Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.
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(Note: This tape was one of the 53 tapes initially withheld from public disclosure.)
Part 1:
Jones: He that liveth in me, and believeth in me, shall never die (John 11:26, “And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”). We are seeing this demonstration, this unfoldment take place before our very eyes. Each service we see cancers expectorated, we see cripples walk. Last week, there was one that was lame, lame for some 20 years, unable to walk, but the Spoken Word went forth, and the discernment about her condition was given, and with that inspiration of faith, she moved instantly, out into the aisles, and she danced and run as a young hart would prance forth through the water brook. Wherever the spirit of Jesus Christ is, there will be the healing of all manner of sickness and disease from among the people (Matthew 4:23, “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.”). He said, these things shall ye do and greater, because I go to the Father (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.”). Christianity has no value as a projectionist theory. We have interpretations, the genealogical problems, the variations of translations and apparent contradictions and so forth. It’s even apparent in Matthew, the first chapter, in Luke, the third chapter, that there’s a disagreement as to who Jesus’ grandfather was, and as to how many descendants there were back to Abraham or Adam. Both trace through the lineage of Joseph. So we must get into the actual experience of Christ (Matthew 1:1-17 contrasted with Luke 3:23-38). Otherwise, past history will be of no value. To talk about what happened back in the days of the Nazarene, or what’s going to happen in the future, by a record that’s rather incomplete, many of the books have been cut out by King James, such as the beautiful books of Barnabus, thus we have to have the Christ in us, the hope of glory made real and manifest (Colossians 1:26-27, “Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:”). For people to believe, we have to become living epistles, read and known of all men, inspired of God with the same power that was in Jesus, resurrecting people, liberating them, emancipating them, setting them free (2 Corinthians 3:2-3, “Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.”). Otherwise Christ is nothing more than a dead letter, and the dead letter will kill, but his spirit will make alive, his spirit is making alive in our midst (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.”), it’s restoring sight to the blind, liberating people from the bondages of the social order, but giving life physically and spiritually. If you want to enjoy the life and the more abundant life, come to Peoples Temple (John 10:10, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”), and participate in this last day God-ordained ministry, that’s reaching out into all of our extensions throughout the United States, even in Africa and in South America—
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Jones: (Voice rises throughout) Two years ago, a young woman came into our assembly that had been treated with radium, cobalt, and surgery for cancer. She could not walk. There was no hope. But she was given the word of knowledge, she was a stranger, but she was told all things about her life, and given the word of healing that delivered her. Now she’s in Africa, presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ in a Peoples Temple extension. We would like for you to participate in this life-giving ministry. I can assure you, if you will come and try the spirit on this beautiful 21 acreage of God’s little garden of Eden, you will not go away disappointed. Again, I thank you for the privilege and the responsibility of bringing you the truth.
(tape edit; new sermon?)
Jones: Let us look again today at the power of thought. As a man thinketh in his heart, as we have said so often, so is he (Proverbs 23:7, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”). Whatever a man consciously makes or invents is always first a thought and an idea, before it is shaped into an objective or external thing. The house in which we live or the ship in which we sail first exists as a spiritual reality in the mind of the architect and builder, (tape edit) the picture in the soul of a painter, and the statue in the idea of a sculptor. This is a doctrine that has gone back centuries before Christ, even. Everything exists in an idea before it can have an external and material realization, a visible thing whether it be a granite boulder or a physical disease, is the outness of a thought, the externalization of the idea. An idea is the inward existence, the spiritual reality of a sensible object, but there are false ideas, and true ones, a right and a wrong way of thinking. A false or fallacious idea is ultimated or externally manifested in the body by disease, and then the truth is the best medicine. Form is a creative power, and it always forms something in its own image, a likeness and correspondence of itself. A bad thought, a false and fallacious idea, a wrong conception and belief, ultimate themselves in the body in disease, acute, if it be a temporary mental state, and chronic, if it be a confirmed mode of thinking. Pre-existent ideas and feelings are the patterns after which the body shapes itself by a necessary law of spiritual cause and material effect.
