goals were attainable because socialist principle
revealed itself not on some lofty plane beyond
human comprehension, but in human history.
Jones preached that
principle speaks on a lower plane….
Jesus said, “these things shall you do
and greater” … so we’re living in a
greater time of compassion, a greater
time of love, a greater time of
miracles—and there are no such things
as miracles, only supernormal,
supernatural, [only] above what we
consider to be natural events. (Q 1023)
Thus the mighty deeds done by Jesus were not
supernatural in the sense that human beings
could not replicate them. Rather, anyone could
achieve them who believed in the principle that
Jesus’s words and deeds pointed to. This idea
that belief and acceptance fostered ability led to
a justification of Jones’s own (alleged) miracle-
working abilities.19 One recording begins with
Temple members giving testimonies of how
Jones had worked miraculous deeds in their
lives. The first speaker stated the connection
between Jesus’s power and Jones’s abilities:
That same Christ that’s working through
pastor Jim Jones have [sic] saved me of
many heart attacks, many, many strokes,
saved my daughter from being raped,
and I am very grateful for the Christ
that’s working through pastor Jim Jones.
(Q 987)
Such an understanding does not necessarily
resonate with Jones’s interpretation of John
14:12. Although the above statement does affirm
that Jones’s followers linked his alleged abilities
as a healer to the Jesus of the Bible, it holds up
Jesus as a source of power rather than one who,
like Jones, tapped into divine socialism as a
source of power. In the same sermon, Jones
explained that
19 Jones’s best-known “miracles” were staged faith healings
(involving clandestine observation and sleight of hand), modeled
after Pentecostal and African-American worship patterns. See
Reiterman and Jacobs (2008 [1982], pp. 44–46) for an account of
Jones’s first forays into faith healing. See Mills (1979, pp. 123–
124) for a participant’s description of one of Jones’s healings. See
Chidester (2003 [1988], pp. 72–78) for a reflection on “healing
theatre” in Peoples Temple.
if people will get their mind and their
hearts, their love and their devotion, in
the right place, then the same power—I
don’t mean some power, but the same
power—that was in the early church can
be in our church, but in a greater day, in
a greater degree! (Q 987)
Jesus was not physically present as a human
being in the early church or in Peoples Temple,
but the power his message pointed to persisted.
Jones offered examples of this power present in
his own life by asking the congregation to
remember miracles they had witnessed: “I have
walked right across the waves when we went to
Mexico…. We’ve stopped the rain all across the
[cross-country] trip—we would just lift our
hand—we’ve stopped the snow when we were
snowbound in Chicago” (Q 987). Moreover,
Jones asked,
How many, through the anointing, have
I raised from the dead in this room?
How many have been healed of
blindness? … How many have I healed
of rheumatoid or arthritic crippling
conditions? How many have I healed of
cancer, the incurable disease? (Q 987)
These amazing feats and wondrous signs, Jones
stated, were possible because of the Christ
principle of socialism that was found within
him. The power that allowed such miracles to
occur, however, was conditional. In electrical
terms, Jones explained,
If you want the power to work through
you, you’d better get the right kind of
circuit…. We’ve got flimsy little toy
switches…. But if you want the power,
you’d better get the dynamo, and the
dynamo is God, is love, and love is
socialism and that will give you power.
(Q 987)
In this explanation of miraculous power, Jones
moves quickly from God through love to
socialism. As mentioned previously, John 14:12
indicates Jesus’s Father as the source of
miraculous power. Here, Jones clarifies to some
extent his rightful claim to power despite his
ridicule of the Skygod. For Jones, God the
Father was not the ultimate truth of Jesus’s
42 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015

message. Rather, the God being spoken of here
is not the Father from John 14:12, but a
symbolization of love and socialism. Thus in the
sermon just quoted, Jones held out the
opportunity to participate in miraculous power
to his audience, provided they embrace his
socialistic goals. Embracing such goals was
necessary because it was the understanding and
practice of divine socialism—not chasing after
Jesus’s father the Skygod—that (Jones claimed)
allowed his miracles to take place. During a
different exposition in which Jones drew from
John 14:12, Jones asked, “Why are you so
superstitious that you worship an unknown God?
Jesus said, ‘Worship what you see.’” (Q 1053,
part 1). In this sermon, Jones went to great
lengths to differentiate his character as God from
the Christians’ Skygod, explaining that “the
most conscious love, that is God. God means
good” (Q 1053, part 1). In this sermon, Jones
symbolized the concrete and visible acts of love
and socialism using the biblical language of God
and did not confuse them with the Skygod of the
Bible whose presence in the world was unseen
or unwanted.
The second passage from the gospel of John that
Jones interpreted as proving that Jesus pointed to
the divine principle of socialism that empowered
him was John 10:34. Specifically, Jones focused
on Jesus’s response to his Jewish interlocutors
upon being accused of blasphemy: “Is it not
written in your law, I said, ‘Ye are gods?’”
When used in Jones’s preaching, this verse has
an emphasis on vocation or ability. In his
interpretation, this statement by Jesus was not
just a reference to Psalm 82:6 from the Hebrew
Bible rather, it was an invitation for people to
partake in the same power and role that Jesus
embodied in the New Testament.
In this verse, Jones interpreted Jesus as equating
other human beings with himself. Just as Jesus
was God, so too were his everyday audiences
and adversaries, at least potentially. In the
context of Peoples Temple, this interpretation
meant that everyone who came to this realization
had the opportunity to become a god—that is,
one who practiced love and socialism. Thus, in
his preaching, Jones equated Jesus, in all his
(presumed) miraculous and radical power, with
the Temple’s members. The goal of Jones’s
interpretation of John 10:34, however, was not
solely to tell his followers that they were
conceivably equivalent to Jesus. In fact, such an
understanding was largely useless without the
knowledge of what gave Jesus his power.
As already mentioned, in Jones’s preaching,
Jesus’s power derived from his embracing
divine socialism. Therefore, Jones was able to
use this verse, like he did John 14:12, to defend
his own godly claims. Jesus’s words in John
10:34 enabled Jones to say, “…you can call me
an egomaniac, megalomania, or whatever you
wish, with a messianic complex. I don’t have
any complex, honey, I happen to know I’m the
messiah” (Q 1059, part 1). Such a claim was
valid because Jones, as the being with the
greatest attunement to the divine socialist
principle, was the embodiment of divine
socialism. Just as Jesus showed the way to
attaining such power, so too did Jones (Q 953).
In one sermon, he explained that his
embodiment of socialist principle functioned
according to necessity, like Jesus’s:
I’m a god and you’re a god. And I’m a
god and I’m going to stay a god until
you recognize that you’re God and when
you recognize you’re God I shall go
back into principle and will not appear
as a personality. (Q 1035)
Thus, both Jesus and Jones’s alleged miraculous
abilities and radical messages were meant to
empower their hearers and reveal to them their
true potential, which could be achieved through
embracing divine socialism. Through his
preaching, Jones promised his audience that
“I’m going to cause you to know that you are
what Jesus was” (Q 1035). Two implications of
this goal worth considering in the context of
Jones’s evaluation and appropriation of Jesus’s
words in John 10 relate to responsibility and
Christology.
First, the power that one attained as a god—a
loving, socialistic being—had to be responsibly
managed and appropriately channeled. On this
point, Jones frequently derided the Skygod. In
some circumstances the Skygod abused its
power, seen in the creation of the world for
selfish motives. In one sermon, Jones explained
that the Skygod created the world and humanity,
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015 43