220. A Story Of Spiritual Manipulation - Jim Jones and Peoples Temple - Part 4

The morning after the massacre, a few survivors emerged from the jungle. People who had hidden during the chaos or had been away on assignments. Their testimonies are haunting. Odell Rhodes states that there were mothers running, trying to hide their children, but the guards brought them back. Patience Thrash said, when I woke up, it was silent. No voices. I stepped outside and the whole world was dead. Tim Carter said, Jim Jones didn't just kill those people. He killed pieces of us who survived. Survival for many didn't feel like escape. Felt like guilt, confusion. And many reported and have said today that trauma has lasted decades, if not their entire lifetime. The world would ask, how could this happen? How did so many follow one man? But the survivors knew the truth. It didn't start with poison. It started with manipulation. 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, he set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for pharisy. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. For freedom, he set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for pharisy. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. Let grace begin. For freedom, he set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for pharisy. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Now, here are your hosts, James Seyfried and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the show today. Thank you for joining us in this wonderful series that we've been talking through. What a great day it is to serve the Lord. Brett, at the time of this recording, it is Holy Week. It is our time, as I'm sure you have been reflecting of your Israel trip, just as I have this week, thinking about the places that we went as we lead up to Golgotha, Calvary, and the Garden Tomb this weekend as we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Brett, how have you been doing? Today's April 1st as we're recording this April Fool's Day. How are things with you, my friend? Man, things are going great. Things are going great. In fact, you're talking about Israel and our trip. Of course, I showed some pictures this past Sunday. You know, our trip and things like that. Shared it with the folks. And, man, it's like you said, it's Easter time. You know, we can, you know, got to be careful saying that word Easter. We don't want people to think we're talking about Ishtar. Yeah. But we won't have none of that junk. Resurrection Sunday is coming up. It's always my favorite time of year. We've talked about this before, but on Palm Sunday, I do the Lord's Supper. I do the Lord's Supper about four times a year. Palm Sunday is one of them. Just a good time for our church family to get together. I messed up a little bit Sunday. My piano player, I sing the same hymn after every Lord's Supper. And my piano player, she's used to doing the doxology. Well, I do the family of God. And she played the wrong music, and it made me forget what hymn I was supposed to sing. And so my wife had to remind me from the pew what song I was going to sing. And so then we had to do acapella. But bless God, it was a good day. It was a good day in the house of God. And so our Holy Week's going good right now. Yeah, we changed some things up this year. We did our Easter egg hunt on this past Sunday, Palm Sunday, and just had a great time with the kids. Normally, we do it on Saturday. We moved it to the Sunday before Easter just to alleviate some of that hectic Easter weekend. Easter weekend can be crazy busy anyways with our sunrise service and everything else. So we did that. I think it was a good move for us. It was really well. We're going to be doing communion this week. And it's going to be a great time. I don't know if we talked about this on the podcast or off the podcast, but do you remember telling me that there were some churches that had a tradition where they not only did a graveyard service, but the family stood on their family's graves? Yeah, I don't know if we talked about that last week or not, but man, I mentioned it today. Yeah, they go and they stand on their graves at 7 in the morning, and they have a sunrise service, and they're standing on their dead in the graveyard. So our last choir practice, I'm in the choir, so I'm a pastor that's in the choir. And so we have a little lull in between songs, and I told everybody in the choir that, and they looked at me and was like, oh, yeah, man, we used to do that too. We go out here in the graveyard and stand on the graves. And we was out there one day, we had an interim pastor, and his son, about 17 years old, was standing on a grave, and he locked his knees and had passed out. And so they were sharing some war stories of standing on the graves at Rocky Point. Wow, that is incredible. Brett, you're part of living history there. I love it. I know. Oh, man. Hey, April Fool's Day is today. And so I was this morning getting ready in the shower, and I had this idea that came to my mind. And I said, Allie, I want you to do this. I want you to walk into the living room. Kids are getting ready for school because I get up early on Wednesdays and go to the middle school. I said, go in there, fall down, and act like you broke your leg, and just start screaming in pain. See how they react. Are they going to act with empathy? Are they going to act with, like, laughter? What are they going to do? And so I get out. I'm getting ready. She said, James, I don't think I can do it. I think I would laugh too much. Like, I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face. I said, okay, I'll do it. So I get ready. I walk out there, and they're not in the living room. Like, where are they at? Where are these kids at? They're outside. We bought them new bikes because we're about to go camping. They're outside riding their bikes in the driveway at, like, 6 o'clock in the morning. It was the coolest thing ever. And so I'm getting my coffee ready, and Jade comes in, and she said, my handlebar's not working right. So I went out there, and I tightened up, and I told Allie, I said, I'm going to do it outside with them since they're outside. So they're all standing there, and I go to turn to walk up my steps to the porch to go into the house, and I just kick the steps so they hear the noise, and I just fall down. I grab my ankle, and I'm screaming. I'm hollering. Oh, my ankle, my ankle. I think I broke it. I think I broke it. Jade and Brody immediately, and they run to me. They're trying to figure out what's going on. Jade darts inside straight to Mom. Mom, Mom, Mom. Dad's falling. He's hurt himself. Brody's screaming in the background. Oh, not one, one. Oh, not one, one. So they're screaming. They all come out. They come to check on me. Allie's, are you okay? Okay. I'm grabbing my ankle. I'm like, I'm writhing in pain. I go, I think I'm healed. April Fool's Day. All good. And I stand up, and Brody is just standing there, like, white as a ghost, looking at me like, how dare you do that? He's grabbing his heart. He's like, I'm having a heart attack. This is the greatest thing ever. So, crew, rule, dad. I don't ever do anything like that to my kids, but, oh, it just, it came to me this morning. I had to do it. Bro, there's a special place in She-Hole for you for that. When you get, when you get on the other side, you're going to have to spend six months in Tartars for that little stunt. I'm sure I will, but it was well worth it. Unfortunately, my ring camera only got a little bit of it in all the audio. So, I'm going to clip that out and send it to you here in a little bit so you can see it. Now, you see, I forgot it was April Fool's, so I haven't done anything cool like that. But today's still young. Do something. Do something. Yeah, I want to do it early so everyone's even thinking about it, because I'm sure someone would have done something at school, and they had known that it was April Fool's Day. So, yeah, I wanted to do that. So, Brett, how are things other than that? Man, are you doing well? Man, things are going good. You just, I mean, how are you liking your tattoo? Man, I love it. It's great. