resurrection of Jesus. This interpretation
intimately linked the believer to socialism. Jesus
completely embodied and was identical to his
message of revolutionary socialism. In one
sermon, Jones referred to the Kingdom of God
and the Kingdom of socialism as one and the
same, thereby calling both these kingdom
messages “this that turned the world upside-
down” (Q 1059, part 2).
Although these observations do not exhaust
Jones’s speaking on the topic of his more literal
understanding of Jesus, they represent some of
his most frequent and consistent comments.
Through these presentations of Jesus’s life and
ministry, one can sketch some of the contours of
Jones’s understanding of Jesus as a messiah in
an apocalyptic setting. Jesus was predominantly
concerned with the poor and untouchable people
in society, and through his actions he visibly
sided with those who were caught in injustice
and oppression. Without fear of retribution, he
criticized brazenly those who perpetuated such
injustice—the rulers of society. For these
reasons, Jesus was unpopular with some
portions of his contemporary audience and made
other portions uncomfortable. And as previously
noted, Jones understood Jesus’s process of
Kingdom-building, through his radical
countercultural message and actions, as
promoting the concept of socialism thus Jones
discussed in socialistic terms elements of Jesus’s
story (such as his death and resurrection).
Jones’s evaluation of Jesus as a messiah in these
more literal observations was not entirely
positive. On one occasion, Jones criticized Jesus
for his potentially selective saving deeds. While
Jones had the power and the will to save his
followers from prison or hell, Jesus
supposedly went down to hell,
according to the epistles, and preached
to who? The spirit[s] of the disobedient
ones in the days of Noah…. He took
them outta hell! Well, if he took some
bunch of disobedient folk outta hell
[but] wouldn’t take you out then he’s a
dirty rascal. (Q 1059, part 1)
Moreover, Jones did not always see the biblical
Jesus as strong. In fact, he took the success of
Peoples Temple—which worshipped divine
socialism, not the Skygod of the Bible—to
indicate Jesus’s weakness. Jones sometimes set
himself up as the Antichrist because he preached
against Christians (Q 1057, part 5). In one
sermon, he argued, “when the Antichrist can be
better than the followers of Christ, you’ve got a
weak Jesus” (Q 1016). On the one hand, the
“followers of Christ” were the traditional
Christians whose religion—according to
Jones—had no effect on alleviating negative
social conditions. Jones and Peoples Temple, on
the other hand, received the label of Antichrist
because he and its members accomplished
greater things even though they did not belong
to the traditional Christian church. Thus, “when
the anti-Jesus people are more loving and
sharing and kind and good than the Jesus people,
you better look at your Jesus! He is indeed
weak” (Q 1016). Since the Jesus of the Bible
and his followers worshipped the Skygod, their
religious convictions were flawed and therefore
weak.
Often, however, Jones reversed this criticism
and approved of Jesus’s strength and forceful
message. Regarding this forcefulness, Jones
once said, “if you don’t like hard sayings, then
you didn’t even like Jesus…. He said a lot of
hard things. He cussed out the money changers,
whipped their ass, [threw] them out, threw… the
tables upside down” (Q 1059, part 4). Jesus’s
message was strong and even harsh, and Jones
commended it. Attributing opposite
characteristics to Jesus’s character—here,
simultaneous weakness and strength—will
emerge again later when we consider Jones’s
Christology. Moreover, Jones seemed to gauge
the effectiveness or correctness of Jesus’s
message by persecution. Because Jesus’s
annunciation of the Kingdom of God was a
threat to the wealthy and powerful, and a
critique of society, it followed that persecution
was evidence of Jesus preaching the “right”
message in an apocalyptic context. In a sermon
already quoted, Jones’s ridicule of the biblical
text had one affirmation in it: “the scriptures
tells [sic] you… if you try to live godly in Christ
Jesus, you’re gonna get persecution” (Q 1035).
