Latest / 4-Freedom Podcast / 218. A Story Of Spiritual Manipulation - Jim Jones and Peoples Temple - Part 2

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218. A Story Of Spiritual Manipulation - Jim Jones and Peoples Temple - Part 2 · 4-Freedom Podcast

0:00
Welcome back to the Four Freedom podcast, Brett, What a great day
0:03
it is, but I don't know how it is being in Mississippi.
0:07
I know that I saw some tornado warnings there.
0:10
We had 80° weather last week. I woke up yesterday and it was
0:14
like 27° outside. Snow was on the ground.
0:19
Schools were canceled. We didn't, we had school.
0:22
We had our first football game yesterday at the time of this
0:25
recording, we won Hallelujah. But it's like 80 degrees, 27°
0:31
wake up in the morning, it's below freezing.
0:34
I don't know if the weather is schizophrenic, bipolar.
0:37
I don't know what's going on right now.
0:39
We had tornadoes touchdown. I was talking to John last week
0:42
and they had like the town beside him had like 8 inches of
0:45
snow. I'm like, what are you?
0:46
What's going on? We're we're in spring almost.
0:49
It's March. How are things in your area man?
0:52
Man, it's about the same. It's like I'm hearing how you're
0:56
reporting and it's probably the same down here.
0:59
You know, you can experience, you know, just to span a few
1:02
days, you can go from winter to spring to summer to fall
1:04
back-to-back to winter. We were sunny and 80 and then we
1:10
had tornadoes. And then the next day we're
1:12
woke, woke up in the morning to snow.
1:15
And then that night we had a freeze warning.
1:16
And so it's just crazy how this, this winter weather comes in the
1:21
spring, these late winters. But other than that, other than
1:24
the, the, the weather not figuring out what it wants to
1:28
do, we've had a pretty good weekend.
1:30
Let's see, we went to a 7th day slumber concert just near us
1:37
Sunday night with the family. Had a good time.
1:40
I know it's not everybody's cup of tea, their music, but I and
1:43
we had a great time. The gospel was shared there and
1:47
it was a great time. But other than that, we're just
1:50
getting ready for Easter. It's only three weeks away, so
1:53
I'm planning on what we're going to preach come Easter time and
1:58
Resurrection Sunday, and other than that, just business as
2:01
usual. I love it.
2:02
Yeah, dude, Easter's coming up. I can't wait.
2:05
Resurrection Sunday's coming. It's going to be a great day.
2:08
Every day in the Lord's house is a great day.
2:10
But there's just something special about on Resurrection
2:13
Sunday. Brett, let's go through real
2:16
quick before we finish some of our banter.
2:19
You're talking about sunrise. You're talking about
2:21
Resurrection Sunday. Do you guys do a sunrise
2:24
service? Do you change your service
2:26
times? Let's go.
2:28
Let's let's go through that First.
2:30
I'll talk about mine and I've got a follow up question that I
2:34
heard this week that it blew my mind and I'm going to see if you
2:37
ever heard it. Maybe some of our listeners had
2:39
maybe you can comment if you've ever heard of something like
2:41
this. But Brett, service times, y'all
2:44
do a sunrise service? What?
2:45
What does that look like in Mississippi?
2:47
I have never done a sunrise service.
2:50
We didn't do it in the ISD and so when I became a pastor, I've
2:54
only done one. It was at my last church.
2:57
It was 6:00 AM. We did it one time, a few people
3:01
on the front steps of the church.
3:04
They used to do it here a long time ago where the cemetery next
3:09
door. And what they would do is bring
3:11
chairs from the fellowship hall and they would sit in the middle
3:13
of the cemetery and have the sunrise service facing east with
3:18
the sun coming up. So no, we don't do a sunrise
3:22
service. I'm not that early riser of a
3:24
person, but I will tell you that we do change our service times.
3:28
No Sunday school we bump our service up to 10 AM.
3:32
That way people can get home and and cook for their Easter
3:36
dinner. That's about all the changes we
3:38
make for Easter. All right, so our sun, we do a
3:41
sunrise service and we did we do we we are in the graveyard
3:47
because we have a massive graveyard here.
3:49
We are in the graveyard at before 7:00, our sunrise this
3:54
year. I look at the calendar, I, I do
3:55
the service times based on the sunrise that The Weather Channel
3:59
says. So sunrise is 7 O five this
4:02
year. So sunrise services at 7:00.
4:05
And so we're in the graveyard at 7:00.
4:08
The piano starts playing. We take a piano out there and we
4:12
sing a hymn. He lives.
4:13
He lives whatever it is that day.
4:15
And sun comes up right behind my shoulder, right across the
4:19
trees. And so I am, I'm facing the
4:22
crowd. Sun's coming up.
4:24
It's a beautiful picture. My wife gets a picture of it
4:26
every year. Some years are super cold, Some
4:30
years it's not. We do that out there.
4:33
Then we have a massive. When I say massive, I'm talking,
4:36
I'm being they are cooking all morning long.
4:39
We do a massive breakfast in the basement of the church.
4:42
Everybody eats until they're full and then as soon as the
4:45
breakfast is over we go straight into the service at 8:30 and we
4:49
do an 830 service just like we would at 11.
4:52
I joke every year and I tell them, hey, we're having a
4:54
service at 8:30, we'll get through our singing and I
4:57
promise to get you out of here by 12 O clock and then all start
5:01
laughing. It's great.
5:03
So being here is the first time we did a sunrise service in the
5:07
graveyard, which was a little weird the first time, I'm not
5:09
going to lie. Yeah.
5:12
And the, the, my last church was the first sunrise service we
5:15
ever did. We did it inside because for a
5:18
couple of years Easter fell early and it was cold.
5:22
And then it just was easier to do it inside.
5:27
And So what we did was our youth did the sunrise service, which
5:30
was really cool. They had put on some program or
5:32
a song or cantata or something. I got to preach the early
5:36
service and then we did breakfast, Sunday school, all
5:38
that still. So I heard this week, this week
5:43
of a church in our area and this is what they do, Brett.
5:47
They have their sunrise service and at their sunrise service
5:52
they go and they go and stand on their dead members bodies in the
6:01
graveyard. They have their service and if
6:05
someone is there and doesn't have a family member in the
6:10
graveyard, they just stand by the truck where the pastor's AT
6:14
and the pastor has a blow horn and he gives his message while
6:17
they're standing on their dead. Have you ever heard of something
6:22
like that? How?
6:24
That's some crazy Dwight Schrute kind of stuff there.
6:28
I've never heard of that before. I was blown away.
6:31
And and they said they do it every year.
6:32
And, and The thing is, is, you know, you may have a group of
6:36
family members right here, they're clustered up, but then
6:38
you may have one random person that's like on the other side of
6:41
the graveyard by themselves and they're just standing on their
6:45
dead. I was blown away.
6:49
Kind of creepy to be honest. Have you heard of any weird,
6:54
fun, crazy something like that ever in your life?
