218. A Story Of Spiritual Manipulation - Jim Jones and Peoples Temple - Part 2

Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. Brett, what a great day it is. I don't know how it has been in Mississippi. I know that I saw some tornado warnings there. We had 80 degree weather last week. I woke up yesterday and it was like 27 degrees outside. Snow was on the ground. Schools were canceled. We had school. We had our first football game yesterday. At the time of this recording, we won. But it's like 80 degrees, 27 degrees. Wake up in the morning. It's below freezing. I don't know if the weather is schizophrenic, bipolar. I don't know what's going on right now. We had tornadoes touchdown. I was talking to John last week and they had like the town beside him had like eight inches of snow. I'm like, what are you what's going on? We're in spring almost. It's March. How are things in your area, man? It's about the same. It's like I'm hearing how you're reporting and it's probably the same down here. You know, you can experience, you know, just a span of a few days. You can go from winter to spring to summer to fall back to back to winter. We were sunny and 80 and then we had tornadoes. And then the next day we're woke woke up in the morning to snow. And then that night we had a freeze warning. And so it's just crazy how this this winter weather comes in the spring, these late winters. But other than that, other than the weather not figuring out what it wants to do, we've had a pretty good weekend. Let's see. We went to a Seventh Day Slumber concert just near us Sunday night with the family. Had a good time. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea, their music, but we had a great time. The gospel was shared there and it was a great time. But other than that, we're just getting ready for Easter. It's only three weeks away. So I'm planning on what we're going to preach come Easter time, Resurrection Sunday. And other than that, just business as usual. I love it. Yeah, dude, Easter's coming up. I can't wait. Resurrection Sunday's coming. It's going to be a great day. Every day in the Lord's house is a great day. But there's just something special about on Resurrection Sunday. Brett, let's go through real quick before we finish some of our banter. You're talking about sunrise. You're talking about Resurrection Sunday. Do you guys do a sunrise service? Do you change your service times? Let's go through that first. I'll talk about mine. And I've got a follow-up question that I heard this week that it blew my mind. And I'm going to see if you ever heard it. Maybe some of our listeners had. Maybe you can comment if you've ever heard of something like this. But Brett, service times, do y'all do a sunrise service? What does that look like in Mississippi? I have never done a sunrise service. We didn't do it in the IFB. And so when I became a pastor, I've only done one. It was at my last church. It was 6 a.m. We did it one time. A few people on the front steps of the church. They used to do it here a long time ago. There's a cemetery next door. And what they would do is bring chairs from the fellowship hall. And they would sit in the middle of the cemetery and have the sunrise service facing east with the sun coming up. So, no, we don't do a sunrise service. I'm not that early riser of a person. But I will tell you that we do change our service times. No Sunday school. We bump our service up to 10 a.m. That way people can get home and cook for their Easter dinner. That's about all the changes we make for Easter. All right. So, we do a sunrise service. And we are in the graveyard because we have a massive graveyard here. We are in the graveyard at before 7 o'clock. Our sunrise this year, I look at the calendar. I do the service times based on the sunrise that the Weather Channel says. So, sunrise is 7.05 this year. So, sunrise service is at 7 o'clock. And so, we're in the graveyard at 7 o'clock. The piano starts playing. We take a piano out there. And we sing a hymn. He lives. He lives. Whatever it is that day. And sun comes up right behind my shoulder. Right across the trees. And so, I'm facing the crowd. Sun's coming up. It's a beautiful picture. My wife gets a picture of it every year. Some years it's super cold. Some years it's not. We do that out there. Then we have a massive. When I say massive, I'm talking our men. They are cooking all morning long. We do a massive breakfast in the basement of the church. Everybody eats until they're full. And then as soon as the breakfast is over, we go straight into the service at 8.30. And we do an 8.30 service just like we would at 11. I joke every year and I tell them, hey, we're having a service at 8.30. We'll get through our singing. And I promise to get you out of here by 12 o'clock. And then I'll start laughing. It's great. So, being here is the first time we did a sunrise service in the graveyard, which was a little weird the first time. I'm not going to lie. It's where I'm in here. Yeah. My last church was the first sunrise service we ever did. We did it inside because for a couple of years, Easter fell early and it was cold. And then it just was easier to do it inside. And so, what we did was our youth did the sunrise service, which was really cool. They put on some program or a song or a cantata or something. I got to preach the early service. And then we did breakfast, Sunday school, all that deal. So, I heard this week of a church in our area. And this is what they do, Brett. They have their sunrise service. And at their sunrise service, they go and they go and stand on their dead members' bodies in the graveyard. They have their service. And if someone is there and doesn't have a family member in the graveyard, they just stand by the truck where the pastor's at. And the pastor has a blow horn and he gives his message while they're standing on their dead. Have you ever heard of something like that? How? That's some crazy Dwight Shrook kind of stuff there. I've never heard of that before. I was blown away. And they said they do it every year. And the thing is, you know, you may have a group of family members right here that are clustered up. But then you may have one random person that's like on the other side of the graveyard by themselves. And they're just standing on their dead. I was blown away. Kind of creepy, to be honest. Have you heard of any weird, fun, crazy, something like that ever in your life? I have never. To that extent, no. I think I'm speechless. I've got nothing to add. I've never heard of that in my life at all. It's interesting. The South has some weird traditions, guys. We should start just a fun dialogue of crazy things you find in the South. And so it is definitely one of those fun things if you go to different