This is why in our Temple we will not permit discussion of disease and sickness. We are told when we greet one another not to discuss how we are in the terms of negative condition, but to talk about the positive, the hopeful. If there’s anything pure or lovely or good report, to think on that. We do not discuss diseases. We do not gossip about problems. We do not speak about the negative or the forlorn conditions, because we realize that these patterns then form chronic— after a while, certainly, chronic and debilitating diseases that will finally destroy the human and the inner man. The sincerity and deepness of our belief, or recognition of those ideas as the realities, is always the measure of the extent and permanency of their effects upon the body. The condition of the body is only the interior becoming the outward, and the excellence or defect of the idea in the body’s health or malady. The disease is preceded by a priori wrong way of thinking, and the cure is a result in every case of an anteceded change of thought and idea. This is the philosophy of the system of cure and divine healing practiced by Jesus Christ, and forever consecrated by him as the divine method of healing both soul and body. Everything resolves itself back into an idea. (tape edit) The solid framework of the world, with all its objects of beauty and youth, are but the crystallization of God’s thoughts. [Robert] Fulton’s idea became solidified into a steamboat, [George] Stephenson’s into a railroad, and [Samuel] Morse’s into a telegraph. A factory is only somebody’s thought condensed into a material manifestation. And any faulty way of thinking, any defect in the original idea, makes the machinery go wrong and causes an imperfect manufacture.
Here is the whole spiritual theory of disease, for what is true of a mill, is more certainly true of the body and its relation to the mind. Truly, as we think in our mind, so are we. Men have only begun to realize the power of thought over the external organism, the influence of ideas, of imagination, of faith and feeling over the corporeal condition, and the physiological functions. We’re now seeing that we can lower our blood pressure even by a mental attitude. They’re doing it in clinical laboratories. Lowering the blood pressure by mere attitude, by mere concentration of thought. This is not in some spiritual clinic, or some religious research center, but in the empirical research centers of science, that thought has been producing changes in (unintelligible word) condition, changing in physiological processes. Why then, you question me in the mail, do we discuss mind so often in our religious broadcast? It’s the most effective study. What possible result are you going to have from a study of hell or heaven, the furniture of heaven and the temperature of hell. It will do nothing for you to ameliorate your circumstances in life, but the study of the mind of Christ has been proven in our midst to heal every known disease (1 Corinthians 2:16, “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ.”). Every minute of every day in Peoples Temple, we see cancers expectorated before our eyes, the arthritics made whole. In one service, five hundred people crippled with arthritis in our San Francisco assembly were restored in one meeting alone. Thus we will not have time to deal about the streets of gold, the streets of heaven, the gates to the city, or some peripheral concern, some side issues (Revelation 21:21, “And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.”). We are going to deal with the mind of Christ, for in that mind is the resolution to all problems, and it will adjust all problems satisfactorily. We will live in this mind, we will preach this mind, until finally, this mind engulfs (stretches out word) all of our life, and covers the earth as the waters cover the sea— (tape edit) —and ultimately brings divine help, love and happiness to all of mankind (1 Corinthians 2:16). (tape edit) Yes, we shall continue to study about the mind, for the mind is the only life of the body, and the only real and enduring thing in human nature. No one ever dies of what is called disease, as has been said so often in my broadcast. No, it is only when faith, hope, and imagination lose their hold upon the organic structure, and the soul relaxes its grasp upon the body, that it yields. Then it goes down like a scuttleship in a storm. It is only kept afloat by the buoyancy that the mind imparts to it, and when the connection between it and its life preserver is sundered, it goes under the waves to rise no more. When the correspondence between the mind and the body ceases, the body dies as a lamp expires when the oil is exhausted. Thought is the grand characteristic of man, and belongs to the essence of the soul. Even the word “man” means — in the ancient Sanskrit — “to think,” and is the root of the Zen word mantra, speech. Man may be defined as the being who thinks and speaks. Thus we’re going to deal with the problem of the mind. Today we’re told in every medical science journal that man does not die from organ failure, that before the heart stops, the mind sends a signal to tell it to stop— (tape edit) This fact is recognized by all medical scientists.