6:58
I have never to that extent, no. I think I'm speechless than
7:02
that. We've got nothing to add.
7:05
I've never heard of that in my life at all.
7:09
It it it's interesting the South has some weird traditions.
7:13
Guys, we should start just a fun dialogue of crazy things you
7:17
find in the South. And so it is definitely one of
7:21
those fun things if you go to different churches.
7:23
So the only reason why I heard about this is because a buddy of
7:26
mine was going to start a sunrise service, have a larger
7:29
church. They've never done it before.
7:31
So for a couple of years prior to this, he would just sort of
7:34
church hop as a pastor at these other churches to see what they
7:37
were doing. And he said he went to one of
7:40
the churches and while he was there, this is what happened.
7:43
And he saw it. And he said, yeah, it's right
7:45
here, right down the road from us.
7:46
This is how they do their sunrise service and I'm like
7:49
dude, that is just so weird. What are people doing?
7:52
Like, I don't know. Yeah, that's something else.
7:56
I can honestly say I've never heard anything like that before.
7:59
Let's go, let's go. Well, Brett, how is the family?
8:02
How are you guys doing? You're looking beautiful and
8:05
great every time I see you. You're about to be a master of
8:09
theology here soon with your education, man.
8:13
How are things going? Man, things are going great.
8:17
Like you said, I've got about a year and a about a year and a
8:19
half left of seminary to get my master's.
8:22
But other than that, I've got a son about to graduate high
8:26
school and so he's got him a little part time job.
8:29
And you know what things are going good at the at the church.
8:34
Everybody's just, we're kind of clicking along in our routine.
8:37
We are raising money right now to go to Nicaragua.
8:40
And so we've got a couple of fundraisers coming up to to do
8:43
that. We're looking forward to being
8:45
there in July and beginning end of July, beginning of August
8:50
going to be there with you in Nicaragua.
8:53
But other than that things have just been clicking right along.
8:56
You know, we've got the VBS is getting close.
8:59
So we've got some some things that we're trying to get
9:03
together there, organize some things and then we've got, let's
9:07
see, we've got our convention coming up in June.
9:11
And so we're looking forward to going down to Orlando.
9:15
But man, life's just been great. Can't.
9:17
Complain. Love it.
9:18
Yeah, same here man. My wife, she, she had a gym
9:22
membership at a gym and they were giving her the runaround.
9:26
They jacked the prices up after they got a new owner and so she
9:30
finally cancelled it and said, hey, James, let's get AY
9:34
membership. And I was like, oh man, I don't
9:38
know about this. She was like, hey, it'll be it's
9:40
actually cheaper for us to get a family Y membership for all of
9:44
our entire family than it was for her to have just her
9:47
membership at the gym for one month.
9:50
So it's cheaper for all of us for a month than it was for her.
9:53
So I said, all right, we'll do it.
9:55
So I went ahead and got the membership.
9:56
Well, now I feel guilty, Brett, that I have to go to the gym
9:59
because I've got this membership I'm paying for.
10:02
So I've been trying to work out a little bit.
10:04
Run on the treadmill for an hour or so or an hour or so.
10:07
Heck no. Run on the treadmill for like 20
10:10
minutes, get a mile in, do some cardio and do some strength
10:15
training. Getting back into my football
10:18
days and working out. So starting to get into that a
10:21
little bit with, with today before we recorded.
10:24
And so just trying to trying to get a little more healthy,
10:26
right? It's, it's, you know, sitting
10:28
around all the time. It can be rough on us.
10:31
I find myself cutting some weight in the spring, in the
10:33
summer. But, you know, we, we sort of
10:36
stock up in the fall in the winter when it's cold outside.
10:39
And so just trying to stay a little more active.
10:41
They've got a beautiful pool and a sauna and some other things
10:45
the kids can enjoy. So we're we're going to be doing
10:48
that. But yeah, man, I am so excited
10:50
about our convention coming up. Some good things are coming out.
10:54
Brett, I'm going to be in Georgia in just a couple of
10:57
weeks. Our friend that we went to
10:59
Israel with Johnny has asked me to come down and preach while
11:04
I'm on vacation down there. So I'm going to go on a
11:06
Wednesday and preach at his church.
11:09
And so looking forward to that. If you're in the Georgia area,
11:11
let us know. Let me know.
11:12
We'll love to meet up. We'll be down there for a couple
11:15
of days on family vacation, but also over in the Picket Mill
11:20
area. And then our convention, man,
11:23
that's it's right around the corner.
11:25
It'll be here before you know it.
11:27
And I'm excited about being there with you guys and all of
11:30
our friends. And it feels like our, our
11:32
family just grows every year as we're down there and meet new
11:35
people and see old friends. And so it's a great time to be
11:39
down there together. Hope you'll join us.
11:42
Absolutely. I'll tell you, my son, he, he
11:45
goes to the gym every day and we've got a family, a family
11:48
plan at the gym as well. And it's just cheaper and it's
11:52
just makes sense. And he goes every day.
11:53
And I told I was going and I got busy with school.
11:57
And then I said, look, you know, when once we get through this
12:00
semester, I've got a pretty heavy load, the summer gets
12:03
here, I'll start going back. And I'll try to stay in the
12:06
habit to go with him. I think that's the best thing to
12:08
do. And so I'm like, I'm miss
12:10
lifting weights, so I miss doing that.
12:12
So we're gonna start that back soon.
12:15
But yeah, everything that you said, we're looking forward to
12:17
everything we've got going on in our future and we got things
12:22
coming down the Pike. And listen for our audience out
12:26
there. Listen, if you're near some
12:29
place we're going to be, we want you to reach out.
12:31
We want you to reach out on social media.
12:33
If we want you to message us, we want you to comment on Facebook
12:38
post. If you are a listener and you've
12:41
got some ideas that hey, I think this would be a good subject or
12:44
this would be good for you guys to talk about, Send those ideas
12:48
to us. We, we need those ideas.
12:50
We want those ideas because we want, we exist here for you.
12:54
We exist here to lift you up, to encourage you to, to show you
13:00
the freedom that we have in Christ.
13:02
And that's what we exist here to do when we're here to help you.
13:06
So reach out to us if you've got it on social media, if you've
13:09
got an idea you'd like to share with us about series idea or
13:14
some couple episode ideas or something like that, share that
13:18
with us and it will be a blessing to us.
13:20
Yeah, absolutely. And Brett, also, if you want to
13:22
Share your story, right, we've done this before.
13:24
We've had guys and girls come on and share their story.
13:27
We want you to give that opportunity for you to be able
13:30
to share how the Lord's worked in your life and how you've been
13:33
set free from the change of legalism.
13:36
And Brett, I'm, I'm excited about the series we're in with
13:39
the Jim Jones series. And I believe the next series
13:42
we're looking at is we're going to dissect the house church
13:45
manual. And so we've been ripping that
13:47
apart and trying to figure out all of it and excited about
13:51
walking through that together. But yeah, if you, if you want to
13:54
Share your story, if you had something that maybe you were
13:57
bound in not having boundaries. We this boundary idea has been
14:02
in my head for a while, really since the bourbon meet up.
