV so he'll keep you perpetually. Or you're sold to the company store. You're not free.
You're a shame. Laura Johnston Cole, a former member of People's Temple who joined in California, remembered Jim Jones as a student of history who knew exactly what he was doing when he formed his church. In the valley, so there was a lot of animosity around people's simple being there. The area itself was pretty racist.
I wasn't the only one who had issues come up. People had issues come up that worked when they were black and applied for work. Or people yelling things that they would buy to Temple and stuff like that. And Jim Jones backed up against a railroad track.
They were pretty easy access. I just felt like probably two things. One thing is, it seemed like people could just drive on the property two different ways and go right to Jim's house. The church was right on a main road in this rural community.
Somebody could drive right on the property and go straight to Jim's house and do any kind of damage. And I think it was in Jim's best interest for him that convinced us that we weren't being paranoid. We were being cautious. I mean, she was paranoid always.
And so she did like to transmit that to us, that we should be paranoid. Because whether we were being monitored by the government or whether they were local races or whatever it is, we were at risk speaking our minds about integration and the different things we believe. I think that's true. But also one of the things that Cole leaders have over the years, one of the ways that they control people who are part of a cult is by doing a weed day.
And so Jim was a student, usually a scholar of who made cults work effectively. You know, Hitler did it by saying the Jews were all the problem, not anybody else. I mean, Father Divine did it even with his mission saying that people outside didn't want an integrated church and paranoia was something that he even mentioned to Jim when Jim went to my deal and how to do it. So I didn't think it was animosity in the valley and that Jim just got in and ran with it so that we feel particularly estranged from the community we were in.
If it's good, it's gone. I just want you to get free. But your Canada is a death when you are free, stand fast in the liberty, but with Christ has made you free and be not again entangled with the yoke abundance. That's my desire for you to let you have what I have and more.
I hope you can see a picture of what I've taken and reproduce a great one in your circle. Because the world needs Jesus and the only place you're going to find Jesus child is in you. You are living a pickle. The only one they're going to read.
So read me well. Don't jump the gun. Don't go out and think you're going to get into this realm overnight. I've come through lynch mops.
I've been shot at and shot down before your eyes. And you saw me picked up. You put the fingers in my, the holes in my chest. And I thought this about healing because I recognized none of them in this time and I got the Christ.
But I cannot die. My people need to see the Christ and me to bring forth the Christ in them. I cannot die. My people are not ready.
So I said, I am. That's the key. I said, I am not ready. And all that blood was all over me.
I got up. You else on. And that night he was a man by just sending the word that was in an epileptic seizure. He's right over there in the fireplace.
I just reached out and said, arise. Priest all night. So take a good picture. Take a good picture.
Watch me closely. Learn my mannerisms. Learn the patterns of devotion. My spiritual life and my social administration.
Just a sense of concept of distanceation of principles that I demonstrate everyday. Learn all these principles closely. Because I'm a living. Access of the apostle.
And one of those acts may be a small act, but I'm a, I'm a make an act that's going to help the work for Jesus. The belief system that the apostle Paul had where you are going to be all things to all people for the sake of the cause. In the Apostle Paul's case, it was the early church Christianity. And so what happened to the Apostle Paul?
They killed him. On a beautiful afternoon in Redwood Valley, the church hosted an outdoor potluck gathering temple members old and new before services. As Jim spent more time in San Francisco and on the road, Sundays like these with father in attendance, casually mingling and enjoying the company of his followers was a rare treat in Redwood Valley. San Francisco and Los Angeles required most of Dad's time and attention.
Besides, Redwood Valley was far smaller, more intimate, and the people who lived there were some of his oldest and most trusted followers. The scene could have been mistaken for one of father-divines heavenly banquets until shots rang out, creating a scene of terrified chaos. Amidst the toppled food, frantic parents, and startled old ladies laid Jim Jones holding his chest. His yellow shirts splattered with blood.
They had killed Jack, Martin, and Bobby. They killed Fred Hampton and tried to poison Castro. Now they'd come to take father. I was right in the meeting hall.
Everybody kept saying, oh, Jim has been shot. So I wasn't out there where he was. And then next soon he came in the door with blood all over the shirt holding his hand over an imagined wound, I suppose. But he got behind the floor and did an incredibly dynamic speech.