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I was showing it to my buddy Bryson the other day, and a couple of my church members saw it, and they love it. Man, it's been great. Yeah, I've been getting compliments. It's kind of opened up a door. Yeah. You know, it's kind of, for me, it's kind of like a tool that people, they wouldn't normally talk to me or come up to me and ask me about it. And I've got stuff. If I see someone with a tattoo, I can compliment them, show me mine, and it opens up a conversation. I think it's been a really cool thing. I'll tell you this. You know, JC just got that one on his arm, Tetelestai, with the three crosses, and I text to her. I'm messing on Facebook. I said, man, you're not allowed to get no more cool tattoos before me. So he's going to have to stop that. But yeah, I'm enjoying it, too. I can't wait for the next one one day. Yeah, that's great. Love it, man. Yeah, I'm excited about what we've got going on. I had an interview just a couple of days ago from this, but weeks ago from when this comes out, about our book, the book I just put out with, From Brokenness to Freedom. And my buddy Bryson, he runs a little radio place. He's on staff there. Radio station, that's the word I was looking for. And he had me come on, and we just talked for like 30 minutes, unscripted. He's going to send me the audio. I'm probably going to drop it on here as a podcast, just talking through a couple of things. But yeah, it's a great time, and I got to do that, hanging out with him, and looking forward to hanging out with you, Brett. With the time of this recording, man, we're like two months, less than two months away from being in Orlando at our convention, the Southern Baptist Convention. And what a great time that's going to be. A wonderful time of fellowship the week before and then the week of. Can't wait to go down there. What is, let me ask you something before we move forward with the show. Something that just popped. Can you think of an April Fool's where somebody got you? I don't remember. Let me, let me, let me, I'm going to give you a story. I give you time to think if you think of one. Okay. My, my youth pastor growing up, he did this trick on us on April Fool's. He went into the boys' bathroom. He was a trickster. Okay. This is in our Christian school at our church. He went in to the boys' bathroom and he drained the water out of the toilet. He lined the toilet with saran wrap and filled it up to the line with Mountain Dew and dropped some baby roofs in there and then brought the boys in one at a time and pretended to grab them out of the toilet. Yes. When I tell you shock and awe was on the face of, of me and these other classmates, they were like, we thought we were going to have to commit him. You know, that was, it was, it was the craziest thing, a trick I'd ever played on me in my life. I mean, I thought the dude had lost his mind. Wow. No, I, I've never been gotten on April Fool's. Our first year of marriage, Allison messaged her mom on April 1st. We were about to buy a house and she had been begging us to get pregnant and have a baby. And Allison just texted her and said, Hey, I got some news for you later. That's all she said. Got some news for you. And her mom like went crazy. It was like, I'm going to get a pregnancy announcement or maybe she told her we were pregnant. I can't remember what it was. And then she was like, yeah, we, we just put an offer on a house or something. And her mom was like, I'll let down. Cause we weren't pregnant. She thought we were pregnant. And she was like, you know, it's April Fool's. What do you expect? I'm luckily like, I think she just let her on to that, but I can't remember exactly. That was like 14 years ago. But no, I've never, never been gotten by one. I'm sure someday someone's going to get me pink slip on my desk or something. And you know, maybe that's not going to be an April Fool's day. That may be real. I tell you what? Another thing that we've got coming up here in the near future is we're going to work for Freedom Podcast is going back to Nicaragua. And we're going to have a chance to put on a pastor's conference. About 100 Nicaraguan pastors are going to be coming in. And I mean, you're going to be speaking to them and teaching them some things. We've got some gifts for them. In addition to the normal ministry that we do down there. And our church right now is raising funds to go on this missions trip. And it'll be really cool for us to get down there. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, right now it's me, my wife, and my son that are going. I had a couple that were going to go, and their schedules just didn't allow them to go. So it's just us going this year. So it's going to be a great time. Super pumped about that. And I've been talking to Lee a little bit. And so I can't wait for that to happen. And then, as always, if you haven't checked on our cigar line, check it out. I've been having some great things going on there. I had a buddy of mine in Tennessee that reached out to me and said, Hey, I've been dabbling in it a little bit. And I heard you got a line. Let me know. And so he said he did one of the Deacons and the likes of the Chocolate Maduro last night. And it was great. He said it was awesome. And so excited to hear about that. Brett, there was one other thing I was going to say. I think it just lost it. I can't remember what it was, but it was on the tip of my mind. But, yeah. Yeah, it was right there. But, yeah, other than that, oh, here it is. Next week, we've got a special episode coming to you. We're going to be interviewing James Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon's son from Texas. Not Charles Spurgeon's son, but from the Texas Baptist Crucible. We had him come on last year when we were talking about Bob Jones. Bob Jones. Bob Gray. And he's going to come on, and he's starting a podcast now. So we're going to talk about his podcast. We're going to talk about Bob Gray and Scott Gray and all this crazy stuff that's going on there. And so if you want to tune in next week, that'd be great as well. Looking forward to – we've just got a couple of weeks left for this season before we take our summer break. And we've got some great couple of episodes lined up before we break for the summer. But, man, we are excited about this season of the podcast and what the Lord's doing. Absolutely. I wouldn't rather be anywhere else than here with James and the podcast. And we've got a lot of exciting things coming down the pike. Stay with us. Yeah, absolutely. Let's jump into our episode today, Brett. I opened up with some quotes from survivors. Man, as you listen to those quotes and as people – as our listeners have listened to those quotes as well, you can see and feel the cost of manipulation. You can understand these are not just victims, but these are people who lived their lives in this area in this moment. Man, they've got stories. They've got hurt. They've got