churches. So the only reason why I heard about this is because a buddy of mine was going to start a sunrise service. They have a larger church. They had never done it before. So for a couple of years prior to this, he would just sort of church hop as a pastor at these other churches to see what they were doing. And he said he went to one of the churches. And while he was there, this is what happened. And he saw it. And he said, yeah, it's right here, right down the road from us. This is how they do their sunrise service. And I'm like, dude, that is just so weird. What are people doing? Like, I don't know. Yeah, that's something else. I can honestly say I've never heard anything like that before. Let's go. Let's go. Well, Brett, how is the family? How are you guys doing? You're looking beautiful and great. Every time I see you, you're about to be a master of theology here soon with your education. Man, how are things going? Man, things are going great. Like you said, I've got about a year and a half left of seminary to get my master's. But other than that, I've got a son about to graduate high school. And so he's got him a little part-time job. And, you know, things are going good at the church. Everybody's just kind of clicking along in our routine. We are raising money right now to go to Nicaragua. And so we've got a couple of fundraisers coming up to do that. We're looking forward to being there in July and beginning, end of July, beginning of August. Going to be there with you in Nicaragua. But other than that, things have just been clicking right along. You know, we've got, the VBS is getting close. So we've got some things that we're trying to get together there, organize some things. And then we've got, let's see, we've got our convention coming up in June. And so we're looking forward to going down to Orlando. But, man, life's just been great. Can't complain. Love it. Yeah, same here, man. My wife, she had a gym membership at a gym. And they were giving her the runaround. They jacked the prices up after they got a new owner. And so she finally canceled it and said, hey, James, let's get a Y membership. And I was like, oh, man, I don't know about this. She was like, hey, it's actually cheaper for us to get a family Y membership for all of our entire family than it was for her to have just her membership at the gym for one month. So it's cheaper for all of us for a month than it was for her. So I said, all right, we'll do it. So I went ahead and got the membership. Well, now I feel guilty, Brett, that I have to go to the gym because I've got this membership I'm paying for. So I've been trying to work out a little bit, run on the treadmill for an hour or so. Or for an hour or so. Heck no. Run on the treadmill for like 20 minutes. Get a mile in. Do some cardio and do some strength training. Getting back into my football days and working out. So starting to get into that a little bit. Went today before we recorded. And so just trying to get a little more healthy, right? It's, you know, sitting around all the time. It can be rough on us. I find myself cutting some weight in the spring and the summer. But, you know, we sort of stock up in the fall and the winter when it's cold outside. And so just trying to stay a little more active. They've got a beautiful pool and a sauna and some other things the kids can enjoy. So we're going to be doing that. But, yeah, man, I am so excited about our convention coming up. Some good things are coming out. Brett, I'm going to be in Georgia in just a couple of weeks. Our friend that we went to Israel with, Johnny Nix, has asked me to come down and preach while I'm on vacation down there. So I'm going to go on a Wednesday and preach at his church. And so looking forward to that. If you're in the Georgia area, let us know. Let me know. We'll love to meet up. We'll be down there for a couple of days on family vacation, but also over in the Pickett Mill area. And then our convention, man, it's right around the corner. It'll be here before you know it. And I'm excited about being there with you guys and all of our friends. And it feels like our family just grows every year as we're down there and meet new people and see old friends. And so it's a great time to be down there together if you'll join us. Absolutely. I'll tell you, my son, he goes to the gym every day. We've got a family plan at the gym as well. And it's just cheaper. It just makes sense. And he goes every day. And I told him I was going. And I got busy with school. And then I said, look, you know, once we get through this semester, I've got a pretty heavy load. As summer gets here, I'll start going back. And I'll try to stay in the habit to go with him. I think that's the best thing to do. And so I'm like, I miss lifting weights. I miss doing that. So we're going to start that back soon. But, yeah, everything that you said, we're looking forward to everything we've got going on in our future. And we've got things coming down the pike. And listen, to our audience out there, listen, if you're near someplace we're going to be, we want you to reach out. We want you to reach out on social media. If we want you to message us, we want you to comment on a Facebook post. If you are a listener and you've got some ideas that, hey, I think this would be a good subject or this would be good for you guys to talk about, send those ideas to us. We need those ideas. We want those ideas because we want we exist here for you. We exist here to lift you up, to encourage you, to show you the freedom that we have in Christ. And that's what we exist here to do. We're here to help you. So reach out to us if you've got it on social media. If you've got an idea you'd like to share with us about a series idea or some couple episode ideas or something like that. Share that with us and it will be a blessing to us. Yeah, absolutely. And Brett, also, if you want to share your story, right, we've done this before. We've had guys and girls come on and share their story. We want you to give that opportunity for you to be able to share how the Lord's worked in your life and how you've been set free from the change of legalism. And Brett, I'm excited about the series we're in with the Jim Jones series. And I believe the next series we're looking at is we're going to dissect the house church manual. And so we've been ripping that apart and trying to figure out all of it and excited about walking through that together. But, yeah, if you want to share your story, if you've had something that maybe you were bound in not having boundaries. This boundary idea has been in my head for a while, really, since the Bourbon meetup. We had a couple of individuals that asked us about how do we have boundaries with our family members. And, you