What is Cultish? This!
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Join us for this very special broadcast of Apologia Radio. We are introducing you to our brand-new program from the creators at Apologia Studios: Cultish. The first four episodes are available immediately for download at https://apologiastudios.com/shows/7. We are going to introduce you to a very dark world. Listen-in today as we play the first episode for you here on Apologia. We examine the world of Jim Jones and Jonestown. Jones was a Marxist and Communist who led over 900-people to commit an act of "revolutionary suicide". It's hard to hear the actual audio the day of this horrible event. However, it's critical that we gain a proper understanding of how the Kingdom of the Cults operates.
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- It is an engagement with an entrance into the kingdom of the cults, the kingdom of the cults.
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- We have dropped the first four premiere episodes and you're going to be hearing the first one today.
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- It is about Jonestown, Jim Jones, Jonestown, Ground Zero. It is difficult to listen to.
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- We're going to be actually listening to some of the actual audio from the day of the suicide.
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- Jim Jones was a Marxist, socialist, communist, atheist, actually.
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- He distanced himself from the Judeo -Christian worldview and created a commune in Guyana.
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- And it is a powerful, powerful thing to hear some of this audio. And again, I warn you, it is difficult to listen to.
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- But Cultish is a program from Apologia Studios that will aim to introduce you to the world of the kingdom of the cults, to unwrap them, to unpack them, to examine them from a theological, a sociological perspective.
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- The first four episodes, Jonestown, engaging Apollo Quiboloy, the
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- Filipino son of God, the man today who says that he is the Messiah on earth today.
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- We're going to talk about the Jesus of the cults. And of course, we also have our final episode is
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- Escaping Scientology, where we talk to Andrea Schwartz, who was actually a part of Scientology, and she escaped with her and her husband when they became
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- Christians. And they were actually informed there was a contract out on their lives when they left.
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- So we're very excited to introduce this program to you. It is all up at ApologiaStudios .com.
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- You can go to that website. You can browse and you can click through all of Apologia Studios' content.
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- Cultish is right there. Click on that, go to the page. And right now, for your listening pleasure, all four first episodes are up right now.
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- They will be across all major platforms, iTunes, all those things.
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- You're going to get them all. But right now, you can get them all at ApologiaStudios .com. I encourage you guys to go there, listen, enjoy the episodes.
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- We hope that they are a blessing to you, that they help you to understand and engage this world and partner with us to actually dismantle the kingdom of the cults.
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- So here is that first episode on Jonestown, Ground Zero. We've had as much of this world as you're going to get.
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- Let's just be done with it. Let's be done with the agony of it. It's a revolutionary suicide. This is not a self -destructive suicide.
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- So don't pay for this. They brought this upon us. I want you out of it and with Christ.
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- But you, you, you're... How very much
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- I've loved you. How very much I've tried my best to give you a good life.
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- But in spite of all that I've tried, a handful of our people, with their lives, have made our life impossible.
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- There's no way to detach ourselves from what's happened today. Not only we're in a compound situation, not only are there those who have left and committed the betrayal of the century, some have stolen children from others and they're in pursuit right now to kill them because they sold their children.
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- And we are sitting here waiting on a powder keg. I don't think this is what we want to do with our babies.
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- I don't think that's what we had in mind to do with our babies. It was said by the greatest of prophets from time immemorial,
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- No man takes my life from me, I lay my life down. So to sit here and wait for the catastrophe that's going to happen on that airplane, it's going to be a catastrophe.
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- Almost happened here. Almost happened. The congressman was nearly killed here. But you can't steal people's children.
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- You can't take off with people's children without expecting a violent reaction. And that's not so unfamiliar to us either.
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- Even if we were Judeo -Christian, if we weren't communists, the world, the kingdom suffers violence and the violence will take it by force.
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- If we can't live in peace, then let's die in peace. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the premiere episode of Cultish.
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- We are a production of Apologia Studios and this is our premiere episode. My name is Jeremiah Roberts, I'm one of your hosts, and I'm excited to have you guys aboard.
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- And with me is my good friend, pastor, and co -host, and I've known him for over 20 years,
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- Jeff Durbin. How are you man? Good man, what's up guys? Very excited about this flagship episode of Apologia Studios' new program,
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- Cultish. We are going to enter into the kingdom of the cults, unpack the darkness, bring light, and ultimately, by God's grace, dismantle it.
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- That's the goal. Yes, yes, and so I want to give everyone just a little bit of context here of what you are listening to.
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- This is a tape, it's actually referred, when the FBI recovered it, it was referred to as Q42, is the title of this tape, and it was the recording that took place nearly 40 years ago,
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- November 18th, 1978, in a little commune called Jonestown, in Guyana, South America.
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- And the context of what had happened is that Jim Jones was a, a lot of people, he's an iconic figure, and a lot of people don't know a whole lot about him, and we've been able to do some fantastic research, and want to kind of bring you guys in on that.
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- So he was a charismatic leader who had started a quote unquote Christian ministry in Indiana, and was very
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- Pentecostal, charismatic based, but ultimately he really had this progressive, sort of Marxist and socialist gospel that he would talk about, and in fact we're going to talk about that more in later episodes, but what happened is that he transitioned, this is very interesting, he transitioned over to San Francisco, and one of the reasons too is because he had a lot of paranoia of just apocalyptic visions, he thought that there was going to be a nuclear fallout in the
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- Midwest, and so that's part, so he took his whole group, they moved to San Francisco, then there were allegations that took place of abuse, of control, and a lot of typical tactics that you'll see in a lot of these destructive cults, and upon those accusations that were brought about by certain journalists in San Francisco, he immediately departed to Guyana, South America, to Jonestown, which is a commune they were already in the process of building and putting up together.
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- So, that's... Let me ask you about that real fast. Jim Jones has essentially become pejorative. Yes. It's a way to cut somebody down, you're like Jim Jones.
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- But I just want to say quickly, in terms of people don't understand what he believed, you mentioned Marxist, and commune, but yet he used
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- Christian terminology, and manipulated and twisted the Word of God, and was able to influence people as though he were some sort of Christian evangelist preacher, circuit preacher, but the truth is, his worldview was actually antithetical to the biblical worldview, and he actually ebbed and flowed from a profession of faith in Christianity to atheism and agnosticism.
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- Yes. He wasn't actually a religious figure. Yeah, and in fact, if you listen to that,
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- I want to just kind of bring you guys into that context of what you just heard. So, he's talking with his group, getting ready to commit what was the largest mass suicide in modern history, in fact, as the greatest loss of American lives in one particular place.
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- How many? I believe it was 915. And 300 of those were children. And 300 plus were children under the ages of 12, 13 to 12, and some of them were all the way down to even being infants.