The theme of persecution for one’s beliefs
permeated Jones’s American preaching and
followed the Temple to Guyana. There Jones
40 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015

claimed that enemies of the Temple—
particularly the CIA—waited in the jungle to
attack the commune and cast the visit of
Congressman Ryan in terms of animosity and
persecution.17
Jones’s interpretations of Jesus in a messianic
and apocalyptic context were based largely on
stories of Jesus in the Gospels. Such stories
would have been familiar to at least a portion of
Jones’s audience. In this way, Jones used his
interpretation of Jesus as a messiah to connect
with those people in Peoples Temple who joined
the movement as Christians. By interpreting
Jesus through his own socialistic goals, and by
backing his socialist agenda with biblical
preaching, Jones sought to acclimate his
audience. Jones referred to certain events facing
the Temple, such as newspaper smear
campaigns, in the context of Jesus’s own
suffering for his annunciation of the Kingdom of
God.18 Thus, Jones said, “the next time
newspapers [reporters] come, I’m going to make
such a stir—I’ll be selling newspapers for three
months…. Naturally, naturally they’re gonna try
to get us” (Q 1035). Here he connected the stir
his own message caused with the stir that Jesus’s
Kingdom-building message caused. The
persecuting newspaper reporters were
“naturally” attacking the Temple because
Jones’s message was really the message that
Jesus had preached in the New Testament. Just
like in the New Testament, persecution followed
revolutionary socialist teachings. This
interpretation cast the world in a dualistic light
and called for determination—even to the point
of causing anguish or suffering harm—to follow
the Temple’s socialist principle.
17 Q 175, for instance, casts Ryan’s visit as an “invasion” and
labels the Ryan delegation as the “enemy.” On one occasion, Jones
placed the entire community on alert for 6 days to defend against
an impending invasion. One description of this “six-day siege” can
be found in Reiterman and Jacobs, (2008 [1982], pp. 360–372).
18 In 1972, editors at the San Francisco Examiner assigned reporter
Lester Kinsolving to investigate Peoples Temple for the
newspaper’s religion section. The 8-part series he wrote represents
the first major media attempt to explore—and expose—the inner
workings of the Temple. Kinsolving’s articles (some of which
were originally unpublished) are available on the Jonestown
Apologists Alert blog at http://jonestownapologistsarticlearchive.
blogspot.ca/2007/11/dont-miss-all-eight-of-les-kinsolvings.html
Jones also understood Jesus in a much more
abstract way. In this abstract interpretation of
Jesus as a messiah, Jones described Jesus to be
either a representation of divine socialism or the
divine principle itself that people in the present
could attain. To understand how Jones
interpreted the Jesus of the New Testament, it is
necessary to look at how Jesus pointed to or
embodied divine socialism, and divine socialism
as a source of messianic power. In particular,
Jones repeatedly cited two verses from the
Gospel of John that served to highlight the fact
that Jesus’s power was not necessarily due to
any of his own innate characteristics or qualities.
Specifically, Jones cited 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” and John 10:34, “Jesus answered
them, “Is it not written in your law, I said, ‘Ye
are gods?’”
Jones understood Jesus’s words in John 14:12 to
be a promise that those who believed in Jesus’s
message would be able to do the same
revolutionary sort of miracles that the New
Testament portrayed Jesus as enacting.
Immediately noticeable is the fact that this
passage attributed miraculous power to the
Skygod—in John 14:12 the Father—that Jones
derided. In some sermons, however, where Jones
dealt with this passage he seems to have
conveniently avoided the final “because I go
unto my Father” clause. With an interest in the
divine principle of socialism and a dislike for the
Skygod, Jones worked to reinterpret the source
of Jesus’s works and explain his own miraculous
claims.
In Jones’s exposition of John 14:12, Jesus the
messiah functioned more as a paradigm than a
supreme being. In a way, Jesus represented the
beginning rather than the ultimate end of
pursuing the knowledge and practice of divine
socialism. In this sense, Jesus’s words and
actions pointed toward the principle of socialism
that would enable its followers to do greater
things than Jesus did in the New Testament.
Jones explained that those who believed in
Jesus’s message of divine socialism were
promised “not only the same things shall you do,
but the same things and greater” (Q 987). Such
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015 41