14:05
We had a couple of individuals that asked us about how do we
14:08
have boundaries with our family members and you know, once we've
14:11
left the movement and all these things.
14:13
And so I've really continued to meditate on that.
14:17
And Jim Neuheiser's book on boundaries really is what got me
14:21
really kick started on this idea of the case study of Jim Jones.
14:25
And so last week we started with Episode 1.
14:28
And this week we're going to be jumping into Episode 2 when the
14:31
people's temple moves from Indianapolis to California and
14:35
they begin their rise of power and what that looks like, and
14:39
really the beginning foundation of what Jonestown is going to
14:42
look like. So Brett, anything else before
14:45
we jump in today? No, I'm I'm ready to go.
14:48
Let's do this. We'll jump in and we'll jump
14:51
into our intro song, and then let's get started with a great
14:54
cold open this day. For freedom, you set me free.
14:58
Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee.
15:01
Grace lit the flame. Now I'm puffing peace, cigars
15:03
and victory. Justified.
15:05
Released. Welcome to the For Freedom
15:09
podcast. This podcast exists to bring the
15:12
freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with
15:15
everyday issues. Saved by dress codes, not by
15:18
what I eat. I'm covered in the
15:20
righteousness, washed from head to feet.
15:22
No tally of tradition. No man made code.
15:25
Blood bought my freedom. Now I ride that road.
15:27
They clutch pearls when they see smoke rings rise, But my prey
15:31
still ascends Past the legalist cries.
15:33
Christ plus nothing. That's the real math.
15:36
So miss me with your fence laws and your extra path.
15:39
He sat with sinners, I'm sitting with Saints, sipping grace from
15:42
the bottle. No room for face.
15:44
I like one for liberty. Toast to the king.
15:47
Every ash of sermon. Death has lost its sting.
15:50
For freedom He set me free, Not for change, not for guilt, not
15:54
for Pharisee Grace, Let the flame now I'm puffing peace,
15:57
cigars and victory justified, released.
16:01
For freedom He set me free. Not for change, not for guilt,
16:04
not for Pharisee grace. Let the flame now puffing peace,
16:08
cigars and victory justified, released.
16:11
Let grace begin For fruit on me, threaten me free.
16:15
Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee grace.
16:18
Let the flame. Now here are your hosts, James
16:21
Seyfried and Brett Martin. By the early 1970s, Jim Jones
16:39
had transformed from a charismatic pastor into a
16:43
political force. The People's Temple now have
16:46
thousands of members in San Francisco.
16:49
Jones built a machine. What he had there was free food
16:53
programs for anyone in need, rehab support for those that
16:57
were struggling with addiction and difficulties in their life,
17:00
Elderly care. He had started nursing homes and
17:04
and organizations for those that could no longer care for their
17:07
parents. Transportation services with
17:10
buses and and vehicles that could take you anywhere you need
17:13
to go and political activism cruise where they would show up
17:17
at different locations and they would pick up an event or they
17:20
would take over an event and they would actually change the
17:23
vote of the voting bloc by just simply showing up with thousands
17:27
of people. Whenever a politician needed a
17:30
rally filled, Jim Jones was the man you would call.
17:34
Jim Jones would deliver anytime a politician called, even a
17:38
mayor publicly said Jim Jones is what the church should be.
17:44
But deep in the bowels of the temple in San Francisco,
17:46
something else is brewing. Apartment style living
17:50
confiscated mail as people would begin to get their mail required
17:54
signatures of loyalty that we talked about last week and began
17:58
pushing surveillance programs where they would actually
18:00
surveil people that were part of the temple as they would go
18:04
throughout their life and work. Punishments that are unbearable
18:08
for us to even talk about on these shows here.
18:10
Whippings that would happen that would really torment people to
18:16
the brink of depression and even death at times.
18:19
Sleep deprivation for mind control and manipulation.
18:24
Mandatory work assignments where people would have to go and do
18:28
whatever was assigned to them. The People's Temple was no
18:32
longer a church. It began to be an authoritarian
18:35
system wrapped in charity. You know, this is kind of where
18:44
power becomes an idol. Jones wasn't satisfied with
18:49
influence. He wanted total control.
18:51
Now influence can serve people, but control replaces God.
18:57
When you start trying to control people, you set yourself up as
19:02
an idol. You set yourself up as God, and
19:06
to him, loyalty was more important than the truth.
19:10
And he, you know, and he valued loyalty more than the truth.
19:14
And then because he valued it, the people under him began to
19:17
value loyalty more than their senses, more than reality, more
19:21
than the truth. And so when you start to control
19:24
people like that, you kind of put yourself in the place of
19:27
God. Yeah, but you were exactly
19:30
right. Spot on.
19:31
That. And you know, when you think
19:32
about this manipulation, what it looks like, most cult leaders
19:36
don't start with violence. Most cult leaders, they begin
19:40
with the peace movement during this time.
19:42
If you study the the history of what's going on in the early
19:46
1970s and 60s, this is rooted in the civil rights movement,
19:51
right? If if Jones would have continued
19:53
what he was doing, he would have been honored and remembered.
20:00
Martin Luther King junior Jesse Jackson But what happened was he
20:06
began to flirt with this violence and manipulation and
20:12
total authoritarian control. The the what started with
20:16
compassion, right? I have I have a care for the
20:18
people I I want to start an addiction ministry.
20:21
I want to start a grief share program.
20:22
I want to start a nursing home ministry.
20:24
I want to start these really good things eventually led to
20:30
this people excusing the manipulative behavior and what
20:36
started us feeding the poor began to turn into this
20:40
authoritarian control, as you just said.
20:43
Yeah, you know, manipulation always hides behind good works.
20:47
It's a mask, and Jones was a master at it.
20:50
Jones would use social justice as a tool, as a, as a
20:54
smokescreen. And James, it's a it's a classic
20:58
bait and switch because you mission, mission draws you in
21:03
and then control keeps you there.
21:05
It's like it's control wrapped in compassion.
21:09
It's manipulation wrapped in mercy.
21:12
And we've both been in some situations in the past where you
21:16
know, we we all know, know all about bait and switch tactic
21:20
where at first it's, you know it, it's biblical, but then it
21:24
becomes whatever the pastor wants, you know, that kind of
21:28
thing. So we know about the bait and
21:29
switch. Yeah, absolutely.
21:31
One of the things that I noticed as we were studying through
21:33
this, we were looking through this story and, and really just
21:36
I'm calling it a case study because we can look and there's
21:39
so much that's been documented and wrote on it is the way that
21:43
Jim Jones used what was called isolation.
21:47
He began taking people, isolating them from this group
21:51
of people, and he began to separate them from the people
21:55
that were closest to them, their family, their friends, their
21:59
their people that have outside thought into them.