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- So, what you'll hear though is that even, he says, even if we weren't, if we were Judeo -Christian, but we're not, we're
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- Marxist and socialist and communist. Right. But what's interesting too is that he's getting them ready.
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- I want to talk to you guys real quick about the manipulation. He takes John 10, 18. He talks about, it's said by the greatest of prophets in time memorial, no one takes my life from me.
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- I lay it down and everyone cheers from him. Then he takes another scripture, Matthew 11, 12, and he talks about the world, the worldly kingdom suffers violence and the violence is triggered by force.
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- So, I mean, as a pastor, you know, those have, those have very, very different meanings.
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- Yes. And the scriptures then taking, getting ready to commit revolutionary suicide, I'm sure you'd say.
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- Absolutely. One of the critical things to keep in mind is that the twisting of scriptures, the perversion of the word of God, by cult leaders and charlatans and con artists like Jim Jones and many other leaders like Joseph Smith Jr.
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- of Mormonism, Charles Taze Russell and the Watchtower, David Koresh. You can, you know, the list is long and sordid, right?
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- Yes. This is not a new thing in terms of twisting the scriptures, the word of God. I'll give you an example of that.
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- This is from the Bible. This is long before Jim Jones came around. This is 2
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- Peter chapter 3. This is what the apostle Peter says in terms of twisting of the scriptures. He says, and count, in verse 15, and count the patience of our
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- Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters.
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- Here it is. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures.
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- You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your stability.
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- Yes. And so it's critically important for us to recognize that these charlatans, these con artists and cult leaders use the
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- Bible as a springboard, as a pretext to manipulate, to distort, and to destroy people.
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- Right. And so, for example, Jim Jones confessing that he's not coming from an ultimately
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- Judeo -Christian background, yet he uses the Bible to draw people into this commune, into this movement.
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- And he takes the word of God in reference to Christ laying his life down for the sheep. Yes. And he uses that somehow to say that suicide is the way.
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- We're laying our lives down. Laying our lives down. Right. And so his concept, his Marxist worldview, he had a view of what was called revolutionary suicide.
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- And he had actually really planned and visualized carrying this out all the way back to when he started in Indiana.
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- So pretty much all of his quote -unquote ministry and everything he did led him up to this very moment.
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- So what led to this talk and this happening is that he was waiting for the right time.
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- And so essentially there's further allegations in Jonestown, Guyana, of people being held against their will.
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- And just additional abuse. It was propagated as the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey.
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- If you go down to Jonestown, that's supposed to be the happiest place on earth. Right. But as soon as people got there, it was slave labor.
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- They were forced to get up at 6 o 'clock in the morning, have a meal of just some gravy and rice and such, maybe three really terrible meals a day.
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- Most people lost around 30 to 40 pounds within just a couple months of being at Jonestown.
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- And after working, as soon as they were done around 6 p .m., they were forced to go to the main commune, and Jim Jones would just rant till probably around 6 o 'clock in the evening to probably 1 o 'clock in the morning.
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- So people were just tired, and they were just systematically broken down. And there's something interesting about this,
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- Jeremiah. This was a pattern for Jim Jones that went all the way back to childhood, correct?
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- Yes. He, from a child, used to bring people into what was a barn, and he would just sit and preach to children as a very, very young man for extended periods of time and used to even manipulate them and give all kinds of promises and things like that if they would show up.
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- He would try to get them... He would even engage in things like feeding them and stuff like that to try to get them to come to say.
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- Giving them punch. Giving them punch. Just a documented fact. When I first heard that, I was chilled. So what ended up happening is there was a congressman,
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- Leo Ryan, from San Francisco. He came down with some reporters from NBC to figure out what was going on to investigate.
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- Right. Upon arriving at Jonestown, Jim Jones tried to make everything nice.
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- He had everyone sort of rehearse his lines to say Jonestown is the most wonderful place. Right. Fortunately, there was a defector, someone who wanted to leave, handed a cameraman a note that said,
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- Help me get out of Jonestown. And that just sent a whole huge amount of events where they just...
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- Well, he handed it. He slipped the note under his arm. Yes, he slipped the note under his arm. And the note fell. Yes. And there was a child that started yelling,
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- He's passing a note! He's passing a note! Yeah. So they were all aware and warned, ultimately by Jones, not to speak out, not to say something.
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- Obviously, because this little child said, He's passing a note! He's passing a note! Yeah. And so what ended up happening is that he sort of started a snowball effect where all of a sudden, there were more defectors who realized,
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- Oh, he's getting out of here. This is my opportunity. So it ended up being around 16 to 20 somewhat people that ended up leaving to try and get out of there.
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- And so they went back to this airstrip that was several miles out from Jonestown. What ended up happening is that they got ambushed by...
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- There were some people from Jones' security force who ambushed them. And you'll hear about that later on.
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- But they were ambushed. And there was a... Congressman Leo Ryan was killed. Several reporters from NBC were killed.
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- There were some people who survived it. It was actually the first congressman in the United States to die on the line of duty.
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- Yes. So all that being said, that whole segment kind of... Jim Jones had been planning this mass suicide for years.
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- So this whole line of events really set the tone. So what we're going to do, we're going to go ahead and jump into this.
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- We're going to be showing you... So just so you know, we've done our best to edit this to try and give you guys the best points to understand where we're coming from in regards to this.
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- So we've done our best to edit this to get it out. But I do want to warn you, what you're about to hear is... It's disturbing.
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- It's graphic. But it's something as Christians we can't shy away from because this is...
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- The Bible talks about there's evil in men's hearts. And Jesus said, Out of the heart comes all different sorts of evil.
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- And so we have to be able to confront this because the world looks at this and they try and make sense of it. And even though it's disturbing and it's graphic, we have to jump into this.
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- Yeah. Theology matters. Yes. It has a real impact in the world, whether that theology is atheistic theology in terms of a denial of God's existence or whether it's
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- Christian theology or cultic theology. Theology matters. It has consequences. Yes. Real consequences in the world.
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- Again, whether that's an atheistic theology in terms of a denial of God's existence, that actually leads to perspectives and worldviews that have real, genuine impact in the world around us, on our communities.
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- Absolutely. Mormonism, same thing. You have consequences like Mount Meadows Massacre and on and on.
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- Theology matters. But I want to reiterate what Jeremiah said there, everybody. What you're going to hear is very, very disturbing.
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- And so if you have children around, I want to encourage you to just be cautious about that in terms of thinking about how old they are and being willing to hear these things.
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- And I'll just highlight something. At the very beginning of the episode, when we have the cultish intro playing, those sound clips in the middle of that intro are from Jim Jones in this moment where they were drinking the
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- Kool -Aid, where the people are dying. So when you hear children crying in the background, they're crying out of pain.
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- They're in severe pain because they're dying. So when you hear that in the background, this is a really very serious situation.
