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Jones: —is upon them. Hmm? Anyone? (Pause) Oh, I’m just telling you what’s in there. And if it’s in the New Testament, it’s in the Old [Testament]. Then whenever you go, you find it. Say, well, how do you know what’s good from— ri— right— right from wrong. That’s how you have to have a preacher that’s sent from God. How can you hear without a preacher? How can he preach, lest he be sent? How do you know he’s sent? He’ll have these supernatural gifts, but more than that, he’ll have a supernatural love. He’ll have the fruits of the spirit and the gifts of the spirit. Said, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. The word of God’s not written, it didn’t say faith cometh by reading, it says faith cometh by hearing. Listening (Romans 10:14-17: “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? … So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”). (Pause) That’s why it said in the last days, there’ll be a famine for the hearing of the word (Amos 8:11: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.”). Folk walk out. They won’t hear it. Radio stations won’t let me preach this. (Cries out) Why are they so afraid? Why? Why the wo— the station manager at— at San Francisco told us, he said, I know it’s true. WIBC in Indianapolis says, I know it’s true, but he said, they would burn my building down if you preached it.
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: In fact, I was on WIBC— (Pause) I was on WIBC a while, and that man came to me in tears. He said, they’ve gone to every advertiser, and threatened that they’ll not buy their products, and they’ve threatened to blow this place up. (Tone moderates) He said, we’ve got to cancel your broadcast. And he took my hand with tears in his eyes, and he said, I never will go to another church in my life. He said, they’ve said the meanest, ugliest, damnablest things over this phone to me that I’ve ever heard, and then they quote scripture and speak in tongues to me. Hmm. Yes, yes, yes, I know. (Pause) In the first place about some of these who walking out of here like that, and the woman up there walked out in hu— her silver tresses, (Pause) they walk out of here not believing the Bible themselves. ‘Cause the Bible says, let the women keep silent in all the churches. ‘Cause Paul, according to King James, he interpreted Paul, and he didn’t like women, so he said, let the women keep silent in all the churches. Said, suffer not a woman to teach. If she wants to learn anything, let her go home and ask her husband (1 Corinthians 14:34-35, “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.” Also, 1 Timothy 2:12, “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”). If he isn’t dead. Or if she can find him. If the system hasn’t already killed him. Let her go home, find him. Now I know it’s harder for some of you white people to identify with this than it is for black people. But they’re giving you the same road.
Single voice: That’s right.
Jones: (Voice rises) You had to fight today— Your president [Richard Nixon] didn’t want to give you a little bit of benefit increase of Social Security. They had to fight. He didn’t want to give you enough, and you can’t hardly live now. If you get sick and go to hospital, you wait for five hours in the emergency ward. Some of you whites are just as much of a nigger as I am.
Congregation: Applause and cries
Jones: They got our eyes in the sky. Why, I’ve got the pictures up here — I won’t go into it now — of the internment camps under Title II of the McCarran Act that they’re gonna put anybody in that protest or subverts religion or the institutions of this society. That’s why old Hubert Horatio [Humphrey] never gonna get my vote, ‘cause he’s the one the put that thing into being, and there’s concentration camps right now at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, Tulelake (unintelligible word) California, they’re in Greenville, South Carolina, and Montgomery — I’m naming the places — Wickenburg, Arizona, the— Tucson, outside of Tucson, there’s one McNeil Isle in Washington, (in full throat) already ready for fools like us that got our head in the black book and think we’re gonna fly away. They’re gonna put us in hell while we’re looking for silver streets.
Congregation: Applause and cries
Jones: (Moderates tone) Comin’ all the time. Come round the corner this week, the Supreme Court said, a newspaper cannot print anything and keep their sources secret. They’ve got to give to a grand jury— they give you a little thing, you say, oho, great, great, great day. No capital punishment. Didn’t say that at all. Says capital punishment will not be applied to the na— the— the people that are presently in sentence. But it leaves to the state and encouraged— one dissenting opinion encourages the state to set aside capital punishment for those who are guilty of political crimes. (Voice rises) And a political crime is whoever is in the head at the time. George Washington was just a stone’s throw from being called a traitor. He happened to win, and we call him the Father of the country, but if they’d lost, they’da burned him at the stake. So whoever they want to call the political (voice softens) crime will be murdered. And everybody jump up, (unintelligible rush) no more of us gone get killed now. (Pause) Same day they hand— they sent down that decision, they said a newspaper cannot now— a reporter has to tell where he gets his information. You know what that’s gone do? (Pause) You know what that’s gone do? What if you know some Mafia that’s pushing drugs in your neighborhood, and killing your kids. (Voice rises) You’re gonna tell on them, when that newspaper’s got to bring you before the grand jury? (Pause) Are you gonna tell, when you know some Murder Incorporated? What kind of a mother’s gonna risk her life to tell a reporter? (In full throat) They’re gonna fix it up now so Mafia— (Voice moderates) And everybody thought The Godfather was a big picture. I wanted to vomit. It was another one of the schemes of the system to glorify the Murder Incorporateds in America, make the big ol’— make uh, the godfather look so nice. Shootin’ people in their sleep, having people in their baptism and shootin’ ‘em down in the doorways, killin’ every breath, cuttin’ people’s— knives went through their hands, and making them look like they’re ordinary people. When you got through with the godfather, you liked him, didn’t you? Yes, you did, most of the people that saw The Godfather kinda like him. Kinda liked him, because it made him— he liked his kids. (In full throat) And that’s what they want you to do, to like the rich rulers, the bankers, the international capitalists, the Mafia, they want to brainwash you, so you’ll like your enemies, and let them kill you even further.
Congregation: Response
Jones: (Voice moderates) Right now in San Francisco, fifteen people have been murdered by the Mafia. The mayor [Joseph Alioto] says they’re gonna have to have a national emergency, a sta— uh, a city emergency, ‘cause we got to get into what’s going on. (Pause) There’s that old stinkin’ (unintelligible word). (Laughs) (Pause) It’s not stinking because the person that was so brave to give it to me, sweet in that sense, that she got saved, think of her being saved so much, but look at that, look at that. Just— just take it up and down the aisle. (Pause) Gold. And there’s a hundred thousand of them in this town. (Voice rises) We got no food, we got no medicines, but we got gold, honey. We got crosses, we got sheribims and sheraphims (Pause) up and down the town today, in the choirs of us nigger churches, all us niggers. We’re tryin’ to act like we’re free, and we’re not going to get free with choir robes, we’re gonna get free when we put our money together and build hospitals, and build factories, and build mills, and build farms, and build homes, and build schools, and get together. (Voice drops) Did you hear me? You know it’s the truth. (Pause) You know what I’m saying is the truth. (Pause) Take a lot for that woman to get converted and give that up. Most folk won’t do it. They got too much— She had— She uh— Her treasure wasn’t too big for her, but most people, when they get a treasure like that, they’re not gonna give it up. (Cries out) [That’s] Why a lot of you won’t listen to me. You’re thinkin’ about (voice drops) how good you look with those white gloves. (Voice cries) You know your preacher’s a whoremonger. You know he’s a rotten pimp. But you like to stand out there in the aisles, you like to look good with your white gloves. You’re afraid you’re gonna give up something. You look like somebody. But you’re nobody. When you get old, he’ll spit on you, you won’t count for a dime.