difficulties, trauma that they're going to deal with for the rest of their life. Some of these people were young babies and children, but some were in the prime of their life that were, I mean, just ready to fight the world. And now all of a sudden, through this manipulation that we're going to look at here in a little bit, was just devastating to see what this one man, Jim Jones, was able to do with the authority that he had taken from these people. James, manipulation is just – it isn't just harmful. Manipulation is just absolutely devastating. Manipulation actually rewires people's identities. It takes years and years to recover from it, and some people never, ever fully recover from it. You're completely changed. You're a different person. Because one of the reasons why it's so devastating is because you have to relearn what's true. You have to relearn what's safe. People have to find themselves. They have to learn who they really are. You know, I've had this journey in manipulation, not to this extent of Jim Jones, but you just have to – it just rewires your brain. And you have to come out the other side and take some time and untangle the tangled mess that is your mind. And it's a devastating process. Yeah, when you said that, it reminded me of the picture that you've seen. I think it's Charlie Sheen where he's got all the whiteboard with the different lines going to all the different things, trying to prove the conspiracy. That's how your mind begins to happen, right? You're thinking one way, and all of a sudden it just gets jumbled up, and you're having to reprogram how everything works and how everything goes in your life. And, you know, that's why we have to understand what manipulation is, not just understanding it historically, right? Not just taking an example of something that happened back in the early 1800s, 1900s, sorry, later 1900s, and taking this example or the examples that we've used from Jack Howes and other independent fundamental Baptist movement people. But we have to understand in our own relationships, in the leadership that you're around, in the environment that you're in, and begin to see, okay, is this person manipulating me? Or do they really just care about what's going on and they just want to see what's best for me? Oftentimes when we go down these rabbit holes, it's like this with anything, right? Once you see something is the enemy, it's always the enemy. Everything is manipulation when you see manipulation done wrong, right? Once when people begin to see that Israel is the enemy, everything is Israel's fault, right? 9-11 was Israel. These things happened. It was because of Israel. Like, it's always going to be Israel's fault. You killed Charlie Kirk. That's the new thing right now. Yeah. So what happens is we get this tunnel vision, and we see everything through that one lens. Now, not everything is manipulation, but we need to be aware of what it looks like and how that begins to affect our life, not just from a historical idea, but from a broader perspective. And so we're going to sort of go through this pattern and walk through today this sort of 10 phase that Jim Jones used and look at this and give some good feedback for how you can recognize these things. Here's what our audience needs to understand is that Jim Jones didn't just pull this off in one singular moment. There wasn't one big thing that happened. He followed a predictable, repeatable pattern of manipulation. This is one used by narcissists, abusers, corrupt leaders everywhere use this process. And here's the pattern. Number one, the first step is love bombing. We've heard this term before, love bombing. And this is what Jones did. Jones offered belonging. He offered family. He offered purpose. He made marginalized people feel seen. It's the classic, you know, you're safe with me. And it kind of felt like unconditional love, but actually it was a hook. That's how people get their hooks into you. They create dependency with love bombing. And I've heard this term many times. If you ever want to jump in, just please do so. The next one is isolation. Yeah. For love bombing, I'd love to love to talk about that just for a minute because love bombing, it looks great on the outside, right? You want to care for people. You want people to care for you. And so just because someone loves you doesn't mean they're love bombing you. Love bombing is simply the explanation that they are using this love as a tool to take over what you see valuable. And so what did Jim Jones do? He said, you don't have a family. Let me give you a family. You don't have a means of income. Let me give you a means of income. Let me allow you to work for the ministry and I'm going to pay for you. But now you're going to have to do everything for me. And all of a sudden the person began to disappear. And so love can turn into this, but love does not equal manipulation. Oftentimes people, because someone made them feel appreciative, now all of a sudden they never want to be feel appreciative because they're afraid that they'll be turned into a manipulated person. And so it's drawing this boundary, going back to our very first episode in this series with Jim Neuheiser, having those good boundaries to still accept the love, but not allow the love to control you. And that's what Jim Jones was able to do through this love bombing was allowing this love to control every aspect. Do you not care that I'm taking care of you? Do you not care that I've taken care of your family? Look what I've provided for you. You had nothing. You had no one. And so now love is the tool that he's using to manipulate every action that they're going through. So, right, exactly. You know, true, true love as Christ describes is selfless, selfless. Love you actually love the other person more than you love yourself. That's the new commandment he gave us. This type of love and the love bombing, it's self-serving love. Because it's not genuine. It's a means to an end. It's a method of control. People are aware of what they're doing when they're doing it. And you've got to be really careful. Because that's one of the, you know, this is an easy way to get pulled into this process of manipulation. And so you just always have to be, and it's a shame you have to do that. You have to be weary of somebody showing you affection. But you do have to just go into every situation with your eyes open. The next step is isolation. Okay. At first, it's emotional isolation. Then it turns to physical isolation. You separate people from dissenting voices. And then they cling to the manipulator. And the point is, you know, you take a person and you make their world smaller and smaller and it prevents anything that goes against the narrative from reaching that person. And, you know, and when you isolate a person and they have no other voice to listen to, then they're going to depend on the only voice that's speaking to them. And that is the manipulator. And that's how isolation works. Yeah, that's the one thing that, you know, isolation does. When you don't have someone to bounce ideas off of and you don't have an outside voice or opinion, all of a sudden you begin to only trust the one and singular voice that you have, which is what Jim Jones wanted. He wanted them to only go to him and trust him. He was the godlike figure on the throne sitting there like that Moses, right? Moses, when you look at Moses in the Old Testament, he enjoyed everyone coming to him and asking him for advice. And his father-in-law came and said, you can't do this. You're going to kill yourself. You need other