Man, he was really convincing about. He made everybody truly believe that he might change the world into the whole idea of dream of a national movement that he was going to run for office or start an actual grassroots movement. Instead, he wound up poisoning all the people he had trained with that dream. I do believe that they had weapons, but I don't remember seeing them, but I do remember they had incidents where there was weapons fired outside the church during one of our Wednesday night meetings.
And basically what I found out later was that that was contrived. Yeah, it was not, there was really no threat that that was just someone from within the church that was doing that to make everybody afraid. I think that it was kind of like more of a way to fear is a very tight bonding thing. And I think it was kind of their way of feeling more and more fear enough.
It was blended with truth. I mean, there were government consultations into organizations. The Black Panthers were being destroyed. There were assassinations.
There was Chile. There was many things happening that were horrible. So there was truth mixed in with this message. They just had a big picnic between services in River Valley.
We were all out there in the big old parking lot and stuff. And we heard again, so that they had a bunch of nurses running up there when I'm stepping in the hall. You got to walk back to the house. It was all a con.
But, you know, at the time I didn't have a house that scared me. I was out walking down to the bench. I had my legs just gave you that on me. Honestly, that's, yeah, it would really have an effect on me.
Well, you know about that. When we're generally supposed to be shot and blah, blah blah. And that's all bullshit. You made all that grandpa himself.
There's no, not a bit of truth to it. And he certainly didn't raise himself from the dead. And they had that goddamn shirt in a, you know, on the wall and the valley temple in a case so that we could, you know, it was one of our religious icons. So, you know, that was sort of bullshit.
I was not involved in, by the way, but it's just so I thought the other bullshit. I had an incident with Jim. But again, as he wanted to fire a pistol, I don't know why, but, you know, but he wanted to fire him. He said, let's just a warning shot.
I said, Jim, there's no such thing as a warning shot. I should remember my choice of the crossbow. This was a well earned lesson. I said, you should have worn a shot.
That's a real shot. It's going to come down someplace just as fast and hard as you left the damn muscle with other weapons. He said, really? He said, that's true?
I said, I know it's true, man. So, he shot someplace else. Jim, I imagine Jack Beam was shot to gun and then decorated Jim with some pins to load. Or maybe a lot of animals running around, you know, some animals who are trying to be shot.
You know, don't forget Jim was a great prankster. So, as far as being all things to all people, it's right in there with the possible who said they end justifies the means basically. And this is all the road to hell. Thanks to all people, it's just a prescription for the justification of being a liar.
You see me as God? I'm God. You see me as your friend? I'm your friend.
Now, I guess for somebody that, like, Jim, if he had people faking and he knows, and he can't trust them. He can't trust them to be real. Now he has to entrap them with various designs where, because he doesn't trust them. What, uh, web we, we, when we first begin to deceive.
Oh, I want the persecution to come on. There's a great love here. They're not going to tell the story. No, they're not.
But I don't tell you the tides against them. They may bring us down down seemingly in natural circumstances as they did Jesus so many days ago when they hung him on the tree and he seemed to be a loser. And laid away in a tomb. But my followers got me out of the tomb there, and they'll always get me out of the tomb.
I shall always come out. You can't keep me in a tomb. You can't keep the Christ idea, the revolutionary idea of socialism. You can't keep it in a tomb.
You try to nail me with a few guns, not long ago. Shot me down before all this congregation. My people scream. You see agony.
I don't ever hear that agony again. They scream as I fell on the floor. Blood gushing out of the holes in my chest. But I said I'm not ready.
My time hadn't come. You weren't organized yet enough. You weren't the little gods that I want you to be because I'm Daddy God and you're my baby gods and I want you to be just like me. And I rose on that floor and I said I'm not ready.
And they put their fingers through the free holes. They said well you can't continue. You must be the doctor. I said I'm the doctor and I'm the lawyer and I'm all I knew.
So if we did it once, we can do it again. And if you're not careful and then they will take me and do with me what they will. But my name will get known and you won't even separate yourself from me because I'll be on every TV and on every radio and on every newspaper. And on every newspaper and you won't be able to say I never knew him because every time you wake up I'll be haunting you because he'll be talking more about me than he ever talked about anybody.
When I get through, when I get through they're going to be talking about me. When Jim Jones was supposedly shot, witnesses saw him fall clutching his bloody chest. He was led to his house by Marcelyn, Jack Beame and Archie Iams. He was never looked at by a doctor and the police were never called.
