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Jones: I find it incredible that in the 20th century, many religious groups are still preaching a fear gospel. When Jesus said he came to give life and life more abundantly, that we being evil in the natural realm, knew how to do good, how much more our Heavenly Father knew how to do good, that he would not give a serpent for flesh, he would not give stone for bread. There’s not one of you that would condemn someone into hell on the basis of a theological issue. But your Heavenly Father’s much more expansive and much more loving than anything you’ve ever brought into your consciousness. Thus, if he admonishes us to forgive seventy times seven in one day, I am certain that forgiveness and restitution, reconciliation are his chief virtues, and if ordinary human beings are then forgiving, certainly God incarnate is going to be that much more (breathless) forgiving and loving. [Reading from The divine law of cure by Warren Felt Evans, 1884] A religion whose central principle is fear cannot make the soul happy and does not bear the seal and impress of divinity or the Christ teaching. In fact, it is an anti-Christ religion. Perfect love casts out fear. God’s infinite Life is love and love is blessedness in itself. To consciously live in God, to share his life, to be made one with him and thus be made a partaker of the divine nature, is to live in the order of our creation, and to move in the element in which we were made to exist and to act, and out of which there is no real life and blessedness. Let it be remembered that happiness and health are most intimately, if not indissolubly, associated. The man or woman who is happy, not be transient gleams of spiritual sunshine, not by a casual gay surface-coloring of his existence, but by a blessedness all through his being is not in the proper sense of the word disease. The radical idea of the term disease – without ease – is inconsistent with this state. Let us remember that life, blessedness and health are one. He who is not blessed, he who is not living in love instead of fear, he who is not happy, does not really live. He does not realize the full idea of what we call life. The wheels of life move, if they move at all, with friction and labor and effort. All action in the line of duty is an uphill exertion and not a spontaneous (Pause) activity [ed. Note: word substituted for vivacity].
An unhappy person, a fear-ridden person in the consciousness of ordinary religion today, cannot in the full sense of the word be a healthy person. Much of what physicians treat as physical disease is only a mental unhappiness. Much of it, according to the experts of today’s research, is fostered by religion of a negative mortal nature. It follows from this that the best physician is he who blesses others, who makes other souls happy by the divine sunshine of his words and his presence. The sphere of his beneficent life is as contagious, peaceful, and undisturbed as the tranquility of the Christ. (Raps once)
You know people are not reading scriptures today. They are reading as the Word says, (unintelligible word), which are either dead epistles, or as we are commanded to be living epistles read and known of all men. The Bibles that people read are the countenances of your own life, the character which you walk daily in the community. And the true character of Christ ministered to minds diseased, calms their fears, allays their anxieties, solves the doubts of human beings, quiets their forebodings, removes the gloom of despair, supplants their self-condemnation by a sense of pardon and aims to pluck from the heart every rooted sorrow. Jesus came, not to (breathless) condemn, but to give life and life more abundantly. Such was Jesus the anointed, who came to comfort those that mourn, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. The good physician after the manner of Jesus is a doctor or teacher. His first inquiry is not what ails a body, but what are the more real and interior needs of the soul or psyche. By attending to the body alone, he would only work at the circumference of our being. By giving his attention to the mental and spiritual state, he begins the curative process at the center of our existence, and according to an established law of divine order, works from within outward. This spiritual disturbance, the mental abnormality, has priority in time, and is first in importance for the reason that in the mind is found the cause of all bodily changes. We should then search for the spiritual symptoms first, and look at temperature, pulse and respiration, physical symptoms afterwards. The divinest and most Christ-like person in human society should be the good physician, he who from the overflowing stores of his own spiritual intelligence and goodness is governed by an irrepressible impulse to impart life, health, and peace to others. He and he alone is God’s messenger, for God is love. God’s prophet of good, an inspired herald to announce and inaugurate the good time coming to the sorrowing and the suffering, to let him know the good news that the kingdom of heaven, the new Jerusalem is coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband, prepared to wipe away the tears from the eyes, to remove death, disease, and debilitating circumstances, as we are seeing happening every day in Peoples Temple.
The dead have literally been brought back to life, every crippling disease has been healed, cancers are passed in every meeting before our eyes, hundreds of young people are converted from aimless lives of drugs now to a point where they’re using no negative habit of any kind. This life of consciousness, of Christ in his presence, will bring a redemptive attitude in our total relationship, and the messenger of God will inaugurate good news that the time has come for the removal of suffering and sorrowing. The true messenger of God, the prophet of love and justice, racial integration, equality, brotherhood, follows more closely in the footsteps of Jesus the anointed, the divine human, than does he who clothes himself with the spirit of an imaginary priestly dignity to give his solemn sanction and official seal to a soul salvation.
God is supremely happy, because he is boundless, changeless, irrepressible and everlasting love. But love is life and loving us is the life of God in the soul of man. It is an exalted blessedness to lay the hand on the heart and feel it warm with the vital flame of heaven, but it is a supreme bliss of the soul to be the organ of its communication to others. We then become partakers of the infinite tranquility, the peace of God that passeth all understanding, and the soul in unruffled serenity floats on the waveless stormless ocean of the immeasurable life of God.
God is a principle, incarnatable to any who will receive him. He can be reincarnatable by any human being of whatever race or social economic inconstrata. God is no respecter of persons. His abundance is available and that abundance can cause the mountains of obstacles and oppositions of mortal mind to be removed.
We are seeing it happen. It’s no longer speculation but real, real, real in Peoples Temple and (stretches out word) all of its missionary works that reach out into Africa, South America, and our many extensions throughout the continent of the great United States. (Breathless) Yes, the actual presence of God, living in the life of God, letting Christ be in us, our hope of glory is so redemptive that it’s actually bringing immortal life to bear in our meetings. We have had, as we said, in our mother church over 4,000 active participating ministries, members, constituents, participating around the clock in our aged homes, our drug rehabilitation centers, our missionary work in the dormitories, the college educational programs, all the projects of missionary work, too vast to even recall at this moment, the animal refuge shelters. Four thousand people working around the clock, and we’ve not had a funeral in years. Oh, yes, the life of God comes to abolish sickness, sin, disease, dis-ease and death. The final enemy will be conquered by this life principle. So let us not live in the old superstitious realms, the imaginary and the traditional realms of the old order, living in death, for Jesus is life and life more abundantly. Come and enjoy this supreme bliss of the soul and enjoy the stormless ocean of the immeasurable life of God that’s present in even our day.
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Jones: There is, I am afraid, still a lurking suspicion in the human mind, and has been in all ages, that somehow disease is the result of the sin of our forbearers. There are traditionary traces of among most nations of a time when man was pure and holy, and was consequently free from disease, and life was greatly prolonged beyond its present term. We have scientific proof that life is continuing in the Andes and the Himalayas, to a hundred and seventy-five years almost from the cradle to the grave free of disease. So there is a place and plane of consciousness where we can live free from debilitating circumstances, and we can know absolutely under the new covenant or the Christ consciousness that sins are not visited from the parents to the children.
Yet it shows still, this reflection of disease, the inner connection of disease and life and sin, that there is in the mind of man an instinctive recognition of a principle that holiness and health, sin and disease, have an important relationship to each other, even though they may not express the absolute connection of cause and effect.