people. You need other voices. And there was some resistance, but he listened to his father. He understood that there was value to that shared leadership. And we can oftentimes get stuck in that, like I said before, tunnel vision and only having one voice or one idea. Brett, number three is the destructive empathy. And oftentimes this is what happens is Jones appears compassionate while slowly gaining emotional leverage. He begins to use the things that he's done. Have I not cared for your parents? Have I not cared for you? And all of a sudden he uses empathy or sympathy to destroy everything that's around them so that he can have more and more control. And so he, like I said before, in one of the cold openings, he would actually be able to like make himself hurt and feel bad in front of people. And he would even, when he would sense, one person said this, when he would be preaching, if he sensed the crowd wasn't in it, he would have this ability to fake a heart attack or to fake an injury just so people would feel sorry for him so that he would gain more emotional credit with them. And so he uses this empathy to destroy people. Right. Right. He would, he would, he would even, and this is another way of looking at it, but he would make people feel grateful for his attention. This is like, and he would, and that's just twisting, tightening his grip on their loyalty. Next thing he would do would, would instill fear. He would instill fear into people. And this came in the form of threats, perceived enemies, imagined conspiracies and punishments. And that's what fear does. Fear binds people tighter than affection. Fear is the glue. And, you know, fear makes us, you know, throw out love and reason and things like that. And he was a master at creating fear in someone. And as the guy standing behind the pulpit, as the guy standing with the mic, he could tell the stories to manipulate people, to fear him. And that was like his greatest tool that he used. Yeah. And you got to remember, this was before Google chat GPT. He didn't have the ability to say something and be fact-checked on the moment. And so he could say whatever he wanted, right? The Nazis are coming after us. They came after the Jews. They're coming after us. You know, whatever he wanted, he could say. And there was no ability. They didn't have any internet. They were isolated. They didn't have TV. They're in Guyana. And so in Jonestown, they were completely isolated from everything. So he was able to instill whatever fear he wanted. And then on top of that, after he's got the fear, after he's isolated them, he now begins to overload their brain. We call it cognitive overload, where he begins to give them long working hours. He begins to give them sleep deprivation, constant noise, information control. And people stop thinking critically when they're exhausted. When I read through that, when I begin to think through that, my mind goes to The Walking Dead, right? I don't know if you ever watched The Walking Dead, but me and my wife, we watched every episode. But when they take, oh, man, I forgot the guy's name. But when they take Daryl and they lock him up and they play the noise, they're in the place and they turn the lights on. They leave everything on and they sleep deprive him to break him. That's what this is doing without necessarily breaking them. He's just commanding them to work. And he's overloading everything that they ever think or can imagine in their life. Was that before or after Terminus? That was after Terminus. Okay. So I really watched it up until Terminus. I really quit watching after Glenn died. Oh, yeah. I'm one of those on that bandwagon. It was after Glenn. It was after Glenn died. Okay, yeah. So, you know, but this is what you're saying is true about cognitive overload. You know, when you're too tired to question, too tired to resist, too tired to analyze the situation that you're in. You know, why do you think we see these cults, these caricatures? They got these guys out there working in the field, working in a garden, you know, making jams and jellies and stuff like that. And it's to wear them out. It's to keep them exhausted, to keep them controlled. And, man, I know we're going to talk about this a little later in the episode. But when you bring this in a modern context, especially what me and you have been through, I mean, with churches keeping us, you know, on the church property seven days a week. Every day you're going to the church. Sunday to Sunday, you're on the church property. And it just really shows these tactics across the board. Next, we've got public confession and shame. Every weakness confessed became a tool for control. And when you turn people's vulnerability into leverage and shame them into submission and shame them into obedience, it can also be a great tool of manipulation. Yeah, and if you listen to it, it's a very long podcast. But if you listen to Martyr Made by Daryl Cooper, he goes into depth in one of his episodes where he talks about how Jim Jones really uses this control method. And one guy, I think he got caught raping a little girl or something inside the compound. They brought him in and they began beating him black and blue. They began using this as a public shaming, as a public confession. And Jim Jones is sitting on his throne, allowing it to happen. And then all of a sudden, Jim Jones steps in. Jim Jones is the savior who stops the beating and said he's had enough. Now we're going to allow him to have restoration. And so he used the public shame. He used the confession that was made or the act that was caught. But then now he is the guy that comes in and he's the savior. I just took care of you. Now, remember this. Remember this. I took care of you. They could have killed you, but I allowed it to stop. Now be loyal to me. And all of a sudden, and then there would be times where he would be the one that would bring things up. And then he would be the one that would allow the persecution to happen. And then he would be the one to stop it. So he's controlling every one of the narratives. He's the judge, jury, executioner. The president that's given the pardon. He's all of it wrapped in one. And so he uses these confession and shame moments to even drive home even more how much he can control everything. Then he goes into this us versus them rhetoric, right? We are the right ones. The world is evil. They're coming after us. We're righteous. If you leave, you're betraying me. You're betraying your family. Have we not cared for you? Have we not loved you? All of a sudden, this is the constant feeling and the constant preaching that's given is this family is the greatest thing ever. Why would you leave this? Right. And when you frame loyalty as righteousness and departure as betrayal, you make leaving feel not only dangerous, but you make leaving feel morally wrong. And, you know, you're guilted into disdain. And that's what this rhetoric does. Next step is dehumanization. Dissenters were traitors. Reporters were enemies. Children belong to the cause. And this is just a way of stripping people of their individuality, stripping people of their humanity. You look at other people not as humans, but as less than you, as less than the group. And it's very dangerous. Yeah. Anytime someone takes away our humanity and makes us robots, basically is what he's doing. It allows any little thing to happen like what we're going to look at with the big ask in the very moment. Because you're just a pawn. You're nobody. There's no value to your life. And so, you know, everyone's either an