Q1059-4 Summary

Summary prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.

To read the Tape Transcript, click here. To read the Annotated Transcript, click here.
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FBI Catalogue: Jones speaking

FBI preliminary tape identification note: Q 1059 – all parts – labeled in part “6-13-73 #15”

Date cues on tape: (Part 4) October 20, 1973 (Watergate’s “Saturday Night Massacre”)
(Part 5) Fall 1974 (A man described as “doing fine” in Part 4 has died on a recent day in September.)

People named: (Part 4)

People named: (Part 5)

Bible verses cited:

(Editor’s note: The verses below appear in order of biblical reference, not as they appear in Jim Jones’ address. For a complete scriptural index to the sermons of Jim Jones, click here.)

Part 4:

Reference to Noah (Genesis 5 – 10)

“Best prophet’s in there, Lot. Spokesman to save Sodom and Gomorrah. But I’ll be damned, if that’s all they save Sodom and Gomorrah for, they all to let ’em all go up. Lot — they saved that damn town, he was all was left.” (Genesis 19:28-29)

“Lot gets drunk, he says. And he was determined his daughters were gonna lose their virginity. And all through the Bible, you see prophets doin’ this all time. Layin’ with their daughters. And he laid with his daughters– both of them. That’s what the Bible said, Lot laid with both of his daughters, and his excuse was, he was drunk. Let me tell you, that no fool that can get that drunk, that he doesn’t know he laying with his daughter.” (Genesis 19:30-36)

“Abraham lied and had his wife say that he was her brother, and went in to the king and the king made love with her, … [and] the king finally found out — he said, what do you do? You let me lay with your wife?” (Genesis 20:2-11)

“Thou shalt not kill. We murder more people in Cambodia and Vietnam, we’ve burned them with jelly, we’ve murdered them, cutting off the breast in Chile, our CIA’s doing it now, this great Christian nation’s murdering people, cut out the eyes of a nun that I know in Chile, cut her eyes out. That’s ‘thou shalt not kill’.” (Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17)

“Solomon, great prophet, he was a type of God in the old Testament, talkin’ about pissin’ over a wall. There’s no purpose for it, he just talkin’ about who pissed the farthest” (3 references: 1 Kings 14:10, “Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone”; 1 Kings 16:11, “And it came to pass, when he began to reign, as soon as he sat on his throne, that he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not one that pisseth against a wall, neither of his kinsfolks, nor of his friends;” 1 Kings 21:21, “Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel.”)

“[The Bible] describes in Ezekiel, the heat of hell, and in Revelations, the source of the heat of heaven. And it talks where brimstone forms a sulfur heat, it was something like 833 degrees Fahrenheit where heaven’s heat is described seven times as the heat of the the sun.” (Ezekiel references to hell and brimstone in chapters 31, 32 and 38; Revelation references in chapters 1, 6, 9, 14, and 19-21, esp. Revelation 20:10, 13-15, “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.… And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”)

“People said, Jesus come out of the tomb. That’s a lie. Just a lie like all the other lies about King James. King James is full of lies.” (Resurrection story in four gospels)

“[The Bible] traces Jesus through Abraham, in Matthew the first chapter, in Luke the third chapter… But [it] doesn’t trace him very well.” Jones then articulates difference between lineages in two books. (Matthew 1:15-16, “… Matthan begat Jacob; And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ”; Luke 3:23-24, “And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, Which was the son of Matthat…”)

“[I]f you read back in the original Scriptures, you’ll see that Jesus did not say sons of hell to the moneychangers, the capitalists, the rich that were taking advantage of the poor, he said sons of bitches.” (Matthew 21:12-13, “And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” Also, Mark 11:15-18)

“[Jesus said], You clean the outside of the platter, but inside, it’s filled with all kinds of damnable — and he said some other things, he used a word in the Hebrew, the Yiddish, that was horrendous.” (Matthew 23:25-26, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.” See also Luke 11:39)

“If you don’t like honesty, then you can go back home, because I’m giving you the truth, and the Truth will set you free.” (John 8:32, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”)

“I have prepared this land as best I can. This house, the house of Jones. I’ve prepared it. I prepared our food supply in our cave, I prepared clothing and supplies of a medical nature.” (John 14:2-3, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”)

Reference to Letter books of New Testament: Romans, Timothy, Colossians, Thessalonia, Corinthians

“What is a letter? Bible. The Bible murders. What is the Spirit? Spirit of God is what? Love. God is Love. Then what– what murders? Bibles kill. They murder. Didn’t just say, it cause you to go to sleep. It says it murders you. The Bible murders, but the spirit, love, makes alive.”  (2 Corinthians 3:6, “Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”)

“I’m crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Christ means the revolution, or the anointing. I’m crucified for the anointing of the revolution. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, the ego of Jim Jones, but the revolution or the Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.)

“You talk to me about a little word like cuss word that Paul used and all of them used. Dung. Dung means shit.” (Philippians 3:8, “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”)

“You measure that heaven of Revelations, and you’ll find that the heaven the King James talks about will fit in comfortably to the downtown section of San Francisco. Now where you gonna put all these people in a city of foursquare with twelve gates to the city?” (Revelation 21:16, “And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal;” Revelation 21:12, “And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.”)