know, once we've left the movement and all these things. And so I've really continued to meditate on that. And Jim Neuheiser's book on boundaries really is what got me really kickstarted on this idea of the case study of Jim Jones. And so last week we started with episode one. And this week we're going to be jumping into episode two when the People's Temple moves from Indianapolis to California. And they begin their rise of power and what that looks like. And really the beginning foundation of what Jonestown is going to look like. So, Brett, anything else before we jump in today? No, I'm ready to go. Let's do this. Let's jump in and we'll jump into our intro song. And then let's get started with a great cold open this day. For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. I ain't saved by dress codes, not by what I eat. I'm covered in the righteousness, washed from head to feet. No tally of tradition, no man-made code. Blood bought my freedom, now I ride that road. They clutch pearls when they see smoke rings rise. But my praise still ascends past the legalist cries. Christ plus nothing, that's the real math. So miss me with your fence laws and your extra path. He sat with sinners, I'm sitting with saints. Sipping grace from the bottle, no room for fakes. I light one for liberty, toast to the king. Every ash a sermon, death has lost its sting. For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. Let grace begin. For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Now here are your hosts, James Saifert and Brett Martin. By the early 1970s, Jim Jones had transformed from a charismatic pastor into a political force. The People's Temple had now had thousands of members. In San Francisco, Jones built a machine. What he had there was free food programs for anyone in need. Rehab support for those that were struggling with addiction and difficulties in their life. Elderly care. He had started nursing homes and organizations for those that could no longer care for their parents. Transportation services with buses and vehicles that could take you anywhere you needed to go. And political activism crews where they would show up at different locations. And they would pick an event or they would take over an event. And they would actually change the vote of the voting block by just simply showing up with thousands of people. Whenever a politician needed a rally filled, Jim Jones was the man you would call. Jim Jones would deliver anytime a politician called. Even a mayor publicly said, Jim Jones is what the church should be. But deep in the bowels of the temple in San Francisco, something else was brewing. Apartment style living. Compensated mail as people would begin to get their mail. Required signatures of loyalty that we talked about last week. We began pushing surveillance programs where they would actually surveil people that were part of the temple as they would go throughout their life and work. Punishments that are unbearable for us to even talk about on these shows here. Whippings that would happen that would really torment people to the brink of depression and even death at times. Sleep deprivation for mind control and manipulation. Mandatory work assignments where people would have to go and do whatever was assigned to them. The people's temple was no longer a church. It began to be an authoritarian system wrapped in charity. You know, this is kind of where power becomes an idol. Jones wasn't satisfied with influence. He wanted total control. Now, influence can serve people, but control replaces God. When you start trying to control people, you set yourself up as an idol. You set yourself up as God. And to him, loyalty was more important than the truth. And he, you know, he valued loyalty more than the truth. And then, because he valued it, the people under him began to value loyalty more than their senses, more than reality, more than the truth. And so, when you start to control people like that, you kind of put yourself in the place of God. Yeah, you were exactly right spot on that. And, you know, when you think about this manipulation and what it looks like, most cult leaders don't start with violence. Most cult leaders, they begin with the peace movement during this time. If you study the history of what's going on in the early 1970s and 60s, this is rooted in the civil rights movement, right? If Jones would have continued what he was doing, he would have been honored and remembered Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson. But what happened was he began to flirt with this violence and manipulation and total authoritarian control. What started with compassion, right? I have a care for the people. I want to start an addiction ministry. I want to start a grief share program. I want to start a nursing home ministry. I want to start these really good things eventually led to this people excusing the manipulative behavior. And what started as feeding the poor began to turn into this authoritarian control, as you just said. Yeah, you know, manipulation always hides behind good works. It's a mask. And Jones was a master at it. Jones would use social justice as a tool, as a smokescreen. And James, it's a classic bait and switch. Because mission draws you in and then control keeps you there. It's like it's control wrapped in compassion. It's manipulation wrapped in mercy. And we've both been in some situations in the past where, you know, we all know all about the bait and switch tactic. Where at first it's, you know, it's biblical. But then it becomes whatever the pastor wants. You know, that kind of thing. So we know about the bait and switch. Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I noticed as we were studying through this, as we were looking through this story. And really just, I'm calling it a case study because we can look and there's so much that's been documented and wrote on it. Is the way that Jim Jones used what was called isolation. He began taking people, isolating them from this group of people. And he began to separate them from the people that were closest to them. Their family, their friends, their people that had outside thought into them. And as I got to thinking about it, I really correlated this with like your story, right? You were, your parents were at an SBC church. You got started getting picked up by an independent fundamental Baptist church. And they began to tell you, hey, your family, they don't even love Jesus. They're going to a Southern Baptist church, right? And all of a sudden you feel like you've got to begin winning your family over to this movement. Even though they're at a good church, they're a church that loves the Lord. They're the church that's preaching the gospel, that sing good songs, that has a Bible. It