Jim Jones was almost certainly an atheist. This isn't a moral slight against atheism, but merely an observation based upon how his preaching and apparent ideology evolved over the course of several decades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JVntXiOksc- Here we have a Jim Jones sermon from around 1960, back when he was still in Indianapolis. Very passionate, Pentacostal-inspired, Christ-centered.

https://youtu.be/SviM_3qBe94?si=M7lKaDnWHrmMX0bj - Flash forward to 1973. This is around the time he had been quoted saying things like 'The Bible is a paper totem' and 'Christianity is a flyaway religion with a sky god'. He'd completely abandoned the faith by this point.

Most evidence points to Jim Jones being a hardcore atheist/communist who used a religious framework as a method of control and I think it's unlikely that he believed in any of his claims of divinity or reincarnation.

>Why would Jim Jones, an atheist, perform a satanic ritual?
>What do you mean by 'satanic ritual'?
>Jim Jones was a CIA asset and it was a mind control experiment

Do you need to be aware that you are performing a satanic ritual in order to successfully perform one? I don't think so. And, because I don't think intentionality matters, I also don't think any of the theories about CIA involvement (I haven't looked into these myself but I am open to them) contradict what I'm about to explain.

Now, when I say 'satanic ritual' I am speaking in the Biblically accurate sense; there are a lot of different flavors of 'satanic' and most of these are decidedly NOT Biblically accurate. LaVeyan satanism is mystical individualism with satan as a symbol, the one based in the Florida is more of a political movement that uses satanic imagery as a form of protest against what they see as unjust religious favoritism laws, and then most else of what you see is 'esoteric luciferianism' descended from 19th-century anarchists.

>>40687865 (OP)

From the Biblical perspective, Satan is the prince of lies. He does not care if anyone says 'hail satan', only that they are drawn away from God. A true place of satanic worship, in that sense, is very unlikely to be a black building covered in pentagrams with a statue of baphomet on the lawn; rather, it's far more likely to look like a church.

>How do we identify the satanic?

This is tricky because the nature of the satanic is both deception and temptation; absolute certainty is never guaranteed. The devil himself quotes scripture in order to tempt Jesus in the wilderness.

A heretical thing is not necessarily satanic in nature. Nor a blasphemous thing. Nor an atheistic thing. But there are certain identifiers which can point us specifically to the satanic:

>Inversion of Christ's Teaching
This is biggest identifier. Not a rejection. Not a replacement. A complete inversion. Remember that.
>Resemblance to religious practice as forbidden in scripture (Lev 18:21)
>Similarity to Biblical warning (Thes 2:3-12, John 2:18-22, John 7)

These are just a few, but they're the big ones. Moving on to the Death Tape.

https://youtu.be/ofbGZDbbUsE?si=t4_bRCnLB9Iws0pF

This is the audio recording of the ritual/massacre itself, it's about 45 minutes of audio which includes Jim Jones' final sermon.

>>40687872
He begins the sermon with 'How very much I have loved you'. Even without any prior knowledge of Jim Jones I would recognize this very first line as a massive red flag. In any other denomination you'd hear 'How very much God has loved us' or something similar. If your weird, newly religious friend drags you to an unfamiliar church and that's the preacher's first line: get out. Just get up and leave.

From his very first line God has been banished from the room. Jim Jones has replaced both God and Christ. At no point does Jim Jones say 'I am God' during this audio because he doesn't have to, it's in his behavior and how his most frantic of followers treat him.

The word 'God' is spoken very sparingly during the massacre. The one time Jim Jones explicitly refers to God he instead chooses the term 'sovereign being'. The words 'Jesus' and 'Christ' are not said a single time. The exclusion of these is not an immediate signifier of the satanic. However, something interesting happens at the end of Jim Jones' opening statement: he quotes scripture! Even though he'd verbally torn the Bible apart and chosen to replace God in his cult of personality, he specifically quotes John 10:18.

>It was said by the greatest of prophets, from time immemorial, "No man takes my life from me, I lay my life down".

He credits these words to 'the greatest of prophets'. Those are the words of Christ, preaching to the Pharisees. The full scripture is

>Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.
>John 10:17-18

>>40687887

Christ says that his Father has given him the authority to lay down his life for his followers and take it up again. In a complete and total INVERSION of this verse, Jim Jones uses it to justify his authority (as Father) to have his followers lay down their lives along with him. Jim Jones has replaced the Father. His followers even call him Dad. At one point in the audio a follower literally says 'I know Jim Jones is God'.