22:03
And as I got to think about me, I really correlated this with
22:06
like your story, right? You were, your parents were at
22:09
ASBC church. You got started getting picked
22:11
up by an independent fundamental Baptist Church.
22:13
And they begin to tell you, hey, you're family.
22:16
They don't even love Jesus. They're going to a Southern
22:17
Baptist church, right? And all of a sudden you feel
22:20
like you've got to begin winning your family over to this
22:23
movement. Even though they're at a good
22:25
church, they're a church that loves the Lord.
22:27
They're the church that's preaching the gospel that that's
22:29
singing good songs, that that has a Bible that may not be the
22:32
King James Bible, but they're preaching the Bible.
22:34
They're preaching the word. And they use this control of
22:38
isolation to control the people. And this is what isolation does.
22:43
It controls them. It separates them.
22:46
It causes dissent to happen. Jones even was was a master
22:50
manipulator in creating inner circles of ones that were the
22:54
closest to him that we're making decisions and controlling the
22:58
group. And so now you have this envy of
23:01
I want to be part of that inner circle.
23:03
I want to be able to spend this extra time with Jim Jones.
23:06
I want to be able to have this time.
23:07
And so it drives how, you know, if, if maybe if I tell on Brett
23:11
a couple of times, Jim's going to see that I'm loyal and he'll
23:15
bring me into that inner circle. And so now you have this, this
23:19
faction of people that are turning other people in all so
23:22
they can get closer to the leader that's in control.
23:26
Right, separation, it starts with the phrase separation from
23:31
the world. And but they take that
23:34
separation from the world. It doesn't mean isolation from
23:37
the world, it means separation from the world's sin.
23:41
But that's the tactic that Jim uses.
23:43
He used isolation. And, you know, as the people,
23:47
the people's temple grew in California, you know, of course,
23:50
so did the accusations. Families claimed loved ones when
23:55
were being held against their will.
23:58
Journalists began investigating financial fraud.
24:01
Former members exposed staged miracles.
24:05
And we just just recently had an expose on Facebook about on
24:10
YouTube about staged miracles for Bethel.
24:14
Politicians started distancing themselves and Jones responded
24:19
with paranoia. Members were told the CIA is
24:22
coming for US. America wants to destroy our
24:26
movement. If you leave the temple, you
24:28
will be killed. Your family doesn't love you
24:31
anymore. He created ghost enemies trying
24:34
to justify tightening control. In fact, survivor Deborah
24:39
Layton, who escaped Jonestown, later wrote, we were told we
24:43
were the most righteous people on earth and that everyone
24:47
outside wanted us dead. Now that wasn't caution.
24:51
That was psychological entrapment.
24:54
It's this, it's this US versus them mindset.
24:58
And and that's manipulation. one-on-one is to start this US
25:02
versus them. Once you once you distrust
25:05
everyone else, the manipulator becomes your only safe place.
25:11
It begins with isolation, and then it goes on to controlling
25:15
the narrative. And then once you control the
25:18
narratives you instill, don't ask any questions.
25:22
And that's one step away from fear.
25:24
And fear is the glue that held them in place.
25:28
Yeah. But I want to go back and hit on
25:31
a couple of those statements that you said, because those are
25:34
some things that maybe we didn't hear exactly in the IFB, but I
25:39
can remember this, right? We were the church that got it
25:43
right and everyone else around us is the church that got it
25:46
wrong, right? What did, what did Jim Jones
25:48
say? We were the most righteous
25:51
people on earth and everyone outside wanted us dead.
25:54
It's the same statement, just in a different mentality, right?
25:57
It's, it's, we have to stay here because we're the ones getting
26:00
it right. Everyone else is getting it
26:01
wrong. You don't want to end up wrong,
26:03
do you? You don't want to end up in the,
26:05
in the judgment seat of the Lord and say, well, I thought I
26:07
trusted the right way and it was the wrong way.
26:10
And so all of a sudden this manipulation begins to come up.
26:14
Really you, you listen to some of these statements, the, the
26:16
fear tactics that were brought up.
26:18
The CIA is coming for us and the CIA may be coming for us, right?
26:23
If you have my hope that our FBI agents not listening, but but
26:26
sometimes the the, it could be true, but I'm very much doubt
26:30
that that's happening in most of our churches of today.
26:33
America wants to destroy our movement, right?
26:35
This is the idea that they're taking away religious liberty
26:39
and they're taking away all the things that we can do.
26:42
The the idea that your family has abandoned you.
26:45
They don't love you, they don't want you anymore.
26:47
We are your family. We are the place you belong.
26:50
These types of statements we may have not heard verbatim and you
26:54
may have heard this in the IFB, but we get this same mentality
26:58
of it's the US versus them that we talk about.
27:02
And you know the scary part about all this, Brett, is when
27:05
you isolate people emotionally, you don't have to have change
27:09
anymore. They will begin to police
27:12
themselves. You begin to put them in a
27:14
situation. I am number one.
27:18
I can attest this from Bible college, right?
27:20
We have the rules there. But all of a sudden our Bible
27:24
college became little Jim Jones's.
27:26
All of a sudden we had guys that were in the dorm that were
27:29
trying to become a dorm super, but trying to become a room
27:33
leader. And so they would begin to be a
27:35
narc and they would begin to turn someone in.
27:37
Hey, I saw James, he didn't come in at the right time on curfew.
27:42
And all of a sudden they are beginning to police themselves.
27:46
And the leaders in charge don't actually have to do anything
27:48
because people are turning themselves in.
27:50
And all of a sudden, you better come in and be the savior.
27:53
You get to come in and, and, and and this you have punishment or
27:57
grace in that moment and now you look like the good guy.
28:01
Right, you know, and Jones did it.
28:03
He, he understood that fear binds people tighter than love.
28:08
Jones understood how to use fear and that and that.
28:12
Let me say that while I know there are a lot of good IFB
28:17
churches out there, there are a lot of IFB churches that do have
28:22
extreme cultish like behaviors. And, and I've witnessed it.
28:27
And then a part of it, I remember a pastor getting up and
28:31
telling a story about this lady that had came to him and she
28:36
didn't like something that he did.
28:38
And so she she cursed at him and screamed at him.
28:44
And then he said the next day, her son was going down the road
28:47
in a car and hit a curve and had a wreck and died.
28:52
And she went crazy from that. And today, she's still in the
28:57
psych ward at the mental hospital.
28:59
That was a story I heard growing up.
29:02
I heard it more than once and I thought, man, this is this.
29:06
Oh, I better listen to what the pastor tells me.
29:08
Do I better not speak against him?
29:11
You know, he's tell us about the She Bears and whatnot.
29:15
And what's interesting, James, is I heard that story several
29:18
times growing up and then later on in life I heard another IFB
29:23
preacher tell the same story. So it's like my pastor heard
29:28
that from somebody else and adopted it and made it his
29:31
story. And so those tactics to try to
29:35
fear, you know, try to fear you and to control this just part of
29:41
the manipulation tactics. Yeah, I, I remember Brett, I was
29:45
at a youth conference one time. John, if he's listening, he's
29:48
going to be able to test this and some of our guys going to
29:50
test this where Ralph Sexton got up and he preached.
