Rev Jim Jones was ordained in 1957 by the Assemblies of God Church.
Initially, his church didn’t have much members. So, he organized some religious programs and invited the popular Evangelist William Branham.
Due to the popularity of Rev. Branham, Jim Jone’s congregation grew immensely .
Soon, he took many members to a Jungle in Guyana and named the place Jones town.
Most of the members were encouraged to sell all their “worldly belongings” and bring the money to Jim Jones or the People’s temple.
Jim Jones was notably against racism but ironically, he was known to read books by Adolf Hitler and Father Divine.
In fact, Jim Jones adopted colored or non-white children. He even advised his followers to adopt orphans from war-torn Korea in the 1970’s.
Soon, Rev. Jim Jones began to enforce his own doctrines. He claimed that he was the reincarnation of Buddha and Ghandi and that he was the second coming of Christ.
He notably said: “if you see me as your God, I will be your God”.
INVESTIGATIONS:
In 1978, the US Government sent a delegation led by US Representative, Leo Ryan to Jones Town to investigate allegations of human right abuses.
After the delegation had visited Jonestown and was heading back, Jim Jones ordered some of his followers to kill the members of the delegation.
Leo Ryan and some others were killed, while few others survived the attack.
MASS SUICIDE
That same evening, Jim Jones called his followers together and informed them that the government would come to torture them and that the only “escape route” was death.
He openly served his members some drinks which were mixed with cyanide(a poison).
Some members refused to drink initially, but they were either intimidated or forced by other members to drink the poison.
Parents administered the poison to their own children before drinking the poison too. After everyone else had taken the poison including Jim Jone’s wife, Jim Jones shot himself in the head.
A total of 918 people died that day, including 304 children. Because of the graphic nature of the event, the pictures will not be shown here, but can be sourced on Google.
REVIEWS:
While Jim Jones was somewhat of a preacher, it should also be noted that he openly had Atheist or Agnostic tendencies.
He once notably told his followers : “There’s no heaven up there! We’ll have to make heaven down here”.
He also rejected the Bible and denounced a “God of the Sky”.
He was also notably bisexual.
One word almost desribes his life’s work: “horrible”
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