So even though Christ is directly quoted during the beginning of this sermon, his name is not once invoked.
>And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils
>Mark 16:17

Now, the audio continues with Jim Jones preaching in a secular, almost fatalist fashion about how they all have to die. Only one vocal dissenter, Christine Miller, manages to argue against it all for the duration of the killings but is eventually shouted down.

>>40687899
Christian teaching is that life has meaning; life is worth living. Suffering is an integral part of existence. Jesus didn't commit suicide, he suffered voluntarily. Jim Jones inverts this core tenet of completely and utterly, almost too many times to keep track of.

This is what a satanic sermon sounds like
>It’s never been done before you say? It’s been done by every tribe in history, every tribe facing annihilation. All the Indians in the Amazon are doing it now. They refuse to bring any babies into the world. They kill every child that comes into the world, because they don’t want to live in this kind of a world. So be patient, be patient … death is … I tell you I don’t care how many screams you hear, I don’t care how many anguished cries … death is a million times preferable to ten more days of this life. If you knew what was ahead of you, if you knew what was ahead of you, you’d be glad to be stepping over tonight.
>Without me, life has no meaning. I'm the best friend you'll ever have.
>Let's just be done with it. Let's be done with the agony of it. It's far, far harder to have to watch you every day die slowly and from the time you were a child to the time you get gray you're dying.

At some point in the tape, while Christine Miller is arguing for everyone's lives, her reasoning takes an interesting turn. She begins to make an argument from free will, an argument that would have equal validity to both a Christian and a satanist.

>Christine - I know that. But I still think, as an individual. I have a right to...
>Jones - You do, I'm listening...
>Christine - I think, what I feel, and I think we all have the right to our own destiny as individuals
>Jones - Right
>Christine - And I think I have the right to choose mine and everybody else has the right to choose theirs.
>Jones - Mm-hmm.

>>40687903

At no point does Jones disagree with her or formulate any argument against her. He gives the most satanic response possible: he agrees with her and then doesn't let her leave. Without speaking, he says 'Yes, I agree. But I am using my freedom to restrict yours'.

Eventually, they bring out the cyanide-laced flavor-aid. The vast majority of people at Jonestown did not commit suicide; they were murdered. They were surrounded by armed guards and weren't allowed to leave. If you didn't drink you were injected with poison. If you tried to run they'd shoot you. Babies don't commit suicide.

Babies had poison injected into their mouths with needle-less syringes. Parents were forced to kill their children before dying themselves. This is a crucial element of satanic identification and what truly separates Jonestown from most other mass cult tragedies.

Heaven's Gate was a suicide. Jonestown was a sacrifice. The fact that parents sacrificed their own children eerily reflects the Molech sacrifices as described in the Old Testament. Jones didn't just instruct this, but participated in it, as his youngest biological son was poisoned and killed.

>Direct inversions of Christ and perversions of scripture
>Child sacrifice
>Never invoking Christ even while identifying in sermon as 'Judeo-Christian' communist
>Idolatry and self-worship
>Hardcore atheistic fatalism rants
>Jim Jones' antichrist/pseudochrist like behavior and perspective on freedom

It checks. Every. Box. Jim Jones didn't have to know he was performing a satanic ritual. That doesn't matter. Aware of it or not, what he did was the blueprint of an Old Testament child sacrifice.

What are the potential implications of such a mass ritual having been successfully performed? Or of CIA involvement? The government has delved into the paranormal before. Is it possible the CIA knowingly orchestrated such a ritual? What satanic organizations are preparing for this kind of thing right now?