enemy, a traitor, or you're here for the long haul. Then he began to create crises. Creating crises was something that he did to create these imaginary made-up emergencies to justify the extreme measures. We talked about it in depth with the white knights, and he prepared them to prepare themselves for their very own death. Whether that be death by the people coming in to take away the town, or the way that he installed it with the drinking of the different drinks in order to say it was poison. But I saved you. You guys passed the test. The ultimate test of loyalty is what he is basically doing in this moment. You actually normalize extreme obedience. You make these fake crises, and you just get so used to it, and you get calloused to it. And it just becomes a normal way of life after a while. And that's one of the ways that he controls you. And then, 10, we've got the final ask. After years of conditioning, the unthinkable becomes obedience. This isn't insanity. It's just strategy. He, this whole time, it's not random, the things that he did. They were calculated. They were thought out. It was processed. He knew what he was doing the whole time. All leading up to that fateful day when the Kool-Aid came out. That's what it all been leading to. And Jim Jones knew what he was doing the entire time. So, this is where it hits home for us. Like, Jonestown that we've talked about, it's an extreme example of the pattern, but the pattern isn't. It's like, the pattern's normal. We see this pattern all the time. These are the same tactics used today by narcissists, by abusers, by corrupt leaders everywhere to control people. And reading through this and listening to us speak about them, especially if you come out of a cult or if you come out of an extreme IFB-type background, you can see where your leader, your man of God, used these in your life. Yeah, one of the things that Jim Neuheiser said in his book and how to say no is so valuable because manipulation thrives anywhere that truth is taken away. Right? Luther, Martin Luther said, the truth will set you free. That was what led him to lead the Catholic Church. The truth is what sets us free in our lives. And any time we are in an area of our life where truth is replaced with something, manipulation will quickly follow. Right? When truth is replaced with a personality, look at this big shiny figure who's bombastic, who's energetic, who's leading people, and all of a sudden he's the one leading everything. Truth doesn't really matter. Right? We're throwing truth out the door. You can take this example, not only with Jim Jones, but with LDS and with Joseph Smith and any of these big figures who take over the personality. Relationships that we go through, friendships, families. When that is the main priority and truth is thrown out the door and it doesn't matter what the truth is, these are the things that matter, manipulation begins to follow. So, spiritual leaders or even church systems. Right? When the system of the church is the main priority and the truth of scripture is not the main priority, all of a sudden manipulation can happen. But I'm going to tell you a story real quick of a church at a guy up in Batcave, North Carolina. In Batcave, I heard this story secondhand from one of my former pastors. He was with a mentoring group and the pastor had been there about a year and they had been working through some things. And there was a message. He was sitting at a table at a deacon's meeting and the deacon was sitting on the other side of the table and he was sort of had his arms crossed and wasn't really paying attention to anything. And the pastor finally looked at him and said, Brother Swimso, is everything okay? He said he reached into his shirt pocket and he pulled out a CD or DVD and slid it across the table and said, this is what our church needs to get back to. It was a preaching video from like 10 years ago or something. And he said, well, you know, we're doing things a little different now. And the deacon stood up and said, we need to do things the way the bylaws say we need to do it. And he goes, well, that's good. But he said, I just want to do things the way the Bible says we should do it. And out of the deacon's mouth, this is what he said. I don't care what the Bible says. I care what the bylaws say. Right. The church system, the church system of how we do things is now the most privacy thing. The truth doesn't matter anymore because we've got a system that's going to tell us what to do. And he looked at it and said, if that's what we're going to do, if we're going to follow the bylaws more than we're going to follow the Bible, I'm probably not the best pastor for you. And a couple months later, he resigned and was out of there. But that's what can happen, right? The men create the bylaws to create what they want to be done. And that's going to dictate everything. The system now replaces the truth. I'll tell you, one of these tactics was used on me. It was the public confession and shame. And what had happened was I was on staff at a church and I was told to lead the choir. I'm not a music guy. I've never claimed to be a music guy. I can't carry a tune in a five gallon bucket. But I was told to be the choir director and I obeyed. And so I'm leading the choir. And when prior practice is before the evening service. So I'm up there leading the choir while people are coming in and out of the back door, standing at the back. So the choir practice has an audience. And I had been struggling. But on this particular day, I felt that we had hit a stride. I was asking opinions. People were talking back. They were laughing. They were having a good time. People were interjecting with their ideas. They were talking to each other. It was the first time in choir practice I had ever actually had fun. Now, unbeknownst to me, the pastor was standing in the back with the men of the church. He couldn't have any beacons because they were all divorced. And he was, you know, because that was the rules of that church. And so he's standing in the back at, you know, talking to the men. And he was like, what do you see up there? It took the men a minute to get what he was getting at. But they caught what he was trying to get them to say. And they said, no control. Right. No, there's no control up there. He's just letting them do whatever they want to do. So he called me into his office later after the evening service or sometime that week. I can't remember. And he said, you're losing control with that choir. And, you know, we was and he told me about the men in the back standing back there judging me. And said, you need to go into that choir, stand in front of them. And you need to apologize for doing that. And you need to crack down on them. And the next choir practice, it was awful. I had to go in front of that choir. I had to say, look, last time, let y'all talk, have fun. Can't do that anymore. I'm in charge. I'm the choir director. You need to listen to me. These are the lines he told me to say. And just suck all the air and all the joy out of the room. Just being controlled, being shamed, being made to get up in front of people, confess your sins. And it was just an awful, awful situation. So I can see glimmers of this in what I went through. And, you know, the thing is, when we see people using these tools like guilt and fear and isolation, shame, emotional leverage, spiritual authority, these tools are just used to keep others dependent. And the point is to bend people's choices to someone else's control. Yeah, and, you know, Brett, I would dare to say