Q926 Summary

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

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FBI Catalogue: Jones Speaking

Date cues on tape:     None

People named:

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.)

“I’ve said enough to know that only God can know the thoughts of your mind, and know the intents of your heart.” (Daniel 2:28-30)

“[T]he time will come when you’ll pray, ‘My father.’ So just, just, just, just look up now and learn the language of the spheres. ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven.’ He’s in his Heaven.” (Beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, at Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11: 2-4) 

“Don’t think that there’s nothing impossible with God, nothing impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37, “For with God nothing shall be impossible.”)

“He says these things shall you 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.”)

Summary:

(Note: This tape was transcribed by Seriina Covarrubias. The editors gratefully acknowledge her invaluable assistance.)

In this undated faith healing service, Jones heals several people. As he does in other such services, he reveals details about the personal lives of those whom he is about to heal, to “build your faith,” and to show “that only God can know the thoughts of your mind and know the intents of your heart.” While he does say that their prayers are to the Father “in his Heaven” and that he works in the name of Jesus,” there is ambivalence about who he means – Christ or himself – when he says, “I have come in the Godship degree for just such people as you.”

One healing is more spontaneous. He interrupts the celebration for one woman who can now walk and tells people to “[g]et out of my way. There’s somebody about to die.” A moment later, he emerges from the bathroom to report that he brought back a woman who had died of a heart attack.

Jones brings his own hatred of racism to one of the healings. In tending to a man whose pelvis was crushed 18 years before, Jones includes the information in his revelation that the car which ran him down and killed his child was driven by “a white racist [who] went across the wrong side of the road and struck you down on purpose and fled the scene of the accident.”

The service seems to have been recorded for public consumption. An announcer with a professional-sounding radio voice describes the scene as events unfold, and each of the two segments fades to silence instead of being cut off abruptly, as most of these tapes do.

FBI Summary:

Date of transcription: 7/2/79

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 21, 1979, Special Agent (name deleted) reviewed the tape numbered 1B110-7R3. This tape was found to contain the following:

A recording of JIM JONES healing people who are paralyzed.

Differences with FBI Summary:

The summary is accurate and meets the FBI’s purposes.

Tape originally posted June 2005