Christ, after the cure of disease, often said to the restored patient, “Go in peace and sin no more.” Here the causal relationship of sin to disease seems to be implied, if not directly stated. The same is implied in what he said to the paralytic: “Son, be of good cheer. Thy sins are all forgiven thee,” where the remission or removal of his sins is equivalent to the cure of his disease. Incidentally, and not quite related, it’s interesting to note that Jesus was forgiving sins before he even went to the cross. Back to the subject at hand: According to Jesus, the Christ holiness – which according to [Emanuel] Swedenborg, expresses a right state of the intellect or the thought – is spiritual health, and disease, so far as it is an abnormal condition of the bodily organism, is only the externalization of an anterior mental or spiritual disturbance or inharmony. Sin is a moral evil or disorder. It is a divergence from that mental order which expresses the will of God in relation to man’s well being. It is in the mind before it can become an external act or outward condition, as was taught by Jesus Christ, yet by an invariable law of correspondence, it translates itself into an outward effect upon the body. Disease then, as we have affirmed and which is in harmony with the teachings of Jesus, is always an impure state because it corresponds to evil. It is the echo in the body of some form of spiritual disorder. Following the lead of Jesus of Nazareth in his dealings with it, we would not affirm by this that a sick man ought to be punished here or hereafter, but that he ought to be cleansed from his leprosy, which may lie deep within, and to be made whole or holy, the two words having the same radical or entomological meaning.
Apostle Paul gives a comprehensive and general definition of sin as “a transgression of the law” by which he means to include something more than the Ten Commandments or Decalogue. It is a divergence from the spiritual and moral order of our being, which expresses to us the law of our nature and the will of God good. In the metaphorical expression “transgression,” or a crossing over, the law is symbolized as a straight line. To pass over it or diverge from it on either side is a sin. But unfortunately for most or all of us, we were born on the wrong side of it. By the law of heredity, which means the tendency in the mind and the body of an individual to develop in the likeness of his progenitors, we inherit a predisposition to many forms of so-called evil. This is often nourished and strengthened by what is called in philosophy our environment, by which is meant the sum total of the physical and moral conditions and influences that surround us, the ambient world of matter and spirit. In the present state of the world, it is not strange that there are so many sick people and sinners. It would be a miracle if it were otherwise. I am fully persuaded that much of what is called acute disease and nine-tenths of all chronic disease by the statement of medical people in our Temple is the result of an hereditary predisposition to it. We are born morally and spiritually out of joint. This is what many doctors call “the great unhingement” of human nature. But my precious friends, is there no deliverance? No redemption for us? Did Jesus Christ introduce into the world of moral and spiritual darkness, disorder and disease, a plan of salvation, a method of cure for both body and soul? Can we be rescued from the effects of this hereditary taint, whether it be in the direction of racism, death or rheumatism, of covetousness or consumption or cancer. If it is our misfortune not to have been born aright in our first start in life, can we in any proper sense of the word be born again? Is there in every human being, however sinful or diseased, a hidden germ of a new and a higher life that can, by divine spiritual and celestial influence, be, as it were, impregnated and developed into a new man? Oh, yes. In Peoples Temple, all around the clock, we are seeing the new man unfold. Racism is disappearing, a new social order is being created, an apostolic community on all these beautiful acres that in every sense of the word takes care of first the household of the faith and then reaches out to all other people on both the physical, physiological and spiritual plane. Cancers have been removed a thousand times within a month on many occasions. We have seen every debilitating disease cured, right before your eyes. The prophetic voice calls out people and tells them the thoughts of their mind and conditions that go back for fifty years in many instances that caused the disease, thoughts that only they had. Prophesies are given of the exact day ahead in a week or a month when which they will have full deliverance of terminal diseases. We have ten thousand cases in our files of terminal diseases that have been made everwith whole. We even have five cases of clinical resurrections from the dead that ghave been attested to by medical authorities in the past weeks.
Oh, yes, there is a celestial influence that can impregnate us and can develop us into the new man, the Christ man. Is this whole Christianity doctrine of salvation a baseless phantom, or is there an underlying practical truth in it? I affirm yes, that Christ, whose very name, Jesus or Joshua signifies savior or health-giver, was sent into the world to save his followers from sin and thus redeem them from the spiritual seeds of disease. And that Christ, in us, that can be the same as it was then and even greater – Jesus said these things shall you do and greater, because I go to the Father– that consciousness today can remove (stretches out word) all the effects of mortal mindedness. In the grand system of cure which he inaugurated and which we are demonstrating, spiritual truths and influences are the restorative and healing agencies. Yes, in Jesus’ divine therapeutics, faith is of more value than pharmacy or medicology, contrition, humility of heart, freedom of prejudice, more important than cathartics, and instruction is shown to be more efficacious than all the modern antibiotics or the surgical or radiological remedies. In the hands of the Christ, this spiritual system of medicine is adequate for the cure of the worst forms of bodily malady. Before the power of the Word and Spirit, which we find today a willing instrument in Peoples Temple and an organ of communication, all disorderly spiritual influences will flee, and disease and death has retired. Won’t you come over to our father’s house and enjoy the multiplied blessings that reach as far as you can imagine in the mathematical field. For the privilege of bringing you the truth of racial justice and divine restoration for both body, mind and soul, I thank you.
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Jones: It is my purpose to come to you with the love of God that I represent, purely to show you that the light or divine word is within you, and it’s the light that “lighteth every human being that cometh into the world.” All humans in favored moments have experiences of this spiritual illumination, this awakening and quickening of the intuitive perception, and might have much more if they understood the laws and conditions of its transmission and receptivity. The reality of a present inspiration from God good both of life and light in all human souls can be established as a fact in mental philosophy, resting on a foundation of evidence far more substantial than that of most scientific theories if you please.
One of the first results of the nearness of man to God is the revelation of God good to man. The existence of God is a truth to be seen, not to be proved. There is absolutely no demonstration of a being of God that does not involve some logical absurdity. The central sun of our system shines with his own light, and makes himself known to all the planets that revolve around this central orb. Their light is borrowed or imparted light, and not self-originated. God may be so very near to us that we cannot see him, but only feel him, and this is the highest possible evidence. Thus, Paul says that we should seek the Lord, if happily we might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from every one of us, Acts, the 17th chapter [verse 27]. Conscious contact of the soul with God, an all-satisfying communication or communion and fellowship with him, is the highest demonstration of his existence, for to feel anything to be true is to attain to a state of certainty and freedom from all doubt. The greatest plane of certainty comes when you see all of the ennobling qualities that have been reflected in scripture about God incarnated in a human individual. And this was our command, that we should be as our heavenly Father, as Jesus said he were perfect, so we should also imbibe perfection. And we can have this Christ in us which is our hope of glory. And when you encounter the Christ in bodily form, then you have a state of certainty and freedom from all doubt. It has been truly said that “God is not merely an object of faith, as is usually said, he operates faith in us, and gives in this very fact the most lively proof of his existence and care.” He makes known himself to the religious consciousness with more certainty and force of evidence than the external world is made known to our senses. He reveals himself to the intuitive reason, as pure reason, which is the highest evidence the mind is capable of receiving. In the attainment of certainty as to the Divine Existence, so that the being of God is no longer a doubtful hypothesis, but he becomes to us the only reality, our pathway is open to the fountain of all health and blessedness. As in the age of Augustus, all the magnificent highways of the empire centered in Rome and conducted the traveler from the provinces by an unerring route to the place whence emanated all subordinate authority and power, so to the man who has attained of the consciousness of God good, and of our vital relations to him, all remedies will conduct us to the central Life, and will bring the sick and bewildered wanderer to him from whom proceeds every sanative potency for soul or body.
For beloved listener, do you not realize that it is the divine alone, the Christ alone, that heals? You that have wondered where our healings are coming from, the fact that we are being able to tell you of five literal resurrections from the dead in the past few weeks, or that in years, none of the four thousand active members of our mother church have had a death, that we’ve not had a funeral in years. You wonder where this comes from? It comes from God. The only source of healing is God. The only source of cure, the only source of deliverance, the only source of good is God. All good things come down from the father of light in whom there is no shadow or bearableness of turning. There is one truth of which we must never lose sight, that there is but one life in the universe. Being is simple and uncompounded. There is not a multiplicity of beings but only one Being, all power that is, is ordained of God as Romans 14 says. Being and life are the same. This one being, one life is what Jesus called the Father, because from him everything springs. By existence, we mean manifested being. This is endlessly varied and multiplied, but all existences from the atom to the world, from the insect to the angel have their ground and being in the one being and life of which they are but manifestations to consciousness, that is to sense and thought. All the millions of the race are but ri– the rising into individuality of the ocean of being, but never lose their connection with it. They are a personal cropping out of the primal life, God good, as a center of being, as mountains are an upheaval of the primitive rock, but are not sundered from it. The Father is in us, and we are in the Father. In the innermost root of our existence, we are inseparably and perpetually connected with him. Otherwise we could not exist at all, and because of it, we shall live forever.
