Q923 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

FBI preliminary tape identification note: Labeled in part “Healings”

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.)

1. There’s nothing hid that shall not be revealed, there’s nothing covered that shall not be uncovered, for the

Spirit of the Lord

1. is upon me. [Luke 12:3, “For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.”]

All good and perfect gifts, all good and perfect gifts come down from the Father of Lights, in whom there is no shadow, or variableness of turnings. [James 1:17, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”]

Summary:

(This tape was transcribed by Georgiana Mamlakah. The editors gratefully acknowledge her invaluable assistance.)

Jim Jones conducts a healing service in Los Angeles. The date of the service is unknown.

The service was recorded for use elsewhere, possibly on for radio broadcast on a local station. An announcer often provides commentary when there would otherwise only be the sound of the audience – sometimes just stirring, more often cheering – and reports on the miracle cures Jones has effected.

The pattern of the cures is similar to that in other such services: Jones calls someone out of the audience. He establishes that they have never met and that he knows nothing about them personally, and that the information he has about them – the type of cleanser they use, the number of dogs in the household, or (more significantly) the number of tragedies the person has experienced – comes from the Spirit of God. He then refers to a medical ailment that they have, and after a few whispered words of glossolalia, pronounces them cured. One woman is escorted to the bathroom to pass a cancer, and when she returns, he asks that “the enormity of that awful growth that’s left the body” be passed around the congregation “for you to see and to smell.”

Some of the miracles are preventative: the cloth he has given will prevent the heart attack that was going to happen in a few days, or the accident which would have killed them.

He works in the name of Jesus Christ, and the only two scriptural references he makes comes from the New Testament. The latter is in the context of his own role as working as an agent of God rather than of the devil. “The Destroyer never, never heals anybody. He never cared,” he says midway through. “How can a devil cast out a devil?”

The most remarkable aspect of this service is that Jones turns water into wine.

FBI Summary:

Date of transcription: 7/9/79

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 14, 1979, Special Agent (name deleted) reviewed the tape numbered 1B107-15. This tape was found to contain the following:

JIM JONES offering prayers and curing physical ailments such as back, heart and eye ailments at “healing service.”

Differences with FBI Summary:

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

Tape originally posted January 2019.