>>40687865 (OP)
Actually engaging and informative thread, bump for you, anon.04ADW

>>40687865 (OP)
Huh. I expected another schizo bot thread but I'm pleasantly surprised.
>>40687913
>What are the potential implications of such a mass ritual having been successfully performed?
I don't think this one in particular heralds anything particularly, except that we are very broadly heading towards the end times though it does get me thinking. Catholicism recognises the influence of demons outside of possession, which it has very strict criteria for and I'm of the mind that Jerry Marzinsky has found how the forces of evil can conceal themselves within our rational society. My reading around project monarch suggests that the people doing that, like arch-Satanist Michael Aquino, believe they're simply practising advanced, if completely immoral, psychology which is separate to magic but I do sometimes wonder whether that's true. My personal belief is that evil already stalks the earth and looks for any opportunity to burrow into men's hearts, so could it be that nutjobs like Jim Jones' most devout followers kind of fall victim to a negative feedback loop which slowly lets demonic forces overwrite their logic and compassion until they're pretty much controlled inhuman flesh puppets without being outright possessed? I'm phone posting so I dunno if that makes sense but it explains to me how certain radical groups throughout history were capable of such inhuman cruelty.

Great writeup, OP. I had studied this a few years ago and it is one of the most fascinating mass murders (not suicide as you pointed out). I think you leave one thing out that has quite its importance to figuring this whole ordeal out, but I think Jim was fucked with the authorities because of a few "incidents" (forgive me cause my memory is kinda shot by substance abuse). I think he felt like going out in a bang without leaving any witness behind. My opinion is that there was no intervention from the government or agencies.

You make a great point when you talk about rituals made without the knowledge that it is a ritual. I don't know enough about the Old Testament to know if it fits, but my question to you would only be this: for what purpose? Correct me if I'm wrong, but rituals are made as an exchange of sorts. Had he made it out, I would have told you that perhaps he intended it, or did a mass sacrifice without even realizing the ramifications. However he just died, leaving nothing behind. To me, it's just one of those events that happened where you need a way higher ground to get the entire perspective. I think it led to something else in the world, unrelated, that "balanced" all those innocent murders.

Just my two cents. This anon >>40688258 also makes some good points.

>>40688100
Thank you. Jonestown needs to get talked about more, fascinating from every angle.

>>40688258
I think there's a possibility that real demonic forces could have influenced the People's Temple, or even that Jim Jones himself was possessed.

If Gabriele Amorth can be believed the Catholic Church had reason to believe Hitler was possessed during WW2 and attempted and a long-range exorcism. Jim Jones behaves in way that's easy to describe as demonic.

Most people who are possessed are likely unaware that they're possessed.

>>40688311
>for what purpose? Correct me if I'm wrong, but rituals are made as an exchange of sorts

First, let me say that I think MOST satanic rituals are probably done without any of the involved parties knowing.

Theologically, the goal of satan isn't to harm or frighten or make your head spin around or vomit pea soup. None of that is important. Satan wants to separate people from God. Destroy faith. Lead astray.

What did Jonestown accomplish from a satanic perspective? Almost 1000 people were led astray and murdered. Faith was shaken because that's what mass tragedies do, especially one involving a Judeo-Christian cult.

What did Jim Jones have to gain? From his perspective, he was a communist hero. It wasn't a ritual to him, it was a revolutionary act. Political murder-suicide. He got exactly what he wanted except the revolution he wanted to follow. I think his wife left a note wanting all of their assets to go the communist party of the USSR (not sure if that was ever honored).That's a bit of armchair psychology though. He was also hopped up on drugs.

Wait until you find out these people were murdered by the feds for being too "dangerous".
Never trust the feds. For they are the true satanic cult in hiding.

>>40688548
CIA massacred them before they (PTs) moved to the USSR. I don't know if CIA is federal per se, or extra-govermental .
jim jones proved racial harmony and communalist communism CAN work, so the CIA had to send a death squad to off them all

>>40688597
>jim jones proved racial harmony and communalist communism CAN work
They couldn't even afford to kill themselves with real kool-aid.

>Over 300 of the people who died at Jonestown were children
>Jim Jones, starting around the 70s, would start baptizing people 'in the name of socialism'

That's a lot of dead, unbaptized children. Did he intentionally build up as many as he could?

>>40688597
Pretty much. Jonestown is something I don't research much but from what I've seen and heard and what the man could do and taught people to do.. yeah I can see why they offed them all and treated the whole thing as "satanic". Goes without saying.

>>40688768
>yeah I can see why they offed them all and treated the whole thing as "satanic".

/x/ is the only place I've ever seen the 'Jonestown is satanic' narrative.

Mostly there's just a weird media silence about it. You'd think an actual communist death cult would be a common talking point for modern day American conservatives but it isn't.

>>40687865 (OP)
i dont think so