Jones misdirected his security, pointing in the opposite direction from where the shots were heard to have originated. He later claimed he did this on purpose to protect the gunman from being torn apart. When Jones emerged, he showed his flock a bloodied shirt and stuck his finger through the bullet hole. He claimed to have healed himself, though some believe he was resurrected.
Father now claimed he could raise the dead. Once again, Jim Jones had tested the limits of his power to manipulate his flock. He had performed a Christ-like resurrection with little to no consequences, but with enormous benefits to his reputation. As his congregation grew, he needed more inner circle members to help him run things.
That meant more people who knew how the Temple got its funds and faked faith-healings, amongst other things. The assassination attempt proved that they would need tighter security measures, more members-only meetings, and secret groups to handle the conspiracy plot against Jones. Justice Father warned, hidden rulers were coming out of hiding and attacking the Temple and its leader. They would need to be ready for anything.
In reality, Jim Jones was not just paranoid of outsiders, he was afraid of his own people. As more inner city youth joined the Temple, former gang members, drug addicts seeking recovery, and troubled individuals with violent paths came to Jones for help and protection. Jim Jones' reality was shifting from that of a religious leader to the leader of a political movement. Acting captain of the San Francisco Police Department and former member of People's Temple, Yolanda Williams, remembers when Jim Jones started beefing up security and the effect it had on the Temple.
When we first started, of course, there was no security or anything. Everything was just free, everybody was relaxed, it was just a very peaceful, loving environment. Everybody trusted, everybody, he could leave your car unlocked, he could leave your doors unlocked. I mean, everything was just cool, but at one point in time, he claimed that somebody tried to take a shot at him.
And it was after that supposed attempt to take his life. And he said, you know, I never want to do this, but I think I'm going to need security. And then that's when he started first with a few security officers, bodyguards, whatever you want to call them. And they would be with him everywhere.
And then later on, it became that when Chief Gaines was Chief of Police here in San Francisco, somebody security guards started getting permits to carry firearms. So then it became armed security guards, but they would all wear like black suits, and they'd have, most of them would have like, berets on. They would kind of look like a black panther, or who had on black suits, you know. So men and black, they would be with him.
And like, if you wanted to talk to him, you'd have to get their authorization or get their attention, and he'd have to acknowledge or prove that you could come over and talk to them, and then you could have the personal conversation with him. So things became very organized, and the accessibility to him was far less than it had been in the past. So he became more like a ruler, authoritarian, a leader, almost like presidential. And in his mind, he was not president.
As the temple expanded in California, and the demographics of the congregation became more diverse, a group of metaphysical spiritualists who studied the works of Edgar Cayce joined. Edgar Cayce, known as the Sleeping Prophet, was famous during the early 1900s. According to legend, Edgar Cayce read his Bible daily, and by the age of 10 had read the book many times through. He wanted desperately to be a missionary, but was left with only the prospects of becoming a farmer, as his family could not afford to send him to school.
While Edgar was reading his Bible in the woods, an angel appeared and granted him divine powers. From that moment, Edgar didn't need to read his Bible. He could now quote it verbatim. The angel had granted him the power to memorize any book he slept on top of.
Friends and family tested Edgar's abilities and were astonished. His divine gifts made national news, and doctors from all over came to Tess Edgar's prophecies, an attempt to prove he was a fraud. He proved not only could he memorize books, but he could also heal the sick. While in a trance-like state, to this day, Edgar Cayce is one of the most well-documented spiritualists.
Many claimed his powers were authentic. People like our sister Evans who would have died of this tumor and divine blind, but now is healed. Just because she had faith in the God that was working in this picture. I didn't know what to do except mine the inner voice, but in the inside my natural mind said, oh dear, pipe the system, pipe the system, but I didn't.
I listened to the spiritual voices, I always knew. Edgar was disturbed by his ability to diagnose patients using words to describe the anatomy and medicines he had never heard of. But were familiar to the doctors around him. Edgar wanted to help people, not accidentally kill them with false diagnosis.
Often his readings included complicated chemical combinations, sometimes perplexing the pharmacists, that were administered to his patients for serious conditions. As his fame and fortune grew, Edgar became fearful of his powers. People all around him wanted to exploit his ability to heal by exploiting the wealthy people who sought him out for readings. Edgar questioned the source of his powers and the identity of the winged woman who would bestow upon him this sorcery.
Was this God working through Edgar or the devil? God out there and he looked over the past to rise in the time. And he was lonely. That really killed me.