may not be the King James Bible, but they're preaching the Bible. They're preaching the word. And they use this control of isolation to control the people. And this is what isolation does. It controls them. It separates them. It causes dissent to happen. Jones even was a master manipulator in creating inner circles of ones that were the closest to him, that were making decisions and controlling the group. And so now you have this envy of, I want to be part of that inner circle. I want to be able to spend this extra time with Jim Jones. I want to be able to have this time. And so it drives, you know, if, if maybe if I tell on Brett a couple of times, Jim's going to see that I'm loyal and he'll bring me into that inner circle. And so now you have this, this faction of people that are turning other people in all so they can get closer to the leader that's in control. Right. Separation. It starts with the phrase separation from the world. And, but they take that separation from the world. It doesn't mean isolation from the world. It means separation from the world's sin. But that's the tactic that Jim uses. He used isolation. And, you know, as the people, the people's temple grew in California, you know, of course, so did the accusations. Families claimed loved ones when we're being held against their will. Journalists began investigating financial fraud. Former members exposed staged miracles. And we just just recently had an expose on Facebook about on YouTube about staged miracles through Bethel. Politicians started distancing themselves. And Jones responded with paranoia. Members were told, the CIA is coming for us. America wants to destroy our movement. If you leave the temple, you will be killed. Your family doesn't love you anymore. He created ghost enemies trying to justify tightening control. In fact, survivor Deborah Layton, who escaped Jonestown, later wrote, we were told we were the most righteous people on earth and that everyone outside wanted us dead. Now, that wasn't caution. That was psychological entrapment. It's this us versus them mindset. And that's manipulation 101 is to start this us versus them. Once you distrust everyone else, the manipulator becomes your only safe place. It begins with isolation. And then it goes on to controlling the narrative. And then once you control the narrative, you instill don't ask any questions. And that's one step away from fear. And fear is the glue that held them in place. Yeah. But I want to go back and hit on a couple of those statements that you said, because those are some things that maybe we didn't hear exactly in the IFB. But I can remember this, right? We were the church that got it right. And everyone else around us is the church that got it wrong. Right? What did Jim Jones say? We were the most righteous people on earth and everyone outside wanted us dead. It's the same statement, just in a different mentality, right? It's, it's, we have to stay here because we're the ones getting it right. Everyone else is getting it wrong. You don't want to end up wrong. Do you, you don't want to end up in the, in the judgment seat of the Lord and say, well, I thought I trusted the right way and it was the wrong way. And so all of a sudden this manipulation begins to come up. Um, really you, you listen to some of these statements, the fear tactics that were brought up, the CIA is coming for us and the CIA may be coming for us. Right. If you, I hope that our FBI agents not listening, but, but sometimes the, the, it could be true, but I very much doubt that that's happened in most of our churches of today. Um, America wants to destroy our movement, right? This is the idea that they're taking away religious liberty and they're taking away all the things that we can do. Um, the, the idea that your family has abandoned you, they don't love you. They don't want you anymore. We are your family. We are the place you belong. These types of statements, we may have not heard verbatim and you may have heard this in the IFB, uh, but we get this same mentality of, uh, it's the us versus them that we talk about, you know, the scary part about all this, Brett is when you isolate people emotionally, you don't have to have change anymore. They will begin to police themselves. You begin to put them in a situation. I am number one. I can attest to this from Bible college, right? We had the rules there, but all of a sudden our Bible college became a little Jim Joneses. All of a sudden we had guys that were in the dorm that were trying to become a dorm super, but trying to become a room leader. And so they would begin to be a narc and they would begin to turn someone in. Hey, uh, I saw James. He, he didn't come in at the right time on curfew. Uh, and all of a sudden they are beginning to police themselves and the leaders in charge don't actually have to do anything because people are turning themselves in. And all of a sudden you get to come in and be the savior. You get to come in and, and, and issue out punishment or grace in that moment. And then now you look like the good guy. Right. You know, and Jones did it. He, he understood that fear binds people tighter than love. Jones understood how to use fear. Now, now let me say that while I know there are a lot of good IFB churches out there, there are a lot of IFB churches that do have extreme cultish like behaviors. And, and I've witnessed it and then a part of it. I remember a pastor getting up and telling a story about this lady that had came to him and she didn't like something that he did. And so she, she cursed at him and screamed at him. And then he said the next day, her son was going down the road in a car and hit a curve and had a wreck and die. And she went crazy from that. And today she's still in the psych ward at the mental hospital. That was a story I heard growing up. I heard it more than once and I thought, man, this is this, oh, I better listen to what the pastor tells me to, I better not speak against him. You know, he's tell us about the she bears and whatnot. And what's interesting, James, is I heard that story several times growing up. And then later on in life, I heard another IFB preacher tell the same story. So it's like my pastor heard that from somebody else and adopted it and made it his story. And so those tactics to try to fear, you know, try to fear you and to control this, just part of the manipulation tactics. Yeah. I remember Brett, I was at a youth conference one time. John, if he's listening, he's going to be able to test this. And some of our guys can attest to this where Ralph Sexton got up and he preached. It was the tsunami that happened in 05 there on, I think it was 05, 04, somewhere around there on the Japan, the coast of Japan or something like that. He got up and he read