Yes, he that liveth and believeth though he were dead yet shall he live and he that liveth and believeth shall never die. An insight that we’re bringing today into the absolute unity of the human existence with the divine Christ is certainly the profoundest knowledge that you can attain. This knowledge of the allness of God and the nothingness of matter, or so-called evil, giving no place to the devil. Giving recognition only to the conscious presence of God, sustains me, free from disease. Fifteen years ago we’d arrested cancer when the doctor said I had no hope. It has healed our Temple of every known disease under the sun. We’re living in prosperity, health, fullness of joy, freedom from racism and all the negative restraining habits. A moral life uh, such as you have never seen in the collective sense is led in Peoples Temple by all four thousand members.
The grand error of the religious world today has been separating God too far from man. It has believed in a divine being who is somewhere but not here, and indeed who is anywhere and everywhere except in man. What we’ve found that he’s within us and he’s mighty to save and not can but will absolutely satisfy all noble good desires. Come and enjoy the ever presence of Christ with us.
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Jones: As in of the case today when the prophet speaks, so was it in the day of Jesus. [Reading from The Man of sorrows: a little journey to the home of Jesus of Nazareth by Elbert Hubbard] They expressed their surprise at his assuming the prophetic function. They showed no sympathy when he spoke of his mission. In short, man, in his age, gave him a thousand proofs that they did not understand him. They were far too much accustomed to him, had too often see him go in and out, seen him work and rest, eat and drink to be able to look upon him as a prophet. And so from kindred and neighbors, he met with no appreciation, no enthusiasm, no faith, and such faint hopes as he had ever entertained were dashed to the ground. And to this day the ordinary run of mankind judged by the same kind of purely accidental circumstances. No height of moral grandeur will convince them that those with whom they are familiar are anything but very ordinary sort of people.
We are told, give and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over shall they give under your bosom. For with what measure you meet, it shall be measured to you again [quoting Luke 6:38].
Jesus was a Galilean and the word Galilee means mixed. It was evidently so used because of the extremely varied population which inhabited the province. There were Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks and Jews – the latter being somewhat in the majority. Many were reckoned as Jews who had simply married into Jewish families; for a Gentile to become a Jew, no particular rite was required.
The assumption is that Jesus was a Jew by birth, yet of Mary’s genealogy, we know nothing, and we are also ignorant, of course, of the unknown father of Jesus. That Jesus did not have the fixed and idolatrous regard for the Jewish laws that the orthodox Jew had, we know full well. He quite often disregarded the laws openly and encouraged his disciples to do the same thing, spurning the old rules, the old scriptures and giving them commandments of his own for their guidance.
Joseph treated the boy as his own, kindly and gently, and brought him up to be useful, to wait on himself, to respect his elders, and to do good work. He learned the carpenter’s trade, which then included that of the stone mason, working side by side with Joseph. Jesus was also a pupil of the village school taught by the “hazzan,” or schoolmaster, who was really the janitor of the synagogue which served as both schoolhouse and temple. The children were taught to read by reciting in concert, repeating over and over again the same thing. This method of teaching was in general operation, even in America, up to within a comparatively few years ago.
This bright, active, impressionable and serious-minded boy learned by hearing the older ones recite, by listening to Joseph and the neighbors as they sat and discussed the Law and the Prophets after the day’s work was done, from the chance visitors who came along at times, and from the peddlers who carried their curious wares and trinkets for the women folk.
Nazareth was not a pagan town like Caesarea, where the Roman politicians lived and Greek learning had taken root. Evidently, Jesus, the Christ, knew nothing of Greek culture, but he did know something of Buddhism. He derived this knowledge from some traveler but let the seeds of Buddhism fall by the wayside. In towns like Nazareth there was no caste. All one person knew belonged to the rest. The conversation was full and free. And that this boy with his thoughtful ways and his thirst to know and all of his fine energy, absorbed ideas on every hand, there is no doubt. He knew all that the best in the place knew, and all he himself knew besides. Like all country boys, he was familiar with the birds of the air, the lilies of the field and the foxes that made their holes beneath the rock.
The lake, exaggeratedly called the Sea of Galilee, twelve miles long and seven wide, was only a few miles away, and there he used to go with his companions. So the various processes of fishing and the handling of boats were to him quite familiar. He grew to be very fond of these fisherfolk who lived along the lake. They were strong, hardy, companionable men and women with a dash of the hero in them.
Jesus was not an educated person in our sense of the word, and this is the most fortunate quality. Learning tames and dilutes man; he grows to reverence authorities and things that are dead, and so he gradually loses his own God-given heritage of self-reliance. A reformer must of necessity be more or less ignorant. In fact, the finest nobility is only possible in a man or a woman who has never had a teacher – who acknowledges no authority but the God within, and that Jesus did. And he told us in our hour, to rest on no traditions outside of us, that when we needed courage, when we needed information, when we needed moral guidance, that we could resolve the problem by listening to the still small voice within, that Holy Ghost would give us the thing that we needed to say in our hour of persecution, even when we were brought before kings and adversaries, the Paraclete, the comforter, the spirit of truth, the Holy Ghost would tell us the things that we needed to say to give us undaunted courage and wisdom.
[Resumes reading from The divine law of cure by Warren Felt Evans, 1884] Jesus left no written creed, no unalterable system of ecclesiastical polity, and no fixed forms of external worship. Everything was left to be unfolded by the spirit, love or truth that was promised, the Paraclete that was to lead into all truth and duty. The Christian system is constructed on the principle of progress and thus bears the mark of divinity, and it cannot help but administer to the healthy growth of (stretches out word) all who receive it in its true spirit. Those who’ve not been stayed by traditionalism and schooled in old system that makes it in prison for them, thus impossible for them to be freed. Once in the soul, this truth of Christ is like the mustard grain that develops into a tree, or like a divine leaven that transforms the whole nature to be rebirthed into Christ gives us truly a catholic or universal outlook that receives into itself all that is of permanent value in the world science, philosophy and religion, and that stimulates the growth of all that is good and true in the souls of men. But to have it, we must be converted and become as little children before we can enter the kingdom of the heavens, or come into the closest sympathetic relations with the general sphere of life and light in the world of Christ. When the religion of Christ Jesus is divorced from all the shams and counterfeits that pass current forth, all those that dabble in the furniture of heaven and the temperature of hell and is pruned of all that a priestly ecclesiasticism has grafted into it, and it becomes what it was in its founder, a sympathetic union with the living God or good and the ever-present angel world, it will be the power of God and the wisdom of God and the salvation to body and soul, just as is being witnessed in Peoples Temple, every hour of the day, when cancers are healed in every service, the lame are made to walk, the blind are made to see, as six were in just a recent service, and literally in the past weeks, five have been restored from the dead with clinical and medical documentation. Where Christ is, there is a life of brotherhood, simplicity, love of justice, race, and truth. There’s no inequalities, there is no irreverence for life, there is just a love for pursuit of justice and knowledge that will bring health and harmony to both soul and body. I thank you.
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Jones: The spiritual instinct of true Christian prayer leads to an intercommunion of the soul with God or good or truth, and finds its satisfaction in union with the only Life, and the reception of good from that supreme source. He who would live tranquilly, wisely and healthfully will find somewhere in his own soul the guiding light of his course. To follow anything outside of this, only so far as it meets a response within, is to be led blindly by an unknown and bewildering and fallible guide. It is grasping at a shadow and missing the substance.