That always got to me. So he looked up there and said, make man, what do you make man to the grams that he made man to worship him? Now you know if I told you, come over to church tonight because I'll give you the privilege to worship him, Jim Jones. I don't tell you where to go and where to stay put.
He had some angels up there too. He had to make them too. But the angel didn't worship him enough. They just went around to him.
He wanted to get somebody that was smart enough to go wrong, and then know that they were going wrong and have all kinds of things happen to him. So they had to use the dirt and then say, I'm sorry. So he could forgive him. I won't go over that twice.
But something like that. The angels couldn't do anything wrong. That wasn't enough. He had all his angels down and flapping their wings.
He had to share with him. That wasn't enough. And one of those angels was too much more. He made the most beautiful one he made.
Lucifer made it the most beautiful angel. And that copy picker. He wasn't here. Oh, Lucifer, Lucifer up there, he said, how high?
He gave me too much of his brains. He gave me too much of his lips. He looked out of that mess and he said, ah, I'm not going to go around here. Down on the street in the morning.
He took a third of his angels. Run over. She had one third of his darn angels. Run over.
That's the kind of food he says you've been worshiping and all these years. You've been worshiping such nonsense as that. So you're talking about Lucifer being now. What kind of a guy.
I wonder what you're going to do to Lucifer. I think that story, that analogy is so good. That Lucifer once said, somebody met the devil and said, Lucifer, what in the world ever caused you to leave heaven? What in the world ever called you to rebel against God?
He said, I'll tell you in just five seconds. He said, I'll show you why I left heaven. He said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get up on this barrel.
And I said, I want you to run around that barrel and say, how to loo you? How to loo you? How to loo you? And after about 50 times around that old fella said, you know I'm tired.
He said, that's what got me with me. That's really not left heaven. You know what? You're so brainwashed.
Some of you can't even laugh at that. That's funny. He told me one time he said, Dave, I noticed they're having a little church meeting down at the end of the street. He said, I want to have a little bit of fun.
I said, really? He said, walk down the end of the street there on Hoover. And he said, we're going to go in there. He said, they've got testimony lying, leading halfway down the wall.
So we walk down the street and go into this Pentecostal type of church. And he goes right up being so sweet and so diplomatic and just takes the microphone right out of the head person in the front of the light. And looks over around everybody and smiles and he starts talking preaching like real Pentecostal like about Jesus. And then he says, Hey, you're Satan.
Hey, you're Satan. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. And then we left and he laughed real big like that.
So funny. San Francisco in the 1960s was a haven for new religious movements and political activists. When David Wise joined people's temple in San Francisco, he was a Hare Krishna. I was looking for something sincere and real and true.
And so the people's temple was described to me in that way. And when I went and checked them out, I was just overwhelmed. It was completely different than any group of people I had ever met. More than just if you went to a Pentecostal church and you went in there and people hugged you, these people were smart and they were all very, very sincere.
And it was a group of all colors acting humble and acting like they were family. The Jim Jones preaching, I had to pretty much forget. It seemed to be just about a bunch of healings. And I wasn't impressed by them.
He had these sunglasses on like he had a sign underneath him, Rev. Jim Jones wears sunglasses so as not to distract him when he's receiving revelations in the spirit. But people's description of him about how he was humbling and he didn't purchase like wings or new clothing. He was non-materialistic, similar to the Hare Krishna's, except that he believed in using material as to do good in the world and to be involved in the world.
And so I was interested in real, free communities. Not just a bunch of people that were like sort of slaves and Hare Krishna called to where they're like, not free to go out on the street and they're like all being kind of controlled. We later see Jim Jones coming to actually become what he told me I was trying to get away from when he said that the Hare Krishna's, well not socially, socially enough for me. As a former Hare Krishna and people's temple pastor, what do you think attracted new majors and people interested in Eastern mysticism to the temple?
I think mysticism was because he wouldn't have been able to get as much cooperation amongst the intellectual elite. Who did think, who did have sort of an heir of superiority about them? There was this big hippie element that broke into a lot of different pieces. But a lot of the intellectual whites and blacks and Hispanics that were in the group really believed in some type of a revolution or a change that was going on in those years.
They knew that carpet bombing Vietnamese women and children who didn't even have vehicles, they lived in Fatch Roof, and they're saying, well, have you even cooked rice yet? What percentage of the leadership in people's temple believed in God? Oh, the leadership of people's temple was entirely atheist. I thought so.