29:54
It was the tsunami that happened in O 5 there on, I think it was
29:58
O five O 4 somewhere on there on the Japan, the coast of Japan or
30:03
something like that. He got up and he read the
30:04
newspaper and he said there's a tsunami of sin coming and it's
30:09
destroying America and it's coming this way.
30:11
Look at though this physical tsunami did.
30:13
And he gave an illustration. I don't know if it was then or
30:16
another time, but he said he was preaching at a Coliseum in North
30:19
Carolina. And there was a young lady that
30:22
got up and and, and pointed in his face and said, I'm not going
30:26
to believe what you have to say. I'm not going to believe in your
30:28
lies. I'm not going to believe in who
30:30
you say this God is. I'm going to do my own thing.
30:33
I'm going to live my own life. And she walked out of that
30:35
auditorium and she stepped onto the curb and a car jumped the
30:39
curb and hit her and pinned her up against the side of the
30:42
Coliseum, the brick wall. And later that day, she died.
30:47
Her body was decapitated. And the last thing she said was
30:51
I'm not going to believe in what you have to say.
30:53
Are you going to be that girl? Are you going to walk out of
30:55
here and not believe in this spiritual manipulation that came
31:00
over? What happened was was, was was a
31:03
fear based of I'm going to make this decision because if I step
31:07
out of this room, I may die right now.
31:08
And that may happen, but we're, we're causing the decision based
31:13
on fear, not the Holy Spirit moving in their world.
31:16
We are becoming to be the Holy Spirit.
31:18
And that is what Jim Jones did. He stepped in and he became the
31:21
Holy Spirit in their lives. And this type of loyalty breeds
31:26
this type of wait on someone's life that they get to the point
31:31
where they can't even breathe anymore because they're so
31:34
burdened by what's going on around them and by how I have to
31:38
please the leader, not pleasing God.
31:42
Right. I agree with you there.
31:44
And as we go back to Jim Jones story in 1974, we see things
31:56
begin to take a turn because Jim Jones announced his new vision.
32:02
An agricultural paradise in the jungles of Guyana, South
32:05
America. A socialist utopia.
32:09
A reach, a racial paradise, a land free from American
32:14
corruption. That's where we'll go, he said.
32:18
A promised land. But the real reason for
32:21
Jonestown was simpler. He needed a place where no one
32:25
could escape. Guyana was remote, dense jungle,
32:30
no nearby cities, no easy exit, limited government oversight.
32:36
It was the perfect stage for complete control. 1977, when
32:41
newspaper exposes were about to break, Jones panic and moved
32:46
hundreds of temple members to Guyana overnight.
32:50
They flocked there, believing they were building heaven on
32:54
earth. When they arrived, they found
32:57
exhaustion, malnutrition, surveillance and armed guards.
33:03
Jonestown was a prison disguised as Paradise.
33:18
Yeah, that's what happened. And the story goes even more as
33:23
Brett, they were going through this, Jim was promising and
33:28
sending even like pictures back of how great this organization
33:31
was and looking out. I mean, they were coming in and
33:34
they were having to manually by hand with very small, heavy or
33:39
heavy agricultural equipment, tear down massive jungles of
33:43
trees and then build from the ground up barracks and living
33:47
residents and and what was supposed to be a 510 year
33:51
project. Jim Jones, he fast-paced this
33:55
thing. He kept saying, hey, can I send
33:57
more? Hey, can I send more?
33:58
Hey, can I send more? And what was happening was when
34:00
they were actually showing what the ground was producing, they
34:04
were actually going into town buying fresh fruit and fresh
34:08
vegetables and putting that on tables to entertain what was
34:12
going on, to give the appearance that look at how great this new
34:15
place is. We've already got ground growing
34:17
and and then the guys are on the ground.
34:18
We're saying, listen, we like we it's going to take several years
34:22
for us to cultivate the ground, for us to be able to plant, to
34:25
produce food, to be able to provide for all these people.
34:29
And so they were having to when people started getting there,
34:32
they had to actually start paying money to buy food and
34:36
product to make it look well. And you can go and you can see
34:39
the documentaries of of, of storage houses that are full of
34:42
food. None of it was grown there.
34:45
It was all bought in the villages and brought there.
34:48
And so Jim used this way as a full blown manipulation tactic
34:54
that be quickly became captivity for people.
34:57
You begin isolating someone physically.
35:01
Now you've spiritually isolated them to just believe what you
35:04
say, and now you've moved them to a new location.
35:07
And emotionally, you were the only connection that they have
35:11
to the world. And Brett, this is where they're
35:13
at. They have now been emotionally,
35:15
spiritually and physically brought into this manipulative
35:19
tactic. And you know, look how clean the
35:21
progression is, you know the process that he uses it, it's
35:26
almost like a blueprint. First, you've got the first
35:29
progress stage is belonging. You know that's, that's love
35:33
bombing. That's you're part of a family.
35:35
You're, you're part of a, part of a 'cause you're part of a
35:39
mission. And then the second stage is
35:42
loyalty. And loyalty means you know
35:45
you're, you're, you're committed.
35:47
The more committed you are to our cause, the more righteous
35:51
you are. You're, you hear the phrase, you
35:53
know you're part of something bigger than yourself and that
35:57
that builds loyalty and that loyalty then turns into
36:01
dependence. Dependence means that it means
36:05
that your needs can only be met in this group.
36:09
Outside this group, you cannot get your needs met.
36:12
You can only get your needs met inside of this group.
36:16
The next stage is fear. Fear comes in many, many forms.
36:21
You've got punishment, you've got fear of rejection, and then
36:26
you've got fear of the outside world and let you know when he
36:30
instills it. This fear, fear can make you do
36:32
some some things you wouldn't normally do.
36:35
And then on top of that, the next stage is isolation.
36:39
You know, you got to make them doubt everybody but you.
36:42
You even have to make them doubt themselves.
36:44
They can't trust their own judgment.
36:47
They can't trust the judgment of the world.
36:49
The only judgment they can trust is the judgement of the leader.
36:54
And then this goes into control utterly, 100% full, total
37:02
control. And you have that much control
37:04
over somebody, you've set yourself up as an idol.
37:08
You've you set yourself up as a, as, as God, basically.
37:11
And that's exactly what he wanted to do.
37:14
And you know, going through this, James, it reminds me,
37:18
National Geographic put out a many years ago, they put out a
37:24
documentary on North Korea and how people were North Korea are
37:28
so brainwashed, the Kim Jong owns and the Kim Jong Illinois's
37:33
and, and how they look at the their dear leader.
37:37
And there's a lot of similarities here.
37:40
Yeah, I can agree. I was.