The true spirit of prayer or introspection cannot be shut up within the limits of any stereotype formulas, but will find vent in a liturgy of its own creation. By a creative force inherent in its own essence, it will find an ultimate expression in forms that it calls into existence at the time. We are speaking of prayer in its reality, and not the semblance of it so common in the outward worship of the religious world. It is only real prayer – the crying out of the soul unto the living God – that can have any therapeutic value to either mind or body. An ill prayer, as one says, God uses as a foolishness, to which he gives no answer. Anyway, we are warned of hypocritical and false or inefficacious praying. We are told that the hypocrites stand with a loud voice in the synagogue to be heard of men, and we are told also that he has his reward. He is seen of men but he is not heard by the higher dimensions of deity. After all, the mere reading of or saying of a prayer over a sick man or a sinner will not restore the one to health or convert the other any more than the repetition of a burial service at the grave will raise the dead to life.
[In] Fact, though this is a bit afield from the subject, we have found nothing to be gained by being by a grave in the first place. For many years now, we have not had a funeral, though we have over four thousand active members in our mother church alone. Part of this has been because we will not find ourselves commemorating those who have made passing, who are our friends in other circles or other churches who are outside of the faith by being inside of a funeral service. This is no memorial to life. We want the life of a person to live on, then we will not enhance it by dwelling in the thoughts and shadows of death. And it has been very efficacious in our midst because, as I said, we have had not one funeral in years amongst our membership. We have found a state of life consciousness and we want to enhance it and encourage it.
But back to the thought of prayer. It must be the spontaneous and almost irrepressible outpouring of the thoughts and feelings of the soul into the listening ear of a present God. Note that parable of a present God. It is only a certain degree of mental pressure or intensity of feeling that can generate the real spirit of prayer and give efficacy to it. All else is a worthless formalism.
After all, really, it is finding the key within that unlocks all the doors of obstructionism that is about you. Faith cometh from within. It cometh by hearing first the Word of God from a prophet sent by God. We are told we cannot find a truth in the reading of scripture, but we must have a prophet that is sent. How can we hear without a preacher? Can he preach lest he be sent? No. We cannot hear without a prophet. We cannot hear without a preacher, and he cannot preach lest he be sent by the Holy Spirit, and his proof of being sent will be the fact that he inculcates the nine gifts of the holy spirits? Yes, indeed. And we must find these keys from within. First, by being inspired by a prophet, and then finding the keys of our own inner dimension. A man or woman in distress spontaneously cries for help when he believes it possible that succor is in hailing distance, and the true religious spirit always feels that God is thus near to it and is a present help in the time of trouble. If you have not found God incarnated in some human form, you will not have this assurance that he is a present help in the time of trouble. The spiritual man is in speaking and even whispering nearness to the divine being, the central life. Such a one does not in time of need stop to ask whether prayer is logical or scientific. He does not even pray from a sense of duty, but because he cannot very well help it. It is a spontaneous movement of the religious spirit within him and is the outward manifestation of an instinctive spiritual impulse and is as natural a movement of the soul as certain reflex muscular movements are in the body under the influence of the proper sensational stimulus.
But it is a movement towards a proven source of result. That source of result first must be stimulated as I said from a prophet without, from one that is sent of God, even in our days, apostles, pastors, teachers, prophets, evangelists, for the perfection of a saint, necessary even in the church today for the perfection of a saint. This must be the initial stimulus, and then we will find the release from within. It is no more natural for a merry heart to laugh or to sing than it is for a troubled soul to pray, James 5 [James 5:13], we’re told. All emotional excess of either bliss or pain in the soul must find an outlet, or disease is the result. So you have to find some source of overcoming, and if you can’t find it in abstract theories, come to the source of living water today that’s being manifested in his prophet, even in our Temple, where the blind are seeing in every service, six healed of blindness in one service just recently. [In] Fact, eight in one service also. Two that were blinded from birth, crippling diseases are vanished away, cancers are passed before our eyes, the dead are made to walk.
Back to resurrection, life and fullness of joy. By the consciousness of Christ in his prophets, I know no other way for perfection to be reached than through these bodily ministries and through prophets that duly have the earmarks of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the nine gifts mentioned in Corinthian letter. By seeing that manifestation, it will give you an encouragement to pray, and if you have no encouragement to pray, the frustrations go from within and we’re told by all the authorities of medicine, they create all sorts of diseases and debilitating circumstances. So find God where you can reverence him. Find God where he has answered your prayer, reaching on the level that you have proven him to be just and equitable. When you do, you will find a door into harmony and upliftment, the like of which you’ve never seen in all your life. It will amaze you beyond all knowing. We have witnessed it. We were empiricists, many of us were agnostics who could not believe if we have not seen with our own eyes, but we have demonstrated the Christ within us and it has proven efficacious for every need. It has been a racial harmonizer, it has been a social readjuster, it has brought apostolic community. Yes, complete sharing as it was on the day of Pentecost between all the thousands of varied races that meet within our sanctuary here around the clock. There are no more barriers, no more restrictions, no more limitations, there are no lacks, wants and limitations in this Christ consciousness. We have found the source of efficacious prayer, and we’ve reached out in our soul and we’ve found that he is exceedingly able to do above (stretches out word) all that we’re able to ask or think. We have proved it to all the agnostics, the scholars, the lawyers and doctors, the medical people that are in our circle, we have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that God is available today, that he is the same today, yesterday and forever, the God that changeth not, that his word is true. Though I am with you always, even on to the end of the world. And in that consciousness of the actual presence of God, I remain eternally happy, eternally blessed, eternally healthy, and I desire so deeply to convey this to all you, my precious listeners in radio land. Thank you again for the privilege of bringing you the Christ truth.
(tape silent for a minute or two, then begins again)
Jones: My friends, [Reading from Psychical science and Christianity: a problem of the XXth century by Emily Katherine Bates, 1909] desperate diseases need desperate remedy. The time has surely come when silence on certain subjects is no longer discreet and advisable, nay on the contrary but is absolutely criminal and totally blasphemous. It is written, “If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no more flesh while the world standeth,” said Saint Paul in one of his moments of abject but magnificent self-surrender.
Perhaps we have quoted the text sometimes too liberally as an excuse for our silence as well as reason for our discretion. There is a time for all things: a time for silence, and a time for speech; a time for discreet reserve, and a time for speaking out – and speaking boldly – even at the risk of offending some of our brothers and sisters.
A man once passed an artist who was working in the midst of splendid mountain scenery. He saw him put down his brushes, get up, and step slowly backwards, the better to judge of the effect of his work. Absorbed in this, the artist had forgotten the precipice behind him and was quietly stepping further and further back, to get just the right light upon his picture.
The stranger, grasping the situation and realizing that a word of warning would only precipitate the calamity, seized one of the artist’s paintbrushes and, with great presence of mind, daubed the paint over the beautiful picture which had cost him so many hours of patient work. The latter naturally sprang forward to save his beloved picture and to punish the “wicked outrage,” and was himself saved from a hideous death.
The churches of today have built up a beautiful picture, founded on tradition, some true but a great deal, false as to our Lord’s life and mission, true and false because the groupings in the picture do not always harmonize but are often in direct contradiction (tape warp) the one to the other.
The noble lines of the most divine life ever lived are all there, easily filled in by the devout and reverent soul. Our Lord said quite enough to himself and of himself and of his mission to give a true idea of both. That accretions and additions should be found, (tape warp) due to the necessary limitations or the inherited prejudice of his recorders, must be true of any book, however sacred, that has not dropped from the skies, with leather binding and gilt edges complete. The critic may say, “What right have you to take certain records and reject others? You must take all or reject all.”
I do not think this is a reasonable remark, although of course it is a very general one, and for many centuries has effectually silenced all criticism.