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- It's very sad, of course, but just be aware of that. What we're going to play is very disturbing. So my opinion is that we be kind to children and be kind to seniors and take the portion like they used to take in ancient
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- Greece and step over quietly because we are not committing suicide.
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- It's a revolutionary act. So as you see, this is what he had led everyone up to. Now, this moment, what ends up happening is that all of his followers are almost completely loyalists.
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- There were others who thought this was just a drill because up until this moment, Jones had really conditioned these people into being completely dependent on him.
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- He had done mock drills to have them take a drink because they were, quote -unquote, being attacked.
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- But those ended up being false alarms. So some people thought this was just another drill. Other people really believed it.
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- But not everyone here died, just so you know, voluntarily. He talked about there's people outside who are going to come and take us and kill us.
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- However, all of Jones' troops and all of his security, they were armed with guns.
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- They were not aimed outwards. They had surrounded the entire commune, aimed inward, both with guns and with crossbows.
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- And when the teams came after the murder of all these people, when they came, they saw the vats, of course, of the
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- Kool -Aid and the cyanide, but they also found a number of syringes as well filled with cyanide.
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- And the speculation is, of course, that Jones actually had people who were not going along with this actually tagged with those syringes.
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- Yeah, primarily the syringes were used on the children because a lot of them were not willing to drink it.
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- The children, for some reason, had the ability to think for themselves from what witnesses say. As we're having this discussion, it's hard to even fathom that.
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- But, yeah, I mean, that's what happened. So the next statement which you're going to hear is that Jones gave an opportunity to say, if there's anyone who has a dissenting opinion, go ahead and here's your chance to speak.
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- And no one spoke out of the 900 -plus people except for this 60 -year -old lady named Christine. And I think just listening to her,
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- I mean, she, in spite of all the conditioning and all the systematic breaking down, she was incredibly brave in this moment to stand up.
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- And there's almost 20 minutes that are edited out, but she's trying to reason with Jim Jones to appeal, to say, no, there's a better way than to kill herself.
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- She doesn't want it to happen, but no one else is following along except for her. So go ahead. Clip 3. Clip 3.
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- People's lives are in my hands, and I certainly don't want your life in my hands. But I'm going to tell you, Christine, without me, life has no meaning.
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- I'm the best friend you'll ever have. I said I'm afraid to die.
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- I don't think you are. I don't think you are. But I look at our babies, and I think they deserve to live.
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- I agree. You know? But also they deserve what's more, they deserve peace. So it's interesting.
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- One of the oppressive and complicated issues with every cult is that all of the thought life, all the principles really rest in that leader, that person, right?
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- This person who's leading me. And so when you look at any cult that's across the scene, whether it's, again, the cult of the
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- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints or the Watchtower or Jim Jones, the leader becomes the reference point, right?
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- He's the reference point. And so I'm the most important person. You're not going to have a better friend than me.
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- Life has no meaning apart from me. Yeah, and in fact, when you do a study of the attributes of God, you'll find out that the commonality a lot of these cult leaders have is they take on the very characteristics of God that you see in Scripture.
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- So Jesus, for example, said, My yoke is easy, my burden is light. However, when you take what is supposed to be laid upon Jesus and try and put that in the hands of someone else who claims to be what only
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- Jesus has, then you end up with a very, very cruel taskmaster who is going to take you to task.
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- Well, and that goes across the board, though. This is really important in terms of thinking about this as Christians. This is our ballgame, our ball field.
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- We play by our rules, right? Our rules. The Word of God is the standard here. So it's important to note that when you look at these different religions and these cults that, say, twist and pervert the biblical worldview, these counterfeit
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- Christian cults, like, say, Jim Jones, in a sense, he even denies ultimately being a
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- Christian himself, but he uses the Word of God in biblical language to draw people into it. You have the
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- Bible over here, and they'll say, yeah, I believe that book, but really it's their secondary standard over here, or the cult leader themselves, that becomes the real standard that eats up the standard of the
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- Bible. So when you look at Mormonism, for example, you have the Bible and the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine and Covenants, History of the
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- Church, Journal of Discourses. They'll say, we believe the Bible, but actually their secondary standard over here is what is the real standard.
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- That's the principium, that's the source of knowledge. And for Jim Jones, he would give a passing remark of this verse or that verse, but in essence he says,
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- I'm the standard. His ultimate appeal, his ultimate authority was because I said so.
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- Yes, me, I'm the authority. That's ultimately what it is. So we're gonna go ahead and jump into the next part of this conversation that Christine is having with Jim Jones at this moment.
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- It's gonna be what ends up happening, and this is important to see because this is a commonality in Marxist ideology.
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- It's also a commonality in cultism and different cults is that a lot of times cults will take your real authentic self and your authentic identity and they'll replace that with a cult identity that is part of the group.
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- And your whole goal is you have to conform and fit in. And in most of these organizations, saying no is flat out against the rules.
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- It's just what it is. And you're systematically broken down. And anytime someone steps out and tries to question, that's when the authority gets put into place.
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- So you guys are gonna hear that from this next segment with Christine talking with Jim Jones and another member of the
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- People's Temple in this very disturbing video clip. It's over, sister.
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- It's over. We've made that day. We made a beautiful day. And let's make it a beautiful day.
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- That's what I want. Christine, you're only standing here because he was here in the first place.
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- So I don't know what you're talking about, having an individual life. Your life has been extended to the day that you're standing there because of him.
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- Their identity is wrapped up in the leader in the cultic group. Jeremiah, can you talk about this for a second?
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- Contrast that with the biblical worldview of the Christian church in terms of questioning and challenging somebody's authority.
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- Does a pastor or elders of a church have ultimate authority like this? To contrast that in terms of the
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- Christian worldview, a church member, a Christian contradicting the leader or questioning their standard.
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- Right. So this is what's interesting is that, like I said, the Jim Jones and David Koresh sometimes, sometimes those are impact words because people hear those really maniacal cult leaders and they all of a sudden have this fear mentality.
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- You're not supposed to question them. People can call anyone. You've been called Jim Jones. By Arrow when we did
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- Vice. He tried to say that just to kind of incite fear in the people. But I'm just like, what do you even mean by that?
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- I need to figure this out and break it down. But what's interesting is that, especially whenever you have a sermon, for example, you always say that if, don't take what
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- I say, for example, test what I say by the word of God. So the biblical worldview is that it's our primary authority is the
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- Bible. That's what that's God's revelation that he's given to us. Now he has appointed us elders. That's part of the infrastructure of the church.
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- Now, however, they are not the final authority. Jesus is the one who is leading the church.
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- He is the one who sit at the right hand of the father. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. He is the one in whom all the treasures, the wisdom and knowledge lie in.