the newspaper and he said, there's a tsunami of sin coming and it's destroying America and it's coming this way. Look at this physical tsunami did. And he gave an illustration. I don't know if it was then or another time, but he said he was preaching at a coliseum in North Carolina and there was a young lady that got up and, and, and pointed in his face and said, I'm not going to believe what you have to say. I'm not going to believe in your lies. I'm not going to believe in who you say this God is. I'm going to do my own thing. I'm going to live my own life. And she walked out of that auditorium and she stepped onto the curb and a car jumped the curb and hit her and pinned her up against the side of the coliseum, the brick wall. And later that day she died. Her body was decapitated. And the last thing she said was, I'm not going to believe in what you have to say. Are you going to be that girl? Are you going to walk out of here and not believe? And this spiritual manipulation that came over what happened was, uh, was, was, was a fear based of, I've got to make this decision because if I step out of this room, I may die right now. And that may happen, but we're, we're causing a decision based on fear, not the Holy spirit moving in their world. We are becoming to be the Holy spirit. And that is what Jim Jones did. He stepped in and he became the Holy spirit in their lives. And this type of loyalty breeds, this type of, uh, weight on someone's life that they get to the point where they can't even breathe anymore because they're so burdened by what's going on around them. And by how I have to please the leader, not pleasing God. Right. I agree with you there. And as we go back to Jim Jones story. Jim Jones, in 1974, we see things begin to take a turn because Jim Jones announced his new vision and agricultural paradise in the jungles of Guyana, South America, a socialist utopia, a rage, a racial paradise, a land free from American corruption. That's where we'll go. He said a promised land, but the real reason for Jonestown was simpler. He needed a place where no one could escape. Guyana was remote, dense jungle, no nearby cities, no easy exit, limited government oversight. It was the perfect stage for complete control. 1977, when newspaper exposés were about to break, Jones panicked and moved hundreds of temple members to Guyana overnight. They flocked there believing they were building heaven on earth. When they arrived, they found exhaustion, malnutrition, surveillance, and armed guards. Jonestown was a prison disguised as paradise. Yep, that's what happened. And the story goes even more as Brett, they were going through this. Jim was promising and sending even like pictures back of how great this organization was and looking out. I mean, they were coming in, they were having to manually by hand with very small, heavy agricultural equipment, tear down massive jungles of trees and then build from the ground up. Barracks and living residents and what was supposed to be a five, ten year project. Jim Jones, he fast paced this thing. He kept saying, hey, can I send more? Hey, can I send more? Hey, can I send more? And what was happening was when they were actually showing what the ground was producing, they were actually going into town, buying fresh fruit and fresh vegetables and putting that on tables to entertain what was going on. To give the appearance that look at how great this new place is. We've already got ground growing and the guys that are on the ground were saying, listen, it's going to take several years for us to cultivate the ground for us to be able to plant, to produce food, to be able to provide for all these people. And so they were having to, when people started getting there, they had to actually start paying money to buy food and product to make it look well. And you can go and you can see the documentaries of storage houses that are full of food. None of it was grown there. It was all bought in the villages and brought there. And so Jim used this way as a full blown manipulation tactic that quickly became captivity for people. You begin isolating someone physically. Now you've spiritually isolated them to just believe in what you say. And now you've moved them to a new location. And emotionally, you were the only connection that they have to the world. And Brett, this is where they're at. They have now been emotionally, spiritually, and physically brought into this manipulative tactic. And, you know, look how clean the progression is. You know, the process that he uses, it's almost like a blueprint. First, you've got the first stage is belonging. You know, that's love bombing. That's you're part of a family. You're part of a cause. You're part of a mission. And then the second stage is loyalty. Loyalty means, you know, you're committed. The more committed you are to our cause, the more righteous you are. You hear the phrase, you know, you're part of something bigger than yourself. And that builds loyalty. And that loyalty then turns into dependence. Dependence means that your needs can only be met in this group. Outside this group, you cannot get your needs met. You can only get your needs met inside of this group. The next stage is fear. Fear comes in many, many forms. You've got punishment. You've got fear of rejection. And then you've got fear of the outside world. And when, you know, when he instills this fear, fear can make you do some things you wouldn't normally do. And then on top of that, the next stage is isolation. You know, you've got to make them doubt everybody but you. You even have to make them doubt themselves. They can't trust their own judgment. They can't trust the judgment of the world. The only judgment they can trust is the judgment of the leader. And then this goes into control. Utterly, 100%, full, total control. And you have that much control over somebody. You've set yourself up as an idol. You've set yourself up as God, basically. And that's exactly what he wanted to do. And, you know, going through this, James, it reminds me. But National Geographic put out a, many years ago, they put out a documentary on North Korea. And how people were in North Korea are so brainwashed. The Kim Jong-uns and the Kim Jong-ils. And how they look at their dear leader. And there's a lot of similarities here. Yeah, I can agree. I was, when you said that, it reminded me of a story when Fidel Castro took over in Cuba. And I think I've shared it on the podcast before. If not, I've shared it other places. But when Fidel Castro took over in Cuba, he realized that the only way he was going to actually take over is if he somehow won over the generation that was coming up. He knew if I can, I'm not going to be able to win the adults over. I'm not going to be able to win