37:43
When you said that, it reminded me of a story when Fidel Castro
37:46
took over in Cuba. And I think I've shared on the
37:49
podcast before, if not I've shared in other places.
37:52
But when Fidel Castro took over in Cuba, he realized that the
37:56
only way he was going to actually take over is if he
37:59
somehow won over the generation that was coming up.
38:03
He knew if I can, I'm not going to be able to win the adults
38:06
over. I'm not going to be able to win
38:07
the grandparents over, but if I can win the kids once in 10
38:12
years, 15 years, they're going to be so loyal to me that I'll
38:17
be able to control the entire nation.
38:19
And So what he did was he went into the kindergarten and 1st
38:21
grade classrooms and he in Cuba before this was a very religious
38:25
country. They were very Catholic oriented
38:27
and very much believed in God and believed in Jesus.
38:31
And so he went into the classrooms and and he told every
38:34
kid he he had, he would go into some of these classrooms, but he
38:37
would take his representative and he would tell all of them.
38:40
He would have all of his guards around the room.
38:42
And he would say, kids, I want you to bow your head.
38:45
I want you to close your eyes and I want you to pray to God
38:49
that he would give you an ice cream cone.
38:52
And he said all the kids would bow their head.
38:54
You'd hear them mumbling a little bit, they'd open their
38:56
eyes and they'd sit up and there'd be not, there wouldn't
38:59
be an ice cream cone on their desk.
39:01
He said he would look at them again and he'd say, now what I
39:04
want you to do is I want you to bow your head.
39:06
I want you to close your eyes. And I want you to pray to Fidel
39:10
Castro. Pray that Fidel Castro would
39:13
give you an ice cream cone. Remember, these are 5 and 6 year
39:16
old little kids. And they would bow their heads
39:18
and they would close their eyes and they would, with all
39:20
sincerity, pray, Fidel, please give me an ice cream cone.
39:23
It's hot outside. I want an ice cream cone.
39:25
And while they were praying, the officers and the people that
39:28
were around the room would go and they would put ice cream
39:30
cones on everybody's desk. And he'd say, OK, now open your
39:33
eyes and they'd open their eyes and there would have said that
39:36
ice cream cone and he'd say, now look, Fidel Castro will provide
39:39
for you, but God won't. And he used this type of
39:43
manipulation, this type of control and fear and isolation
39:48
and and brainwashing to an extent to show that he could be
39:53
the one that was going to lead them.
39:54
And the history shows that within 10 years of that time, he
39:59
had complete and utter control and took this nation.
40:02
Into this communist regime, that was the way he wanted it and ran
40:06
it for his lifetime and then his his brother's lifetime.
40:10
Raoul and had complete control over this during so much turmoil
40:15
of time because he knew I can do this if I take over the kids.
40:20
This pattern of abuse happens here in Jim Jones as well.
40:24
It starts with the relationships.
40:26
It starts with, hey, how can I help you today?
40:28
How can I be there for you? Now?
40:30
It goes into the spiritual abuse of if you don't do this, this is
40:34
what's going to happen to you. And then it leads into cults and
40:39
people who are in ways that they never even thought or imagined
40:44
that on the outside look in, say, there's no way I would ever
40:47
be a part of something like that.
40:48
But then within moments of time, they are in that organization
40:52
because control comes in and it doesn't come in and and throw
40:56
handcuffs on you and say you're going to follow me in this cult,
40:59
You know, it comes in with love and care and compassion and
41:03
manipulates people into doing what you want them to do and
41:06
ultimately you having control over their life.
41:09
Right. And and all six of those stages
41:11
belonging, loyalty, dependence, fear, isolation, control.
41:16
Jones was a master. He did all six perfectly and
41:21
tragically. Fact survivor Tim Carter, who
41:24
lived in Jonestown, later said We were tired, hungry,
41:29
overworked. We still believed we were doing
41:33
something good. And that's the scariest part.
41:36
We thought the suffering was righteous.
41:39
Manipulation doesn't make people feel foolish.
41:42
It makes them feel faithful. And that's the thing.
41:45
If you know, if you question the suffering, then it's made to
41:50
where you're questioning God. But you, you can't say enough.
41:54
You better not say anything because you, you don't want to
41:56
question God. But you know, James, when I read
41:59
the book of Psalms, I see a lot of people questioning their
42:04
suffering. I see the Psalmist saying, how
42:07
long, O Lord, will you forget me?
42:10
How long, you know, we, we see this, you know, the Psalms, they
42:14
question God all the time. And so this idea that man, this,
42:18
this, this, if I question my situation, I question the
42:21
suffering, I'm going to be questioning God.
42:24
It's just just just manipulation.
42:27
Yeah, let's pull back the curtain for a moment and begin
42:30
to look at life inside Jonestown.
42:39
The workload in Jonestown was brutal.
42:42
Most people report that they work 12 to 16 hour days farming
42:47
in the heat in uncultured land that was never even designed to
42:51
produce fruit and vegetables and vegetation for food.
42:56
Mandatory meetings every single night.
42:58
They had built a pavilion where every night you would go and you
43:01
would hear a word from Jim Jones.
43:03
Confession sessions begin to happen where people were brought
43:07
forward and they were humiliated to the point of tears and
43:11
sometimes beatings that would happen as they would say that so
43:15
and so stole an extra piece of bread or so and so did this to
43:18
someone. And the abuse and and rape and
43:23
molestation that was happening that was going on is very widely
43:26
documented because a lot of all these sessions were recorded and
43:30
Jim would get up and he would take these confessions and he
43:33
would manipulate and control people through this statement.
43:38
Loud speakers were installed and put all over Jonestown in
43:42
Guyana, and 24/7 they had to hear Jim Jones's voice preaching
43:48
and teaching and talking to them every moment of every day, while
43:53
they're working, while they're sleeping, while they're walking
43:55
their dog, while they're taking their kids for a walk.
43:58
Whatever they were doing, they could always count on Jim
44:02
Jones's voice coming through those loud speakers.
44:05
Through an old sermon, through a sermon that he was recently
44:08
preaching, through a message, whatever it was, his voice was
44:11
coming through the speakers. And everywhere you went in
44:15
Jonestown, loud speakers were there, but armed guards were
44:19
patrolling all throughout the border.
44:21
You couldn't leave. No one could come in there.
44:24
There was this, this town that was built inside of a jungle
44:28
that had guards protecting people from coming in, is what
44:31
it was said. But it was to protect people
44:33
from leaving as well. So that was what it was like
44:36
inside. It was brutal, it was
44:37
heartbreaking. It was devastating to everything
44:40
you could do, but also Jim Jones controlled everything.
44:44
This is what Jim Jones controlled.
44:45
He controlled when you slept. You could not sleep unless Jim
44:49
Jones gave you permission to sleep.
44:51
You could not eat unless Jim Jones gave you permission to
44:54
eat. You could not determine who you
44:57
were going to talk to unless Jim Jones allowed you to talk to
45:00
someone. You could not control where you
45:03
went. He controlled where you went,
45:05
where you slept, what you did and what you ate.