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- So ultimately the authority is in Christ. And so as a pastor, you have a responsibility to communicate
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- God's truth. But in no way, even though this is what God has called you to do, my life is not extended to the day you have given me.
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- That's the only way I can describe it. It's different though. And pastor's words are tested by scripture, right?
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- He can be your pastor must be, um, uh, it must be able, you must be able to refuse and contradict your pastor when he contradicts or subverts the word of God.
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- Yep. Yeah. One thing I just want to mention too, is that a lot of you are listening here who, who may not be
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- Chris, you may not be Christians. You may believe something completely different from this. And you're interested in Colts or, and I think some of you may have even come from a background where you left a destructive group and you're trying to make sense of how do
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- I put my life together? And I know a lot of people who end up, whether Jehovah's witnesses or they're part of a group like this, majority of end up becoming atheist, or even if they do become
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- Christian, profess Christ, they want nothing to do with the church because they see the idea of you having leaders or pastors and authority.
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- And all of a sudden they kind of make this unhealthy, understandable, but not unhealthy comparison with someone who is an authoritarian figure versus someone who is, who is a pastor.
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- Like I said, I'm under the authority of church eldership. That's the way we should be, but it's a different, it's a different infrastructure.
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- Yeah. And there's, there was a premier doctrine that was shouted out of the Reformation. It's all the way back in the earliest church, of course, and in the pages of the
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- Bible. But there was a doctrine actually that was heralded during the time of the Reformation, right? And that doctrine was
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- Sola Scriptura. And that doctrine emphasizes the fact that God himself is the reference point in the standard and the ultimate authority.
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- And that every single human being, every image bearer of God is under God's authority, which means that even when you have a situation like God has created a, a, an authority in the church in terms of under shepherds, those under shepherds are under shepherds, right?
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- They're under the main shepherd and his words are the final appeal, which means that you have an obligation, according to the
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- Christian worldview to reject unbiblical authority and to take them to task when they actually contradict the words of God.
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- So you made a good point there. We may have people listening to this that are just coming out of cults or they're in a cult or they're an atheist and they want to learn about cults.
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- We want to be a help to you and a blessing to you overall. But ultimately we'd also like to point you to the fact that the biblical worldview has the answer as to why all of this is wrong in the first place.
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- But the biblical worldview also has a foundation by which you can also escape the clutches of these cult leaders because you reject their authority because you stand on an outside authority that we all have to appeal to.
- 28:18
- Yeah. We'll go into this in later episodes. We're going to jump into the next clip in just a second. But one of the things you realize is that every cult always appeals to an internal authority or a private revelation.
- 28:30
- They have some experience or ultimately they just come to the conclusion that I am the authority and ultimately because I said so.
- 28:38
- But the Christian worldview gives you this ability to have this external authority that was a public revelation.
- 28:44
- It was not secret. Right. Secret. It was confirmed by multiple witnesses. It was a reliable collection of historical documents that witnesses these these things that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecy.
- 28:57
- And so all of those things when you study the origins of the New Testament you can find out these are private revelations. They said Oh this happened over here.
- 29:03
- Yeah on you know you could say on 5th of May. It happened over there if you have questions about it. I've got 10.
- 29:08
- There's a lot of eyewitnesses over here. There's a lot of eyewitnesses and so that being said so what we're going to do is that so the next segment is that again you see at this point
- 29:18
- Jim Jones is just with his manipulation and just I know how to say the guy had just an evil man that he was just an evil man.
- 29:28
- And I can only make sense of this being you know having a biblical worldview because it talks about the nature that's in man. But at this point you start to see a lot of his other followers talk
- 29:37
- Christine again was the only one who spoke out against Jones. Still you'll hear an undefined man here talk and then
- 29:44
- Jim Jones kind of goes and after this man talks you'll kind of see people get riled up to do this revolutionary suicide and then you will then
- 29:52
- Jim Jones going to say a couple of things to get the crowd going and we're going to break that down. I've tried to keep this thing from happening but I now see it's the will it's the will of sovereign being that this happened to us that we lay down our lives in protest against what's being done.
- 30:24
- So we lay down our lives to protest in what's being done. The criminality of people the cruelly people who walked out of here today.
- 30:33
- Did you notice who walked out? Mostly white people. Mostly white people walks.
- 30:44
- I'm so grateful for the ones that didn't those who knew who they are. There's no there's no point there's no point to this.
- 30:51
- We have we are born before our time. They won't accept us and I don't think we should sit here and take any more time for our children to be endangered because they come after our children and we give them our children then our children will suffer forever.
- 31:10
- So yeah you can so just so you know I mean you hear someone like that saying we're all ready to go just completely overwhelmed with emotion.
- 31:17
- I want to try and explain this to you is that you are probably horrified like I was the first time
- 31:23
- I heard that but you're you're viewing that through a lens of rationality and you probably have six to eight hours of sleep you know probably last night hopefully mean unless you got like newborn kids or your mom sometimes but the point is that these people over months you start off with viewing that this guy was a messenger from God and then you're systematically broken down and isolated and conditioned to be completely dependent on this person.
- 31:48
- So of course this is the process of months being broken down and that's when people don't a lot of people don't understand this level of suggestibility and the susceptibility that people have in regards to that.
- 32:00
- So that's just something you need to take into account when you hear someone like this or these cult members that are completely indoctrinated and essentially just worshipers of Jim Jones were worshipers.
- 32:10
- Yeah it's part of the sociological manipulation of the cults is common within the cult sociological manipulation and that is that they find their identity first and foremost in the group.
- 32:21
- The identity is in the group. You have issues where there's love bombing right. And so there's a constant sort of frenzy of love and love and love and if you start to question the authority figure that Jim Jones or if you start to find your identity outside the group that's where the group starts to pull away from you.
- 32:37
- Yep. And they start to say now your identity is no longer in the group. You're not with us. You're not with us. Yeah. Essentially they're psychologically thrown off balance to where they just know that get closer with a group receive love question the group take away that love and take away and you're always in that love will be taken away.
- 32:53
- It's one of just real fast. It's one of the great fears of people when they talk about leaving a cult is they feel like if I leave the cult if I question this authority
- 32:59
- I lose my identity. I lose my family. I lose my friends. I lose everything if I lose the group.
- 33:06
- I remember this conversation I was with you nearly 20 years ago. We are outside of the
- 33:11
- Mormon temple and we're taught we're having a conversation with someone who is a high up Mormon. He had talked with several nights.
- 33:18
- He came out of doing after a whole night after working in the temple and talk with us and I'm sure you remember this.
- 33:25
- He told us he says yes the pearl of great price the book of Abraham it's a fraud. And so this is we'll go into that probably another episode.
- 33:33
- The point is is that he said I know it's a fraud but I can't leave this and he got emotional
- 33:39
- I said this is my my whole family. This is my life. Yeah. And this is just the grips that they were in at that moment.