Congregation: Applause and cries
Jones: (Voice moderates) Don’t tell me, sister Ethel Taylor belonged to a Baptist church there, Missionary Baptist Church in San Francisco, and all her life, she’d been on the usher board. She was the head of the usher board. But she got trouble, she got in an accident, crippled this leg. (Pause) She couldn’t afford her apartment, and they kicked her out. She called up her preacher. She’d been on that usher board, she’d scrounged and cleaned and worked, and she bought him one car herself personally, he said to her, (fake minister voice) “Trust the Lord.”
Congregation: Laughter and cries
Jones: I never met her, but some neighbor told me about [her], and I got her a home in three hours. I had her a home. (In full throat) You are a bunch of silly people. You’ve got nothing to lose but your chains. That’s all you’ve got to do, is to lose your chains. Get the chains off your mind. Get free. Be free. Whom the spirit set free, is free indeed.
Congregation: Applause
Jones: (Moderates voice) Got nothing to lose. You’re glorifying the very man, King James that pu— (Aside) Take that thing out of my face, I’ve seen enough of it.
Congregation: Laughter
Jones: It’s beautiful, somebody helped us out, because if that sister don’t object, I’m gonna auction that off. Some jackleg’ll buy that, he’ll by that quick.
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: (Breathes heavily) All right. (Pause) All right. Yeah? (Pause) They come to hear long enough, what I had to say. They wanted to spy out my liberty. Well, I’m not minding— Listen. I’m not minding what you got in store for me. (Pause) I remember when old [Henry David] Thoreau, who preached the errors of the Bible, he wrote Walden, you know. He— One of our great writers. We tell all these great things about him, but we don’t preet all— print all their books. They throwed him in jail, (Pause) ‘cause he wouldn’t pay not taxes for war, for slavery. Said, I’m not paying no taxes for slavery. They throwed him in jail. Old Thoreau was there reading some book about peace, and up come [Ralph Waldo] Emerson, the big preacher, Reverend Emerson come up and he says, said, “Dave,” he said, “David, what are you doing in jail?” Thoreau looked up through the bars and said, “Emerson, what are you doing outside of jail?”
Congregation: Laughter
Jones: And that’s the way I feel today. (Pause) (Ministerial cadence) So we don’t worry about me. I only live one day at a time. It’s not too present, because I got babies that I want to rear. I’ve got all this family I want to protect. But I only live one day at a time. And somehow the moon looks prettier. And the sun shines brighter. And those I love look more beautiful, because I only live one day at a time. Because I know the price of truth may be one day, that I’ll have to lay down my life, but I’m not afraid to lay down my life for my brethren.
Congregation: Applause
Jones: (Normal tone) Not afraid. I lost that fear someplace. Someplace I lost it. And I’m a freer person because of it. And I’da died, when they shot me, if I’da been afraid of dyin’. If I had tried to keep my life, I’da lost it. If you try to lose your life, you find it. If you try to keep it, and you’ll lose it. (Pause) I just take one day at a time. And that’s the price of truth. Now those of you who are doubtin’, you watch the attendance. The first meeting we had here, they were packed in the aisles, down the seats, on uh, the seats over there, down the chairs, standin’ in the back. There was— This place was packed. (Pause) (Short laugh) And it’da stayed packed, if I just healed the sick.
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: (Voice rises) Everybody loves somebody that can cause the cripple to walk. Everybody loves somebody that can cause a woman like this that couldn’t see. You can see me now, can’t you, Janie?
Janie: Yes, indeed.
Jones: How many fingers I got up, now, Janie?
Another voice: (unintelligible)
Jones: (Normal tone) Yeah, that’s right. All right. Well, you missed it by one. You missed it, Janie. But you could— you— you couldn’t see at all. What— What have I got in my hand? (Pause) She was totally blind. A book. That’s what I got. A book. That’s right. That’s right. See, that’s amazing. She couldn’t see anything. That right, Janie?
Janie: Sure!
Jones: Fifteen years— (unintelligible under Janie with microphone)
Janie: Everything you say is right.
Jones: All right.
Congregation: Applause and affirmation
Jones: Totally blind. Everybody likes somebody that can get you some sight when you’re totally blind. Everybody likes somebody that can cause you to walk when you can’t walk. Everybody likes to get rid of cancer. Everybody likes you, like this Willie Bryant there, that was— who— I told him to go back to the hospital, and they’ll find no cancer, and it was all gone. He’d been operated and operated. Everybody like you, like that little child dying, they want their children healed. If I’d do that, you’d have to have the Shrine Auditorium for me.
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: But the trouble is, the rub comes in, is because I’ve preached the truth. Another rubs comes in: I won’t let anybody buy me. Do you know of the people that come up there, want to give me a thousand dollars, somebody right back here settin’ in the row, says, I’ll give him a thousand dollars, he come back and takes it in m— his hand. I said, I don’t take a thou— one dollar in my hand, so why should I take a thousand dollars in my hand?
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: She kept her thousand. (Pause) I’m not startin’ it. (Cries out) No! You just as much a nigger as me, if you got a thousand, you probably just out (unintelligible word: “cooked”? “crooked?”) somebody, that’s the only reason you have a thousand.
Congregation: Applause and calls
Jones: Or you had a few breaks. Say, I worked hard. Well, you coulda been (Voice drops) unfortunate like someone in here that was born blind or born crippled. So don’t think— don’t be too cocky. It’s just the breaks. Just the breaks. (Pause) Well, I love you, and that’s why I gave you the truth, because it’s costly. It’s costly. It’s costly. (Pause) ‘Cause every enemy gets after me, they sic everybody on us. In Seattle, they sicced the fire department on us. Fire chief said I— I don’t want to bother you people. Said, I’ve been called five times. (Pause) Said, you gots the wrong kind of seat in here. They sicced— They’ve sicced every kind of official on us, every place, everywhere. They won’t rent buildings to us, Crouch Temple Church of God in Christ, minister came out and he— I— minister said, give me some money under the table, and if I— he’d give me a little money on the side, I might be able to help you. I said, no, I said, I’ll never be back here, I said, you not gettin’ none of my money. I knew what he was tryin’ to do. He was tryin’ to get that money. And he knew I wasn’t coming back. What was his name? (Pause) No, no, it wasn’t Reverend Krause [phonetic] who did that. Dickey. Hickey. Or whatever. (Pause) Don’t say he didn’t do it, he sure did it. (Pause) He can sue me if it’s not true. I said, no, I said, the brothers will never get back in this building, they’ll never let us back, and Crouch Temple never let us back. (Voice rises) What are they afraid of? They got so much God, what are they afraid of? If you’ve got so much God, why are you afraid of this little ol’ nigger Indian? If you’ve got so much truth in you, why are you afraid to hear me? Isn’t it all right, in America, there’s supposed to be freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, I’m supposed to be able to rent a building, that building’s supposed to be rented to anybody that wants to rent it. I could take him to court if I wanted to. I could make those folks stop renting that building to anybody, because when you discriminate to one group of people— I’ve never been arrested for anything, I’ve never violated any laws, when I get arrested, it’ll be when this country is taken over by dictatorship, (Pause) (Voice moderates) ‘cause I’m not wasting any time getting’ drunk or chasin’ any women. Nobody gone shoot me in their bed with anybody’s wife, ‘cause I’m not gone be there.