the grandparents over. But if I can win the kids, once in 10 years, 15 years, they're going to be so loyal to me that I'll be able to control the entire nation. And so what he did was he went into the kindergarten and first grade classrooms. And Cuba before this was a very religious country. They were very Catholic oriented and very much believed in God and believed in Jesus. And so he went into the classrooms and he told every kid. He would go into some of these classrooms, but he would take his representative and he would tell all of them. He would have all of his guards around the room and he would say, kids, I want you to bow your head. I want you to close your eyes and I want you to pray to God that he would give you an ice cream cone. And he said, all the kids would bow their head. You'd hear them mumbling a little bit. They'd open their eyes and they'd sit up and there wouldn't be an ice cream cone on their desk. He said he would look at them again and he'd say, now what I want you to do is I want you to bow your head. I want you to close your eyes and I want you to pray to Fidel Castro. Pray that Fidel Castro would give you an ice cream cone. Remember, these are five and six year old little kids and they would bow their heads and they would close their eyes and they would with all sincerity pray, Fidel, please give me an ice cream cone. It's hot outside. I want an ice cream cone. And while they were praying, the officers and the people that were around the room would go and they would put ice cream cones on everybody's desk. And he'd say, okay, now open your eyes. And they'd open their eyes and they would sit that ice cream cone and he'd say, now look, Fidel Castro will provide for you, but God won't. And he used this type of manipulation, this type of control and fear and isolation and brainwashing to an extent to show that he could be the one that was going to lead them. And the history shows that within 10 years of that time, he had complete and utter control and took this nation into this communist regime that was the way he wanted it and ran it for his lifetime. And then his, his brother's lifetime, Raoul, and had complete control over this during so much turmoil of time because he knew I can do this. If I take over the kids, this pattern of abuse happens here in Jim Jones as well. It starts with the relationships. It starts with, Hey, how can I help you today? How can I be there for you? Now it goes into the spiritual abuse of, uh, if you don't do this, this is what's going to happen to you. And then it leads into cults and people who are in ways that they never even thought or imagined that on the outside, look in and say, there's no way I would ever be a part of something like that. But then within moments of time, they are in that organization because control comes in and it doesn't come in and, and throw handcuffs on you and say, you're going to follow me in this cult. No, it comes in with love and care and compassion and manipulate people into doing what you want them to do. And ultimately you having control of their life. Right. And, and all six of those stages, belonging, loyalty, dependence, fear, isolation, control. Jones was a master. He did all six perfectly and tragically. In fact, survivor Tim Carter, who lived in Jonestown later said, we were tired, hungry, overworked. We still believe we were doing something good. And that's the scariest part. We thought the suffering was righteous. Manipulation doesn't make people feel foolish. It makes them feel faithful. And that's the thing. If, you know, if you question the suffering, then it's made to where you're questioning God. But you, you can't say enough. You better not say anything because you, you don't want to question God. But, you know, James, when I read the book of Psalms, I see a lot of people questioning their suffering. I see the psalmist saying, how long, oh Lord, will you forget me? How long? You know, we, we see this, you know, the Psalms, they question God all the time. And so this idea that, man, this, this, this, if I question my situation, I question the suffering, I'm going to be questioning God. It's just, just, just manipulation. Yeah. Let's pull back the curtain for a moment and begin to look at life inside Jonestown. The workload in Jonestown was brutal. Most people report that they worked 12 to 16 hour days. Farming in the heat in uncultured land that was never even designed to produce fruit and vegetables and vegetation for food. Mandatory meetings every single night. They had built a pavilion where every night you would go and you would hear a word from Jim Jones. Confession sessions began to happen where people were brought forward and they were humiliated to the point of tears and sometimes beatings that would happen as they would say that so-and-so stole an extra piece of bread or so-and-so did this to someone. And then the abuse and, and, and rape and molestation that was happening, that was going on is very widely documented because a lot of, all of these sessions were recorded and Jim would get up and he would take these confessions and he would manipulate and control people through this statement. Loud speakers were installed and put all over Jonestown in Guyana and 24 seven, they had to hear Jim Jones's voice preaching and teaching and talking to them every moment of every day while they're working, while they're sleeping, while they're walking their dog, while they're taking their kids for a walk. Whatever they were doing, they could always count on Jim Jones's voice coming through those loudspeakers through an old sermon, through a sermon that he was recently preaching, through a message, whatever it was, his voice was coming through the speakers. And everywhere you went in Jonestown, loudspeakers were there, but armed guards were patrolling all throughout the border. You couldn't leave. No one could come in. There was this, this town that was built inside of a jungle that had guards protecting people from coming in is what it was said, but it was to protect people from leaving as well. So that was what it was like inside. It was brutal. It was heartbreaking. It was devastating to everything you could do, but also Jim Jones controlled everything. This is what Jim Jones controlled. He controlled when you slept. You could not sleep unless Jim Jones gave you permission to sleep. You could not eat unless Jim Jones gave you permission to eat. You could not determine who you were going to talk to unless Jim Jones allowed you to talk to someone. You could not control where you went. He controlled where you went, where you slept, what you did, and what you ate. Every letter that you wrote, Jim Jones read, or one of his people in his inner circle would begin to read. They would open, and