Part 5

“Jesus said, if you can receive it — this is John the Baptist, which was and is to come, or Elias had returned as John the Baptist.” (Matthew 11:13-14, “For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.”)

“Jesus said, when they called Him the prince of devils, He said, no man can do these things. No devil can do these things. All good things come from God.” (Matthew 12:24-35, Mark 3:22-27)

“[It’s] undoubtedly so, that teachings are what set you free. No one ever read in any religious Bible or any religious work that a healing set you free, never said that a miracle set you free. But it’s said, when you receive the truth, the truth shall set you free (John 8:32, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”).

“And when they took him away, he did not know what was in the hearts of people. He said, for what good work are you taking me away? For what good work are you stoning me? They said, for no good work, but because you’re being a man, make yourself God. Jesus said, it is written, ye all are gods.” (John 10:31-34, “Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shown you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?”)

“The account of Scripture says that Jesus raised one — at most, two from the dead.” (Lazarus in John 11 and Luke 16:20-31; the daughter of Jarius in Mark 5:22-23, 35-43 and Luke 8:41-42, 49-56)

“And after this, the gods that follow me, these things shall they do [and] greater.” (John 14:12, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.”)

“I have come and gone back to the Father.” (John 16, esp. John 16:28, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.”)

“Having eyes, they see not, having ears, they hear not, neither do they perceive, neither do they understand, because their hearts are not ready to receive.” (Acts 28:25-27, “…Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”)

“To him that overcometh, I will make a pillar in the temple of the house of revolution, and they will go no more out.” (Revelation 3:12, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.”)

Summary:

This tape consists of two parts, a continuation of Part 4, which began on tape on Q 1059-3, and Part 5, which continues on Q 1059-5. While the first is quite specific in time — it refers to the events of the day in October 1973, when President Nixon fired Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox during the so-called Saturday Night Massacre — the second is of an unknown date. However, Part 5 does seem to occur in Fall 1974, since Jones describes the September funeral of a man who was still living in Part 4.

Both parts include several elements of a Jones address: descriptions of what Peoples Temple as an institution, and Jones himself, do for its members; reflections and predictions on government, politics and American society; liberal use of quotations from the Bible, mostly as a mean to discredit it; and reflections on the miracles and healings of the church.

Continuing the subject at hand from the previous tape, Jones speaks of the self-deprivation he puts himself through in order to bring things to them. “I’ve got to take care of you,” he says. “I’ve pledged to take of you from the cradle to the great transition, and I have done so.” By the same measure — in a continuation of another subject begun on the previous tape — he says he is “tired of half-assed people coming in here, trying to tell me how to run the business.”

He later praises a woman who had been a first-time visitor to the church the previous night, and who understood what he meant. She may not be that educated, but she got what many members of long standing hadn’t yet grasped. He returns to an anti-intellectual theme later in the address, when he criticizes people with a college education who can’t comprehend what some people — who can’t even read or write — can understand. “I’d like to award a degree to some folk, just in one area, the degree that shows you the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground,” he says, as the congregation cheers.

But the events of the day are what most immediately occupy his speech. He reminds his followers that he has prepared them for the day when military dictatorship comes — with provisions laid aside in a hidden cave — and the day is coming. “We’re going to have to get out, and then be able to come back after the system falls.” He returns later to Richard Nixon’s troubles, and the president’s lack of reason in handling it, when he says that Nixon ordered a plane crash to kill the wife of a Watergate conspirator and to steal her papers. Jones has to protect them, because it’s a dirty rotten system they’ve got, irretrievably so. “Honey, if you cut the cancer out of America, you’d have to kill it.” At the end of the political discourse, he says he didn’t start out to preach this. But someone criticized him, and he felt he had to.

Even as he says at various points that he is not religious, and that there is no hope in religion — “I think we ought to go out and … get in business and try to raise some money, Ocause it’s hopeless coming to church” — he spends much of the time talking about religion. He talks about using their religion to protect them. It’s an awful job, but he has taken it on. “I’m crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Christ means the revolution, or the anointing. I’m crucified for the anointing of the revolution. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, the ego of Jim Jones, but the revolution or the Christ lives in me.”

He makes a more direct — if still oblique — comparison between himself and Christ later, when he says that some people come to see him because their preachers tell them, Jim Jones is the Antichrist. “Sure, they couldn’t call me what I am, because if they did, their churches would empty out.”

In yet another veiled reference, he talks about the “hard saves” that he and Jesus have both made. He talks about Jesus whipping the money-changers out of the temple, throwing over their tables, and “cussed them all the way out. I know.” After a pause, he adds quietly, “Give you three guesses how.”

Later, however, he confesses to being tired to addressing them in the language of their religion. “It’s cramping me. And I didn’t mind for 20 years, I’ve gone through with this shit. But I’ve gone through with it, but now I’ve got to get you to narrow down to be able to take care of you.” That means he doesn’t want any more talk of being blessed by the Lord, since the use of the word “Lord” refers to master, or ruler. It was put in by King James, the slave owner who sent the first ship to Africa to enslave the black race.