45:09
Every letter that you wrote, Jim Jones read or one of his people
45:13
in his inner circle will begin to read.
45:16
They would open and they would determine what that letter was
45:19
able to be able to be sent out of Guyana, to be able to go back
45:22
to whoever that was. And most letters never even left
45:25
the premises. People at home said that my
45:29
family was. It felt like my family member
45:31
had disappeared off the face of the world and and they came to
45:35
find out that there were letters and notes that were found in
45:38
offices that were never sent out because they didn't want them
45:42
sitting out. The news you heard was the news
45:45
that Jim Jones told you. There was no TV.
45:48
There was no type of radios that were coming in and out.
45:51
It was only the news that Jim Jones told you.
45:54
And most of that news was we have people that we have
45:57
captured that how we're trying to come into this village to
46:00
take over what we were doing. And everything you heard, you
46:03
believed because Jim Jones was at the center of that
46:05
information. He controlled everything, even
46:08
to the point of controlling what you thought and how to think.
46:12
Jones had a throne like chair on an elevated platform where he
46:16
broadcasted prophetic messages and political fear monging over
46:20
his PA systems. This is some things that were
46:24
said. The world is against us.
46:28
They're coming to kill your children.
46:30
I am your only shelter. This was not a community.
46:35
This was a conditioning for people to ultimately listen to
46:39
exactly what Jim Jones was saying and how they were going
46:42
to respond to their life. Listen, as I'm sitting here
46:58
listening to you reading this, I'm getting chills, not only
47:03
because of how bad just hearing how bad this was, but thinking
47:09
about the similarities between what you just read and my
47:12
experience of House Anderson College.
47:14
And I'm not saying House Anderson is Jonestown.
47:17
I'm not saying that at all. But what I am saying is, you
47:21
know, when you have to read the biography of the pastor on tape,
47:25
you have to record yourself reading the whole book to be
47:31
sure that you read it. And you know, you have to sign
47:35
in and sign out like control where you go and you've got a
47:39
curfew. And if you're a girl, you,
47:41
you're not allowed to leave. And then you sing hymns about
47:45
Jack Hiles like old time religion.
47:47
You think it was good for Doctor Hiles.
47:50
And then this part where you talk about an elevated platform.
47:53
He sits on the throne. Somebody should go.
47:56
You should. You right now should go to
47:57
YouTube. And you need to look up Jack
47:59
Kyle's birthday at How's Anderson College and see how
48:03
much that man was worshipped on his birthday at How's Anderson
48:08
College and what they did for him and the pageantry and the
48:11
hooping and the hollering. And it was, if it's eerie, the
48:17
similarities here between what I experienced and, and, and what's
48:22
going on here. Did you want to say something
48:23
about that? Yeah.
48:25
Didn't they bring him in on on like a chariot, like on a
48:28
throne? They carried him down the aisle.
48:31
Yeah, they they have. They have carried him.
48:33
I remember seeing that that picture, that video where they
48:36
put him on a throne. They had like 10 guys carrying
48:39
them on the shoulder like an old Roman king coming into the into
48:43
the emperor. I remember seeing that.
48:46
It was the first time I ever made this correlation in my
48:48
mind. That's how that happened.
48:50
But man, that's, that's crazy. Yeah, you know, and you know, it
48:54
goes back to when somebody control where, you know,
48:57
somebody controls your environment, controls your
49:00
schedule, controls your sleep. They can rewrite your sense of
49:05
reality. That's what happened in Jones
49:07
Jonestown. And in essence, that's what
49:09
happens to a lot of these cultish like Bible colleges.
49:14
You know, I'm not saying they're all like that, but the culti
49:16
ones are. They control your environment,
49:18
what you see, what you watch, what you hear.
49:21
You control your sleep, control your schedule, what you do, and
49:25
your brain actually starts to trust the manipulator over your
49:30
own senses. And it works.
49:31
Your reality. Yeah.
49:33
You know, Brett, one of the questions that people ask all
49:36
the time is, OK, these people that are part of Jonestown, they
49:40
must be like low IQ people, people that are very easily
49:45
manipulated. These are people that they,
49:48
they, they can't be really educated people.
49:52
This is the part that people miss.
49:53
These folks were not dumb people.
49:56
There were doctors, there were lawyers, there were educators,
50:00
there were historians. There were people that were very
50:04
high level IQ people teaching in the universities, people that
50:08
had had their doctorate in medicine.
50:10
Because what they had done is they had set up, if you had a
50:13
problem and you needed surgery, you went to Jonestown and they
50:17
would take care of your surgery. They would take care of all your
50:20
dental work. They would take care of
50:21
everything. And so these people now move to
50:24
the Guyana and they're the ones that are also under the same
50:27
control. They were very educated people.
50:30
Now there were some that were, were not and there were some
50:33
that were there just looking for the handout and looking for the,
50:36
the, the free meal that was going to be given to them.
50:39
But most of these people were not weak people.
50:42
They were people who simply trusted the wrong person at the
50:46
wrong time, and they slowly lost their ability to tell the tell
50:52
from the truth, to be able to see devotion, and they begin to
50:55
turn to devotion rather than truth.
50:58
You know, I made a TikTok few years ago and it was about how
51:06
me finally coming to the realization that all these
51:08
preferences that I have been taught were not in the Bible and
51:14
most of the comments that I got were how come you didn't just
51:18
read the Bible? How come you didn't leave?
51:20
How come you didn't do this or do that?
51:24
Listen, manipulation drains the ability for you to think
51:27
independently. You know, this brainwashing,
51:31
it's a real thing. And when you get introduced into
51:34
it slowly and, and you can't think independently, you cling
51:40
to the person who thinks for you.
51:43
And, and that's what happened in an extreme case.
51:46
That's what happened here in Jonestown.
51:47
When, when your when your own thoughts and your own judgement,
51:52
you when you can't trust your own judgement, then you're like,
51:55
man, I need somebody else to think for me.
51:57
If I can't think for myself, I need somebody else to think for
52:01
me. And this leader who's done all
52:04
this good for me and his love bombed me so much.
52:07
I need to listen to him. And and you lose your ability to
52:11
think for yourself. Yeah, exactly right.
52:14
And you know, what happened was Jones began to be their lens of
52:20
reality, their interpreter of reality.
52:22
You could almost say that when they were in this culture, they
52:26
were putting on the glasses of Jim Jones.
52:29
And Jim Jones wore sunglasses as well to hide some things, but
52:32
they were putting on the glasses of Jim Jones and how they saw
52:35
the world was through his eyes. And one person said, like this
52:41
survivor Odell Rhodes said this. You didn't question Jim.
52:46
You didn't doubt Jim because if you doubted or if you questioned
52:50
him, you were betraying him. And this doubt that they were
52:55
living became sin. If I doubt the leader, if I
52:58
doubt what Jim is telling me, if he tells me that we're about to
53:01
be under attack or the CIA is coming in and I question or I
53:05
doubt that I have now sinned and manipulation, this is when it
53:10
has reached this peak to where every single sentence, thought,
53:14
phrase that you say is 100% absolute truth.