When a beautiful, holy and consistent character is portrayed for us – when such teachings as the Lord’s Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount are given to us in the name of Jesus of Nazareth – then I think we have a perfect right to reject any interpolations that contradict the spiritual simplicity of these precepts, and the continuity of character they’re in, and to courageously declare that we stand by our shepherd’s teachings as a whole and not by every text in which they have been conveyed to us.
It is “the letter that killeth.” How many stock arguments have been used by superficial critics, anxious to belittle a character too far above their spiritual apprehension?
Based on the old historical Judeo tradition, we are told continually that Jesus of Nazareth was hard, indifferent and wanting in reverence for the things of life, insensitivities to parents and other people in his relationships. It is by clinging to the letter while rejecting the spirit, that all these absurdities have been made possible: misapprehensions on the part of his friends, and futile criticisms such as the one we just mentioned on the part of his foes – foes only through lack of spiritual perception.
[Ed. Note: Given the balance of this tape, it is likely the following text is from another New Thought writer of the late 19th or early 20th century. Until the text is identified, however, we will present the words as Jones’ own, and annotate accordingly.]
We refuse to accept that Jesus of Nazareth that told us to love our enemies, to do good to those that despitefully use us, yea, even to his apostles to feed those of our enemies that were hungered. We refuse to place him in the Judeo tradition of a God that gives law governing human sacrifice in Leviticus 27, where the inhabitants of Jericho were thus devoted to the Lord in Joshua 6:17, and Jeremiah 7:30 and Nehemiah 10 make it obvious that the orthodox Jews and religious ardent students of that day burned their sons and daughters to Jehovah in comparatively late times, as would be brought forth in Ezekiel 20 and Micah 6. In obedience to this law of the old Judeo tradition, Bible God, Jephthah a prophet burned his daughter, Judges 11 and the 29th verse through 39. And David sacrificed the sons of Saul to stay off a famine in second Samuel 21.
But this is not the God of Jesus Christ. This is not the motivating power that moved the Nazarene. Nay, he was a God of love. He said contrary to levitical law, contrary to what we had been told in the Bible in Exodus, contrary to the Bible and religious creed of that day and all the letter they had, that said an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and a wound for a wound. He said it’s been said of old time, he would not even dignify it by saying it was scripture. He would not even dignify it as the Talmud, the law of the prophets. He said it’s just been said of old time, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, it’s no longer so, you’re to love your enemy. You’re to give them your cloak when they ask for your cloak, you’re to go the extra mile. The ways of Jesus are not consistent, they are totally incongruous with the Old Testament. There is nothing about the Nazarene and that essence of which I am and all those who have Christ in you, the hope of glory that is in any way comparable to the old practices of blood sacrifice where, as we said, one instance like that of Jephthah necessitates a general custom. Religious Jews immolated children to Jehovah by many historical records. God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, according to the misinterpretations of scripture in Genesis 22. The order was revoked but the text has driven thousands to insanity and murder. We had a recent case in Tennessee where someone went berserk killing several and one in New Jersey a few years ago because of Abraham’s example. The substitutionary ideas, the basis of our religion that’s been brought out of the old blood-letting of the Old Testament [Reading from The works of Lord Byron, Volume 9, by Baron George Gordon Byron, 1811] that the Son of God, the pure, the immaculate, the innocent is sacrificed for the guilty. This proves certainly the heroism of the Nazarene, but no more does away with man’s sin than a school boy’s volunteering to be flogged for another would exculpate a dunce from negligence.
We must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Jesus fulfilled the law. He reconciled us by his blood, but we’re saved by his life. He is an example, an exemplar, a way-shower, a pattern. He is the way, the truth, and the life, but we must walk in that way . We cannot take up his cross. He said a man that would follow him must first deny himself and take up his own cross. The way of Jesus is not a one of magic substitution and transference of guilt, that has been played so important in most church circles today, children being punished for their fathers’ sin, the scapegoat bears the sins of the tribe, the Christ of the atonement has been made a scape God. Unfortunately instead of a way-shower, a way of life, an exemplar, he’s become a scape God. In keeping with their belief and magical substitution, the old religious system held that a barren woman might beget a baby for allowing a woman in childbirth to sit on her knees. In Genesis 30[:3]. Well, these absurdities. The absurdities of the old system, the injustice to women that is found under the old dispensation. That women should be in subjection – always – because Eve was deceived. That woman could be captured, violated and then turned out of doors in Deuteronomy 21. No civilized state would tolerate such infamy, and I reject it. I’m boldly enough to declare today to you that we must (breathless) reject this insanity. There’s no place in the Christ consciousness for this absurd old traditionalism. The letter kills but the spirit maketh alive. I am not serving the God of Leviticus that approved of slavery and established it in Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25. I do not approve of the old concept (unintelligible word under tape distortion) of religion. Jesus is a new testament, a new covenant and he’s done away with the old, where God may authorize a man to sell his daughter as in Exodus 21. I do not approve of the God that ordered slave-capturing expeditions in Deuteronomy 20. I do not believe in the God that directed slave branding in Exodus 21. I do not believe in the sanctioning of slavery that even today has been the basis of countless cruelties throughout the world.
Oh, my friends, let us find the God of our salvation, the Christ. He said when you see me you’ve seen the Father, for I and the Father are one. I have come in my Father’s name. These things shall you do in greater, because I go to the Father. I have come back in that name today, come back in the dispensation of the Christ consciousness to tell you that your hope is within you. The kingdom is not meat and drink, it’s not keeping of rituals and rules and regulations, but it is the cognizance that is deep within your breasts and I am demonstrating it, healing the thousands as I have done in every service, six—
(SIDE A ENDS)
(SIDE B)
Jones: –cannot mix the old with the new, you cannot put old wine in new vessels, you cannot patch up the garment with the old tradition, wipe away the tradition of the elders and the tradition of old laws and regulations. You cannot live under law but under the grace of the consciousness of the ever presence of Christ. And in that principle I have come, I make it available to you through the spirit of Jesus of Nazarene.
Please, will you in [Resumes reading from Psychical science and Christianity: a problem of the XXth century by Emily Katherine Bates, 1909] the clerical world as a whole, both in the Protestant and Catholic communities, quit stepping backwards instead of forwards, admiring your own handiwork in the past, so absorbed over the details of its craft, that it is absolutely blind to the fact that a few more steps will bring it to the brink of the precipice. Jesus Christ is the light of the gospel. He said these things shall you do and greater, because I go to the Father. We are to press on to the high mark of the calling of Jesus which is perfection, laying aside the dead works of repentance, laying on of hands, eternal judgments, resurrection of the dead, and to move into the perfection and harmony which God revealed in Jesus Christ is totally within the human consciousness.
If it is not to be this spiritual evolution in the churches, to move forward, then it will most certainly be spiritual revolution outside of them. Is it not time for all those who know that this accurately describes the present crisis to come forward boldly and attempt to save the situation, even though this can only be done by becoming a cause of offense to many? Some day we shall be judged more justly and therefore more leniently. It is a small matter that we shall be beyond the judgment of men.
I come in the consciousness of Christ, motivated by the spirit that formulated the Word in the beginning. That word is dwelling in us now made flesh vital to save, it’s sharper than any two-edged sword. It will divide as a discerner of the thought, yes, it will divide the unreal from the real. It will look into the heart and know the intents and purposes, I am content that I have come in my Father’s name. And you can live in your Father’s name today in the dispensation of divine love that not only loves your neighbor, but your enemies and does good to all that despitefully use you. I say that is as different from the Old Testament as light is from darkness, as water is from dirty oil.
(Tape stops; begins again after a few seconds)
Jones: Mr. George Johnson of 3412 Chickawagwa, Dayton, Ohio was one of the scores blessed and healed in our tremendous rally in the Indianapolis Peoples Temple. This Christ force that operates through Pastor Jones, he writes, discerned his very presence and called him out by name, though he was a stranger to all present. He was told not only the exact street and number of the house he lived but the description of things in the house and minor (unintelligible word) details in his life. He rejoiced in the thanks (unintelligible under tape distortion) of being called out and told things that he knew could only have been revealed by God Almighty. In that congregation of several thousand, Pastor Jones told him of the exact sufferings he had been having and of the operation that (unintelligible word) this, corrective surgery. But it– it had not, and he was diminished in health. And then before the very eyes of all present, he passed a massive growth of bloodious mass, and all the pains and suffering left him, and he reports today he’s completely (unintelligible word).
