Document: Transcript of a sermon given by Jim Jones while the Peoples Temple was still in Indiana. This sermon likely dates to 1957 or 1958.
Title: Q1058-2 Part 3
Author: James Warren Jones
Date: 1957 or 1958
Source: FBI Files Audiotape Q1058-2
Transcript: Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple. Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGhee III.
Annotations: team names
Jones: (comes on in mid-sentence) (hoarse voice) —over against each other, intelligence and faith. When Galio [Galileo] grasped the new astronomy, he had to fight old archaic beliefs. When [English anatomist William] Harvey knew that the blood did circulate, he faced opposing beliefs that it did not. So we have come to say, give us intelligence, but beware of this vice of the mind, this impediment to progress faith. To this, of course, the answer is clear. Granted that faith is one of the most dangerous forces in the world, men even have faith in war as a way of settling international difficulty, and from such major faiths bringing ruin on whole civilizations to individual beliefs in segregation, in rabbits’ feet, and astrology, fake medicines, and demonology, incredible ideas about the world, and obsolete creeds of religion.
Faith can debauch your life, corrupt the mind and impede progress. But faith is the miracle worker. True, from the carnal mind of the mortal understanding, it would be difficult to believe suppositionally in our religious background. It would be hard for us to grasp the meaning of the universe. But if you will follow your negativity to its end, to its ultimate, you will not be able to find any hope for your life. There’ll be no purpose or well-being. We must drive at faith, as a prodigious power to be used or misused. The fate of mankind depends largely on what is done with it. We never can solve the problem by eliminating faith. Of all mad faiths, the maddest is the faith that we can get rid of faith. A human being is essentially a creature who necessarily and forever believes in something. The only cure in this world for the wrong use of faith is the right use of it. Deep at the center of every personality, where we handle our own solitariness, we are working out success or failure, salvation or destruction, by our use of this perilous power, positive, and let us consider some of the wholesome and saving use of it.
In particular, note four mortal enemies of the soul. Aimlessness. Feebleness. Fear. Pessimism or cynicism. If ever there was a time when these mortal enemies went up and down the earth, seeking whom they might devour, it is today. Believe me, as a pastor, and a believer in the— in at least the prime facie pattern of the Kingdom, it is difficult for me at times to believe in many of the eternal things. My precious friends at the Peace Mushin [Mission], under the leadership of the Great Master, Father Divine, believe in the immortality of the body. I love those precious people, and they are in many ways the dearest and most precious family I possess. It is a little hard for me, though, to see speculatively this position. I see the immortality of truth. I see the immortality of that which I am sowing now for the good life, and giving myself completely to truth. If it does (unintelligible word) live in me, it shall live in that which proceeds me. And I see certainly see faith as a necessity, and although I cannot comprehend this great ultimate of the immortality of the body, and such a personal immortality, I would not dare allow my mortal mind to rid me of the hope that there is faith for the survival of the good life, or the incarnate divinity that is within every man. We must bless people who have faith. It is people who have had such radical faith as the Peace Mission, that have caused the world to be turned upside-down. It was the faith of Jesus and the resurrection of the body and the hope of the world that caused us to have peace that passes all understanding today. Keep your faith. Do not give room for doubt. The negativeness of the atheist has never moved a mountain, but Christ can do all things. Peace and love from Pastor Jones.