they would determine whether that letter was able to be able to be sent out of Guyana to be able to go back to whoever that was. And most letters never even left the premises. People at home said that my family was, it felt like my family member had disappeared off the face of the world. And they came to find out that there were letters and notes that were found in offices that were never sent out because they didn't want them sent out. The news you heard was the news that Jim Jones told you. There was no TV. There was no type of radios that were coming in and out. It was only the news that Jim Jones told you. And most of that news was, we have people that we have captured that were trying to come into this village to take over what we were doing. And everything you heard, you believed because Jim Jones was at the center of that information. He controlled everything, even to the point of controlling what you thought and how to think. Jones had a throne-like chair on an elevated platform where he broadcasted prophetic messages and political fear-mongering over his PA systems. This is some things that were said. The world is against us. They're coming to kill your children. I am your only shelter. This was not a community. This was a conditioning for people to ultimately listen to exactly what Jim Jones was saying and how they were going to respond to their life. Listen, as I'm sitting here listening to you reading this, I'm getting chills. I'm getting chills. Not only because of how bad, just hearing how bad this was, but thinking about the similarities between what you just read and my experience at House Anderson College. Now, I'm not saying House Anderson is Jonestown. I'm not saying that at all. But what I am saying is, you know, when you have to read the biography of the pastor on tape, you have to record yourself reading the whole book to be sure that you read it. And, you know, you have to sign in and sign out and you have to control where you go and you've got a curfew. And if you're a girl, you're not allowed to leave. And then you sing hymns about Jack Hiles, like old time religion. You think it was good for Dr. Hiles. And then this part where you talk about an elevated platform, he sits on the throne. Somebody should go. You should right now should go to YouTube and you need to look up Jack Hiles birthday at House Anderson College and see how much that man was worshiped on his birthday at House Anderson College. And what they did for him and the pageantry and the hooping and the hollering. And it's eerie, the similarities here between what I experienced and what's going on here. Did you want to say something about that? Yeah. Didn't they bring him on like a chariot, like on a throne that carried him down? Yeah, they have. I remember seeing that picture, that video where they put him on a throne. They had like 10 guys carrying them on his shoulder, like an old Roman king coming into the emperor. I remember seeing that. It was the first time I ever made this correlation in my mind. That's how that happened. But, man, that's crazy. Yeah. You know, it goes back to when somebody controls your environment, controls your schedule, controls your sleep, they can rewrite your sense of reality. That's what happened in Jonestown. And in essence, that's what happens to a lot of these cultish-like Bible colleges. You know, I'm not saying they're all like that, but the culty ones are. They control your environment, what you see, what you watch, what you hear. You control your sleep, control your schedule, what you do. Your brain actually starts to trust the manipulator over your own senses, and it warps your reality. Yeah. You know, Brett, one of the questions that people ask all the time is, okay, these people that are part of Jonestown, they must be like low IQ people, people that are very easily manipulated. These are people that, they can't be really educated people. This is the part that people miss. These folks were not dumb people. There were doctors. There were lawyers. There were educators. There were historians. There were people that were very high-level IQ people teaching in universities, people that had had their doctorate in medicine. Because what they had done is they had set up, if you had a problem and you needed surgery, you went to Jonestown and they would take care of your surgery. They would take care of all your dental work. They would take care of everything. And so these people now moved to Guyana and they're the ones that are also under the same control. They were very educated people. Now, there were some that were not, and there were some that were there just looking for the handout and looking for the free meal that was going to be given to them. But most of these people were not weak people. They were people who simply trusted the wrong person at the wrong time and they slowly lost their ability to tell from the truth to be able to see devotion. And they began to turn to devotion rather than truth. You know, I made a TikTok a few years ago, and it was about how me finally coming to the realization that all these preferences that I had been taught were not in the Bible. And most of the comments that I got were, man, how come you didn't just read the Bible? How come you didn't leave? How come you didn't do this or do that? Listen, manipulation drains the ability for you to think independently. You know, this brainwashing, it's a real thing. And when you get introduced into it slowly and you can't think independently, you cling to the person who thinks for you. And that's what happened in an extreme case. That's what happened here in Jonestown. When your own thoughts and your own judgment, when you can't trust your own judgment, then you're like, man, I need somebody else to think for me. If I can't think for myself, I need somebody else to think for me. And this leader who's done all this good for me and has loved me so much, I need to listen to him. And you lose your ability to think for yourself. Yeah, you're exactly right. And you know what happened was Jones began to be their lens of reality, their interpreter of reality. You could almost say that when they were in this culture, they were putting on the glasses of Jim Jones. Jim Jones wore sunglasses as well to hide some things. But they were putting on the glasses of Jim Jones and how they saw the world was through his eyes. And one person said it like this. Survivor Odell Rhodes said this. You didn't question Jim. You didn't doubt Jim. Because if you doubted or if you questioned him, you were betraying him. And this doubt that they were living became sin. If I doubt the leader, if I doubt what Jim is telling me, if he tells me that we're about to be under attack or the CIA is coming in and I question or I