Mr. and Mrs. Benny Simms, a lovely retired couple who reside at 918 Castor, Oakland were both touched dynamically and miraculously in our large San Francisco meeting of 3,000 present. The Christ operating through Jim Jones reached out with the almighty power of love discerned (unintelligible). They testified that they were told exact details of things that no one could know, of things so private they had been spoken only to each other in absolute privacy. Yet they say this marvelous gift of God Almighty told them precisely their very thoughts and words. He also told them of loved ones that have lived and resided in states thousands of miles away, naming names, places and events in their families’ history, including even the name of one grandmother and the circumstances surrounding her death, known only to them and God. They say they were so blessed by the gift of divine revelation, the blessing of Christ was working through Pastor Jones, even further did not stop with revelation. Mrs. Simms was told through the amazing gift the female problems and the blood pressure, difficulty she had been burdened with and was (breathless) instantly delivered from them and has never had them return again. And joyously too, this gift reached out to Mr. Simms and showed once again that it knows the very (unintelligible under tape distortion) of our bodies and souls. Mr. Simms had been having excruciating headaches for some times and was released immediately from them, and even more wonderfully this Christ that operates through Jim Jones protected him and saved him from a stroke that would’ve taken his life in the slow debilitating process.
Mrs. Georgia Allen, 735 Oak Street, San Francisco, who was called out in our San Francisco meeting by the miraculous power of the divine Christ working in Jim. Her faith was renewed and strengthened as she received revelation after revelation about herself and family. Through this mighty force of discernment and prophecy, she was told of events yet to happen and given divine protection. She rejoiced at the wonder of such a mighty power in the midst as she was witnessing in Pastor Jones. And Pastor Jones, as is written, told her of the cancerous growth that was in her back and in abdomen. And when Mrs. Allen walked down the aisle to Pastor Jones and touched him in the spirit of Christ, all pain was instantly removed from her body, and her neck was able to move normally, and she was healed completely.
We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the Seattle response. In our last service, over 2,500 were present, six people were healed of blindness. How gracious it was to see the presence of God move into a woman’s eyes that had been blinded by diabetes. And the Word came and she was able to read. Another lady, young, could not read a word, was able to read the small print on a book, before the eyes of all the thousands assembled. Cancer was cast before our eyes. One woman that had been crippled for six long years from a pera– paralytic state, could not use her left side. Mrs. Armstrong was told by the Word of God that is incarnate in our midst to be moved out from her uh– her place in the seat and to dance, and she danced as beautiful as a little child, up and down the aisles without a trace of the former paralysis. Oh, praise thee, the name of Jesus.
We’ll be coming back to Seattle and Vancouver just after Christmas for a six-day campaign. Three days in Vancouver and then the closing part of the week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Seattle. We’re expecting thousands to come and as usual, the manifold miracles that you’ve never seen in your life will be beholden there before all the eyes.
(tape edit)
Jones: As I heard of old times, and it is related through all the translations of today, how can you hear without a preacher, and how can he preach lest he be sent? Original scripture had it, “How can we hear without a prophet?” Now we are told that we cannot have faith without the hearing of the Word of God. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. We’re saved through the foolishness of preaching. We must hear the Word of God, not read it. When we go back to the old translative problems, we can see quite distinctly why it is necessary that we must hear the Word of God. The Word, which is sharper than a two-edged sword, divides the thoughts, evil thoughts from the good. It’s a discerner of the thought, divides the bone from the marrow. We are told of this viable living process which is not something that could be written.
We are also reminded in scripture, that if all the things Jesus had both began to say and do were recorded in the books in the last chapter of Saint John, the world would not be able to contain the activities of just Jesus in Nazareth consciousness. Thus you cannot find the Word of God in written pages. We are in fact warned against such a process. We are told that the letter kills – or the Bible, the letter to Thessalonica, the letter to the church of Romans, the letter to all the various churches in the New Testament – the letter kills. But, the spirit makes alive.
What is the spirit? Spirit means enthusiasm. Spirit means the nature of God. Spirit comes from a root word meaning love. (tape distortion unintelligible) God is love, so his spirit would have to be love. Thus, the letter kills or the Bible kills, but the spirit, or love, makes alive. The churches around us today, divided into two thousand, six hundred major fragmentations, are all divisive for the most part, because they are dwelling in the letter – the consciousness of a dead letter – and fail to have the living word. In the midst of Peoples Temple, the viable process of the living word is incarnate. The blind see, the cripples walk in every service, cancerous growths are passed before the eyes of even the most skeptical scientists, who say, “I cannot help but believe what I see with my own eyes.” The power of the living word satisfies all good desires. In Peoples Temple services around the clock – yea, around the clock, every hour of the day – people are healed of every known malady in medical science. We do not oppose medical science, for all good things come down from the Father of lights in whom there is no shadow or variableness of turning. But this incarnate word, the living word, has resurrected the dead.
Mrs. Leonard, the wife of a former agricultural commissioner in California, was literally dead in Crescent City. And her doctor turned and said, “You cannot thank me or anyone else but your pastor, for I saw you clinically dead and there was no hope.” Over three minutes, but the Word brought her back to life. Mrs. [Esther] Mueller, a woman who works in the Temple family, owned one of our apostolic projects around the clock now, and is in her three score years and ten, she’s past that expectation. She was brought back to life four years ago. A Miss Sherry Richardson, teacher in training, died in our church– came to our service, literally died. The medical people could find no pulse, there was a cessation of life in her body, no blood pressure, no pulse, no respiration. But she was brought back to life. Mrs. [Dorothy] Worley, a nurse in the community hospital here, also was brought into our Temple. She was dead. But the spoken word, the incarnate word, reached out to her in her limitations and at the end of her extremity and brought her life. We can speak (breathless) vividly of what the Word will do.
Now we see that the letter is greatly confusing. Thus, you– we must have the prophetic voice. We must have a prophet. We must have one that is sent from the heavenly host. We cannot even ascertain in the scripture, as we read in Matthew, the first chapter, sixteenth verse and compare it to Luke, the third chapter and 23rd verse – you go and do that, remember? Matthew, the first chapter and sixteenth verse, and Luke the twenty third verse – You will not be able to ascertain who the father of Joseph was. Matthew says it was Jacob. Luke says it was Heli. Jesus is traced through the lineage of Joseph by both Matthew one chapter and Luke third chapter, and they’re traced back to Abraham, but one has him having fifteen more grandparents than the other. Thus we cannot determine anything by the letter. The letter is filled with contradiction. We have in uh– Satan provoking David to number Israel in first Chronicles twenty one. But according to second Samuel 24:1, due to the mistranslations of the King James who was a king of England and approved of slavery even, he sent the good ship Jesus to Africa to bring slaves in chains to our land. So he’s not a prophet, he was merely a king of England who approved of imperialism, who improved [approved] of the yoke of the bondage of slavery. He had no spiritual council, he selected eighty men of a variety of trade, some of them very ill repute, men of immorality, and decided that he would interpret scripture. That’s why we are warned even in the scripture which does contain the truth of God, but we are warned, you know, that no man can call anyone Christ except by the Holy Ghost, the spirit of truth, the spirit of comforter, or the spirit of bravery as it comes from the original Greek. We must have that spirit of the comforter within us before we will how to– (unintelligible under tape distortion) We must have the guidance of a prophet in our hour before we shall know the truth from fiction. It’s impossible to ascertain without the Living Word in our midst. In second Samuel, it says it was God that numbered Israel. If both accounts are true, then God and Satan are the same person. Ridiculous. The Bible God punishes neither Satan nor David but slays seventy thousand Israelites for being counted at his own instigation according to one version. David justly remonstrates with his deity, second Samuel 24:17 says “Lo, I have sinned, but these sheep, what have they done?” But according to the misrep– translations of scripture, seventy thousand Israelites perished because of something that’s even contradictory, some failure of David.