Good job. Okay, but hold it. We can't say that. The new ageers before they were such a term were thick, only likely enter all the way up to Jim Jones.
There's too much superstition in areas of zodiac or just kind of new age stuff, but not everyone. Some were just bold-ass, bald-tired atheists. Okay, so the leadership thought they were involved in a surreptitious plan to use religion to introduce socialism. But Jim jumped ship.
He decided to make himself God. He really didn't feel safe because he was engaging in things he did not want to be found out or on the news. So now he suddenly was creating skeletons in his closet and didn't want suddenly he had started out. He wanted to be a mayor and he wanted to be a president.
And so I turned the papers in. I not only got my shots. It's just a condemnation. I'm thinking for people like us.
It's like the thing, wow, we need to listen to you when you talk about society as a cult. All the people where I'm trying to do this in the world say, I used to tell you about him. He knew Jim Jones. I tried to tell people, yeah, he went mad.
Why do you think I got away and told people about it? But I'm not going to lie about any good parts. Anyway, I was in charge of a castle. It was like a castle.
You remember when you talked about the people like body doubles and all that? For a while, everyone was dying in her black. So I dyed my hair black and then blow dried it up with a blow dryer. Boy, did I look different.
Like some other form of velvet's like you never saw. It was like this girl was making these dushy keys. She made me this really lovely blue one and one of the greatest regrets of my life is that I had my hair all fixed up and I had a tie wearing instead of a robe. I was out shining the robes wearing my own crap and Jim Jones.
I was sitting inside and Jim said, it was almost sort of like a you know, is she good kind of a type of a form of a statement. I said, Jim, I'm not doing anything with her. You know, like that. And he said, that is really a handsome dushy there.
That really is good looking. And one of the greatest regrets of my life is in that moment. I did not take it off and give it to Jim Jones. David Wise was an associate pastor for People's Temple in Los Angeles.
The temple had a massive church on Alvarado Street. Dave liked to call the castle. Hugh Forzaan was also an associate pastor for the Los Angeles temple. And like David, who was a Hare Krishna when he joined People's Temple, Hugh Forzaan came from a more traditional religious background.
He shared his memories from his first visit to People's Temple. Actually, my mother went to one of these in downtown Los Angeles. They might have grand local tail there and an auditorium inside the hotel. And she came back, she was very excited.
She said it's a mixed congregation. There's black people, white people, all different kinds and even the choirs and take up with young people and senior citizens. And she just kept raving about it. I'm like, okay, that's what my mind.
I said, I'm going to go down there myself one weekend and I'm going to pick holes in it and come back. And bust her bubble. However, because I was a fiscal painting at the time and our whole service was one whole hour. And as well as I was an alkylide in Ocho, so I knew what to do and what not to do when to carry the incense on two special days.
And then the other was bringing in the cross, bringing in the priest and going to the whole procession for one hour. So I had that downhand. So interesting enough, I was somewhat impressed when I actually sat down and saw this whole, I don't want to say act, but this whole area of them doing a supposed to worshiping to God because everything at that time was the Lord Jesus Christ working through pastor Jim Jones. That's what was said of most of the testimonies of how the Lord healed them and delivered them from certain situations.
So I'm just listening to all this stuff. And then when Jim Jones actually did come out, it was kind of different because he wasn't in a suit. He was in a pair of black flags to actually use any had lack of the lower back and now say that was some fancy of a lower shirt and it was striped. And it was never enough.
He had these sunglasses on. And so he came on and sang a couple songs with the group. And from there, he began to go into a very small portion of actually scripture, but he tied it into the things that were happening in our neighborhoods. As far as he was comparing, the local churches were not addressing the area of people that needed places.
They hung even drugs. And at that time, they'd be struck with LSD and heroin. So that kind of impressed me. And so I said, okay, so I came back again to try to once again find these holes.
I couldn't find the holes. I wasn't so much impressed with the so-called heathens at the time. Because at that time, he was supposedly calling people forth and telling about their lives and then telling their head conditions. And some of the women he would tell them to go back to the bathroom with his mirrors.
And then when he did come back, they were crying and boo-going and slinging and snot. And going forth like they really had been healed. No, whether or not they were or not. That wasn't my call.
I didn't know. It was literally what he called my interest. And I'm like, wow, okay. So that was some of the things that grabbed my interest.