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: And that’s where most of your preachers have been. Many a time, honey, I can tell you, many a time. The head of the Baptist Alliance, right— Doctor George Bedford right here, tried to get two of my young girls in— in the bedroom. (Pause) Let him sue me, if it’s not true. Doctor George L. Bedford, Pastor, Macedonia Avenue Baptist Church, Macedonia Baptist Church on Sutter Avenue, the biggest Baptist church in California. Don’t tell me he didn’t do it, he did it.
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: (Aside) Hold it, just hold it there for me, little brother. (Back to congregation) This little brother was, by the way, paralyzed from the waist down. Waist down. He fell off a cliff. I ran to him barefooted, and when I touched him, he started walking, that’s why he’s been a faithful little companion.
Congregation: Applause
Jones: He fell off a cliff, way like up some of there. Cliff— I mean, you look at the cliff behind our church, you can see what it is, how high it is, way back at the back acreage. Well, that’s neither here nor there. (Pause) Only reason I mention healings is ‘cause some of you folk wouldn’t sit here five minutes for the truth. Mmm-mmm [No]. You wouldn’t come across the street to hear the truth. I know I don’t have enough polish to draw you. Honesty is not enough polish. Straight ol’ truth’s not enough. It’s the fact that I have got an extraordinary gift of healing. That’s why you’re here. (Voice rises) And some of you going to endure it, hopin’ that I’ll be finished pretty soon, so that I can come up and down the aisle, and somebody can pull on me here and pull on me there, and I’ll be just like a piece of beef, pulled out, pulled in, pulled on—
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: (Moderates) Don’t bother him. Uh— I told you about old dogs, they can’t— le— let him growl. Come on. (Pause) (In full throat) All you’re waitin’ on. You haven’t heard a word I said. You’re waiting on (draws out word) me-e-e-e-e, so I can heal you, so I can get you well, but you won’t let me give you the thing that raised me up. I’ve been raised from the dead. Doctor Earl Thomas can tell you, I was healed 17 years ago, when he said I was gonna die of cancer. What healed me? (Voice drops) I looked at my babies that I’d adopted. I didn’t asked to be healed. I said, who’s going to raise them? And a glow came within me. (Pause) I said, I’m well. Eva Pugh, who’s been healed of arthritis, couldn’t— had to take cortisone to— her medicine every day, I healed her. She’s our treasurer now. In advanced years. Her husband [James Pugh] was dying of cancer, [I] healed him. (Pause) Where’re you going? (Pause) One of you. One of you need to stick around. Gertrude, better tell him, he needs to stick around. (Clucks disapproval) (Pause) (Calls out) All right, all right, I know when you’re coming and going. (Pause) (Normal tone) Seven out of the ten, probably, at least, or three out of four, who’ve walked out of here, either had some impending disaster, or some sickness. (Pause) The worst ones that I said that needed me, have walked out. But they— they think they don’t need me, so that’s their problem, I guess. I can’t do anything about it. (Pause) My, my, my. My, my, my. (Pause) I feel like Jesus felt when he looked over Jerusalem. Every row I go back, I see several folks sleeping. (Pause) He said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft I would have gathered you, like a brood, doth are chickens under the wings, and you would not (Luke 13:34: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!”). (Pause) Los Angeles, Los Angeles, how I’d like to take you. ‘Cause I know the day and the hour, when part of this whole California’s gonna drop right into the sea. The minute. I know the day when bombs are going to burst in A. Lest in the very air, uh— the minute, the second, the day, the year, has already been given. (Irritated aside) Move them quietly, please. Lives are at stake. (Pause) (Back to congregation) It’s my orders that they get, uh, little fellows fed. That’s why we put a pool for them. They try to save our children. We’ve lost none of them thus far. Never had a child arrested. So I can’t be as bad as you’re trying to make me. Never had a child in trouble. Never had one that ever grow up— grew up to be a prostitute or be a drunk. Never had one. Never one grow up in my family— and I’ve had— that organist was a child when she was with me, and that child was burned by a religionist that threw grease on her. (Pause) Threw grease on her, and I saved her. She’da died, burned alive. They were babies when I started, babies. They’ve been with me all that long, and never one of them been arrested, never one of them taking drugs, never one of them ever used alcohol, (Cries out) never one of them.
Congregation: Applause and cheers
Jones: So what I’m doing must not be all that bad. And I have got me my own Indian religion, that’s what I got, (Voice moderates) that’s what doing it. (Pause) My own Indian brand of Christ. (Pause) It’s so wonderful. It’s so wonderful. Where will you go? Where will you go? Where will you go? In order to get you to build a kingdom of heaven on earth, I’ve got to tear up things that I hate to tear up. I don’t like to even do it, because I don’t like to see the anguish in your faces. (Deliberate) But where are you going to go? Everything in your book is messed up. (Pause) You’re not going to be able to get straight unless you have a straight person. [You] Say, how do I know a straight person? Follow the one that’s got the most love. If you find somebody else with more loving than me, that adopts more children, takes in more older people, washes more of their backs, goes in with their han— his hands and breaks up more of their bowel impactions— (Pause) (Unintelligible word) takes their wounded bruises, gives them their— their medicines, their vitamins, provides nice homes. If you find anybody that does any more — goes to any more courts — than I do, you follow them. That’s the place for you to go, to follow them. (Hurriedly) That’s a (unintelligible word: “tough”?) place for you to go to follow them. (Cries out) I’m going to give you a last bombshell. (Calmer) ‘Cause if you don’t know in that Bible, that (Voice rises) it— it’s not straight about who Jesus is. It’s not straight about where he ascended from. One place says, that there was— all the thieves railed on him. Another place, it says, only one railed on him. And the other ones rebuked the other thief and said— Jesus said, this day, you will be with me in Paradise. One place it says that Jesus (stumbles over words) was crucified the third hour, and the other [the] sixth hour, one place it says that he was three days in the belly of the earth, the other place he said he died Friday and rose Sunday, that’s a day and a half (Crucifixion accounts in Mark, esp. 15:24-28, compared with Luke, esp. 23:39-44)— (In full throat) You don’t know anything about that book.
Congregation: Reacts
Jones: (Calms, then rises throughout) In here it tells the awful things, it says, slaves, obey your masters. You don’t believe that. Thank goodness, you didn’t. Or you’d still be in chains. That’s why they wrote it, though, to keep you like that— That’s why they made you a Baptist and chained you to the chair, so that you’d be good. They wanted you to be a good field— good field Negroes. You know in the old days, there were the house niggers, and there were the field niggers. They wanted to get you to be a good house nigger, to say, “Yes, Master,” “No, Master.” (Pause) “Thank you, Master.” “Thank you, Lord.” You want to know why I didn’t believe (unintelligible word) want to say Lord? Lord means the owner of slaves. I don’t— I’m not a slave for anybody. I don’t want to serve anybody that is a slave owner (Colossians 3:22: “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God.” See also, Ephesians 6:5, Titus 2:9). The word Lord is not the original translation. God means good. Lord means the owner of a feudal state, or the owner of slaves, so I will never use the word Lord, never! (Pause) (Calms) Never. Never. You’ll never get me to use it. Every place a song says it, I say God. (Pause) (Casual) Lost two more on that one. (Pause)
Single voice: Thank you, Father.