Thou shall not steal, we’re told in Exodus 20:15, yet in Exodus 3, we were told to go spoil the Egyptians, to steal from the Egyptians, to borrow and not return. Job 21 says “the wicked shall prosper,” but Ecclesiastes says it’s not so in 8:13. These doctored passages, these contradictions, the (unintelligible under tape distortion) that are brought to your attention cause you to realize that though God is true, the letter is greatly misinterpreted. And thus we have to go back to the living word and find out what the truth is and what is fiction. Without the Word, we are hopeless, for in the letter alone we will find cruelty. We find Elisha causes bears to tear children for laughing at his bald head in second Kings 2:23. By the authority of God. Can you believe that? No. God is love. Children should be beaten with rods in Proverbs 23. No, God is love. Robbing bird nest, ordered to lengthen life, according to Deuteronomy 22. Ridiculousness. Slavery. God establishes slavery in Leviticus 25 and Exodus 21. A man can sell his daughter in Exodus 21. God orders slave capturing expeditions in Deuteronomy 20. God directs slave branding in Exodus 21. The New Testament even sanctions slavery.
Without the prophetic word, how can we hear without a preacher, how can he preach lest he be sent. And how will you know if one has been sent? These signs shall follow the believer. They shall cast out the darkness, the demoniac, the negative conditions, the consciousness of mortality and implant the consciousness of righteousness. They shall heal the sick, cause the blind to see, the deaf shall hear and the gospel of the good news shall be preached unto the poor. The yoke of bondage and oppression shall be broken over those that are captive. All races shall be integrated. God is no respecter of person. Love shall fill the atmosphere. All great religions and all the world’s great bibles say God is love and love is the fulfilling of the law.
Thus his prophets will be loving, compassionate and yet powerfully wise and all consumed by the power, the power of God Almighty to proceed to break the bondages of negation over the earth. By healing the sick both physically, psychologically, emotionally and mentally, all shall be healed by the power of a prophetic voice. You can know a prophet.
And in the scripture, you will find absurdities, cruelties, slavery, cannibalism even. A strain of cannibalism at Jeremiah 19, in Deuteronomy 28, Lamentations 4, and 2 Kings 6. You find diabolical process of God described in Exodus 12, where assassinations at midnight were taking place for the first born of every Egyptian family. Killing of a baby to punish his father for murder in second Samuel 12. Killing men for not worshipping this God in Exodus 22. First Samuel 15, God speaking, now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and little suckling baby. Why this cruelty? Because the Amalekites, according to mistranslations of scripture, had wronged the Israelites 400 years before. Confess, oh, Christian, this morning and this afternoon, that a God who gives such a command is unworthy of worship, and he’s not the God of Jesus Christ. He’s not the God brought to light by Jesus Christ and he’s not the God that can be found in Jesus Christ. Every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is anti-Christ. Not was come, not shall come in the future clouds of glory, but every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is anti-Christ. Christ said “I am the same today, yesterday and forever, I am the God that changeth not. Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Thus we have to have the ever-present consciousness of Christ in the present tense, in the here and now, a God that is ready to save here and now, for today is the day of salvation.
Don’t allow your lying priests, preachers, and teachers and clerics to continue to confuse you. For further co– ev– evidence of the contradictions in the Bible and the need for prophet and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, read The Christ, by [John E.] Remsburg. This honest, searching, prophetic work shows more than five hundred contradictions in the four gospels alone. If four witnesses in court contradicted each other, as the evangelists do, they would be prosecuted for perjury and convicted. Our great president, Thomas Jefferson, found in the gospel history of Jesus, he said “a groundwork of vulgar ignorance of things impossible of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications,” in the memoirs of T. J. Randolph, volume four, page 325. Christianity evolved from paganism, Christmas, in our present (unintelligible word) translations, mistranslations is a pagan festival, celebrating the sun’s return northward. Easter is of pagan origin. Its moveable date disapproved and absolutely shows the contradiction of it. It’s commemorating the resurrection of any one particular s– Lord and savior, when the day changes from year to year. Absurdities. False prophecy. Believe it or not, incredible things.
God instructs Moses how to make a perfume with death for imitators, Exodus 30. To build a temple, David gives more gold and silver than England and America possesses today, 1 Chronicles 22. Foxes become firebrands in Jude [Judges] 15. Day and night before the sun, Genesis 1. Aaron, by stretching out his hand, covers Egypt with frogs. The magicians produce another layer of frogs in Exodus 8. Intolerance. Liberty of thought is alien to the Bible as we now have it. A father must slay his own daughter, wife, son or friend for a difference of religion, Deuteronomy 13. The New Testament is even confused. I would that they would even cut off you which trouble you, Galatians 5. The inquisition carried out the spirit of that text, death for heresy. Millions died. Exodus 22. Death for adultery, Leviticus 20. Death for eating fat, Leviticus 7. For 23 capital offenses, for trivialty, see the Bible, the penal code is barbarous, as we now have it translated. Elijah slays 450 priests for just differing with him in theological thought. Thomas Jefferson again says in every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. Witchcraft, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, Exodus 22. This caused 300,000 persons to’ve been killed in one country in Europe alone. The soil of our republic is stained with innocent blood because of that text in Exodus. There is not a more terrible text in the Bible except perhaps for the words of those that damned disbelievers. For three centuries, witch fires burned in nearly every town of Europe, lighted by that text. Early Quakers, Shaker movements, the first Pentecostals in America were burned at the stake by the hundreds and the thousands because of one text in a mistranslation in Exodus 22.
Oh, come out of the cruelty, the barbarism and the (stretches out word) old mistranslations, the improper literature of the Bible and hear the living word. And the Word can be proven because it will save to the uttermost. It will heal your lives, as it has straightened up the lives of h– thousands in our midsts. Not a young person out of the hundreds that gather in our midweek services use strong drink, or use alcohol, use tobacco, or drugs in any form. They[‘re] clean, moralized, they pay their debts, they absolutely are good citizens by the statement of all the public officials and the law enforcement people. We have had not one of our young people out of (breathless) thousands even appear in a court of law.
Yes, the Word will save, the Word will heal. It will put you on a straight course. The way is so plain that a man be a fool, he shall not need err therein. This way of love– Said all the law and the prophets is fulfilled by one saying love the law of God, love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself. And whosoever loveth is born of God and knoweth God.
Do not listen to those treacherous people that are trying to protect a little kingdom for themselves. I own no cars, I own no houses, I have no new furniture. I’ve never bought a piece of new clothing. I’ve adopted seven children, and we take children in constantly from every field of activity, the courts around us. We are proving that we do love God. Many who say they’re looking for the appearing of Jesus Christ, they’re saying get ready. He may come through the eastern skies at any moment. They tell you that they expect one breath, he is going to come through the air and the next moment you see the preachers acquiring cars, homes, yachts, fine buildings. Why so inconsistent? If Jesus is just around the corner, then why do you build up treasures where earth and moss do corrupt? If your treasure is actually in the heavenlies, then you would expend your energies for the heavenly things. Suffer little children to come unto you, for such is the kingdom of God. And James the brother of Jesus said in J– the first chapter of James, 31st verse, pure religion, undefiled before God and our Father is to minister to the orphans and widows in their affliction and keep yourself unspotted from the world. In the original it says the worship of things. Oh, don’t be chided, don’t be beguiled, don’t be misled by these false lying prophets. Come and see that the Word of God is made flesh and it still dwells in us, Christ in us, the hope of glory. I thank you for being privileged to bring you the gospel of Jesus Christ.