The King James version of the Bible has problems with its accuracy as well as its heritage. Jones describes heaven — as reported by the book of Revelation — and extrapolates how few people and animals will fit in such a small space.

Not only does the Bible present impossible things, it is inconsistent. Jones points to Jesus’ two lineages from two books of the gospel, and shows how they differ. He talks about the cussing in the Bible. He talks about the immorality, ranging from adultery to incest, of its most revered prophets. He talks about its errors. The gospel writers may agree that an event took place, but they differ on the details. Even if that reflects the humanness of the writers, Jones says, it should call our faith in the work into question. “It’s like this. There were four people on a corner watching an accident, and when four people see an accident, none of Oem can tell the same story about it. And that’s true. But … we don’t listen to some four stupid asses on a corner, and build our whole life around them, do we?”

The message is summed up in the title of a pamphlet Jones wrote: “The Letter [of the Bible] Killeth, But the Spirit Giveth Life.”

No one really believes the Bible, he says. He speaks first of Bishop Crane as an example, a black Baptist whose blindness was cured by Jones. Afterwards, Crane read the Bible for the first time in a long time, and “saw what a lie it was.” (Bishop Crane has apostacized Jones’ message by Part 5, and died; see below.) Jones also says that evangelist Billy Graham told Temple leaders — not just Jones — that he didn’t believe the Bible either, but it was a good way to make money.
Jones’ message isn’t for everyone, and he calls them out during the service, tells them he sees them frowning at him. He says they’re hypocrites, and tells them to get out and go home.

The section ends with an attack on American hypocrisy. He says America calls itself a Christian nation, but — offering example after example — Jones says it doesn’t even follow the basic commandment of “Thou shalt not kill.”

Part 5 opens with a question-and-answer session, as Jones takes questions from the floor. While he wants to hear about concerns on a “high level” or “apostolic Christianity as politics” — and not individual concerns, that’s what people bring to him. He wants to refer those question to the council, to deal with them on a human level. Even so, they need to understand that his spirit governs the council, so if they will “trust the spirit of this high dimension, this high evolution … if you will project your mind on the mind that is fearless, the mind that is utter compassion, then automatically that situation shall be resolved.”

A 50-year-old woman raises a question about marrying a 66-year-old man. Jones uses the occasion to blast the institution of marriage, saying it takes away from socialist perfection. “[M]arriage is a part of the propertied system in this stage of the revolution. Marriage represents the ownership of one individual over the other… Marriage is a very low state of consciousness in our day.” Nevertheless, he adds that it is her choice, and even though he is a “ready writer that one day is going to write a revolution across the pages and the annals of American history,” he would never tell anyone what to do.

Jones laments the death of Bishop Crane, a black Baptist who once came to Redwood Valley to be healed and who renounced the Bible (see Part 4, above), but who fell away from Jones’ teachings and said “said that he was glad that his God was in the sky.” Even as he turned back to the church that had treated him like a dog, Jones said, Crane assailed Redwood Valley and spoke against the ministry there. When he did, Jones said he was forced to remove Crane’s picture from his meditation file. Four days later, Reverend Crane died.”[W]hen he began to worship something that did not exist, he had no source for his life… He worshipped an unknown God that does not exist in the skies, and he died, and what a stinking heritage this is.” His obituary was filled with names of important people in Texas, “but the one that he knew that brought him back from the dead one time after another, that one that was all-important, he has forgotten.”

Jones talks about Christ being God, about Christ’s words that all men are gods, that gods greater than him will follow, and finally, God Himself would come. He then describes himself as the fulfillment of that biblical promise. “[Christ] said, each man would approach the Father for themselves. And that day has come, when the Father has approached you, and you have approached Him.”

Jones goes on to offer the evidence of proof. Saying that Jesus raised only a few from the dead, he reminds his congregation that he raises people from the dead every day. No one has died in his church, he says. He points to a young woman and repeats what he told her when she died in his church: “I said, it is not my will that you die, that it is my will that you live to see the revolution, and I brought her back from her paralysis, I brought her back from death, and now she lives, both now and forevermore.”

His ministry has spread, he continues. People outside of his immediate fold are doing his work. They may not name his name, but they name his spirit.

This tape continues on Q 1059-5.

FBI Summary:

Date of transcription: 6/21/79

In connection with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the assassination of U.S. Congressman LEO J. RYAN at Port Kaituma, Guyana, South America, on November 18, 1978, a tape recording was obtained. This tape recording was located in Jonestown, Guyana, South America, and was turned over to U.S. Officials in Guyana and subsequently transported to the United States.

On June 17, 1979, Special Agent (name deleted) reviewed the tape numbered 1B108-39. This tape was found to contain the following:

JIM JONES conducting several Temple services, including preaching and question and answer sessions.

Differences with FBI Summary:

The summary is accurate — in the minimal information it gives — and meets the FBI’s purposes.

Tape originally posted April 2001