Jones: Yes. You say, say Jim Jones, Jim Jones, Jim Jones. (Pause) Jim Jones. Why they speak of your works, and they don’t speak of the Lord’s works, and they talk all about this and that, and they don’t give the glory to the Lord. (Pause) Where is the Lord? (Pause) Has he come along lately?
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: You’d better listen now. (Pause) Has he come along lately? The story tells you about a God. You wouldn’t know there was a God, if I wasn’t walkin’, or some sweet soul was walkin’. You wouldn’t know there was anything good. Somebody had to show you that there was love in the earth, or you would never have seen it. You sure didn’t see it through no book, and in most preachers, you didn’t see it through. If you studied them closely. (Pause) In the beginning, it says, was God. (Extended discussion of creation stories in Genesis, Chapters 1 and 2) This same book, but it tells you that he made the earth in seven days, and then there’s a difference in stories on that. There’s two creation stories, one right after another. The two chapters, and they disagree. One place he makes one thing first, another thing second, and then it— it disagrees in the second chapter with what he did. You never know what he did make. You got things growing before the sun (Voice rises to shout) shines. Keep on walkin’, keep on walkin’, I’m gonna keep on preachin’. When you set down and will listen to something that’ll get your head straight, I’ll shut up.
Congregation: Scattered cries
Jones: (Calms, then rises throughout) I didn’t preach at all yesterday, just healed the sick. (Pause) Just one after another, healed the sick, healed the sick, healed the sick, healed the sick. But I know that some of these sicknesses can’t get healed unless you get the healing of the mind. Because when you see God in me, that’s when it’s going to be reproduced in you. When you see the works in me, it’ll be reproduced in you. When you can see the hope of the world here, it’s in the body now.
Congregation: Scattered cries
Jones: (Pause) (Calm) Said, in the beginning— (Draws out phrase) In the beginning, there was God. And he looked over the vast theme of time, Billy Graham says, and every church says it, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, said God made— off in the beginning, up in the skies, he looked out over the spaces, and he was lonely. (Pause) (Unintelligible word), that’s what they tell you. He was lonely. Somebody back there said, they say you’re the Maker. I said, No, I’m a savior. But I didn’t make you. (Pause) (Ministerial cadence) A savior means somebody that takes people in, somebody that takes them out when they’re drowning, somebody that feeds them when they’re hungry, yes, but I didn’t put you in this hell. (Pause) (Calms) I said, you don’t get me confused with that. (Stumbles over words) This’ll— this’ll— This’ll bound you, if you get this one. (Pause) Then you’ll get up there— you’ll get someplace, you don’t want to work with me, you’ll get someplace and try to build a heaven here, because you know that all the reason they been telling you about a heaven up there is to keep you— be quiet down here.
Congregation: Scattered laughter and calls
Jones: All right, now they’re— they’re feeding you all this mess and these foods. If you didn’t have me, you wouldn’t know. If I wasn’t raising organic foods, some folks, I’ve cha— changed two or three hundred lives, because of changing diets and vitamins and foods, ‘cause they’re puttin’— even the f— government report said that you’re eating rats and mice and cockroaches ground up in every hamburger.
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: (Voice rises) And every one of the preservatives in your food, they’re cancer-causing. Every time you see monosodium glutamate, every time you see some of these (unintelligible word), every time you see these things, they’re eating your body up, they won’t feed ‘em to the rich. (Pause) The rich don’t eat ‘em. Mmm-mmm. Just us poor peons. (Pause) (Moderates) Just us poor folk. ‘Cause you said, (fake gibberish of woman in ecstasy), “One day, hallelujah, I’m waiting for the great big round-up, he gone— Gabriel gonna come on and go (high tooting), and I’m gonna go sailin’ away, hallelujah, by and by, when the mornin’ comes, when all the saints of God are—” (Pause) You’d like to shut me up, but you haven’t got enough power, not one of you got enough to shut me up, ‘cause in this room, I’ve already paid the rent. And it was high.
Congregation: Applause
Jones: The city of Los Angeles owns this building, and they’ve rented it to socialists and communists and everybody else, so they gotta let me talk in here. It’s one place you can’t stop me from talking.
Congregation: Applause
(Pause)
Jones: (Laughs) When you get ready to repent, too, that sister over there that put that little pinch of dust out there, he’d thought I’d walked on. That why you got your— that’s why you’re feeling that burning in the lower section of your posterior. That’s why you’re burning right now.
Congregation: Laughter and cries
Jones: (Cries out) It takes bigger than you to shut me. They’ve come with their guns, and they’ve shot through the windows, and the windows were riddled, but I was still standing. Just two weeks ago, they shot into my congregation, but I stopped every bullet, not one was hurt, not one was hurt.
Congregation: Applause and cries
Jones: (Moderates tone, but intense) Now you see what your Skygod can do for you. (Pause) I tried that Skygod. I said, don’t let my granddaddy die. He was a good man, all of his days, been good to people, old white-haired black, brown, dark, Indian— (Pause) Tall and stately. He died, worse than a snake would have to die. Eight hours, while the doctor was over attending a rich man’s carbuncle. So I quit looking up then, I started looking within. And ever since then, nobody’s died in my presence. My black son [James Jones Jr.] that I adopted, Doctor Curtis can tell you, his kidneys were severed, his heart was crushed, his lungs were crushed, but I just spoke the word— where is Jim around, he’s around here someplace. He’s around here helping me someplace. He’s very much alive now. My uh, my natural born son [Stephan Jones], the same thing, brought him back from a situation they said it couldn’t be cured. Said, the judgment of God, folks said, the judgment of God. I said, I’ll show ‘em. (Pause) I’ve raised him up, all my children are healthy, and in good state, fit fiddle— fit as a fiddle. (Pause) All right now. (Pause) I’ll try to close this in ten minutes, if you will sit down long enough to listen. (Pause) What you want all these pictures for? You’re going to run out of a market.
Congregation: Laughter
Jones: (Cries out) ‘Cause folk won’t buy this when they get what I’m sayin’. I’ll put you— yes, they give him up to die with kidney trouble, I healed him. (Pause) I said, to you, didn’t I say, it’d be all right? Doctors said it wouldn’t work, didn’t I say it’d be all right?
Single voice: Yeah.
Congregation: Scattered applause
Jones: (Laughs) You sh— you show my what your God. I’m like Elisha of old, that Jews talk about in the old history books. He said, let the God that’s God answer by fire. Until you can get something that’s doing work for— for you, work that I’m doing for the people, then why don’t you try me? (2 Kings 6:17: “And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”) Why don’t you try my spirit? Why don’t you touch and taste and see that it is good?
Congregation: Applause
Jones: (Calms) Why, the dead— Nobody’s ever died in my presence since then. 28 plus— 29 today, and she’s still setting back there. 29. (Pause) (Aside) If she wants to eat, so she don’t have to—
Voice too quiet
Jones: Hands clasped. They’re gettin’ some of the senior citizens to eat. We gotta get on our road, after the healing meeting. (Aside, unintelligible) (Back to congregation) Now we’re back— back to the point. (Pause) (Aside), Oh well, that’s fine. (Back to congregation) There’s my Jim that was dead on the highway.