(Conversational tone) I’m going to give you some written testimonies and let you give them yourself with great feeling. Jim Randolph would be a good suggestion, as I mentioned on an earlier tape than this. Somehow you didn’t hear it or it didn’t get done. Uh, using him to take some that I’d put off mechanically and uh, to put them in his own words. Now, in some of these testimonies, you must say something very forceful, even though it’s not included in the writing. Say that, “and he saved them with everyone from a fatal disease”, or “he healed them from this terminal disease that was taking their life.” Make it very dramatic. All right, I will go on with another short sermon. The last two sermons that I gave will probably be material for Philadelphia and material for KFAX [San Francisco Christian radio station]. Uh, I’m not so certain that you uh, would want to use– well, I– I don’t know, I think you could use the– this last one to– for Seattle, uh, we have to give them the truth to some degree, although if you have some of the other back tapes that deal with immortality and that sort of thing as we reach out to– to uh, Indianapolis, I think we want to awa– award– or uh, avoid having uh, references to contradictions in scriptures at this stage in Indianapolis. And uh, Philadelphia probably too, till they get used to it. (tape edit) This ought to be able to be used for Philadelphia.
(tape blank for a couple of seconds)
[ed. Note: Given the balance of this tape, it is likely the following text is from another New Thought writer of the late 19th or early 20th century. Until the text is identified, however, we will present the words as Jones’ own, and annotate accordingly.]
Jones: (Oratorical style) All experience teaches that instinct and desire are inseparably associated with the existence of that for which we earn. It is in the manner, the light of reality first, striking the consciousness of man. It shines from an event that is sure to occur in truth, an event that is already in a stage of unfoldment. Coming events cast their shadows before them, and man is the meeting point of various stages of reality. We look upon the unbroken chain of existence, peering into the path through memory, looking into the future through inference and instinct. Our existence is rounded out, balanced, complete and the sum total of all experience with human understanding separates into past and future lies before us in the eternal now. Christ, the ever-present help in the time of trouble, today, being the day of salvation.
For me, all this bears a large lesson. On the one hand, I see instinct and desire for immortality, for the fullness of expression, for purpose and plan to life. On the other, I see the fear that this instinct falsifies and leads man astray. In instinct I see a positive faculty which has foretold man accurately of all coming developments. It’s told us of the intuitive areas of (breathless) science and all the (breathless) advancements of human psychology and scientific research. In fear, I see negation, which has always been the author of human misery. Fear is the opposite of the nature of God. Perfect love cast out fear. Fear causes the separation of all that is good to our life and our reality lifestyle. In instinct, I see promise and divine guidance with all its subsequent joy. In fear, I see hopelessness, grief, bitterness, whose highest award in the questionable sense of martyrdom.
There is every evidence to support faith and trust in instinct, not one thing to justify adherence to fear. Instinct bears the stamp of the creator. Its existence is justified by its works. Fear has no testimonies. It is a liar and the father of it existent by itself. Instinct is real, concrete, demonstrable, as is light. Fear is the absence of faith, a non-entity in itself as is darkness. Through instinctive faith, I have been able to cause, in recent days, four people to come back to life. Literal resurrection of Mrs. Emily Leonard, the wife of a former agricultural commissioner in California. Mrs. Esther Mueller, one of the project workers, who’s now past her three score years and ten, clinically dead by the statement of doctors, yet I resurrected them through the life of Christ that liveth in me. Miss Sherry Richardson, a teacher in training, resurrected, Mrs. Worley, one of the nurses at community hospital. I could go on and on of the resurrection of those that were given up as dead. All physiological processes had ceased.
We have seen cripples walk in every service, cancers passed before our eyes, massive bloody tumors pass in every service. Even the most skeptical medical people have said surely God is in the land today. We’ve seen the restoration of lives, restoration of apostolic living, communes, projects, senior citizen residence, drug rehabilitation centers, all sorts of projects for the upliftment of mankind, because I have followed what some would say is subjective instinct. But through that instinct of the Christ that is within me, my hope of glory, I have restored around the clock, every minute, people from every known malady and disease. Hundreds of young people fill our mother church in the midweek service, free from alcohol, drugs, tobacco and all traces of immorality. Our law enforcement people have said not one of our young people out of thousands have ever been into a court law for even a minor traffic problem. Surely I have been benefited and you have been benefited for the fact that I trusted the instinct of love and the instinct of good and the instinct of im– immortality that’s within me rather than fear. Instinct says to me, thou man, art immortal. Thou art the son of the living God. The all wise I am. Thy future is sure of purposeful unending. Fear says, you are deluded. Your reasoning is more groundless hope. You are just a chemical accident and are doomed. But I have done away with those fears. For we are told even by men in eminence in psychiatric thought and the most eminent psychiatric counsel, Doctor [Helen] Flanders Dunbar, that people have arrested cancer, that their remission of cancer when people had faith, every known disease has been cured, and she gives case history after case history, this most imminent psychologist/psychiatrist in the world of people who’ve died even on the day of their birth because of guilt or hostility.
What do you have by recognizing fear? Seize the time of the instinct of Christ that is within you, and you can have life and life more abundantly. Instinct is indestructible, incapable of decay, eternally present and operative, whether recognized by consciousness or not. Fear possesses no existence unless recognized. No force is a mere negation. Can man find any justification then in turning to this fear which is so delusive, insubstantial, and unprofitable? In preference to accepting the testimony of instinct which is Christ within which has never betrayed.
Let me tell you, you have asked me if I’m honest in my conviction of immortality to which I reply without hesitation, yes. I believe in immortality more than I believe in the earth and the sun. I see and think nothing else but immortality. I’ve seen immortality brought to light in this gospel of the good news that I am bringing. I know it to be true. No, I cannot give you proof from scriptures of old, the traditions of men. The so-called books of Moses were not written by Moses. Their language did not exist in his age. They record his death and burial in Deuteronomy 34. As one writer asked me about, yes, and the rever– to persons who lived in a later date in Genesis 36. A life of Washington naming Lincoln cannot be written by Washington. And I can certainly agree that there are proofs – thousands of them, as Remsburg brings out – of inconsistencies, contradictions in the letter, and the letter does kill but the spirit makes alive. We know that we can’t even ascertain who the father of Joseph or the father of Jesus was. Matthew, first chapter 16th verse says it was Jacob. But Luke 3 and 23 tracing him both through Joseph says that Joseph’s father was Heli or the grandfather of Jesus was Heli in one case and Jacob in the other. Contradictions exist in the old platitudes of men, the traditions of the Judeo Christian tradition. But God has given you proof of your immortal nature, just as he has given to all mankind. He has written it in your heart. I know, for I’m in the process of writing it again, living scriptures read and known of all men. He said you are living epistles read and known of all men. For proof, turn to him, not to the traditions of the elders. Deep in your consciousness, below material strife and sophisticated pretenses, below vain analysis and straining intelligence, deeper than all conjecture, wider than the reach of the senses, firmer and surer, than the structure of mathematics is an instinctive knowledge that you are as immortal as that I am. That I am that has sent me, God that made you and inseparable from him in every sense of the Word. Trust his holy intuition and hourly his testimony will rise in your consciousness until solid conviction will permeate your entire being. Then you say, as I may offer, to grieving friends that testimony of your own unshakable immortal self, the happiness that the world cannot give and the world cannot take.
I would like for you to come and enjoy it. It’s not something you can believe merely by hearing, though hearing comes by the Word of God, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God and how can you hear without a preacher or a prophet? And how can he preach lest he be sent? I recognize the truth of that axiom. Nothing else though suffices quite so much as seeing with your own eyes. Job said “I’d heard of the God of salvation by the hearing of the Word, but now I have seen salvation with my own eyes. I have met God face to face.”
Come, and we will show you the beauty of God face to face. Whatever your skepticism and cynicism, you will go away convinced that there is a God and blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
End of tape
Tape originally posted January 2012