that there is not one person that, if they could stand today from Jonestown, they would say, we saw it happening. We knew what was going on. We knew this was the end game. We knew this is what he had decided to do from day one when he recruited us. They would all say to you, we didn't know what was happening until it was too far gone. Until we were too deep into it. Until we were hundreds of thousands of miles away in South America, Guyana, in this new town with no communication, with no way to reach home. There was no other people there. Jim Jones was getting all of my Social Security. So there was nothing I could do. I'd already signed my confession away saying that he could do or say whatever I wanted if I left. People would leave and they would get brought back and they would get beat and I don't want that to happen to me. And they would all say they didn't see it happening until it was too deep. Until I was too far in. Until it was too far in to leave and I didn't know another way out. Right? This is what we call in the theological or in the psychological world the Stockholm Syndrome. Right? Where the lady gets kidnapped from her family and the man begins to abuse her sexually. And now all of a sudden she becomes almost like I'm his wife. There's no way out. This is my purpose in life. Because they have been bought into the system of what's going on. Exactly. Jones didn't fool stupid people. He fooled trusting people who are caring, loyal, willing to trust. These are the people that he ended up pulling the wool over. And it's just really a shame at the end of the day. What we want to do is we want to compare some of these things to some scripture biblical parallels. Bring this into the biblical realm. And scripture gives clear warnings about leaders who manipulate. In 2 Peter 2 verses 1-3 it says, There will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies. And through covetousness they will, with feigned words, with nice words, make you merchandises of you. And so he begins to talk through, 2 Peter says, beware of these things. Know that they're going to come in. Know that there are false wolves among you. Ephesians 4-14 says this, Carries about with you every wind of doctrine, but the slight of men and cunning craftiness. Right there is this he's telling us, Paul is telling us, there is a craftiness of man that's going to come in and pull you away. Romans 6-18 says, Jesus himself warned of this in Matthew 7-15. He says this, Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but are truly wolves on the inside. And we have to ask ourselves, we have to meditate in our hearts and say, Does the person in front of me truly care about who I am and what I'm doing? Or are they just using me for the sake of what I can give to them? You see, Jones came and he used the Bible in the beginning as a tool. As a tool to say, I'm going to be a preacher of truth and justice in the American way. And I'm going to rescue you. And by the end of his life, if you look at it, there was portions where he would take the Bible and he would throw it against the wall and he would jump on the Bible because he used it as a tool and there was no value to it other than manipulating people. Jesus, on the other hand, he came in and he used scripture from the Old Testament as truth. He looked at the Pharisees in Mark chapter 7 when they came to him and said, What are you and your disciples doing? Why are you eating without washing your hands? Didn't the law tell us to wash our hands? And he would look at them and he would say, Isaiah says that there are going to be some among you who take the scripture and twist it. But I'm telling you that nothing enters the body that's been defiled. And so all of a sudden he uses scripture not to twist it or to manipulate it, but he uses it as truth. And the difference between the two, it may seem subtle, but it is so vastly different. And it changes everything that we can think or say or do. Because we begin to use truth as in the scripture versus the scripture as a tool. So Brett, let's contrast this with Christ. Where Jones isolated people, Jesus sent them back to his relationships. Jones demanded loyalty. Jesus pushed them back to the father. Said, don't just follow me. Go to the father. Go and pray yourself. Where Jones uses fear, Jesus looked at them and to his disciples. And one of the most common statements that Jesus says was, do not be afraid. Where Jones says, fear, fear, fear. The people are coming after us. The government's coming after us. Everything's going to happen. We're going to all die. Jones, he uses shame. And he uses this way to shame and guilt them. Where Jesus looks and he gives grace. Right? I want you to imagine Jesus in the moment where the woman was caught in adultery. She gets brought to him and he takes the method of Jones. Then he begins to shame this lady and join in with the Pharisees and say, yeah, let's stone her. Let's kill her. Let's get rid of this woman. We don't need her on the streets anymore. But instead, Jesus looks at her with grace and compassion and care and begins to lovingly care for her with grace. And where Jones made himself the savior, Jesus looked and said, I am the true savior. And I'm going to lay down my life for you. Where Jones says, you lay down your life for me. Manipulation imprisons people. And yet Jesus through the gospel sets us free and to be free indeed. Exactly. You know, and while you were speaking, I thought about this. I did a study on false teachers not too long ago. And one interesting factoid that popped up in my research is that every single New Testament book except for one warns of false teachers. It is that prevalent. False teachers, false prophets. Every single book except for one New Testament book warns of false teachers. So we have to be aware of that. And Jesus does need to be our example of what a true teacher is. Jesus never manipulated anyone into following him. He confronted. He corrected. He loved. Man, he never controlled. His followers were trapped by guilt. They chose him freely. And James, I'm even reminded of the story where all these people were following Jesus. And then one day he up and said, you know what? I got too many people following me because he knew their true intention. He knew the heart of man. He knew what was in them. He knew they followed him, not because they loved him and wanted to serve the kingdom of God, but because they ate the fish and they ate the bread. And they, you know, because they, they got the free filet of fish sandwich. That's what they wanted. They wanted more handouts. So he looked around them and said, okay, you want to eat some bread, eat my flesh, drink my blood. And people started looking around like, man, what is, what is going on here to the point it got, it got so many people left that he turned around and saw that it was only the 12 disciples left. And he asked them, will he also leave me? And Peter said, Lord, where else are we going to go? You have the words to eternal life. And, and so that was the thing about Jesus. He didn't try to manipulate and guilt people. He wanted people to, to, to follow him freely. And if, if somebody left, you know, they went out from us because they were not of us. And that was his, you know, that was Jesus's MO. And he didn't try to force followers. They followed freely of their own will. Brett, I'm proud of you. You used the King James when you quoted that just now. I really felt great. I felt like the spirit was really coming down. Well, that's where you get the power of God, brother. That's right. You