Congregation: Cries of concern
Jones: And he told you, when you get sick, who do you call on? “You, Dad,” he said.
Congregation: Applause and laughter
Jones: He said, “You, Dad.” He don’t look dead now.
One voice: No
Jones: His kidneys are— (tape silence for ten seconds) Kerry Ross, would you go to the back of the building. There’s something that they need to tell you— someone needs to talk to you at the back of the building. Kerry Ross. (Pause) All right. (Pause) I want to uh, conclude this little chapter. I’ve shown you that they don’t know who Jesus’ grandparents are. I’ve shown you that the Gospels disagree as to how many grandparents he had (Matthew 1:1-16 compared with Luke 3:23-34). I’ve shown you that they can’t even agree what happened to him. Said when he was baptized, one writer said that he immediately went for forty days into the wilderness. And forty nights. And he saw no one but the devil. Said he was tempted by the devil. Raised up to a high pinnacle on the temple. There’s no pinnacles in temples. I don’t know whether you know that or not, but they don’t happen to be any pinnacles in temples. Well anyway, the other writer says (unintelligible word) three days after the wilder— after he was baptized and the doves settled on him, he was over having a good time in Galilee, turn the water into wine (Matthew 4:1-10, compared with John 1:29-2:10).
One voice: That’s right.
Jones: Now, come on, now. Which is right? (Pause) Which is right? Both of them saying two different things. (Pause) (Short laugh) I got— I’ve got to quit this, I can’t get through to folk. I get the—
Voice unintelligible
Jones: You know what somebody just got through sayin’ to me? (Fake voice) “Every word in the book is true.”
Congregation: Laughter
Jones: (Normal voice, calls out) There’s no use tryin’. (Conversational tone) Imagine how after all I’ve finished saying, someone gonna talk to me, “Every word in the book is true.” (Pause) I changed the word just a little bit so it wouldn’t embarrass the person, ‘cause I don’t want to embarrass anybody. But that’s just exactly the essential of what she said. I don’t want to embarrass anybody. (Pause) Now, in the beginning, it said God made man, because he was lonely. And then he got him a man, he wasn’t— the man wasn’t satisfied, so he took a— out of the rib of the man— (clicks tongue) he took a rib and made a woman. That’s why they been treatin’ a woman like a rib ever since, too.
Congregation: Laughter
Jones: Mmm-hmm. That’s why women don’t have their rights to this day, ‘cause women? Let the man be the head of the house. Let the man do this (unintelligible word fragment)— Obey. You know, obey. ‘Course most of you women don’t— you never believe that, ’cause— (laughs)
Congregation: Laughter
Jones: Look, I know how some of the— the— some of the men quote it too, as I was telling you. Children that were practically starving to death that I saved up here, the Cobb children, now one of them’s going to be a doctor, that I gave him his education. (Pause) He— He’d get drunk and he’d be out chasin’ every woman and bring his wife home every disease, and he’d say, (fake voice, first words unintelligible), “The Bible says, obey your husband.” (1 Peter 3:1: “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives.” See also Ephesians 5:24.)
Congregation: Laughter
Jones: Drunker than a hoot owl, and that’s all he could ever quote. “The Bible says, obey your husband.”
Congregation: Laughter and movement
Jones: And uh— so Adam— Eve got out of the rib, and she— after God got through spittin’ on the dust and makin’ Adam. And they said Adam and Eve didn’t know right from wrong, and said uh, you can eat of the Tree of Life— Isn’t what the book said? You wouldn’t know, three of you, you asleep. It said the uh—
Congregation: Laughter
Jones: It said uh, eat, eat of the Tree of the Life, but it said, don’t eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, ‘cause the day you do, you’re gone die. That’s [what it] said, didn’t it?
Congregation: That’s right.
Jones: Well, Eve was hungry, and like most women, she got time to do something for a man, she lookin’ around, she start workin’, she learned how to be boss quick, ‘cause she out runnin’ around tryin’ to find something for her husband while he layin’ up there. And—
Congregation: Laughter, calls of “All right”
Jones: And she looked and she looked and she looked and she found her an apple. (Pause) And so she— Serpent— The serpent— The other fellow, the devil— Now I never figured out this old story. See, I uh, see God as Mind, as Energy, and I’m just appropriating Energy. I’ve learned how to adapt energy like a, a generator does electricity. I can’t worship this kind of screwball God you got, uh, with a— granddaddy with a long beard and bald head, (mumbles in dismissal). Anyway—
Voice: Take your time.
Jones: I will.
Congregation: Laughter
Jones: (Cries out) So— (Calms) You see, in the beginning, God was lonely and he created a man, and he created angels, and uh, the uh— How bad off he was, you say he’s all-powerful, yet I got a verse in here that says— Judges 1:19, that God was able to uh— Judges, the first chapter, the nineteenth verse, says God was able— I don’t think— Well, it’s in here (unintelligible word) someplace. It’s in the Bible. [It] Says God could, uh— He could drive uh, drave out— it’s not even spelled right. Said he could drave out the inhabitants of the mountains, but he couldn’t do nothing with those inhabitants of the valley, ‘cause they had chariots (Judges 1:19: “And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but cou,d not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.”). (Laughs) (Pause) (Voice rises) It’s in the book. Acts one— uh, Jud— Judges 1:19. God couldn’t get rid of the people in the valley, because they had chariots. Now what kind of a God you got? And God, (unintelligible word) Old Bible, of the King James, the old book, this old stuff we’ve been talking about, (Voice drops) this God was so weak, (Pause) that he made him a bunch of angels, and the most beautiful one he made rebelled against him and led a third of them off. (Cries out) Took a third of them off. Took of a third of his angels, and he was the devil. (Calm) Now, I don’t know whether these stories ever run— run against your grain or not, but— Maybe not. Maybe they don’t. (Aside) Now, honey, you don’t have to do this. You— you’re working awful hard, I can carry this, you want to sit down awhile. ‘Cause I’m walking you too much, maybe. (Back to congregation) So— and they didn’t (unintelligible phrase). He was lonely. And that’s the reason probably he got into trouble, he was lonely and— Now what I’d do if I looked on this mess of Los Angeles, and I was the only one, I’d look down on Los Angeles and I’d say, (Pause) “Well, if I’m in this mess, I love folk too much to make another one like me.” (Pause) You know why they have to keep these on there? You know why they asked you to keep these on there? They’ve poisoned my food. General Hospital— they put so much poison in the— my food— somebody put poison in right when it went down, and I took enough poison that they said in the clinic, that it would have killed five horses.
Congregation: Movement
Jones: They had it checked. General Hospital. So that’s why they put the top on it, so nobody can put— Isn’t that something? That you can’t walk down the aisle. I— They’re so s— They’re so afraid of me, they try to poison me, but they— they— they better learn that they—
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: (Calls out) All right. Anyhow. Anyway. This is what you have been putting your time with, and will draw this day to its conclusion, ‘cause it’s just two minutes from when I said ten minutes. (Pause) What kind of business have you been worshipping? (Pause) All they give you is excuses. Say, God loved you. He made you. That isn’t— That doesn’t make any sense to you. Doesn’t make any sense to your mind. Said, well, he made the devil. (Voice moderates) Why’d he make the devil? He made him because he had to be a free moral creature to choose right from wrong. The best thing to do is not make anybody at all, then they wouldn’t get in no trouble. (Pause) Hmm?