- 33:45
- So I think what's really interesting too is that at this point you hear Jim Jones. He's got this list to him.
- 33:52
- Yeah. He was highly from the time he went to Jonestown. He was heavily addicted to different drugs. So a lot of that slurring of a speech is coming from that.
- 34:00
- And I probably mean being a pastor at a recovery center for four years. Yeah. And knowing being a church where 9 percent you could just the 9 percent people were coming out coming to that church were coming out of addiction and dealing with that.
- 34:12
- You probably you probably can hear from yourself. That's more than likely he was under the influence on the influence of drugs even during this whole talk.
- 34:19
- Yeah. What's interesting though is that even with being a Marxist he kind of slurs and says this is the will of sovereign being sovereign being like he can barely even get that out but he knows to use this terminology to get people continually frenzied up.
- 34:35
- There's another thing that's very interesting which. So Jim Jones is whole his whole message was this sociological socialist racial equality social justice to bring whites and blacks together.
- 34:49
- If you look at the footage from a lot of the services at the people's temple especially in San Francisco you'll see it was a very diverse group of people and it looks wonderful and joyous.
- 34:59
- What's amazing in here is in this moment to set up this another cult characteristic.
- 35:05
- He sets up this manipulative us versus them even though his whole message was about this equality because we're all part of the collective through this
- 35:13
- Marxist commune. He says Do you know who left here today. Well the white people mostly white people right mostly white people and everyone starts cheering.
- 35:21
- Yeah those those white people. And next thing you know but what he does right then and there because they were
- 35:27
- I mean the majority of people who died were black and that's horrific and it's tragic. There were white people who are also were part of this commune who still died but what he says right after that but the people who stayed they knew who they know who they really are.
- 35:41
- So he probably knew those the people who are in the coming who are white. They knew he probably knew that they were going to become defensive about what he just said because oh well you know who you really are because you stayed.
- 35:53
- So he's bringing is kind of doing this quick us versus them bringing them back into the group. Did you catch that.
- 35:58
- Oh yes absolutely. Part of the manipulation of the cult. So. So yeah I mean this is like I said this is hard.
- 36:05
- This is difficult to listen to but it's important because this is this is it in real time.
- 36:11
- Yeah this is this isn't a game and this is this happened back then and this is the ability that all of us are susceptible to.
- 36:17
- Yes. Outside of Christ. Now what now this is interesting. I think we should talk about this in terms of identity. Christians also constantly herald the truth about an identity that we have.
- 36:27
- But it's different. The identity we have ultimately is our union with Christ.
- 36:32
- God himself become a man. Our unity is in Christ. We've now all been as the image of their image bearers of God been brought into his life his kingdom his forgiveness and our identities found in Jesus.
- 36:45
- And of course we are of course the body of Christ in as a people. But our identity is in Christ.
- 36:51
- God himself as the ultimate right. Yes. Not in the group. So for example within a
- 36:56
- Christian communion you are allowed to question the leader. You're allowed to question the group because you have an outside source of authority that exists outside the group the group is supposed to ultimately be submitted to.
- 37:06
- Yeah. And so your unity and your identity is found in one that's not ultimately wrapped up in this isolated little community and group right here.
- 37:14
- And this is what I want to talk about really quickly before you jump into the next clip. Is that the one thing you'll notice in regards to isolation.
- 37:22
- This is what Colts do. They isolate everyone. They cut them off a lot since from the outside world and they're not allowed to question their top anyone who contradicts what they believe they're supposed to isolate cut them off and they are their enemy.
- 37:35
- What's interesting you'll see in the first century. What ends up happening is that what do Christians do.
- 37:41
- What did Paul the apostle do. They went out into the world. They reasoned with all the
- 37:46
- Stoics and the philosophers and unbelieving worldviews and they went on their front lines and they challenged and they engaged in there's no cutting off from the outside world.
- 37:55
- They went into the world they went into their culture and they preached the good news and that's the one thing a different differentiate
- 38:00
- Chris the Christian the true Christmas from the Colts that with they there's a willingness to go out into the world.
- 38:07
- I mean in fact that's what Jesus said it says my prayers that you would not take them out of the world. You deliver them from the evil one.
- 38:14
- Yes that's right. Okay. Clip six now. Yes. Okay. At one time.
- 38:24
- I felt just like Christine. Yeah. But after today I don't feel anything because the biggest majority of the people that left here were white and I know it really hurt my heart because my heart to think that all of these years that these white people have been with us and they're not a part of us.
- 38:50
- So we might as well end it now because I don't see that moment where he says the congressman is a murdered.
- 39:07
- Yes. What just you know what took place there is that after Leo Ryan had left with the defectors they went back to the airstrip where they had landed to go into Jonestown.
- 39:17
- They were followed. In fact. So they they all got aboard this tractor that fit everyone who wanted to leave along with the camera crew reporters.
- 39:25
- There weren't enough people to fit into the initial plane that they had. So they got an additional plane and they.
- 39:32
- Yes. What ended up happening is that they they were ambushed by leaders of people within Jim Jones's Colt.
- 39:40
- They opened gunfire on them. And so Leo Ryan and Leo Ryan was killed.
- 39:45
- And we talked about that earlier. So in that moment that's what took place. So that's so that moment that everyone heard there just now is where he got word that he had been killed.
- 39:53
- Yeah. The congressman has been murdered and that's where things really fast forwarded into this. That's when things just really sped forward with the suicide.
- 40:01
- And one thing one thing is real quickly for you up to the next clip. This poor old lady who again was subjected to this manipulation.
- 40:10
- You see her complete buying into what Jim Jones said about us this us versus them and she's heartbroken that there's white people who left.
- 40:18
- But then you see like Jim Jones like Oh broke your heart didn't it. So you still see this horrific. Well it's manipulation.
- 40:24
- It's interesting. It's a typical M .O. of the Marxist ideology whether it's whether it was the original form of Marxism from Karl Marx or whether it's the modern cultural
- 40:34
- Marxism is you always have the oppressor versus the oppressed the ideology that's the oppressor versus the oppressed and so that's sort of constantly fed into the minds of people whether it's the economic oppressor versus oppressed or whether the cultural
- 40:48
- Marxist ideology of today that's being promulgated even within Christian communions today when in terms of race it's the whites versus the blacks.
- 40:57
- Yes oppressor versus the oppressed. We should always be on the lookout for that because it's entirely destructive completely the kind of tactic that Jim Jones uses.
- 41:07
- Absolutely. So what you're going to hear in this next clip and again we've this next clip just to warn you guys this is probably one of the most hardest most difficult clips you're going to have to listen to these next couple of clips so just be aware of that again if you have children around just be aware of this.
- 41:21
- So what you're going to hear next is this is an unidentified woman talking and she's going to be giving she's giving instructions.