I have even proven to myself without any question, that the mind works constructively while I am asleep. I have thousands in my files of testimonies that have said that what I dream actually happened to them. I would be thinking in prayer meditation in my dreams about someone in their need, and I would send out my thought through the Christ Consciousness, and they would be healed. Later the testimonies would come to me that such-and-such a case happened expressly at the very same time. We— As we said, we have records in our testimony files, documentation, to prove that this is not a theory, but real. So we are not going to deal with peripheral issues, we have no time for pie-in-the-sky jargon, we’re— furniture of heaven or temperature of hell, we will deal about the mind of Christ, for in the mind of Christ is a sustaining force that will resolve every problem, that will heal every disease as is being done in our Temple throughout every minute of every day (1 Corinthians 2:16). So we have no time to deal with the peripheral side issues. We have not time to entertain thoughts about the future or the past histories, but to deal only in the ever-presence of Christ, the Mind which is eternal, that can heal, and will heal, all matters spiritually and materially. (tape edit) Bless you for listening. Won’t you come and enjoy this mind of Christ with us? It’s available to all and restricted to none. I thank you.
Part 2:
Associate pastor: As we said, both on our Saturday broadcast from ten until ten-thirty on this station and Sunday morning from seven until seven-thirty in the morning, we give you many of the wonderful healings to confirm the fact that God is the same today, yesterday and forever. The wonderful Christ force that operates through our pastor Jim Jones reached out to Jane Mutschmann, 1010 Fell Street, San Francisco, in one of our services of the Temple in Redwood Valley. Miss Mutschmann was told the exact name of the doctor she had gone to, and his address and details about how much she’d paid for her bill years ago. As further confirmation of this all-powerful gift of revelation, this young white lady was told the precise amount she paid to him on different occasions. She was also told of the weakness and pain she was having in her body at that very moment. Immediately, as the prophet of God put out his hand to her, all her symptoms disappeared, and the incurable condition was halted forever in her body.
Mrs. Coran Jones, 2918 Ruckel Street, Indianapolis, Indiana was a stranger to Pastor Jones and the congregation when she came to the first night of our great rally in the Midwest a couple of weeks ago, in which over one thousand people were present, they were lined around the walls and the little children sitting on the floor. But she knew that she was known to the Almighty God as Pastor Jones gave her revelation after revelation about her life. This Christ-Force that operates through him was so exact, that it even told her a catfish that someone had given her, and where she had put it. This marvelous gift also told her of the little child, Roy, and of care that she had given him. She knew too that God is all-powerful, for she was told of the arthritis, bladder, and blood pressure conditions that she was suffering with and crippled by. Immediately as Pastor Jones spoke the word, her sufferings vanished. She ran around the huge auditorium singing the praises of her deliverance, and even crying out that my stomach has gone down completely before the eyes before of everyone. Indeed, the Christ that worked through Pastor Jones made her a new woman.
Hundreds of past growths that would have taken their very lives in our wonderful and blessed healing services. Mrs. Lillian L. Cordell of 3911 Nicholas Road in Dayton, Ohio in our Midwist— Midwest meetings was called out in one of our pastor’s dynamic healing services and told the names of her children, Dwight and Tanya, and of events in their lives so exact that she knew that only God could have revealed it. Then Pastor Jones and the all-powerful Christ, spe— uh, told her specific things in her body, the organs that were causing her great pain and difficulty. In great awe and wonderment, she thankfully confirmed this and she passed a huge growth from her female area. As she danced joyously, as we all witnessed the growth, praising this wonderful gift that operated through the pastor. The ugly, smelly growth was shown to the entire congregation of over one thousand people, who joined in the songs and prayers of thanksgiving for her deliverance. Such a mighty God we serve. (tape edit)
Mrs. Alberta Sewell of 825 East Bayshore, East Palo Alto’s very life was spared [due] to the dynamic ministry in Christ that operates through Jim Jones. Mrs. Sewell was called out in one of our Redwood Valley services, where hundreds of people were called out and told precise details of several diseases and conditions that her doctors had diagnosed and considered fatal. Joyously, she confirmed this Almighty God that works in our midst, and this power of Christ went out to her instantly, and removed a monstrous tumor in her neck. This wondrous gift of God did not stop there, for he knew that there were more needs and more work to be done for this pre— precious dear. He called on one of the registered nurses to take her blood pressure. It was over 280. As Pastor Jones spoke the word, her blood pressure dropped to normal, and she was spared a stroke that would have taken her life, undoubtedly, in the next few minutes.