Congregation: Movement. One man laughs
Jones: (Calls out) So what do you really believe? I’m not— You won’t know, I’m just trying to cause you to think. And by tearing up some of these things, I will get you to think, and you’ll think your way to salvation. You don’t feel your way to salvation. You have to come, let us reason together (Isaiah 1:18: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”). (Pause) (Calm) Right now, as I said, they’ve made the newspapers last week, not free anymore. Because every newspaper has to tell, who tells them any news. So that’s gonna make a newspaper not get any sources on who’s in the Mafia, or who’s pushing the dope, or who’s robbing the poor folks in the— in their housing. The newspaper’s not going to be able to expose it, because they have to tell who told them. Little by little, a police state’s creeping on, and they still got us singing, (Sings softly) “By and by, don’t make no difference anyhow. I’m gonna go to heaven one day.” (Voice rises) How do you know? Nothing in there that’s straight. Don’t have a straight story in it. How you know there’s a heaven? (Pause) Jesus didn’t talk about going anywhere. He said, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth (Matthew 6:10: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”)— (Voice drops) He said, the kingdom of heaven is nigh to you. It’s within you (Luke 10:9-11, esp. 9:11: “notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” Also, Luke 17:21: “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”). (Pause) They got plans, right now, to destroy every black person. I’ve got it up here. I won’t go into the laws. It’s called racial genocide. They talked about it on— What was the name of the woman’s program? Right on national TV. (Pause) Ethnic— What’d they call it? The ethnic weapons. What’s her name?
Congregation: (scattered) Virginia Graham—
Jones: Virginia Graham program. Says the military has a plan to destroy every minority. She said, that’s too bad. (Pause) Ethnic weapons. She said, that’s too bad to think about, and they wouldn’t it go on any more. It’s already printed, to destroy. You think that they (unintelligible word)? You say, oh, well, my, not going to do it, ‘cause God’s gonna come. That’s what the Jews said. The Jews said in Germany, God’s gonna come and get us out of our trouble. God’s chosen people, the book says, are the Jews. (Pause) He didn’t keep the Germans from murdering nine million of them. One of the evangelists come through my town, told how he— he said he didn’t know. He said, you’re supposed to obey those that have rule over you. So he stood back while the German secret police came in and shot down little children, right in his church. They said, open your mouth and close your eyes, I’m gonna give you a piece of candy. And they put a Luger in every mouth, and shot every baby, right down on the stree— on the altar. (Calls out) That happened to the Jews. (Pause) And that, the book says, they’re the chosen people. Well, if they’re the chosen people, they sure went through a mess in Europe, ‘cause Germany, when they got through, there wasn’t a one left alive. Killed ‘em. Burned ‘em. Send them to gas ovens, till they dug at the ceiling. They thought they were in showers. And when they found out, they dug at the ceilings. The mark is still at Dachau (Voice drops) and in all of those terrible places. (Pause) (Whispers name) Auschwitz. The fingernails, as they cr— would reach to the ceiling to get out, because they believed that there was a (scornfully) Skygod. They believed that there was a heaven they were going to go to. (Pause) (Low, intense) Wake up, mother. You’ve worked yourself to death for nothing. (Pause) (Calm) Seven years ago, they beat somebody to death because of the color of their skin in the streets of my town, but no more, because we’re all together, and we all vote. We voted in the last supervisor, we voted in the last sheriff. That’s the way we’re going to have freedom. (Voice rises) You’ll keep waiting for a Skygod, and you’re going end yourself up in trouble. And I’ll tell you something else. We went up to Canada, and we cleaned up every place until a man come from Parliament, he said, “I’m afraid your country’s going to go dictatorship.” He said, “If you want to bring your busses in, I’ll let you get in. When it starts coming,” he said, “load your busses and we’ll let you go in as far as you want into the w— wilds of British Columbia.” (Voice moderates) [He] Said, “No matter what they do, they won’t be able to find you.” I said, “Thank you, sir.”
Congregation: Applause and calls of affirmation
Jones: He said, “You’re the cleanest bunch of people—” (Pause) That’s just about the way— I’m just quoting almost exactly the way it was. Port Langely, I told you what they said, said we— the way the children take care of the old people, how they clean up everything, said we— we’ve never had a group of people that were so decent, so honest, so clean. (Pause) So I’ve got an emergency plan for whatever. I know that there’s going to be a great holocaust. I know the date of that. In the meantime, there may be a dictatorship take over. (Ministerial cadence) Your last week’s Enqurier, National Enquirer, prints white Los Angeles officials and names governmental people, that names a school of assassination right out here in the desert, where they’re training people that killed [former Alabama governor and presidential candidate George] Wallace, that killed Martin Luther King, that killed President [John F.] Kennedy, that killed Senator [Robert] Kennedy— You know that they didn’t do it alone. Sirhan [convicted assassin of Robert Kennedy, Sirhan B. Sirhan] didn’t have any money. He didn’t have any job. (Voice moderates) The man that killed uh— The man that killed uh, Wallace had been tracin’ Governor— [Democratic presidential candidate, Senator George] McGovern, he’d been tracin’ every one of them. Travelin’, livin’ in the biggest hotels. When they found Sirhan, he had hundred dollar bills on him, he hadn’t worked for months. (Cries out) Where’d he get the money? (High pitch) And the National Enquirer says, it’s a plan to cause division by killing b— both the bad guys and the good guys, until everybody will have— lose face in the political process, and we’ll let somebody take over by pu— uh, dictatorship, and by power, and will yield electoral process, (Voice calms) will yield the Constitution. (Pause) Said, it’s a plan, and if National Enquirer that has three and half million subscribers says it’s our (Deliberate) CIA, our American Central Intelligence Agency that’s doing it. (Pause) (Intense) Now, that’s what you need to be hearing. (Pause) This I’ll tell you, and what your KCBS said, over the radio, had a big man from the CIA, says, “I had to quit.” He said, in— in Bangkok, he said, in Cambodia, we are bringing out the— the— what is it, the— opium, that makes heroin. (Calls out) He says, our government planes are taking out the heroin to keep up those generals’ dictatorships over there, to keep their governments up, eighty percent of all the heroin in the world, we are transporting with our tax dollars in our planes to keep those generals in power. It was right on the radio, and nobody listened to it, because we’re too busy reading little black books or down on our knees, or in some old dumb missionary meeting. We won’t hear what’s going on.
Congregation: Applause
Jones: (Voice calms) He gave his name, and KCBS gave the documentation. And our tax dollars done that. (Pause) Sure, they murdered these leaders. (Pause) And the man here, across the— who happens to be across the street from the office of the CIA. He says he saw two of them from the bay office — you can look at him, and see whether he’s telling the truth or not, that’s up to you to decide — he saw two of them that he saw walk in the CIA office every day in San Francisco go in my Seattle meeting. (Pause) Huh. Why they going up to Seattle from San Francisco? What do they want with me? (Pause) (Short laugh) And they had a Bible in their hand, he said, too.