53:19
And this is where the manipulation has to be
53:22
controlled, where the boundaries has to be in place beforehand.
53:25
So you can begin to see this beforehand.
53:28
I want to preface preface the audience to brace themselves
53:33
because what they're about to hear is shocking.
53:49
Starting in 1977, Jones began staging White Knights.
53:55
These were emergency suicide drills.
53:59
In the middle of the night, loud speakers would blast White
54:03
Knight. White knight come to the
54:05
pavilion. Members would gather, terrified.
54:10
Jones would tell them the government's coming.
54:12
The government's coming to destroy you.
54:15
We must die as martyrs. Then he offered them a drink.
54:20
Sometimes it was juice, sometimes it was alcohol,
54:25
sometimes it was nothing. When they drank, Jones told
54:29
them, you've just committed suicide.
54:34
And then moments later, he would say, this was a loyalty test and
54:40
you passed this repeated dozens of times.
54:45
By 1978, Jonestown had rehearsed its own death.
54:50
And you know, this, this, this is chilling.
54:53
This is like training people to ignore their own survival
54:58
skills. And before we did this research,
55:01
I never knew this. And I still have, I don't want
55:05
to skip to the end of our story, but I have the aerial views of
55:12
Joe, the aftermath of Jonestown. I have those images burned into
55:17
my brain. And when you first see that, you
55:20
think, man, why would they do something like that?
55:23
But then you, you read something like this and you hear something
55:28
like this, and you're like, oh, they had been conditioned.
55:31
They had been trained, they had done this before and not died.
55:36
And so, you know, it was just, he was just priming them.
55:40
Some of them could have, maybe some of them could have thought
55:43
it was. It's just another drill.
55:45
You know, it's crazy to hear this kind of stuff.
55:53
Yeah, this is so in your list of 6 belonging, loyalty,
55:57
dependency, fear, isolation, control.
56:00
This now adds the the next layer, you can almost put 7,
56:03
which is the grooming stage. This is the stage where
56:07
psychologically you begin to break people down to the idea of
56:11
normalizing something that they would think would be an
56:15
unthinkable, thinkable thing to do.
56:18
He made the unthinkable thinkable.
56:21
He made the idea of death an idea of normality.
56:26
And all of a sudden he began to psychologically groom them into
56:30
thinking that what I'm doing is OK.
56:33
And, and to think about this, Brett, like you said it it when
56:36
you begin to do this over and over and over again.
56:40
And when we get to episode 3, the next episode next week,
56:43
you're going to see how everything that Jim Jones had
56:47
prophesied was in quotation marks here coming true.
56:52
Everything that he was saying, the government's coming in to
56:54
take everything, right? All of a sudden, the senators
56:57
coming in, everything that he had said is now to the point
57:00
where he is, Congressman, I'm sorry, what's coming in?
57:03
This is where he begins to make his ideas crazy.
57:09
Exactly. And by tying suicide to loyalty,
57:13
just like you said, it made death honorable.
57:15
It made death, became the ultimate act of faith, and when
57:21
Congressman Leo Ryan stepped foot in Jonestown, this is where
57:25
things take a major turn for the worst.
57:29
Yeah, yeah. This leads us to the tipping
57:31
point, Brett. This is the moment where
57:35
everything that was going on in the background, Jim Jones, he
57:39
had some nefarious things going on that we're not going to talk
57:42
about on this podcast. He had some things that that
57:45
that drugs that he was doing and medicating himself, things that
57:50
he was doing to manipulate the people began to truly activate
57:56
in himself what he had conditioned his people to do.
57:59
Because now he had trained these people to listen to him.
58:03
And because of his paranormal, because of his paranoia, I'm
58:06
sorry, paranoia of what was going on.
58:08
He just snapped and couldn't control it anymore.
58:12
And like you said, when when Congressman Leo Ryan stepped
58:16
foot on Jonestown, that visit changed everything that we know
58:22
about Jim Jones and about Jonestown and about Guyana,
58:25
South Africa. Within 48 hours of Leo Ryan
58:30
stepping foot of Jonestown, the massacre happened and that's
58:34
what we're going to pick up next week.
58:35
That's where it really gets heavy and we're going to spend
58:38
some time next week talking through this and hope we've
58:41
enjoyed this. Hope you've enjoyed.
58:43
We're giving you a 10,000 foot view of what's going on.
58:47
We could go in depth for hours and hours on the research we've
58:50
done. We're just trying to consolidate
58:52
this to help you to be able to understand what manipulation is,
58:57
how to realize what that is and how to have boundaries set up.
59:01
And so hopefully you've enjoyed this.
59:02
Hopefully you are taking notes as we walk through this.
59:06
Brett, any final closing thoughts before we shut it down
59:09
today? I'm just amazed at some of the
59:12
similarities that I've seen in this, and I think our listeners
59:17
too will be able to pick out, well, man, man, it wasn't that
59:21
extreme, but I'm seeing the earmarks of some things that I
59:25
have experienced in the past. And that's kind of the reason
59:29
we're showing you an extreme example, very extreme example,
59:36
this taken to its manipulation, taken to its completion.
59:41
And I just hope people were able to help people with this.
59:46
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I'm, I'm one of
59:49
these documentary guys. My wife says I'm weird because I
59:52
watch weird documentaries on cults and different things.
59:55
But I watched the documentary on Nexium, Nexium, Nexium and the
1:00:00
cult of that and just the isolation and control that could
1:00:04
happen. People that were, I mean, movie
1:00:07
stars, people that were in, had their life put together, were
1:00:10
trusting in these leaders to control their lives.
1:00:14
And so before you say that'll never happen to me or I'll never
1:00:17
let that happen again. We want to give you some
1:00:19
boundaries to put up to be able to recognize and those triggers
1:00:22
go off and say, OK, maybe that's not right.
1:00:24
Maybe I need to take a step back to understand what's going on in
1:00:27
your own life. And so thank you for listening
1:00:29
today. Thank you for tuning in.
1:00:31
As always, if these episodes have done a blessing to you,
1:00:34
give us a like rating review on iTunes and Spotify where we
1:00:38
listen to give us a a comment and that we hope you've enjoyed
1:00:42
these couple of episodes. We've got a couple more left as
1:00:44
we continue to walk through the life of Jim Jones.
1:00:48
And so, until next time, to God be the glory.
1:00:51
Great things he has done. Found my new name, Found that
1:00:56
good grace, found that healing. And the tears fell down my face
1:01:02
when I found my beginning. It has no ending.
1:01:06
I found that second chance, Found my best friend, Found my
1:01:09
forgiveness. Thanks for listening to the Four
1:01:26
Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do
1:01:29
us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our
1:01:33
podcast or whichever podcast platform you use.
1:01:36
Be sure to join us next time for the Four Freedom Podcast.