- 41:26
- And so one of the things you know contextually is that by the time Jim Jones had gotten down to Jonestown in Guyana he really was not he had a lot of he was addicted to multiple different drugs and so he really didn't have the ability to fully run operations by himself.
- 41:43
- So he had several women who kind of ran operations here and they had figured out they spent they had figured out exactly how they're going to lace the
- 41:52
- Kool -Aid and measure it perfectly to kill everyone like that. They imagine they were figuring this out the whole time they were down there.
- 41:59
- So again just got to consider I mean these people thought they were getting the promised land and that they are going to have all life joy peace and happiness yet the end was death.
- 42:10
- You know the book of Proverbs is a way that seems right into a man but the ways and their inner death. So you're going to hear this you're going to have two different conversations here we're going to go and break it down play the next clip.
- 42:21
- You have to move and the people that are standing there in the aisle go stay in the radio room yard but everybody get behind the table and back this way okay.
- 42:32
- There's nothing to worry about everybody keep calm and try and keep your children calm. And the older children can help love the little children and reassure them.
- 42:48
- They aren't crying from pain it's just a little bitter tasting but they're not crying out of any pain. Annie McGowan can
- 42:54
- I please see you back. I used to do before I came here. So let me tell you about it might make a lot of you feel a little more comfortable sit down and be quiet please.
- 43:05
- One of the things that I used to do I used to be a therapist. And the kind of therapy that I did had to do with reincarnation and past life situations.
- 43:18
- And every time anybody had the experience of going into a past life
- 43:24
- I was fortunate enough through father to be able to let them experience it all the way through their death so to speak.
- 43:33
- And everybody was so happy when they made that step to the other side.
- 43:39
- It feels good you've never felt so good family I tell you. You've never felt so good is how that feels.
- 43:50
- It's it still is hard. I mean it's honestly when I was going through this you know it's sometimes you hear certain things and it's there sometimes research on something like this comes at a cost.
- 44:02
- I was in a grocery shopping actually not too long ago and I was putting this these clips together trying to edit this stuff out.
- 44:10
- And I heard I heard like a baby crying in the store.
- 44:15
- I thought somehow my phone was still on and somehow my I thought my earbuds ran
- 44:21
- I was listening to that and said it was just a child crying but I was visual. I had a couple of times where I've I've since listening to this
- 44:28
- I would hear kids whether at my work could I work in retail crying him and all of a sudden it immediately go back to this.
- 44:36
- And it just it's horrifying but you understand that you have to understand that this is something that we have to say this is evil and we have the ability to say it's evil only through the biblical worldview.
- 44:48
- And just just so you know I mean I'm not going to go into a whole bunch of detail about it but what they took was potassium cyanide and potassium chloride laced with punch.
- 44:58
- And so just so you know that basically does without getting into detail it cuts off all the oxygen and all of your cells to be not be able to consume oxygen.
- 45:07
- So essentially you suffocate. So it wasn't just bitter tasting. It was a horrific death for every single one of those poor precious kids.
- 45:16
- I mean it was from what I understand as a total of three hundred four children seventeen or younger died that day.
- 45:22
- One hundred fifty were ten or younger forty who were twelve to eleven in the age one hundred fourteen tween.
- 45:29
- And like I said it was just horrific. So that's we have to understand that just.
- 45:35
- And why theology matters and why I think it's important we could just just share this from a Christian perspective why it's important that we actually take the
- 45:44
- Great Commission seriously. Theology matters worldviews actually matter a great deal.
- 45:50
- What you believe about the world what your anthropology is what your theology is will dramatically impact the world around us.
- 45:57
- And so these cults and what comes along with them have dramatic consequences here and now.
- 46:04
- And this is a point in terms of like what's the loving thing to do. The Bible says an open rebuke is better than hidden love.
- 46:11
- Love right. What's more important is that we actually love people enough love God and love people enough that we actually say something to them.
- 46:18
- You tell them the truth in situations like this. It's the duty of the Christian church to actually engage with these cults of death.
- 46:28
- These destructive cults that not only have preached a message that leads to eternal murder.
- 46:33
- But in a case like this led to actual physical murder here and now. Yes. And one last thing before we jump on to the next clip is that you see that man right after the lady talks about just getting the children in line and comforting them which is just it's so eerie.
- 46:49
- But in talking about bringing up the idea of past lives we know as Christians the
- 46:55
- Bible says is for a man wants to die and then and then the judgment and God forms us uniquely in our womb and there's no past life.
- 47:01
- This is a complete unbiblical matter. But here this person is bringing this up to manipulate people to their own physical death and their spiritual death according to what the
- 47:10
- Bible says. So just want to emphasize we're going to emphasize that anthropology in terms we say worldview matters that's an anthropology of view of mankind in terms of reincarnation and past lives.
- 47:21
- He uses a perverse anthropology to comfort people into the idea of kill yourself.
- 47:27
- I've already talked to people who have gone through death before and it's the most beautiful amazing thing ever. What would have what would have been a corrective to this man on that on the spot is the authority in the word of God where God says no it's appointed on demand wants to die then the judgment you haven't talked to anybody about a past life in a legitimate way and learned about their death.
- 47:48
- Yeah. Yeah. So at this moment what you're going to hear next is that this is where Jim Jones really kind of goes off the rails and this momentum is going and he is just really using his preaching tactics that he's used to really kind of continue to get the people riled up and you'll see this in this next clip.
- 48:09
- It's far far harder to have to watch you every day die slowly and from the time you were a child to the time you get gray you're dying dishonest and I'm sure that they'll they'll pay for their they'll pay for it.
- 48:26
- This is a revolutionary suicide. This is not a self destructive suicide. Who wants to go with their child has a right to go with their child.
- 48:34
- I think it's humane. I want to go. I want to see you go though.
- 48:40
- They can take me and do with me whatever they want to do. I want to see you go. I don't want to see you go through this hell no more. No more.
- 48:47
- No more. No more. You see kind of his preaching tactics and what he learned.
- 48:53
- He used the language of people attracted to that happy socialist gospel movement.
- 49:00
- You kind of see that underlying getting them what they are familiar with in order to move to continue to kill themselves.
- 49:09
- And at this and this moment people just continue moving forward. I mean what's amazing is that out of the nine hundred fifteen people on Stephen Jones who's
- 49:17
- Jim Jones's son. He was not there. He survived this mass suicide because he was in Georgetown Guyana with his ballot with a
- 49:24
- Jones basketball team playing doing a basketball tournament. That's one of the reasons why he survived.
- 49:30
- But he said that of all the people there no one fought back except for 60 year old
- 49:36
- Christine who had the audacity to somewhat challenge and think for herself. So next clip of the children here.
- 49:49
- A great deal because of Jim Jones and the way the children are laying there now.
