People's Temple - Indianapolis Sermon (1959-1960)

https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=122803

Summary prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.
(This tape was transcribed by Kristian Klippenstein. The editors gratefully acknowledge his invaluable assistance.)

“I’ll tell you this, though, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ!” Jim Jones says about halfway through this sermon. This is not the Jim Jones of Jonestown 1978, or Jim Jones of San Francisco 1972, but rather Jim Jones in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1959. He is a fiery Christocentric preacher, speaking passionately of the powers of the Holy Ghost, of the might of the Christian God, of the need for faith, belief, obedience, repentance, and salvation for his followers.

He speaks passionately, not just of the power of prayer, but of the need for prayer, just as the apostles had. “They broke bread and they had prayer. If you don’t begin by speaking to God in the morning, you’d better not speak to men. You’ll get in trouble all day long.” And it should be a public witness: “If you can say ‘Praise the Lord’ in the house of God, then you say ‘Praise the Lord’ down on the street corner!”

There are other pieces of Jones that would become unrecognizable. “Communism has sold itself to the position of the group mind,” he says. But, he adds, the only thing that’s going to counter Communism is an approach that hints at his future: the sharing of all things as the apostles did on the day of Pentecost, as Peoples Temple does every day with its free restaurant and grocery, through its prison ministry. It is communalism – with a lower case “c” – that will defeat capital-C Communism.

Reflecting the tradition from which he has emerged, Jones does speak of his ability to heal – “If you need healing, come up here, I’ll get you healed” – but it is not Jim Jones who does it. “God’s able to take their burdens away tonight,” he immediately adds. He mentions his healing abilities several times throughout – including his recognition that if he didn’t heal, people wouldn’t come – but the tape closes with his prayer, “By the power of the Holy Spirit bring healing to this life. Father, you see the vacancy, we pray that thou would fill here with your presence and your power, in the name of the Son of God.”

He does separate himself from other Pentecostal preachers in several ways. Those preachers and their followers cherry-pick their way through the Bible, designating the “holy kiss” and foot-washing as customs, and not the law. They are also more interested in lining their own nests than he is, another preview of the Jim Jones to come: “If you’re wasting God’s money today by putting it in some church that’s just doing a rat race or feeding some preacher, keeping him plush, … you’re doing a work that is wrong.”

In the main, though, it is a sermon filled with hope, of invitation, of the power of love. “This is the greatest hour in the world to be alive. But wouldn’t you like to have the same spirit as that early church? Wouldn’t you like to have the desperate hunger of that early church? … Do you want what God has for you?”

Видео People's Temple - Indianapolis Sermon (1959-1960) канала Casey Strange