know, Jesus, he appeared to the conscience. He, he looked at him and he said, this is what I want you to do. He never used emotional coercion that we see oftentimes in even modern day people and preachers. Jim Jones, as we're looking at his life, they, they used emotional manipulation or emotional cohesion to say, I want you to do this because it's going to benefit me. Jesus just simply said, if you want to follow me, sell everything you got. Right. He looked at the rich young ruler and he said, if you want to come follow me, go and sell everything and come back. And the man looked at him and said, I can't do that. He appealed to his conscience. And yet Jesus is, is using this in a way to say, I'm not going to manipulate you. I just want you to come and follow me for your true motives. As you just said. If we learn anything from Jonestown, it's this manipulation grows in shadows. It grows in the dark. It thrives where there is no accountability, no transparency, no honest questions, no dissent allowed. If none of these things exist, even the most well-intentioned people can get swept up into it. Here are the red flags of a manipulative system. Number one, you're told not to question leadership. Next, your identity becomes tied to the group. Then leaders claim exclusive truth or special revelation. Information is then controlled. Fear is used to keep you obedient. Leaving is considered betrayal. The leader becomes the moral center and compass of the group. Jonestown is the extreme form of these, but the seeds show up everywhere. Not just in cults, James, but people use these tools in the workplace, in church, in friendships, in families, in every facet of life. Somebody is always looking to control you. Somebody is always looking to manipulate you. And you have to be able to see the signs. Because it's very easy to slip up and get wrapped up in this and get too deep before you realize what's happening. Now, we're pastors. And as pastors, we have to say this plainly. Any leader, and now you listen to me. Any leader who demands loyalty to himself instead of Christ is dangerous. True leaders point to Christ, not one's own personal authority. We have seen too many pastors stand behind a pulpit and make themselves the center of attention, put themselves on pedestals, have hymns sung about him. I'm looking at you, Jackie Boy house. So much so that after he dies, people pray to him. I've heard that. And so, you know, we've got to be careful with this because it's everywhere. Oh, man, that's exactly right. And, you know, Brett, any church that disciplines honest questions is not a biblical church. I'm preaching through the Abide in Me passage right now with Jesus and his disciples in the upper room in John chapter 13 through 17. And Jesus, in this time, in this short little passage, I mean, in like two chapters, there's like 10 questions that are asked to Jesus as he's teaching. And never one time did Jesus look at him and say, Thomas, what a stupid question you gave me. How dare you even think about asking me that? He looked at him and he said, I've told you this and I'm going to tell you again. And with compassion, with grace, with love, he helps his disciples understand this. And this is what a biblical church should look like. Someone who takes the honest questions and takes the time to talk through them and begins to break out scripture and say, this is what we need to do for each other and for one another. And this is how a biblical church should look. One of the hardest things for me coming out of the IFB and being a pastor of a non-IFB church is the desire to to tamp down this this desire to dominate, because that's how I grew up. I grew up. My pastor was the dominator and he was the he was the final say. He was the law. What he said goes. Every question flowed through him. And what I had to teach myself whenever I got into pastoring a non-IFB church is that you're not a dictator. You're a leader. A leader is not a dictator. And, you know, we ask pastors, James, you know, we we shepherd. We don't control. We guide. We don't coerce. We correct. But we never crush. We serve. We don't dominate. We guide hearts. We don't dictate wills. We correct not with fear, but we correct with love. We never, ever crush a spirit that God has entrusted us with. And this is a line that we don't need to cross as pastors. Yeah. And, you know, authority without accountability becomes tyranny. This is why it's so important as pastors, as leaders, to have yourself accountable to someone or something that's around you. A pastor friend, a group of pastors, an elder board, even your deacons, even your fellow people. I even put myself in the position where I try not to teach Sunday school classes because I want to be in the class learning with everyone else. I'm not going to be the one that always gives the answer. I'm going to be there to get to help fellowship and facilitate the questions and answers because I wanted to people to know that I want to learn as well. And if I'm never submitting myself to a teacher, then I'm going to show that I'm the tyranny. I'm the one in charge. Jones shows us what happens when one man becomes the voice of God instead of pointing people to the ultimate source of life, the word of God. And we must be people. Pastors, if you're listening to this, church leaders, if you're listening to this, we must be people pointing people to Jesus, the source of life, not the source of what we have to give them. Let me say, let me interject real quick before you continue. I also have to train myself to allow people to disagree with me. Yeah. You know, because some of these issues are not, you know, top tier spiritual triage issues or second tier, the third tier, the fourth tier. And I have to be able to rest when somebody doesn't agree 100 percent with me. There are people in my church that don't agree 100 percent on my view of eschatology. They don't agree 100 percent with my view on things like free will and predestination. And I'm OK with that. We can still fellowship together. We can be we can still serve together. This, that. But that would have been unheard of. Disagreeing with something the pastor said, that would have been unheard of in the church I grew up in. And it would not have seen as disloyal. And it would not have been allowed. Yeah. Well, Brett, as we begin to close this episode down, we're going to give some gospel hope and some correlations here in just a minute. But the hope that we have is that manipulation destroys. But Christ restores. Maybe you're sitting here and you say, you know, I'm in a manipulative relationship or I've been manipulated in the past. And I don't have boundaries like I needed to. Christ comes in and he restores us and brings us back to the new life and hope that we have in Jesus. And we can know and trust in him and know that he is the one, the source of power that he has given to us. As one of my friends recently said, as we take communion and we go through communion, it's a moment of renewal to begin every single day as a new day. It's a time to remember that as you leave that time, you get another fresh start, another beginning, another new beginning that begins to happen in your life. And when Christ brings truth in to your confusion, freedom is there to break the bondage of manipulation or whatever may be happening in your life. Identity begins to mend that brokenness and healing begins to happen when the trauma, where the trauma was at. Jesus said in John 8, 32, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. And we must understand that the gospel frees