- 49:57
- I'd rather see them lay like that than to see them have to die like the
- 50:02
- Jews did which was pitiful anyhow. And I'd just like to thank dad for giving us life and also death.
- 50:15
- And I appreciate the fact the way our children are going because like dad said when they come in what they're going to do to our children they're going to massacre our children.
- 50:29
- And also the ones that they take captured they're going to just let them grow up and be dummies like they want them to be and not grow up to be a person like the one and only
- 50:43
- Jim Jones. I'd like to thank dad for the opportunity for letting
- 50:51
- Jonestown be not what it could be but what
- 50:56
- Jonestown is. Thank you dad. It's recorded that Jim Jones used to say if you call me friend
- 51:03
- I'll be your friend. If you call me dad I'll be your dad. If you call me God I'll be your God. Yes. Yeah.
- 51:10
- And you see this level of dependency and it's just it's hard to even grasp what's being said here that they believe that OK that much that these people from these outside forces are going to come in and harm our children.
- 51:27
- So therefore we must protect our children by harming them by injecting them with potassium cyanide.
- 51:34
- I mean it's hard to even to even comprehend. But again this is I want you guys just to hear this there's not much too much
- 51:39
- I must say about this is that this is this is what you get. So with someone who's been systematically broken down like this they're so numb the
- 51:47
- Soviet sensitized when there's children right who are dead who are already laid out and are dying you hear them in the background they're giving praise to their leader.
- 51:55
- Well it gets to the point of authority right. Everybody has an ultimate authority it's not a question of whether there's going to be an ultimate authority but who is the ultimate authority or what is the ultimate authority.
- 52:04
- So for the atheists for example and this comes down to authority for the atheists they can say well I don't have an ultimate authority.
- 52:09
- Well you do and ultimately it'll revolve and make its way back to you. You're the ultimate authority right or the community around you is the ultimate authority what we say how we've reasoned what we've declared to be true and ethical or what have you.
- 52:22
- But it comes down to ultimate authority. So when you in Scripture God is the ultimate authority. God is the ultimate authority and that's where you point back to.
- 52:30
- But in a case like this watch. Why do they believe that ultimately these children are going to be massacred. Why do they believe that they're going to be hurt.
- 52:37
- Why do they believe that they're in danger and they need to swallow this concoction. Because the ultimate authority
- 52:42
- Jim Jones who gave them life and is now giving them death says so. It's on his say so.
- 52:49
- He's the ultimate authority. He cannot be challenged. Adults. Adults.
- 52:55
- Adults. I call on you to stop this nonsense. I call on you to quit exciting your children when all they're doing is going to quiet rest.
- 53:03
- I call on you to stop this now if you have any respect at all. Are we black, proud and socialist or what are we?
- 53:11
- Now stop this nonsense. Don't carry this on anymore. You're exciting your children. I just want to say this really interesting thing.
- 53:16
- Very powerful. The manipulation of course is obvious hopefully to all of us. But notice what he says.
- 53:22
- Are we black, proud and socialist. I find this so compelling Jeremiah. Yeah. That you oftentimes see atheists like for example
- 53:29
- Errol in the vice episode that you're on apology at church and I work against the abortion industry.
- 53:34
- Right. They couldn't find advice had such a hard time because we were gracious to them loving to them reasonable.
- 53:42
- We had great conversations with them. It's such a had such a hard time that they came back the second day and you could see a total change in their perspective.
- 53:49
- They were now like let's make Jeff look like a cult leader. Right. And so you had Errol this atheist who was like and he's like Jim Jones.
- 53:56
- Right. Well it's like but no no no. Actually that's from your worldview. Are we black, proud and socialist.
- 54:02
- Right. Right. Atheistic regimes tend towards socialism they tend towards Marxism those sorts of things like this this this right here is the result of a socialistic ideology.
- 54:13
- Are we black, proud and socialist. And what have we heard bringing into the conversation when we as Christians we've been out at the abortion mills pleading for mothers to keep their lives.
- 54:25
- How many times have we heard them say that if I have this child this child is going to suffer and therefore
- 54:34
- I can't allow my child to suffer therefore I must go into this clinic and have my baby murder.
- 54:40
- That's a good connection. So you see and this is what the Bible says is that in the book of Proverbs it says that all those who hate me love death.
- 54:50
- And that's ultimately where an unbelieving worldview will take you. And again this is hard and this is difficult to listen to.
- 54:57
- But you understand is that it's one thing to hear a verse in the Bible talk about something.
- 55:03
- But then not to actually hear it happen in actuality. This hopefully this is going to force your hand to really embrace what the
- 55:11
- Bible says about this. Yes. I'd like to say is that my so -called parents is filled with so much hate and treachery.
- 55:28
- I think you people out here should think about how your relatives was and be glad about that the children are being laid to rest.
- 55:34
- And I like to say I thank dad for making me strong to stand with it all and make me ready for it.
- 55:50
- Wouldn't be alive today. I just like to thank dad because he was the only one that stood up for me when
- 55:56
- I needed him. And thank you dad. Loving thing he could have ever done.
- 56:03
- The most loving thing all of us could have done. And it's been a pleasure walking with all of you in this revolutionary struggle.
- 56:11
- No other way I would rather go and give my life for socialism, communism. And I thank dad very, very much.
- 56:20
- Dad's love and mercy and goodness and kindness and bring us to this land of freedom. His love. His mother was the advance guard to socialism.
- 56:28
- And his love and his mercy to go on to the field. Where's the vat?
- 56:33
- The vat? The vat? Where's the vat? Was it Green's team? I want to highlight one more time. I was going to say it.
- 56:39
- I think, Jeremiah, this is so compelling that we have the ideology of socialism and Marxism and communism influencing the
- 56:49
- West today on a very, very large scale. Right. Jim Jones, Jonestown, the
- 56:55
- People's Temple. That is the fruit of socialism, communism, Marxism. Yes.
- 57:01
- I mean, it's sometimes you'll hear I think one time on another show that we have under the umbrella of Apology of Studios was you had an episode on communism.
- 57:10
- And there is I think you had the McDonald's logo and it said over 60 million killed versus 60 million servants.
- 57:16
- And on one hand, that's a good way to go it across. And you're using comedy, you know, sometimes it again, it's with a comedy with a serrated edge making mocking an unbelieving worldview.
- 57:25
- And it's one thing to hear that. But then it's another thing, too. I want you guys to kind of really understand what is really happening in this moment.
- 57:33
- It sounds people that's 900 plus people are at least half of them are laying their dead.
- 57:41
- Their people are falling down. They're convulsing and they're shaking from the cyanide poisoning. They're vomiting.
- 57:47
- It was graphic. It's graphic. And you hear children screaming in the background.
- 57:52
- And these people are coming up giving their testimonies like it's church testimony day.