Mrs. Thelma Levels [phonetic] of 423 Main Avenue, Richmond, was touched by the hand of Christ in our Redwood Valley service recently. She was given intimate details of her life, even to her home state. She was also told of loved ones, Earl and his wife, Joyce, who were expecting a child. She was also told of a terrible back problem that was causing her so much trouble and suffering of diabetes that had afflicted her for so many years. But she had come to the place of deliverance from all such maladies, and when Pastor Jones reached out to her and ministered to her, this mighty Christ that operates through him took all of her suffering and affliction away. Thank God for his great benefits to us. (tape edit)
Part 3:
Jones: Know this morning that God is your savior, as you recognize him, and as you choose him as your savior by presenting your body as a living sacrifice wholly, that God might be all in all for you (Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”). There are many things that I could say along this line, but I stress this thought for your consideration. Each and every one, that you might learn to be exactly the same at all times in words, in deeds and in actions, in every expression of your life, and live exactly according to the teachings of the Christ. It is more important today to live Christ in deeds and actions than to teach him. Then, and only then, are you recognizing your savior, and the words that I am reiterating as his messenger this morning. My words alone, as the words of Christ, as I present to you the spirit of the life of God, can save your life. Nothing else. Nothing more. Nothing else will do, but the word, the spoken word of God. It is written, how can you hear without a preacher, how can he preach, lest he be sent? (Romans 10:14-15, “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? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!”) Thus let us listen to the prophetic word, for this word is Spirit, and is Life, according to the gospel, and according to the inspirational declaration that I am now making. My words are spirit and are life, it is written, by Jesus the Christ. In every expression, in every emotion, in every gesture, in every thought, in every idea, and in every opinion in the social world, in the political world, in every avenue of your conduct, if you express the spirit of sincerity, then you will find God, and He will be with you from every angle, and will be a savior when you give him all of your mentality, all of your ideas, all of your resources. Then, and then alone, will God have full control and reign, without any restrictions in your life. I set before you this morning the way of deliverance from all difficulties, for I have come in the name of the Lord. I have provided a way of deliverance from all adversities, from every undesirable condition. I set before you the hope of your redemption by listening to the spoken word. I am freely giving it, and demonstrating it, in the Peoples Temple ministry, that you might find a fashion to copy after, the life of Christ that can be lived by everyone. It’s freely given to whosoever will, that may receive it. We are emancipated, if we are in the Christ life. Whosoever is set free by Christ is free indeed, and must stand fast therefore in the law of love and liberty, wherewith he has been made free. These words are spirit, and they are life. The words of Jesus are being spoken this morning, for I have entered into that faith consciousness, to not demonstrate my own ego, but to demonstrate the will of God of He who has sent me. In every time of need, at all times apply the application of these words of deliverance, of brotherhood, of peace, of non-violent change that I am speaking. And they are applicable to our needs today, and if expressed, they will bring the healings in your life that they are bringing every hour in Peoples Temple. (mike moves? Tape edit)
Yea, the cripples are walking, the blind both spiritually and materially are seeing, cancerous growths are passed in every service, every form of miracle known to man are being manifested in our Peoples Temple Garden of Eden acreage here in Redwood Valley. This is the source of supply, the actual conscious presence of God, and if we will invoke the spirit of good will and harmony towards all people, that God is no respecter of persons, and live in this consciousness, that he is with us today, as he was in yesterday (Acts 10:34, “Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons.”). Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Matthew 28: 19-20, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”). That recognition will satisfy every good desire. The actual conscious presence of God is the source of all supply. There is no space vacant of the presence thereof, and it is now being demonstrated to resolve the disharmonies of race and class and creedalism, and to bring us together in an amalgamation and unification of the spirit of the acts of the apostles. This we shall do, and nothing shall hinder. Will you come and unite with us in this practical demonstration of apostolic living, that not only heals the physical bodies, but heals the diseased minds and brings harmony to the social life and integrates people in the greatest pursuit of happiness that man has ever seen. If you would like to help us in the endeavor of building another further extension in the Bay Area, please write, Peoples Temple, Post Office Box 214, Redwood Valley, California.
End of tape
Tape originally posted September 2003