Congregation: Scattered laughter and movement
Jones: (Ministerial call) They like me dead, but they don’t know how quite to get it done. They tried to shoot me, they tried to poison me, they tried to run over me with a truck, and I’m still going, because I don’t believe in a Skygod, I believe in me, God in me. That’s what I believe in.
Congregation: Applause
Jones: (Voice calms) And what I’m trying to get you folks to do, not giving me a dime. Just get you to put your money together, and let’s build communities and protect ourselves from the enemies that are from without and within. They’re all around you. In San Francisco — I meant to close, but I gotta give this — in San Francisco, the paper, the Sun-Reporter exposed the entire Baptist Alliance for squandering monies that were meant for poverty and for the poor, and it named the name, one of the ministers I just prophesied, he dead, Reverend Green. All the names, put their pictures, showed what they’d done, and do you think that us’ns folks, us dummies, listen to it? That paper would’ve been put out of business. It’s not the biggest paper. It was a little paper, run by a— a very fine doctor [Carlton Goodlett, physician and publisher of Sun-Reporter], who’s been a good friend, the ways he says he don’t believe in churches. He came and he said— well, I’m not going to say what he said about me. People heard what he said. In a word, he said, there was never a man alive like me. (Pause) (Voice rises) But that black man printed the truth about all those black preachers. Doctor Goodlett preached— put it down in writing, gave the dates, told the amounts of money, and told it all, they coulda been put in the jails. But the people so Uncle Tom and Aunt Jane, they still going to those churches. They won’t listen to truth when it’s spelled out and told to them. (Pause) (Calms) You got the same stinkin’ mess right here today. Same stinkin’ mess. Now I’m gettin’ ready to close. But before I close, I think it’s a shame — I’m not taking an offering — but I think it’s a shame that there’s four hundred and thirty-three dollars. And I hope that there’re some of you that love. Before I start calling out people again, I would like somebody to help us, so that we— if it hadn’t been for a man to pay for the rent yesterday, we wouldn’t have had enough money to pay the rent this— this time. They’ve tried to freeze us out. (Pause) 433 people— Why, I can tell you that [Reverend] Ike, with his $250,000 house, and his indoor swee— swi— swimming pool and his outdoor swimming pool, that’s heated. You don’t go away with less than— In Seattle, they told us what uh, they went away with, $50,000, one of those big healers.
Voice: A.A. Allen [healing evangelist of the 1950’s], $64,000 (unintelligible)—
Jones: A. Allen— A. Allen raised sixty-four thousand, and I know across there on Hill Street, that man over there has paid for those seats, he’s raised offering for that same bunch of seats fifteen times. They’re still paying for those same seats, they never— (unintelligible word) returning crowd, keep coming in, you know, to buy this new seats. Come up to Redwood Valley July twenty-second, and you’ll see chairs that can be taken up so we can do physical therapy in the heated pool, for our children. I don’t have a heated pool. The people have a heated pool. (Rises into ministerial cadence) The people have a sanitarium. The people have senior citizen homes, the people have a children’s home, the people have four dormitories, and I want the people to have a hospital. Thus far those of you (unintelligible word) are in my family membership have not had to have one. (Voice calms) But if they do, I don’t want it to be the mess like I did, when I was a kid, and got my first job, I was the head of the nurses, before I went to college at 17, and it’s still the same way today. My wife’s [Marceline Jones] been a head of surgery, we’ve got several registered nurses up there. If you come in, and if you’re somebody, they put on a little, little code on your chart. It means (Deliberate) VIP. They’ve got different words for it now. (Pause) Very important person. You worked in the hospitals, you know what I mean. (Voice rises) And you’re a peon, you can die. But let one of those VIP’s ring the bell, and they’ll run right there, and you can lay and die. You. All you white and black folk here, you can die. Because they’ll take care of first are those VIP’s. (Pause) (Intense, but low) Right now (unintelligible word) till I trained this nurse, through our college plan, and she took over those hos— that hospital nursing division, they were sewing up things in people’s guts, sewing up instruments in their bellies— Oh, don’t tell— read— All you have to do is read the medical magazines on that. It happens all the time. Cuttin’ off things that don’t need to be cut off— (Pause) Heard just the other day, one in San Francisco, one of our registered nurses, she said she— she’s quittin’, she going in another— another hospital, she said she heard the doctor say, “Well, I think I could save her breast, but we just— It’d be simpler to cut it off.”
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: Says it’s tedious work— says it’s tedious work, so I’d think that it’d be simpler to cut it off.
Congregation: Murmurs
Jones: (Ministerial cadence) Now I know all doctors are not like that, but there’s a whole lot of them that are like that. Whole lot of crooked doctors, just like there are whole lot of crooked preachers. I know a preacher up there— one that— (unintelligible phrase) (calms) he’s got a harp up in Redwood Valley, let him sue me if— the old liar. He— He belongs to the Adventist Church, and he’s always going around saving souls, he says, “Oh, you gotta get saved. You gotta get saved. Want to get you saved.” You know what that rascal does? He’ll go into our nursing— We won’t let him in our nursing homes anymore, ‘cause we got thirteen. We— We set up our own people in business too. We help one another. (Voice rises) We’re not building no churches, we’re not building no great big cathedrals, I’ve got one ol’ organ I bought 20 years ago, 22 years ago, and that ol’ organ still plays like it— just as good as it was in— the day I bought it. I’ve carried it from New York to Canada, and it’s still playing, bless its heart, and it’s gone play a long while yet, I’m gonna let it play till the bo— the boards fall off. The boards already have fallen off the piano, and it’s still playing. (Cries out) We don’t need pianos, we don’t need organs, we don’t need church benches, we need something that will lift us up out of our misery.
Congregation: Applause
(Pause)
Jones: (Short laugh) (voice calms) Yeah, you’re a young man. You may have been he— around here a few years, but you’re a young man, and I— you— you’re— you have an understanding. And they got some over there, don’t know their right hand from their left, and they’re young, and they ought to know better. (Pause) You’re settin’ and listening. (Pause) I want to see us have freedom. That doctor, I want to tell you, he comes in these nursing homes, we got 13 members of our church that own nursing homes now. The best in the town. Cleanest in the town. (Voice starts to climb) And we’re gonna keep on, we got that valley in our hands, if you’ll cooperate with us. We’ll move some of you up there, and you can retire in peace, won’t have to— This— This is awful out here, this smog. You got cities all around here saying, that government, Sacramento, you’re gonna do somethin’ about it, they said yesterday, or we’re gonna stop every car in our town, because it cannot stand it, the way it’s killin’ our people. (Voice moderates) I can run two miles in Redwood Valley, I’ll run off and down to the— get the mail at the country store. Run. I run two blocks in this town, and I taste lead, and I get fuzzy-headed. My ears go (makes zingy sounds).