- 57:57
- Yes. Talking about how wonderful Jim Jones is, how wonderful socialism raising socialism and communism while dead bodies are surrounding them.
- 58:05
- And it's just as hard. Isn't it? Isn't it though? Isn't it? Isn't compelling, Jeremiah, that that's the same thing happening today in terms of nations collapsing, economies collapsing, people literally starving in Venezuela to death.
- 58:20
- Right. Like people are still shouting and praising socialism and Marxism and communism while the dead bodies fall.
- 58:28
- Yes. It's a commonality, whether it comes from a cult ideology or a status ideology that's antithetical towards how
- 58:35
- God sees the world of the Christian worldview. Very good. So final clip here. Yep. Final clip. Now this is actually two clips in one.
- 58:42
- Right, Jerry? Yes. Jeremiah, can you set that up for us? The clip number 12 is two things put together.
- 58:47
- And this has actually one of our heroes of the faith, Dr. Walter Martin in it. And I'll just tell everyone, Dr. Walter Martin was the person who authored the
- 58:54
- Kingdom of the Cults. It was one of the greatest resources of the 20th century for the
- 58:59
- Christian church that really exposed, explained a lot of the major cults on the scene.
- 59:04
- And it compared and contrasted their teachings with the word of God. Yes. Right. And so he was the leader in terms of the
- 59:13
- Christian church. Yeah. He broke ground that no one else had really done before. He walked in, for example,
- 59:20
- I mean, there were his first book that he did, he, there was no material available. He had to go into a lot of these cultic headquarters and just gather all the materials to put this stuff together.
- 59:29
- Yes. And so he really paved ground. And so, in fact, when Jonestown happened, there were people who came there, there was news, there was a newscast who came to his doorstep and they want it.
- 59:41
- So we've got to talk to you about this because that's the reputation, the field that he had. Yes. And I think it is good. And we'll talk about this in a second.
- 59:47
- But that's really what the church should be having in regards. And that's part of the purpose of the show is that when things like this happen and like this, this happened 40 years ago, this is perfectly capable of happening again because people are still have the same susceptibility and vulnerability.
- 01:00:02
- They have to come to us for answers. So what you're going to hear in this next statement is the very end of this horrific tape.
- 01:00:13
- And you're going to hear the very end of that. And you're going to hear kind of when the tape stops. And there's an extended moment of silence.
- 01:00:20
- And then you're going to hear this news clip where Walter Martin is interviewed. And he's going to break down a lot of what we've been talking about.
- 01:00:26
- And then we're going to go ahead and just wrap up our final thoughts. And just real fast so people understand what they're listening to, Jeremiah, is this the very end, the silence people hear?
- 01:00:33
- The very, very last moment where he talks about his last talk about revolution or suicide. And you'll hear there's a bit of silence.
- 01:00:39
- So when you hear the silence in the background, just know that silence is coming from a large field of dead bodies.
- 01:00:46
- Yeah. Take our life from us.
- 01:00:52
- We laid it down. We got tired. We didn't commit suicide.
- 01:00:59
- We came to an act of revolutionary suicide, protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.
- 01:01:34
- The deaths in Guyana have raised serious questions about how religious movements can get off track.
- 01:01:40
- News Center 4 reporter Rita Diamond consulted with the head of a Christian research center in Anaheim.
- 01:01:45
- Here's what she found out. An American congressman murdered. Three American journalists murdered.
- 01:01:54
- A woman temple member murdered. More than 400 men, women, and children commit suicide or are murdered.
- 01:02:02
- A tragedy unparalleled in history. A tragedy almost too overwhelming for human understanding.
- 01:02:09
- The people of the people's temple were mostly black from low -income backgrounds. It is thought they joined because the temple gave them a sense of purpose, a place to belong.
- 01:02:19
- But we are learning the temple was not a place of great joy. It was a place of public beatings, public humiliation.
- 01:02:27
- Members were coerced into surrendering their meager life savings. They were forced to sign suicide pledges.
- 01:02:34
- Why did they stay? Why did they submit to a Jim Jones? Why did so many die at Jonestown?
- 01:02:41
- Now the person is conditioned into this gradually, isolated, indoctrinated, made dependent, and then taught that everybody who contradicts this is indeed their enemy.
- 01:02:55
- They develop what could be called a religious paranoia in which everybody's against us so we all hang together.
- 01:03:02
- How are they made, though, to believe this to the point where they give up life savings, they give up property, and they go to something that's touted as the promised land and end up committing suicide or murder?
- 01:03:12
- They reach out for whoever's going to meet that need at the moment. They place their faith in that person, mistaken, zealous, dedicated faith.
- 01:03:21
- The person leads them away from any previous authority figure, and suddenly they are trapped by the fact that they have no place else to go.
- 01:03:30
- They can't go back. And down there in Vienna, what you had was the ultimate logical conclusion, the homicidal and the suicidal tendency, where a person inevitably gets so pushed and so isolated and puts so much confidence in another human being that they become dependent upon them to the point of life and death.
- 01:03:53
- These, of course, are only possible partial answers, possible partial explanations. The world, after all, has never fully understood how an
- 01:04:02
- Adolf Hitler happened. Though we are left with a lack of comprehension, perhaps
- 01:04:07
- Jonestown did, briefly, shake us out of complacency. Rita Diamond, New South 4.
- 01:04:15
- So I encourage everybody to pick up, actually, a copy of Dr. Walter Martin's Kingdom of the
- 01:04:21
- Cults. I think it'll be a great benefit to you, even if you're not a Christian. It'll be a great benefit to you to understand some of the origins, teachings, indoctrination of some of the greatest cults on the scene even today.
- 01:04:33
- Yeah, absolutely. And so I think what's interesting is that, and I really appreciate what that newscaster said at the very end of that little news segment, is that she said, hopefully, we don't have the answers.
- 01:04:47
- People are trying to make sense of this. But she said, hopefully, at least it brought us out of complacency, realizing that this is part of the world that we live in.
- 01:04:57
- This is what people are capable of having an outcome like that. That's right.
- 01:05:03
- All right, guys, so this was the flagship episode of Apologia Studios' newest program.
- 01:05:10
- It's called Cultish, and we hope you guys enjoyed yourself today as much as we enjoyed doing this show for you.
- 01:05:16
- I encourage you all to go to ApologiaStudios .com, ApologiaStudios .com, A -P -O -L -O -G -I -A -Studios .com.
- 01:05:24
- Go check out more episodes from Cultish and a lot of the other programs and content we have. ApologiaStudios .com
- 01:05:30
- forward slash Cultish, where you can check out this episode and the other three premiere episodes that will be available for you to have immediately.
- 01:05:39
- Encourage you also to share them with people you love and care about. I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I'm Jeremiah.