us from our fear. It frees us from our shame. It frees us from the emotional control that we've been in. It frees us from the abuse of authority. And it frees us from the spiritual coercion that we have in our life. Freedom doesn't come from a leader. Freedom doesn't come from a pastor. Freedom doesn't come from checking a new box on a piece of paper. Freedom doesn't come from a new job. But freedom simply comes from the Savior. The one who came to die for our sins, to live forevermore in heaven, to make intercession for you and me, that draws us to the Father through him. Jim Jones is the extreme case. He's the case that we can look at and say, this is the extreme case that can happen when it goes unchecked. But it's not an isolated one. There's others that we could look at. We want to take this one simple case and look at it to break it down for you. But manipulation takes many forms. And manipulation steals lives. Sometimes it's slowly. But sometimes, in many of our cases, it's sudden. We were born into it. We didn't know any different. And we were born into this environment that we just thought was normal. Exactly. Exactly. But the good news from all this is, when we walk in the truth of Christ, when we stay rooted in Scripture, when we surround ourselves with accountable, humble leadership, manipulation loses its power. I mean, when truth is spoken, when questions are welcomed, when hearts are free to discern, that community is built on honesty and humility and Christ-centered love. It is just a breath of fresh air. It's experiencing true freedom. You're not free unless you're in that type of a system. And that's just what we want. We want people to experience freedom that we have experienced and the freedom that's available. Yeah, Brett. As we begin to close, as we begin to finish up and finally wrap this series up, I want to take a moment for you to answer, for me to answer the simple question of how did we see this spiritual manipulation like the Jonestown? One of the things that I have been getting over and over, from emails to comments on episodes, is I never realized the correlation between the Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement and Jim Jones. And, I mean, you know, he was charismatic and he was prophesied and he was doing some of these things. And, you know, IFB wasn't doing that. But, man, the correlation between the two is phenomenal. Brett, what are some of the things that we've seen as we've looked through the Jim Jones story of his life and what he did? That is so parallel to what we have seen in our own movement that we were part of. Oh, man. Where do I even begin to start? I mean, that's a loaded question. That's a loaded question. And, oh, man, to think through that, I would say number one is the us versus them. You know, that was one of the tools that was really used to really kind of isolate us. It's us versus them. Even other Baptist churches, if for some reason we didn't go to our church, we had to drive 50 miles down the road to go to the next, to go to the next independent Baptist church. Because the Southern Baptist churches around us weren't speaking the truth. They were sending people to hell with their devil, with their Satan Bibles and their other translations. And, you know, we were the only ones preaching truth. We were the only ones who were going to be a bride of Christ. Everyone else that saved is going to be a guest at the wedding, but only the independent fundamental Baptist is going to be the bride of Christ. And it just came to the thing where you didn't leave because you didn't have anywhere else to go. You know, you just thought, man, if this is the only thing that's true, then I have to endure this abuse. And I'm going through because I've got nowhere else to go. I'm afraid I'm going to go to hell if I leave. So I'm getting threatened with a hellfire. Not that I believe I could lose my salvation, but if I left, it would prove I wasn't saved in the first place. And that's the mentality that's drilled into you is this us versus them rhetoric. And then, you know, thinking through it, I mean, I would say. I'll give you mine because I think that's that's great. And that's one of the things I was going to say. The one for me is I think you nailed it on the head a minute ago is the finding ways to get people on the property every single day of the week. Yeah, it's the idea that I'm going to isolate you so much that every single day, everything that you're going to do is going to be at the church seven days a week. School, so when in church Sunday night, Wednesday night, whatever it may be, we're going to get you in the doors. We're going to get you on the property to control everything that you think, say and do. And so that is the idea versus allowing Jesus to control everything that they think, say and do. I'm going to manipulate you, brainwash you into doing everything that I want you to think, say and do. Exactly. And for me, I think the second one is instilling fear. You know, my pastor was a great he was a good preacher. I would say great, but he was a really good preacher. He was interesting. He was funny. He can make you laugh. You know, looking back, it was just the same three messages over and over in different packages. But the thing is, is he would get up every once in a while and he would tell you a story that would keep you in line and keep you in check and tell you the story about the woman who said a crossword. Then her son died and she got thrown in an insane asylum and preached the messages on. He would he would sometimes he wouldn't do it. He'd bring his buddy in to preach a message on obeying a pastor. And you better do what this man says. And you better obey him. You never never say one crossword against the man of God. Well, these are some of the things that I experienced in my in my life. Yeah, I would say the only one other one. And this was a more of a broader statement. But the the dehumanization. Right. The we had a pastor and I love this guy growing up and Ron Banks. And then he would be with Lord a couple of years ago. And he he would always say he would refer to women as heifers. And it was a joke. And, you know, it was it was always, you know, you know, a good old barn needs a good paint job every once in a while. And so it was the dehumanization of women, but it was a joking manner. But there was some truth behind what he was saying. But then even the when we would go to the camp meeting preaching circuits and they would say, you know, bless God. And if you don't agree with what I'm saying, don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you. Right. And all of a sudden they dehumanize people to this effect of it's just another number. And if you don't agree with me, you're going to get out. And so those are some things that we can be aware of. Man, I you are so right. I never thought about that. How just the talking down about women and and dehumanizing them, making them less than that was also a big part of what we went through. Absolutely. Well, thank you guys for joining this extended episode in the series that we've been doing. And what a great time it's been. And just learning and trying to educate yourself on when you're in those environments. If there's anything we can do for you, please reach out to us. Let us know. And as we said at the beginning, join us in Orlando or one of our meetups that we get to and looking forward to what the Lord's going to be doing in the future. 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.

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