Congregation: Scattered laughs
Jones: (Calls out, then returns to normal tone) This town is filled with just pollution, and they said the ozone was so bad, over your TV, over one of your radio stations, said your ozone was so bad, I think it was Thursday or Friday, it said, don’t anybody do any exercise outside. Don’t even clip the hedges. (Pause) What do you think they’re telling you that for? (Laughs) ‘Cause they want a few more dollars from you, they want their taxes. (Pause) See, it’s gettin’ so bad now, they didn’t mind if you died off, but if everybody dies off, there won’t be anybody to keep the rich in power. (Laughs) (Pause) Well, what I said about this doctor, and a re— religious doctor, the only good doctors in our town up there are doctors [that] don’t go to church. Every one of the religious doctors up there is a ratfink. This doctor’s an Adventist, and he is something else. He’ll go in— He would go into nursing home until I stopped him, and he would (more intense) never see a patient. And sign the slips, 12:15. Is it true? You registered nurses, all you nurses up there, is it true? Marceline, is it true? He’d slign [sign] the papers (Pause) and never see ‘em, and send it in to, um, the uh, Medicare. And my wife, due to my instruction, I said, go see that one man. The old man had something in his ear clear down— and it wasn’t a member of my church, in another home— and then they kept saying, (unintelligible word/name), he’s just a little loco. He’s just a little— He’s just emotionally troubled. And we took that man to Doctor Whitaker in Santa Rosa, who’s an atheist, he can cuss like a fishwife, we took him up there, and he says, (Cries out) “Who in the ba-bum-ba-lump-bump—” He said, “Who treated this man? For two years this man’s ear and Eustachian tubes have been rotted out with cancer, till it eat clear down,” and that rotten doctor had never once looked in that ear, and robbed that man for two years of his money. And you’re gettin’ hooked like that every day. (Pause) (Calm) We had a woman on our trip, if I hadn’t saved her, she sent her on the trip, (Pause) sent her right from a hospital here. No, and I’ll not name it. No, it’s all right, if you go trip. Take a few penicillin tablets. I come back and looked at her feet, and she was ready to die. She had gangrene in both legs. Stopped in Oregon to doctor, he said, “This woman? Too late.” He said, “I won’t do a thing for her, it’s too late.” The only reason she’s alive is because of me. (Voice climbs) Her legs were rotten, and for nine months, they had never took an examination, just give her a penicillin tablets, and anybody with a bit of sense knows, that an oral tablet won’t reach something that’s clear to the bone. But they wanted her out of their hair, and she— (Shouts at woman) Sit down, you Aunt Jane, sit down, I’m tired of you moving. Sit down. (Pause) (Ministerial monotone) I’ll tell you, it’s a shame, I only come so often, I won’t be back until next week, July eighth and ninth, then— then not till August fifth and sixth, and by golly, I may not ever come back to this stinkin’ hole. (Pause) Where’re you goin’? You got no place to go. (Pause) So selfish, she won’t hear somebody that’s poured out their soul. (Cries out) Giving their soul.
Congregation: Scattered applause and cries, applause builds momentarily
Jones: (Normal tone) Let’s get together, ‘cause we don’t know that there’s going to be anything but what Jesus said, what’s in your hand, what Moses said, what’s in your hand, use it with all your might (Reference unclear). Jesus said the kingdom that is within. Thy kingdom, in earth. (Pause) It’s gonna have to be built in earth. (Pause) (Soft tone) Have I been with you so long that you cannot understand, I’m just trying to save you.
One man: That’s right.
Jones: I’m just trying to save you from the grafters and the corrupters and the ones that have ruined your minds, that have taken a hold of you and used you. And I’ll not prove it anymore. How can I do it? (Pause) I’ve done everything I know to be good and kind. I’ve adopted eight babies, I’ve never refused an older person a home, someone’s going home with us, right in this— this very night, from here. (Pause) So, now, [you] say, “I won’t ever need to go home.” You wait. (Pause) The last meeting, Louise Henry, [who] now lives in our home, beautiful home at Snuffin and Oak, the most beautiful home you want to find, you won’t find any rest homes or nursing homes like ours. They’re the cleanest and nicest that there are.
One man: That’s right.
Jones: She walked out that door, I said, “Please don’t leave.” She said, “This is not my religion. I want to go see my kinfolk.” I said, “Please don’t leave.” She’d never give a dime to the church, never give a dime. I said, “If you go, your comings and goings’ in trouble. You’re in danger on the street.” She didn’t no more get out of the street, she hadn’t been out there any time at all, till she broke both hips. She fell down right out in back of this building, and broke both hips. They laid her up in hospital, our last meeting was May 28th, she laid there until about a week ago, when I took her — two weeks ago — her kinfolk never sent her a card, or never came inside that hospital door, and her preacher, not one member of her church ever visited her, and who took her? I brought her all the way back to Redwood Valley and give her a home. Now she hadn’t got any money. The hospital took every dime she had, every dime she had, (Calls out) it’s all gone now. She could’ve helped me, if she’d had sense. (Conversational tone) But you see, I love people, I s— still couldn’t forget that she’s older, and she didn’t know what she was doing. So I’m gonna say today, little differenter than usual, I want to see some folk here that’ll support this cause. ‘Cause I’m gonna come back here, don’t you get worried, I’m gonna come till I get some of you folk moved. You know what I’ve got here mostly, older people’s got sense. I’ve got young minds in old bodies. I got a swinging young person here, but where are our youth? You may not dig the other churches, but here, that come in here, the youth that come in here, they won’t even listen, some of them.
One man: That’s right.
Jones: And everything I’ve said I’ve proven. (Repetition more deliberate) I’ve proven everything I’ve said. (Pause) You say, well, you’re not gonna make me believe there not a Skygod. Well, I may not make you believe there’s not a Skygod, but I’m gonna tell you, you can’t prove, with all your life, you can’t prove that he’s friendly.
One man: That’s right.
Jones: (Voice rises) Because if there is one, two out of three babies are going to bed hungry every day. People of all races, just because of the color of their skin, they get the worst shaft. Just because of the color of their skin, they get the worst treatment. Why is that? I treat everybody alike. The Christ that’s here, the God that’s here, treats everybody alike. I don’t see rich or poor, black or white, I see people as people.
Congregation: Applause
One man: Yeah. That’s right.
Jones: (Calmer) Now if there was a Being up there like you say there was, some great-granddaddy, and he was all-wise, all-knowing, he should get off of that throne and come down here, ‘cause people are starving to death. [CBS News anchor] Walter Cronkite said, ten million are starving, and it showed on your TV, little white and black, Indian babies, starving all over America. Not to mention, the United States government says (Voice climbs) two out of three babies, while we set right here, while we sit here, (Voice moderates) two out of three babies that he made, that you say the Skygod made, are starving. What if you— What if my eight children were— one of them was starving. You’d say, you louse, get out of here. (Pause) Hmm? (Pause) You quit thinking. (Pause) You’re saying, you’re doing away with everything I ever held on to. Maybe if I do away with something, you might start building something proper. There’s a explanation for this. It has to deal with rebirth. But I’m not going to give you any positive things today, I’m gonna give the negative, so that you’ll get the old torn down. You’re never going to do anything, (quickly, more excited) ‘cause you know what some of you folk’ll do? Just like I heard that reverend this morning say — I heard him say it — he says, “Well, there’s trouble all around, they shootin’ our people in the streets, and if we don’t get anyplace, there’s no justice,” but he say, “when the (draws out word) great white throne judgment,” said, “when we go on that great round-up,” says, “then we’re going to have justice.” That’s the way all of you— (In full throat) You won’t do anything, ‘cause you think that someplace out there in the sky, you’re gonna get your justice. You’ll get no more justice than what you work for (Cries out) right here.
Congregation: Applause
Jones: I’ve— I’ve said enough.
End of tape
Tape originally posted February 2003