doubt that, I have now sinned. And manipulation, this is when it has reached its peak to where every single sentence, thought, phrase that you say is 100% absolute truth. And this is where the manipulation has to be controlled, where the boundaries has to be in place beforehand so you can begin to see this beforehand. I want to preface the audience to brace themselves. Because what they're about to hear is shocking. Starting in 1977, Jones began staging White Nights. These were emergency suicide drills. In the middle of the night, loudspeakers would blast. White Nights! White Nights! Come to the pavilion. Members would gather terrified. Jones would tell them, The government's coming! The government's coming to destroy you! We must die as martyrs! Then he offered them a drink. Sometimes it was juice. Sometimes it was alcohol. Sometimes it was nothing. When they drank, Jones told them, You've just committed suicide. And then moments later, he would say, This was a loyalty test. And you passed. This repeated dozens of times. By 1978, Jonestown had rehearsed its own death. This is chilling. This is chilling. This is like training people to ignore their own survival skills. And before we did this research, I never knew this. And I still have, I don't want to skip to the end of our story, but I have the aerial views of the aftermath of Jonestown. I have those images burned into my brain. And when you first see that, you think, man, why would they do something like that? But then you read something like this and you hear something like this and you're like, oh, they had been conditioned. They had been trained. They had done this before and not died. And so, you know, it was just, he was just priming them. Some of them could have, maybe some of them could have thought it was, it's just another drill. You know, it's crazy to hear this kind of stuff. Yeah, this is, so in your list of six, belonging, loyalty, dependency, fear, isolation, control. This now adds the next layer. You can almost put seven, which is the grooming stage. This is the stage where psychologically you begin to break people down to the idea of normalizing something that they would think would be an unthinkable, thinkable thing to do. He made the unthinkable thinkable. He made the idea of death an idea of normality. And all of a sudden he began to psychologically groom them into thinking that what I'm doing is okay. And to think about this, Brett, like you said, when you begin to do this over and over and over again, and when we get to episode three, the next episode next week, you're going to see how everything that Jim Jones had prophesied was in quotation marks here coming true. Everything that he was saying, the government's coming in to take everything, right? All of a sudden the senator's coming in. Everything that he had said is now to the point where he is a congressman. I'm sorry. What's coming in? This is where he begins to make his ideas crazy. Exactly. And by tying suicide to loyalty, just like you said, it made death honorable. It made death became the ultimate act of faith. And when Congressman Leo Ryan stepped foot in Jonestown, this is where things take a major turn for the worst. Yeah. Yeah. This leads us to the tipping point, Brett. This is the moment where everything that was going on in the background, Jim Jones, he had some nefarious things going on that we're not going to talk about on this podcast. He had some things that, uh, that, that drugs that he was doing and medicating himself, things that he was doing to manipulate the people began to truly activate in himself. What he had conditioned his people to do, because now he had trained these people to listen to him. And because of his paranormal, because of his paranoia, I'm sorry, paranoia of what was going on, he just snapped and couldn't control it anymore. And like you said, when, when Congressman Leo Ryan stepped foot on Jonestown, that visit changed everything that we know about Jim Jones and about Jonestown and about Guyana, South Africa. Within 48 hours of Leo Ryan stepping foot of Jonestown, the massacre happened. And that's where we're going to pick up next week. That's where it really gets heavy. And we're going to spend some time next week talking through this and, uh, hope we've enjoyed this. Hope you've enjoyed. We're giving you a 10,000 foot view of what's going on. We could go in depth for hours and hours on the research we've done. We're just trying to consolidate this to help you to be able to understand what manipulation is, how to realize what that is and how to have boundaries set up. Um, and so hopefully you've enjoyed this. Hopefully you are taking notes as we walk through this. Um, Brett, any final closing thoughts before we shut it down today? I'm just, uh, amazed at some of the similarities that I've seen in this. And I think our listeners too will be able to pick out, well, man, man, it wasn't that extreme, but I'm seeing the earmarks of some things that I have experienced in the past. And that's kind of the reason we're showing you an extreme example, very extreme example. This taken to its manipulation taken to its completion. And, uh, I just hope people were able to help people with this. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm one of these documentary guys. My wife says I'm weird because I watch weird documentaries on cults and different things, but I watched a documentary on NXIVM, NXIVM, and, uh, the cult of that. And, uh, just the isolation and control that could happen. People that were, I mean, movie stars, people that were in, had their life put together were trusting in these leaders to control their lives. And so before you say that'll never happen to me, or I'll never let that happen again, we want to give you some boundaries to put up, to be able to recognize. And those triggers go off and say, okay, maybe that's not right. Maybe I need to take a step back to understand what's going on in your own life. And so thank you for listening today. Thank you for tuning in. As always, if these episodes have done a blessing to you, give us a like rating review on iTunes and Spotify, wherever you listen to. Give us a comment. And that we hope you've enjoyed these couple of episodes. We've got a couple more left as we continue to walk through the life of Jim Jones. And so until next time, to God be the glory. Great things he has done. Found my new name. Found that good grace. Found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning. Has no ending. Found that second chance. Found my best friend. Found my forgiveness. Found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. Found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast. For Freedom Podcast. 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